Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book TV 20110404

i was not a big man on campus. though i was stuffed into lockers and shannon lockers by some of the big man on campus. actually one of my debate partner's do this to say with regard and tom wilson who played this in the back to the future movies and another one was a training josh were many chases tornadoes and was one of the subjects of the movie twister years ago. they went on to really exciting life and i went on to talk. a lot of the people i talk with now are politicians. and so when i was given my current job at the time i was given a good piece of advice to interview three politicians everyday. and from spending that much on around them, i can tell you they are a emotional freaks and was voted or the other. they have a cobbler. dementia which is a tax so much they tried themselves insane. [laughter] but they do have incredible social skills. when you meet them by and large they stand for close to you, invade your personal space, rubbed the back of your head and caressed her cheek, dinner with republican senator put his hand on my side, especially for emphasis. [laughter] several years ago is in the the senate press gallery and watching dan quell and ted kennedy greet each other and they give each other these big hugs and buried her laughing and grouping enhancer revving up and down each other's acts and they are grinding away there. get a room, i don't want to see this. [laughter] another story hotel, which is a fit of a name dropper if you'll excuse me but i'm going through a hotel in boston a couple years ago when bill clinton comes out of one of the elevators and starts praising me for it, had had written praising him, which he thought was particularly an astute column. but as he is talking, people see bill clinton and he starts backing up so they cannot hear what he is saying. so within a few minutes you think any feet away, but he's just talking to me, but just embracing the crowd. another case i was following romney around while he was campaigning in last election cycle. he was campaigning with his five perfect sons, date, chip, rep, lift and tip. he goes into a diner and starts going to the tables at the diner and introducing himself to families and asking what ability to handle there from in describing the home he owned in their village. and then he went around from table to table in the thick 30 people in on the way out to first names almost everybody he's just that. it take okay, that's a profession that will be going into. finally a few weeks ago at the national institutes of health and i was shown by a neuroscientific media for younger with williams syndrome. for those of you don't know, williams syndrome looks like reversal autism. so the little girl is 18 months old in a room with 12-year-old boy, son of the researcher can show me wants to look into his eyes. and the boys chuckling and knocking over stuff. she has no interest in physical objects in the room. show me what social connection so she gets close and stare straight into his eyes minute after minute. i was watching the video, thinking this is every senator i have ever interviewed. [laughter] and so, they are socially attuned creatures. the odd thing is when it turns their them into policy, on the social sophistication vanishes and they start taking like sepia reporters. and i've covered a series of failures in my life, a lot of which have to do with an overly simplistic view of human nature. i covered the soviet union and we sent economists in there with privatization plans. what they really lacked fair with social trust and we were blind to that. as a result he really stole everything in the country with the debate on social trust. then i covered the war in iraq and we sent the military and invaders were oblivious to the cultural and psychological realities in iraq and i'm prepared for that. we had a financial system and regulatory regime based on the assumption that bankers are rational self-interested creatures who wouldn't do anything en masse. that turned out not to be true. most importantly, for 30 years i've covered education, trying to understand why 30% or 20% of kids drop out of high school. and we'll try for 30 years to try to raise high school graduation rate. most of those efforts have been disappointing because we rearranged the bureaucratic boxes, big schools, little schools, charters, vouchers while skirting the central issue which is the individual relationship between teacher and student. [applause] people learn from people they love. if you talk about love at a congressional hearing, they look at you like your opera. they just don't talk in that language. the question is why are the most socially attuned people and is completely dehumanized when they think about policy? and i came to the conclusion that this was not simply a political problem, but a broader cultural problem. we have in our society disinherited view that we are divided cells, that we have reason over here and a motion over here in the two are at war with one another on a seesaw. if you're emotionally were not rational. if you're rational than you are not emotional in that society progresses to the extent that reason, which is trustworthy can suppress passions which are untrustworthy. and so, the bias has led to a view of human nature that we are fundamentally rational individuals who responded straightforward ways to incentives. the two academic discipline i try to study human behavior, using the methods of physics, emphasizing the akin county model and sorted ignoring all the rest. it has led to an amputation, a shallow view of human nature or you emphasize things and ignore things that are down below. it has created a culture in which we are really good at talking about material things, but bad about talking about emotions. really good about talking about health and safety and professional skills, but about the most important things like character and integrity, we often know very little to say. alastair mcintyre, the great philosopher says within a system we still have the words for the import things like virtue and honor and praise, but we don't have a basic understanding of how they all fit together. he says imagine you had science with it neutron or gravity, but we didn't understand how physics were and how they'll fit together is where we are. so i do think we have this amputation, which us in a certain way. and it us in the direction, the prevailing breeze that we are not always satisfied with. i mention it to high school in mesa folks live in wins pennsylvania just west of here. you see parents there in many places around the countries are trapped in a certain style of raising their kids. so you go to an elementary school in the third-graders come out where these backpacks late beatles stuck on the ground. they get picked up with solid and oddities and at that time is socially acceptable to the luxury car so long as it comes from a country hostile to u.s. foreign policy. they get breeze to picked a bite buber moms are highly successful korona to take him out to make sure their kids get into harvard they are doing little but exercise during the moment of conception in the delivery room, cutting umbilical cords themselves. the baby pops out and the mandarin flashcards to turn them into achievement sheens and sat prep, although practice and they're not happy. they don't think this is the most important thing, but the tiger bomb down the street is doing it and they feel trapped into a system in which they were to go, but they actually can't renounce. they are often in a system where they sorted into it at morality and character matters most, but they don't quite have a vocabulary for good when people talk about morality we often talk about shopping. so you know, we have the ben & jerry's ice cream on foreign policy. i joke to one of my books that ben & jerry's should make a pacifist toothpaste that doesn't kill germs. just ask them to leave. [laughter] they've got a whole foods market, one of the grocery stores all the cashiers to click download from amnesty international. my house we buy their cvs-based max klug veggie booty with kill you, with a mom, mom, i want a snack that will prevent colon cancer. [laughter] and so, i think this is sort of the world we are trapped in, but we realize that it's actually not all there is. and there is more to life and more that we should be experiencing. and so i was thinking about this problem and gradually became aware of this other sphere of life where they were looking into some of the deeper things. and oddly it was a theologian. it wasn't really philosophers, but people who study the human mind come over this incredibly exciting. in the city's minds is being done across a wide range of spheres like neuroscience, cognitive science, psychology, behavioral economics. people are looking into the human mind and really it's a revolution in consciousness if you want to put it that way because when he synthesized their findings across these many different spheres, you really start with three key insight. the first inside as well the conscious mind or is the autobiography of our species, most of the action and most of the impressive action is happening unconsciously, below the level of awareness. one way to think of this is that the human mind can take in roughly 12 million pieces of information in minutes of which you can consciously process about 40. all the rest is being done without our being aware of it. a lot of the things going on are somewhat odd in my favorite research findings from the university of oslo scholar is people named dennis are disproportionately likely to become dentists. people named 4 cents are likely to become lawyers because unconsciously we gravitate towards things that are familiar, which is why saved my daughter the president of the united states works. [laughter] some of the things that are going on a consciously or impressive. it is not to tangle the web of urges that freud imagined. the unconscious is really different way of understanding the world and yielding superior results. one of the tips i read about is if you have a discussion you can make a dramatic, tell yourself you'll decide by a coin flip. flip the coin, but don't go by how it comes out. go buy your emotional reaction. are you happy or sad it came up that way? that is your unconscious mind having made the decision in telling you what it thinks. the third area that happens unconsciously is really the most important. how we relate to people? how do we understand situations? how do we perceive the world? these are the fundamental fact are some of the really successful or unsuccessful life. a lot of that action is having unconscious. the second insight is emotions are the enemy is thinking. emotions are the center of thinking. people have strokes and missions that can process emotions are not super smart. emotions assign value to things. they tell you what you want, what you value, what you don't value. if you don't have valuations of ice cream you cannot make rational decisions. emotions are not separate from reason. they are foundation of reason. i'm in middle age by not talking about emotion particularly. one of the scientific experiences therein to, which is getting a truth, which is they took a bunch of middle-aged guys, put them in a samurai and have them watch a horror movie and then have them describe their feelings towards their wives. the brain scans were the same in both circumstances. [laughter] sheer terror. i know what that site. my wife's history writing a book like motion is about on the right and a book about gluttony. it's not a natural thing. and you emotions really are the center of how we perceive the world, how we value the world. they are the center of how our brains organize the world. in 1875 there was a study by rené stood in at this orphanage, they decided to keep the kids healthy, keep them germ-free. they gave them food and good health care, but did not handle them and they separated them. those kids died by age two with a 37% mortality rate and they stopped naming kids because they weren't living long enough. so that is a sign how a motion is literally physically necessary. as though, emotion is something you have to get comfortable with. the third insight is weird not not -- we are social animals with penetrations. at any second or minute are not only seeing you, we are reenact to see in each other inside her mind cleared we are deeply interpenetrate it and there's also such medication methods through which we are communicating in ways that are not even aware. as though there was one story about a psychology professor who wandered up and down the stage from side to side in its class a trick on him, with a 70s over here will look at him. what is over there, we will. in two minutes he was out the door over here. he just felt better over there. another experiment in january after january that some people watch over her movie, some comedy. they got other people to sniff gauze pads, well-paid and say, did the gauze pad watch a horror movie or comedy. tickets are way average so what were much better than men. so we are deeply penetrated. these findings really give this an idea of how life works and who we are. so we are in many ways children of the french enlightenment, believing reason is the highest of our faculties. this confirms some of the emphasis of the british or scottish enlightenment. david hume and adam smith. the reason and sentiments are quite strong are most important faculty. it gives us a view of who we are any different view of human capital, what it takes to lead a fulfilling life. we often talk about things we can measure. grades come in degrees, sat scores, i.q. scores. there's other qualities which are more important, which are both emotional and rational and make a hash of these two categories. what are these talents is this thing called mine site. the ability to enter their minds and learn and download what those mines have to teach you. babiescome equipped to a great degree, so alan bell south is a researcher at the university of washington leaned over a baby who is 43 minutes old, white this time she wiped her tongue that. that's because babies at this age are built to merge with the mind they come into contact with and really absorb models for understanding the world from who they come in contact with. by 18 months, 55% of american babies have established a two-way relationship with the mom primarily, but also the death of those kids have what they call a secure attachment. they really know how to build relationships with parents and with adults and those kids have a huge leg up. and so researchers can take a look at kids who are 18 months old, look how they attached a mom and predict the 77% accuracy who will graduate from high school. if you can go into a school that even at three or two or five and you know how to relate to the teacher, you just have a better shot of doing well in school. about 20% of kids are what they call avoiding the attached comic is to send out signals, but not much has been coming back at them. the teacher described one of the kids come into the classroom, attacking like a sailboat in the wind about wanting to get close to the teacher, but not knowing how to do it. those kids have less activation in ward areas during social interaction make it less of a kick out of social engagement. by age 70 day of many, many fewer friends than others. something that happens at 18 months does not determine the life course, but opens up a pathway, which can be either confirmed or just confirmed by experience. somebody with a bad attachment can discover a mentor and can be changed. these are some of the skills he learned very on. a second skill is equipoise. this is serenity and maturity to look inside your own mind and be aware of your old with says. the unconscious of many skills that have some weaknesses. we are overconfidence machines. 95% of college professors believe they have above average teaching skills. 96% of students have above average leaderships does. "time" magazine asks people, are you in the top 1% of earners? 19% of americans are in the top 1%. take a test or executives about their own industry and asked how confident are you guide your answers right click advertising executives as they are confident they get 90% rate rate. in fact they got 60% wrong. computer executives are the most overly confident industry. they got 80% wrong. this is a strongly gender the trade. so men drowned twice the rate of women because men think they can swim across the lake, especially after they've been drinking. and so, have the ability to correct your biases. you biases. he is ability to, to adjust the strength of conclusion to strength of evidence, to be modest in the face of things you don't know, to invent modesty devices for yourselves. peter had a great one. he said when you make a decision, write your reasoning, seal it in an envelope and open a nine-month period to discover assertive positions are right, theodore in between. in most cases, reasoning will be completely irrelevant. and so, these are all skills that are only tangentially related to i.q. mental character, not metaphors that has to do with your emotional equilibrium. a third trait is a great recall madness, which we may call streetsmarts. the ability to look across the public ate it in and pick out a pattern to a five chest. there is an thing about soldiers in iraq of the pattani street and sort of tell if there was a bomb on that street. they couldn't exactly tell you why. they just felt the coldness inside. some people have sensitivity to the landscape and that's a skill that comes from this, from close observation and practice in most of that perception is unconscious. the fourth thing you might call sympathy, which is sensitively to an emotional social environment. can you pick out other people are feeling and sensing. this comes in extremely handy work and encrypt. most of us working groups because groups function more effectively than individuals. groups will follow much better. capacity of the group to solve hard tricks or math problems or anything else is not related to the high i.q. or median i.q. in the group. it is related to how well do those people read each others' emotional signals? how often do they take turns while communicating? that the liquor does. face-to-face groups do a lot better than groups to communicate electronically. they give some people math problems, give unfettered groups 10 minutes to solve the problems faced to pace and did very well solving problems. another group got 30 minutes, but they do communicate by e-mail and those groups could not solve problems. so beware of teleconferencing. face-to-face is a lot better. some people have the ability to read those things until. if its trade with list difficult propriety. the ability to set scaffolds to control some of your impulses. the most famous experiences which many of you know is called the rushville experiments by training halter michelle. the show took 4-year-old, put them in a room, put marshmallows in a table in front of him and said you can eat mercia linnell. it would leave the room a come back in 10 minutes. if you haven't eaten at a tribute to. we should make use of the kids try not to eat the marshmallows. there's a little groping her head on the table trying to treat the marshmallow. wendy michelle was using an oreo cookie. the book i carefully fix it up and puts it back. the kid is now a u.s. senator. [laughter] but the scary thing is the kids who could wait 10 minutes 20 years later had much higher college complication rates and higher incomes. the kids who could wait one minute are much higher talk about all addiction problems. and that's because some kids grow up in homes where your actions lead to consequences for me to develop strategies to control imposes a mostly by pretending marshmallows a cloud or not real, somehow pretending the temptation is not really there in front of them. and so, kids who go to school with those self control will find cool frustrating kids who cannot. these are other traits that are encouraged early and really happen unconsciously for the most part. it's not so much a trade, more for motivation. i call the marines. the conscious mind hungers for money, for success and recognition. what the unconscious mind hungers for the most i think is when the school i'm fades away we find ourselves live in a challenge in a task or another. this fine carpentry with a nationalist fills one with nature, when a believer feels subsumed by god's love or most frequently for most of us when we find it in love for one another were and where the sense of herself because of love for one another. the decision to fall in love like so many decisions is both rational and emotional at the same time. makes a hash of those categories. we see somebody who might potentially fall in love, one of the things we do unconsciously as much of the alters the ways. we tend to marry people who have nodes with similar tour of empire words similar to our own. we tend to marry people, mr. emu systems. we can tell by smell. we tend to marry people who have the maximum status symbols that we can get. so women unfortunately tend to marry men who are taller than they are because the average inch in height in america equals about $6000 a year in the annual salary. one who is five for six can get as many online data offers an online site is a guy who is six-foot salonga civics $172,000 a year more. [laughter] system of this is sort of rational and cold and calculated even though it's been unconsciously. some of it is quite mystical and enchanted. stendhal had a great phrase that is called crystallization. he described the salt miners and they would take branches and throw into a salt mine. he came back and hold them at the sun in the branches would be covered with these crystals and they would glimmer from the sun. he said that's what we do to our beloved. we imagine they have all these crystals around and we exaggerate their virtues and we become sort of did to them. and the brain scientists scientist said above inside the brain looks very much like a addiction. it's not an emotion so much as they did need, desire to become completely fused, one with another. it's all high school students said they don't believe me that every course they should take in college should help them decide who to marry, that that is the only important decision they're going to make in their lives. if you have each -- a good marriage produces the same happiness game is make it $100,000 a year more. if you have a good merchandise career, you'll be happy. if you have a bad marriage and could verge of being happy. every course should help you make the decision. none of them believe me, none of them do it, but in those courses than in the desired to fuse with one another, we get the sense of essentially we are, we are divided high school, consciousness, but deep down we deeply want to interpenetrate one to another and that is the highest thing with software. one of the beautiful examples i got within about by a guy named doug was hot that are used university scientists to researchers in mind. hofstadter anyone on status in italy and when their kids were fired into, harold suddenly suffered a stroke and died very suddenly. and when carol was dead but still living over there, one day a few months later he was walking to his bedroom. as he had done many days in a row come he happened to glance as he was walking through. he wrote in a strange loop about that experience. i looked at her face may look so deeply that i felt i was behind her eyes and all at once i found myself saying this tears flowed, that need. that's me. and those simple words brought back many thoughts that i had before about the fusion of souls into one higher-level entity, about the fact that the court both of our souls player identical hopes and dreams for our children. about the notion those hopes were not separate or distinct hopes, but just one hope. one could demystifying dispose, that led us into a unit. the kind of panicked and dimly imagine before being married and having children. they realize that the carol had died corp. he said there had not developed, but that it had lived on very determinedly in my brain. the greeks used to say we suffer our way to wisdom and hostettler's suffered his way, which he confirmed as a scientist everyday, that their shared groups to permeate minds in ways that are much deeper than we are aware of. in a shallow unless important way, i think the policy failures we have seen from the soviet union, financial reform, we have suffered are ways to the wisdom combat the shallow view of has become dominant for society as it efficient you and that it's important if we design good policies, lead good lives, to have a much richer sense of who we are. and the good news is incredible. our researchers from all these fields are really going to get a deeper view i think their influence is going to pervade society year upon year, decade upon decade can really give us a much richer sense and remind us of a new humanism, not giving us a new view of human nature, the remaining both philosophies and it's for me been tremendously exciting to be around those people for the past few years and look forward to all the things he'll bring to our culture in the years ahead. so thank you very much. [applause] [applause] [inaudible] >> -- most of you know how this works. richer and a. please pray for the mic. [inaudible] >> two quick questions. your comments about children and many women who were today, so when the child was six weeks or three months old they go to daycare. how does that affect them? the second thing as teachers, especially with elementary in ayrshire schools can't touch kid. and you made a comment about how these children should be to teachers coming if they're not allowed to touch them. >> first on the daycare, the good part of this research is you don't have to be super should be good enough. but if you establish good relationships with kid, if you listen to them, tuned to their needs, when they are nervous to try to calm them down. when they are done you bring them out. if you are aware of who they are in a very basic way, that is the threshold you need to cross. you don't need to be super mom or dad. in fact, most of the super mom or dad stuff doesn't do any good. you just have to be good enough. and so that is sort of relaxing for most parents. when you look at the research, from the university of virginia, most parents whether they work or not, who are listening or two and have good relationships. they've done what they need to do at least on that front. as for daycare, the evidence is sort of mix. i guess it is next because the results are not that firm either way. if it has an effect on kids, if kids who spend -- the first thing to be sent as there's daycare and daycare. some are good and some are not so good. some are individually attuned to kids, some are not. they lived in belgium and i were going to club med in the habit of belgium something called the crash were the kids would go in the day, young kids. i asked the lady and she said with a crash so you can relax on vacation. she said no, we do stuff with the kids. [laughter] been a guest on average the study suggests on average and this is not a strong effect, the kids who spend a lot of time in day care tend on average to be slightly more aggressive than those that don't. and so i think that its research as i understand it. i wouldn't say it is a tremendously strong effect and would not be on the top of my list of social can turns. as for the touching, i spent a fair bit of time in early childhood education. i'm not sure what the rules are, but the parents -- the kids. and in the teachers touch the kids, as they should. the main thing they do at the good ones as they just talk to them. just the flow of words is incredible. what the differences in our societies between middle-class kid who here on average 480 words per hour and lower class kids who hear an average 170 words per hour. and so that's over the course of the childhood about 230 million words and that has an effect. so if you go to the early childhood programs, teachers are just talking to try to compensate for that that is one of the important things they do. >> -- in order for a lot of the social policies that were talking about to be effective ultimately quite >> one of things we need to know which is we have unequal society. as a woman named doctorow why recommend unequal childhoods. she says we do not have childbearing. we are two entirely different buildings. when i grow up in ratner is considered cultivation were kids are driven around and prepared for adulthood. the other is what she -- i forgot the name, but life is hard. but the kids relax. in some sense this is the more sane and healthy weight to raise kids, but doesn't prepare kids for we now have as adults. and so we've got to frankly acknowledge that. the most disorganized homes, we have kids who are just not getting disorganized attachment and we have to have schools a night at a supporter or you go into the school and they teach kids how to want in the hallway. they teach them how to look at the eye and not when someone is talking to them. they teach them not to say yes, excuse me, thank you, smile. they have these drowned in the teachers chant out what is fair and. they learn discipline and order and a lot of the stuff that frankly middle-class kids naturally. and i think they work phenomenally well because they are explicitly based on this marshmallow tape experiment if they were going to give those kids those kinds of social skills. you have to acknowledge we have an unequal society. we have two different sorts of systems for kids who have certain advantages and some who lack them. >> five boroughs back. >> has your awareness of the human is unchanged or political philosophies philosophies that all? [laughter] >> i just cried a lot more. [laughter] >> it has. i guess they put it this way. we been through too individualistic revolutions in our lifetimes in the 60s or the left wing which is socially liberating, be free to be you to be you and me, find your true scum express yourselves and in the 80s and economic individualism, ashburn to relive some cow on the left, one on the right. we've had to revolutions and i think one is it emphasizes community and emphasizes citizenship and emphasizes relationship between people. so i am much more -- it's a community oriented. the community to strengthen communities than i used to be. i wrote up a couple years ago about the fast-growing suburbs in the far reaches of the suburbs here by now much more suspicious of them because the evidence about density suggests face-to-face is more innovative than more project given cities really have some advantages. so there's a lot of areas like that where i can say it changed my mind. and i guess i see everything now psychologically first. so when i look at egypt and tunisia, i see an emotional contagion sweeping across the region. i see their quest for dignity. the cinematic urge come desire for recognition and dignity. and that is when you appreciate how fundamental a drive that is then what happened in cairo doesn't really surprise you as much. so it is an influence to me and all those space. it hasn't made me like, you know, be closer to frank rizzo or rick santorum know or anybody like that, but it has had an influence on how we think. >> cameras that. gentleman and the green. >> david, the most important decisions we make in our life are made from our values and i'm wondering how that's it then would your book and a follow-up on your earlier point, becoming more divergent politically, how do you see as solving the most significant problems facing us as a country, with the divergent politically? >> those are two big questions. you know, i mentioned the unconscious processes. some of the things that influence or unconscious had to do it early childhood. some of it has to do with being thousands of years ago, genetic biases and some of them have to do things that happen hundreds of years ago, which our cultural biases. we inherit our culture, whether it's the region we live in or our ethnicity, we inherit certain ways of seeing the world. for example, there's a lot of research done on how chinese and american at the world and one of the experiments they looked at the mona lisa. the chinese i movements were dancing all over the painting and the american answer basically focusing on the eyes and mouth of the lady, much more concentrated. another famous experiment was they asked cheney siegel to describe a fish tank and they would describe the relationship between the fish, plant life, the whole context. the americans would pick up the biggest fish in describe that. another example is a good research -- the elected people having coffee and they looked at how much they touched each other. affected the number rates, i'll probably get them slightly appeared in rio there were 170 touches in our impairs there was 120. in london it was zero. [laughter] and so, these are values we share not only in these things, but how we perceive justice. in some of our moral intuitions are universal. you don't need to tell any 2-year-old around the world what fairness is. we are born with a sense of fairness. we are born with a sense of pollution. were born with attitude, but within those whether you are jewish or catholic or protestant, american, french, you come in with whole different categories you have to be aware of negotiations of those things. values can change over time. so it is always very complicated stew, but those things have basically fundamental. i look why a country does well or why it doesn't. i think it is fundamentally a value thing. it is do you have these two really crucial values. do you believe the future can be different from the president indeed believe you can control the future? some places they have been in some places they don't. u.s. we have exaggerated sense of how much control we have. but it's good for us to have that. finally on the polarization, tying into the theme, our brains registered in group and elk are very powerfully. if i see somebody make her punished, my brain reacts violently. i see someone in our group a monotony group being punished, i'm sort of callous about that. so we have an essentially tribal nature. in washington we have tribalism on stilts. we have magnified tribalism. i mentioned effective groups for people took turns and communicated very well. if you want the dictionary definition of a dysfunctional group, that would be the u.s. congress and they don't indicate well. they don't really listen to each other. so the polarization that occurs in washington is the fund-raising and media every district team, but mostly caused by psychological psychodynamics have tribalism and people -- good people stuck in most academic cori systems. i see it as a psychological and moral problem, with the fund-raising problem. the >> one political party? >> we need parties that have conversations with each other. >> the lady with the hand upon the. >> in your column last day, you spoke about how we americans overestimate our capabilities in every field. and i am wondering if that is an unhealthy name, and unrealistic and how would you compare that to the opposite, which is to take her mom? >> well, he told us to a group earlier tonight, but i'm going to repeat it. a couple months ago i was driving, listening to npr and they happen to your show called to me and performance which is a rebroadcast in the episode i heard was aired on vj day, the day we won world war ii in being crosby was the host of the show and all the big stars run it. he got out there and said we just learned we won world war ii, but i guess were not proud. we're just glad we got through it. and burgess meredith got out there and read a passage from the great work corresponded compile a row, won the war because we are brave soldiers, great allies in house material abundance in this country. we didn't win it because were chosen people or anything special. we should just be glad in worthy of the peace. the tone of humility was so striking to me on the day they won world war ii. then i get home and i turn on tv and watching football and the cornerback tackles the receiver after two-yard gain and does this victory dance to himself for his great achievement. it occurred to me i'd just seen greater self puffery after a two-year game and winning world war ii. and i do think this is a change from a culture of self effacement. nobody is better than me. i know better than anybody else to a culture of self preservation. look at me, and pretty good. calling daddy used to support this is the high school seniors in 1950. are you a very important for 10? 12% said yes. 2005, the yes are you a very important person and it was up 12%. with 80%. so that is just a change. if you look at math scores, we are 36th in the world do not performance, but number one in the world in thinking we are really good at math. and so, that is the change. and this expansion has led to partisanship because i know the answers to everything and everybody else who disagrees is just in the way. it's led to the expansion because why should i say for future generations i am here. i feel less into the broad change. and i think if you look at this societies that have done well enough, they're the ones who have least confidence in their abilities. and so the lesson from the research is you should have a slightly above average view of yourself. you should exaggerate your virtues of adult to make sure you did go out a day or and try things that are hard for you. we've taken it a bit to the extreme. one of the phrases that i think is the core of my political philosophy is the phrase of epistemological on what you know. modesty is modesty and we should all be aware of how little we know about ourselves on how little we know about the world that we should prepare for this week says at all times and not think we are the bees knees. >> again, judgment at this and that. >> i should save you save you a ticket recipe for modesty, write a column twice a week. [laughter] you'll read in the paper and thank god, what was i thinking? >> i've got a quick question for you. i believe this is the question on everybody's mind. do you believe -- can you name three things our current president has done correctly and it doesn't things -- 20 he's done well? >> three things he has done correctly. one company is the best education president we've had since i've been covering education. [applause] two, i disagreed at the time, but he was right to rescue gm. [applause] you know, i could list more actually. there's some things i disagree with, but i cover the president. i speak to them periodically on the staff almost every day or several times a week. i would say within the white house i disagree. within the white house, there genuinely is a culture of debate. the two traded from the right answers. they generally have the best interest of the country at heart. they are smart people from hartford, half from the l. for attacks during the harvard yoking we are screwed. it will all be up there watching the games. and so, i think there is generally an honest intellectual culture. as for the failures, you know, i thought when we did health care -- i thought we to central tasks. the first was to cover 39 million uninsured people in the second was to care cost inflation under control. we did one. i don't think we did the second. so that would be one thing i disagree with. i think you tried too much in the first few years and really polarize the country may be more than it needed to be. i wish he would call some of the members of the opposing parties. someone i'm friendly with is a guy named paul ryan, a very smart chairman of the house budget committee. i know them both. they would get along and have wonderful conversations about the future budget, which could lay the groundwork for some compromises, but obama has never called him and asked into the white house or had a conversation with him. i just think they should at least talk. and so that is just a function of the nature of washington, which i think he's very well-equipped to change, but hasn't really taken the measures. i could go on, but a think that's enough. >> there is a lady about four rows from the back and listen to her. you know what, sir, we've got other people with their handset. further back. >> you spoke about how some variables of success are based on the eight team of full-time. in an effort to close the achievement gap, the educational achievement gap, would she be a proponent of mandatory early childhood education? >> i wouldn't want to make it mandatory, just because that gives you all sorts of political problems. i still essentially think that the relationship between a parent and child is better and is going to happen and the state supplied daycare center, so i don't want to force people to do it. nonetheless, i do think there should be on one hand much more funding for early childhood education and the right of passage. we should do a lot better job of organizing our early childhood center, head start centers, so people they are our teachers rather than just people we need to give the job to. and we should not only -- we should start earlier. we should start with nurse family partnership that visits so nurses are coming into homes and given off on how to coach. the first year of life, the average mother was a 700 hours of sleep, gets interrupted every 20 seconds on average and sees a decline in marital satisfaction of 70%. it is tough and little babies are charming, but they are invading your brain and it's a brutal thing. and so, people need help. if you go to certain neighborhoods, things i've seen her babies locked into a car seat, eight hours in front of the tv, coca-cola just to keep them quiet. there are things where people need help and you can't stop because if you help kids, a lot of the help phaseout and benefit. it has to be like nutrition, every day. you've got to early childhood education, schools where teachers are able to connect with kids. mentoring programs, go to college or the feel emotionally engaged so they think about and so they are engaged with campuses. all through life there has to be concentrations of early relationships. so i would spend a lot of our money and i'm afraid in our budget straits, the fact is the lobbies of the big guns are the case-control bobby. the higher at lobby and mostly the senior citizen lobby 033 lobby is a pretty pathetic lobby. so i am afraid that is very vulnerable state after state. >> you could take a set with predictions for 2012 cents are not going to see before then? >> i could write another book, but it would kill me. >> i really would do it against president obama. he is a very -- [applause] he has an amazing ability. i've seen them a few times since he lost the last election the democrats did, and amazing ability to self correct. he's a competent person with many different personalities and the downside is he rarely commit and is always once fatback observing. the upside is he tends to look at himself and say how do i need to change? what do i need to do? he does have the ability to adjust to be just skills. they are like a scared looking at pictures who has the best stuff. remember when i saw him in 2005 a long time ago i thought he is the best stuff. he's probably going to be president someday. i wrote a column in 2006 called run barack run because a party at the best stuff. i still wouldn't bet against them. that said, am not sure what he's going to run on. i don't think he can run the campaign he ran last time. the hope and change thing. can't do that anymore after lease for years. can't run health care for missing this passage in his administration has been slow to come up with a new agenda for what to do in the next four years in a country that is still there and about the kind for screwing things up. so that'll be a big challenge. the republican side, the person i would like to see get the nomination and then not supposed to root for one candidate or another, but the governor of indiana, mitch daniels. i like it because he's five-foot six, low to the ground. last back in touch with the people. you have to be low down there to see things. no, i think he's been an extremely effective governor at a time when state budgets have ballooned in debt on average has gone up 40%. state after state in indiana that attack has gone down 40%. at the same time, a lot of programs that matter have been improved. even wait times at department of motor vehicles the job from 60 minutes to eight minutes. he's been an effective governor. republicans would do well to counter program against this graceful and elegant with a guy who may not be charismatic, but just knows how to run things. and so, i think there are two serious candidates are met romney and tim pullin t. again, managers, and a little less enamored. plenty was a good governor, but haven't seen. they would be fine. i would like to see republicans have two problems. the first is to their credit into obama's deficit, they are saying we have to do tackle in a settlement. that is a courageous step as the government hides more than he wants to pay for. being willing to tackling entitlement is the right entity with a we have to address some of these benefit levels. hey, they politically don't know how to sell it to be a don't think republicans quite understand that not only do we have a recession, but structural problems in our economy, which hurt the middle class ticket on decade and i don't think there's a republican answer to the problem. so i think they face some challenges in a phased sort of a talent deficit. they wouldn't bet against obama, but it will eventually get to the fight, which we need to have this here is the money, here's the national wealth. your programs, here's our debt. how are you going to figure this thing out? i'd love to think we are going to have that real serious debate and to end on a pessimistic note, i really don't think we're going to have that debate. [applause] thank you very much. [applause] >> we are here talking with freesheet gabrielle about her new book. can you tell us what it's about? >> we are witnessing right now and islamic movement driven by the radical minority and the islamic religion that is causing problems around the world through terrorists and in bringing back their islamic counterfeits. so this book talks about the history of radical islam, what it's doing in europe right now. what's happening in the united states as a way we need need to be mobilized to understand where the threat radical islam is coming from and what we can do to protect societies. >> what are some findings you have? >> we are finding out the radical islamic terrorist cells are organized, whether in europe for the united states or australia. they are linked together through the internet. we are finding out that al qaeda, which means the base in arabic is nothing more -- as an umbrella organization with many other islamic organizations that share similar goals. lately we've been hearing a lot about the muslim brotherhood good considering what is happening in egypt, the muslim brotherhood is the mothership basically that launched all these terrorist activities. the muslim brotherhood was founded in 1928 and had 70 and islamic organizations including al qaeda and hamas. so the book is dedicated to the project and in particular to the muslim brotherhood project toward north america. >> tell us about your background. how did you become an expert in terrorism in the middle east? >> i was born and raised in lebanon and my 9/11 happened to me personally in 1975 when the radical islam's blew up my home, bringing it down under the rubble. i ended up in a hospital for two and half months and later ended up in a home shelter on the ground for seven years of my life, hiding to survive. i became very concerned about national security. even as a child, i grew up and moved to israel. i wanted to understand what was happening around the world. and what contributes to certain things around the world as i worked as a news anchor from 1984 till 1989. and as reported on world events back in the 80s, yesterday connect the dots and realizing that the name of the perpetrators were always the same. the names were always the same. .net, hussein, khalid. the name of the victims were westerners, christians. terry, colonel higgins, twa, finance light. i could go on and on. i started connecting the dots and realizing what i used to think was a regional problem between the majority of muslim middle east trying to kill or expel minority christians have become a worldwide problem. but the world was not connecting the dots. when i

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