Radio shows and ive spoken to him many times in the last few years who thinks the populous movements goes with the g. O. P. He seconds us with sanders and trump. Rose we conclude with dont think twice with director mike tackett, ira glass and keeganmichael key. You are hoping in your 30s, realizing how dumb it is to hope. The 20s were about me and my friends thinking we were all going to get the same dream, write for conan, letterman, and then in your 30s you know you cant all have the same dream and then you realize how your dream relates to who you are. Rose we conclude with al hunt interviewing mike tackett. They open their arm, extend their families and give opportunity to players. Its a place in the Southwest Corner of iowa, two hours from omaha, kansas city, des moines. Ive never been there, would be hard for you to find it, yet its a place that attracted thousands of young men coming to chase their dream to play baseball. Rose changes at the trump organization, dont think twice and al hunt with michael tackett, when we continue. Rose funding for charlie rose has been provided by the following and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and Information Services worldwide. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. Rose we begin this evening with the president ial election, republican nominee donald trump continues his attempt to stabilize his campaign, this time with a change in leadership. On wednesday he named pollster Kelly Ann Conway as his new campaign manager, stephen ban yon as the campaigns chief effect. Bannian took a leave of absence from his role. Joining me bob costa from the Washington Post and Michael Barbaro of the New York Times. Im pleased to have both of them. Bob costa, tell me about this change. A couple of months ago Trumps Campaign manager was fired and then trump moved under the direction of paul pau paul t who tried to get trump to be more disciplined. Trump has grown agitated in recent weeks and he decided to follow steve bannian. Banion was going to be the chief executive. Rose how will trump be different . What were seeing from trump is someone in one way with conways guidance is trying to appeal more to women, have the presentation as president. You had a meeting in new york that looked like a cabinet meeting, trump in trump tower doing National Security things. What well see from trump is a rally, much more of trump being aggressive and going after clintons. Banion went after the Clinton Foundation and other endeavors. Its a trump that listens to party leaders. Rose a winning formula, mikele . There is one thing donald trump has to do to get out of the death spiral hes in and thats broaden the appeal beyond one area of the country he found his message most resonating in and that is generally White High School graduates, thats the trump base. If he just sticks to that, hes going to lose. Every poll shows it. It does not seem possible to ride that to the white house. Rose what do we know about Paul Manafort and what he was trying to get trump to do. He wanted the message to get out. He thought the offthecuff remarks were getting in the way of the message and trump was talking about that. Poll after poll showed the message of change is a winning message in american politics the this year, correct . Oh, yeah, absolutely. Hillary clinton is by no means a credible candidate of change, not having been in government for as long as she has. So one way to think about how they might pull this off is for these two uh new advisors to present donald trump in a more classic light of the guy who represents change against the status quo, hillary clinton. But if he insists on the kind of often very careless rhetoric that is so provocative and problematic, its hard for people to focus on the change. Paul manafort was brought in to try to polish the rough edges, sand them down, make them more predictable and capable as Newt Gingrich said delivering the telepromper speech, but if Paul Manaforts idea is to let trump be the old trump rose banion. If thats what banion wants to do, i dont think thats consistent with turning him into a classic change candidate. Rose bob, how do you see that . Democrats have seized on banions hire in particular and starting to think landslide. They see in banion the idea that the republicans are veering toward the base. When i talked to the trump campaign, they have an unconventional view. The way they see this playing out in the next 80 or so days, trump has to arouse working class voters along nonpartisan lines. In banion you have someone detached from the traditional republican mainstream g. O. P. He doesnt have party relationships. Hes not even of the g. O. P. Base. Hes ideological in the anticorporatist sense and the antiglobalist sense and he has a line, whether you read his articles or listen to the radio show, where he thinks this populous Movement Goes beyond the g. O. P. He connects it with Bernie Sanders and trump. He thinks thats what trump has to capture to find any way of winning. Rose redefine as a true populist. A answer outsider, corporate establishment, from a political establishment and a populous who will meet people and have raw cause rallies in bannians mind of what would be a populous in this way. Thats the concept the aggrieved are not such working class white, that there is a broader disillusionment and trump could turn that into a victory. Banion champions a gay conservative named milo whos a sensation in the conservative world who argues you can be gay and a conservative and hate all of the liberal institutions that seem to champion gays and have for decades, and thats one example of a way of thinking of a different version of an angry person. Rose what trump tried to do in talking about urban black, is it not saying you have lived within cities run by Traditional Democratic administrations and it has not done for you in terms of the policies that were part of those governments what you might have achieved. Is that correct . I mean, you know the trump thinking. Thats correct. And trump team tried. With trumps speech earlier in the week talking about law and order and crime and reaching out to urban communities who may feel disaffected by democratic policies in their cities or states but banning viewers as much as the manafort model of having prepared remarks in the speeches that are targeted, trump is limited sometimes when he does that and he needs a bare knuckles change, pure outsider. Rose is that what he is, bob, pure change, pure outsider . Hes projecting himself to be that but hes someone whos been involved with the Democratic Party and the Republican Party for decades. Hes been a mega donor, a participant. He thought about running for the Reform Party Nomination in 1999. I think he assumed the mantle of a movement simmering out there beyond Political Parties and hes taken hold of it but i think hes more of a political figure immersed in that movement. The question about donald trump and the question about this gentleman i just profiled this morning steve banion is are they fraudulent populous . Banion is a Goldman Sachs, harvardeducated guy who woke up one morning after the financial crisis and decided he wanted to champion the most virulent and provocative kind of conservatism. And donald trump is a wealthy realtor who woke up and decided to champion white workingclass voters. So together they make for an unusual team and i think you have to ask the question how credible are they in the eyes of most people around the country as real messengers for their anger . Rose yeah. Weve seen this before. When you think of Franklin Delano roosevelt and the messaging. Trump is portrayed as a corporate businessman. As much as trump comes from the business world, hes an isolated figure, not many friends on wreath, his friends are people in a real estate elite and its his company and family. Rose who in the world introduced him to the idea, do you think, bob, of populism as a winning political message . I know exactly who did. Ive spoken to trump about this. His father. One thing i always take away from my interviews with donald trump is he has all these pictures frames in his office, hundreds of him on magazine covers, but the biggest picture in the room of trump tower is an old, thick frame of his phat around his parents, and he always thinks about his phat interest way his father talked to him about trade and the economy in the late 1970s. When people say trumps been saying this for years, thats true, but its heavily influenced by the way his father thought about the country as a businessman operating at the upper realm of real estate in the world i in the 60s and the 70s. Rose banion, a Goldman Sachs guy. The tenor is onty globalist. Bob may have introduced him to this idea, the notion of the word getting currency within those circles is antiglobalist. David brooks picked up on it the other day in an interview with you, charlie. Rose right. What were seeing is a blurring of political partisan lines as people become more frustrated with the economy. Their target is now not so much the elite even with the united states, its this idea of global leaps and institutions not working for them that are distant and thats where you see the fury directed toward the elite but also toward the global, beyond america sphere of media outlets, companies, trade organizations that are aligned in their view against working americans. And that segues beautifully to the banion story as he describes to friends a story of being in shanghai when the financial crisis started in 2008 and being so upset about the fellow bankers and the financial elite and the political elite who had allowed the system to become so overburned with debt and corrupt. He tells the story of his father who was a telephone line worker for one of the small Bell Companies in virginia who spent his life working there and amassing at t stock, and he was losing money, had to sell it, it was a crisis, and he felt that was emblematic of a colder where global elites feel comfortable around each other and not regular americans, and make decisions that destroy the value of regular americans, the industrial jobs they had, and he viewed that as kind of a turning point in his life. Of course, it made lots of money from the very company that helped trigger the financial crisis, but it was a kind of neverlookingback moment for steve banion in which he cometd himself powerfully and compellingly to a vision of conservatives and appealing to the dads of the world who felt like Global Leaders had taken them for granted and thats the message he brought to breitbart, to all his documentaries and the trump campaign. Rose the anti build a burg, men and women who are controlling the world. There are a number of people in the world where wealth is amass snood look how much of the wealth in the world is controlled by how few people. Bob . But there is an element of that that has really agitated republicans on capitol hill and people in the conservative movement. You know, the bill buckley wing of the conservative right, they tried to wash out the john birch element, the antiglobalist element in the 50s and it seems to have reared its head again not necessarily directly because of trump but as part of the trump resurgence in american conservatism. When you look at the conservative outlets today that have been around for a long time, theyre really uncomfortable with whats happening with breitbart, with different other publications on the further right wing of the g. O. P. And they say this is not what bill buckley and reagan represented. Rose go ahead. Thats what is remarkable about banion and his ilk is they never stopped criticizing the elite and powerful just because they were republican. They identified with the Republican Party. They are conservative. They looked at the eric cantors and paul ryans and said youre part of the problem, no ones sacred or protected. That what made breitbart a success. If your opinion selling him out and you believed you were a target, no one thought that the majority leader of the house of representatives could lose a reelection in his district but he did. Rose and in a primary. Hillary clinton, whats to come from the emails. What do we know about the f. B. I. Notes . Whats the next turn that might provide fodder for the campaign of donald trump . Well, the absolute nightmare scenario thats talked about on the democratic side in Hillary Clintons world is not within an f. B. I. Report at this point, its what Julian Assange may or may not have. Its what we believe the leaks abroad might have held back and waited rose some connection with the Clinton Foundation or more than that . We dont have an answer to whats in the emails. There are familiar lines of thinking about where the next scandal could be, right . Was there pay to play in the world of foundation that bled over into the state department which would, of course, be an extraordinary breech on how we think about government. That would be super problematic. You know, an email in which he contradicted something very important that she said publicly about diplomacy or benghazi. Rose and in line. Thats become the last hope of some in the Republican Party and maybe a fantasy. Rose is that an operative thesis, the reason they were so quick to delete all the emails was they feared that or knew Something Like that was in there . I dont know why you delete an email or why i delete an email, but i usually delete it because i dont want it around. Otherwise, gmail has plenty of space for us to keep it. Rose thats right. So i think youre correct in assuming that they deleted the email for a reason, they didnt want them around. They thought they were too personal or somehow potentially in conflict for running for the white house. Rose great to have you. Thank you. Rose thank you, bob, great to see you as always. Great to see you. Rose back in a moment. Stay with us. Rose dont think twice is the new film from writer writer director Mike Birbiglia. Here is a trailer for the film. Five minutes, guys. Remember when you said please tell me when im racist . One of those times. Welcome to the commune. Improv is an art form unto itself. The most important thing is dont think. Dont think, dont memorize. Get paid. But isnt that kind of fun, too . Are you working now or applying for anything . Unemployment . How muchle . You pick one person and say the first thing that comes to mind. Youre fat. Dangerous. Youre slow. The game hurts my feelings. Reat paradox is what is it good, you said that in your audition. Hey, jack anyone from the industry shows up you turn into a oneman audition. There is a new film were working on called cabs for dads but my critics like to call it obamacare. Okay, well be there. Were auditioning thursday for weekend live. Congrats, man. Thanks, man. I auditioned for the show in 2003. I cant take it anymore. Got to focus on me. Im going to get the job at weekend live. I was thinking about doing general as an umpire. Yeah pardon me. If its money youre looking for, ive got none. I thought that was improv. Like my life how it is now. T ends. Your claims are all about hope and your 20s are about hope and your 30s are realizing how dumb it was to hope. How old are you. 40. Just turned 36. We all said we would wear the same outfit. Everybody is being a professor. Rose pleased to have writer and director and star Mike Birbiglia and ira glass and keeganmichael key at this table. How did you get involved. We worked on American Life and i come in as editor and he was writing scripts and showing them to me and i kind of got dragged in. Rose dragged in to making a movie . Reluctant or not. Very reluctant, yes. Rose you signed on because you thought it was that good. Its a movie about there is a lot of movies about ive got to be a star and im gonna make it but there are arent many about something much more common which is i dont know i have enough talent and its about a bunch of people when one rises the rest have to decide should they give up on the dream which a lot of people in their 20s and 30s go through. Rose and a lot of people really did. Thats really what happens in a sense. Yeah. Rose and then they go get a regular job. Right. And so many deadlines are based on factors out of our control. I was thinking of this the other day, i have been doing these q as all over the country and someone said when did you know the script was finished . They said, well, when my daughter was born, i said, i guess im done. New project. So thats what its about. I mean, what ira said its about. It is about looking at s about looking at your life and just saying sort of, like, whats important, why am i doing this, you know, and sometimes saying maybe i should quit. Like, i think thats whats exciting about making the movie is the idea that, like i think the American Dream is based on this idea that or were fed the idea that success is one thing. I feel it can be on the spectrum. It can be a whole number of things. For me, the joke is the 20s or 30s are realizing how dumb it is to hope. But for me its about me and my friends thinking were going to get the same dream, write for conan or daily show or letterman, and in the 30s you realize you cant all have the same dream and then it starts to be realizing how your dream relates to who you are specifically. You were interesting in an oldfashioned big chill movie where you have six characters who are equal in there mixing it up. But a lot of your advice is that you almost have to hang it on an event so that there is these crazy, seismic repercussions for the other five characters. And something you just said that i dont think ive heard you characterize it this way before but you said the sense of, like, what the dreams are in your 30s and you start to realize what kind of person you are having those dreams. Yeah. So is it possible that you could vacillate between two ideas of what your identity is going to be . Because were all wrapping our identity up in what we do. Right. Rose the interesting thing, too, about this is this notion on the one hand, you live with this idea that never say never, never say no. You know, go after it, dont let anybody change you from the pursuit of your goal. Yes. Rose then on the other hand there are people who say youve got to be really real about this. You will ruin your life if you are in pursuit of something that will never ever happen. You have to find your way between those two things. Ira and i have this in common. Both of us have parents who are, like, what are you doing when we started . I was trying to be a standup comedian the in my 20s and my parents are, like, dont do that. laughter i mean, it was horrible. Did your Family Support you in comedy. They did, but remember my parents were therapists, so everything they learned was they were supposed to support you, you trying to discover yourself and exploring what it is you enjoy, but they did not hide their feelings. Theyre, like, sorry, what was the minor, psychology . By all means, minor in psych yi. Please minor in psychology. My mom was a therapist, too. Thats the way of the modern parent your understand try to support your kid in what they do but you tell them i dont agree with this choice. I was 41 before my mom stopped saying you should go to medical school. Rose there has to be for those parents a fallback position. Always. Rose get that College Degree in case it doesnt work. But the truth about show business is you cant have a plan b. No, you cant. You have to dive in. Even if youre in a different level of showbiz, hopefully, and maybe 41 is the cut off where your parents say my child had been penniless. Im not. Im fulfilled. There is a different aspect that people seldom talk about because it hits home. Rose including parenthood and things like that, the dynamic of what you can risk. Correct. And we have been traveling around the country with this woman liz allen who coached our improv team. Shes wonderful. One of the things we talked about with the improv groups around the country is in phoenix, dallas, san francisco, anywhere, as an improviser, you can create the best, most provocative, timely, best performed feeder in the world. On a given night, doesnt have top in new york or los angeles. I think thats important. Rose the other interesting thing for me about this is improv you know, is this the age of improv . I believe so. Know all three of us all very much agree with that assertion because youre seeing it reap dividends in cinema where a person its not that jud started it. When you see a filmmaker like judd give so much credence to improvisation. Adam. Definitely adam. Its permeated the cinema the way i think it has in the past. Its always been there. A lot in altman. Which hes a hero of yours. And i think its here to stay. Not just influence on movies, but there is a huge boom in improv across the country. When you went to promote film we didnt know there were so many in the cities. On facebook we said do anyone want a free improv workshop . 120 theaters submitted requests. When i got out of college there was, like, 20. Its that much bigger. Here in new york there is several theaters, there are schools and hundreds of people coming up through it partly because they think thats their ticket into show business. Like you can take a class at the magnet or c. D. In new york. Rose i bet you can go to all the skills and find improv. And the skill set can simultaneously make you a performer and writer and thats the attraction. I think the key thing about the movie and sometimes the movie gets pigeoned holed about its a movie about performance but i think its a movie about life because the rules of improv say yes and its all about the group and dont think are really good life principles which is why all the training of improv is not bad. Im a standup but i would say go to an improv class that gets good regardless of whether you pursue it . Dont go to a standup but go to improv classes because . Because the principles apply to everything. Rose so you said the art of socialism but life is capitalism. Yeah, thats a thing i wrote on my wall while i was writing the film and nobody ever says it in the movie but it kind of informs all of the rose why wouldnt you put that in as a line for somebody to say . We talked about it. It felt too exactly on the nose. The improv is called the commune, however. laughter wonderful residual. But it was an observation my wife had one night who makes a lot of great observations, we were doing a show, i improvise there sometimes and it was a bunch of people and my wife goes, everyone is equally talented and funny but this person is on saturday night live and this person is a tv star and this one is on an air mattress in queens. Its unfair in some ways but thats a movie. Rose it used to be a game. I would ask comedians, who is way funnier than we are because we dont know. I think in standup, he has a really big following, but Doug Stanhope is phenomenal. And i think theres no one better. Rose wait, theres no one better. No one better than Doug Stanhope and marie bamford. Shes become massive because of her series on netflix and doug has a huge following. I dont think there is anybody better than those two. Whats interesting is in our film is tammy sager and in our film every skill one could have she possesses to the nines. In chicago, wrote for madd tv, girls, 30 rock, broad city, and also back home t. J. Im saying, you know, these names that come to my mind, when i think, people are transcendent. Rose did people assemble for Comedy Central and for the daily show come mostly from improv . Co correll, colbert theres a ton. Ed helms. Rose whats the difference in sketch and improv. The thing with sketch is one can use improvisation as a tool to develop and generate ideas and then you polish those ideas and its written. So when you see a show thats a sketch show, everything has been prepared as if youre watch ago play or review, whereas improvisation, youre doing instant play writing. Its happening only in the moment. Its very ephemeral. The show will be done after that day. Everything is made up when youre doing improvization. All the sketches started as improv in new york city. We used improv as a tool to write the sketches. Its heavily scripted by the time you see them. Keeganmichael key and tammy were together in the 70s and when we talk about the film its emotional because its semiautobiographical to yours and tammys friendship. It really is. The movie is very special and tumping to us in that way because watching our careers, theyre both going on a trajectory, but the passion and the love i dont know how to explain it. I dont have a word for it. There is a feeling of camaraderie that doesnt go away. Its like being in the comedic marine corps. I say marine corps in particular because the moniker, the motto semper fi applies. Rose do you think of yourself as an actor . A trained actor and improve. I got a masters in performance and classical theater and another from comedy from the second city. So i think of myself as an actor but i have an amazing arrow in the quiver called improv. Rose whos your character. Jack mercer. There is a great stage direction mike wrote that says, jack mercer stealthily ambitious he says come see the show tonight, and when hes given the opportunity to audition for saturday night live, this saturday night live type of show sheer coincidence, charlie rose yeah. He more than anyone sees this brass ring and how it gleams. He will not let a person get in his way from reaching the brass ring. And no matter what it costs him in the court of public opinion, hes not going to stop. To him, his dream is the thing theyre fright achieve and i dont think that dream is ever altered. He probably had that dream since he was eight years old. Kind of a nice guy, trying to do right by his teammates. Rose when did being a nice guy end, though . Well, yeah, exactly. Because he still looks out for number one. Rose exactly. Capitalism comes in. Ome on you guys apitalism, though bernie supporters would disagree. Rose democratic socialism. Sometimes i say socialism lies in capitalism. People say it doesnt have to be. You have character in the film who says id rather stay poor and do the thing i want. That was my plan. Rose but capitalism is cruel and i dont want to be cruel . They just want to do what they want. You have more power than anybody. Rose the old notion is it used to be somebody could write this, somebody would hang out on the beach and earn money here and there but they mainly want to hang out on the beach and surf, versus the person who did all this stuff to make a lot of money so that he could buy a beach house on a beach and surf. Right. But there are people especially in our industry who i know, and i believe mike is one of them, one of these people who say it has to be this way. Rose i think mikes a capitalist. laughter the incorrect finishing of the sentence. I will not allow this to happen on Public Television laughter rose across the street from cbs. Finish the sentence. Its that i think you could live a wonderful, fulfilled life, always pursuing this middle ground because thats what youre doing. You werent going to make another move. Im completely comfortable with that. People always ask, did you ever audition for saturday night live because thats what the characters do in the film. I go, i have been operating on such a low level of show business for so long i was never considered to be considered. laughter they never thought maybe right, right. Rose you told a hollywood reporter, i think you have to have a difficult past to have the will to entertain, especially to make people laugh. At this point i listened to so many mike moran guests to take it for granted people who are super funny have to be at some point in their life a little screwed up. Do you believe that . I dont. Believe so either. Rose i dont think so. Yeah. Rose i mean, you could say that to run for president you have to be a little screwed up. Yeah. Rose you know, you have to have some i agree with that. laughter rose but i really dont. I think you can be happy and funny. I think thats true. We know each other well and you dont seem screwed up. Rose you werent beaten by your parents when you were four well. laughter this will be a new show snowcome share your pain. But i think there is a degree to which youre able to make observations and you see extreme darkness and lightness and once you see it you cant unsee it. And youre with your feelings. Yeah. Rose youre what . Youre awake to your feelings. That may be more to the point. You can be happy and the type of a person whos awake to your feelings. You know rose the question is are you awake to your feelings . As opposed to are you screwed up enough to do this work . Are you awake. Because some people are awake to duty and those are people who become soldier, firefighters, policemen. Some people become artists and poets. I think it might be a personality type. I think youre right about this and im wrong. Rose what role did he play as producer . Thats what i want to know. Ira is the smartest person i know. Not the smartest person on earth. The smartest person i know. Rose hes one of the smartest people i know. One of the smartest people on earth, the smartest person i know. Rose so why is he doing a radio show . Why isnt he running the country . I dont know. Can answer that. I dont have a talent for running a country. I have a talent for running a radio show. Rose isnt the greatest thing to find out what you should be doing. That in a manner of speaking is better than falling in love, to have a sense of why youre here. There is a cog called earth and youre this cog and you realize, oh, im this cog, i got to where i want to be. Angela duckworth in the New York Times said College Graduates shouldnt ask what do i want to be when i grow up, its what world do i want to live in and how can i contribute to making that happen. Rose whats her book called . Its grit. Of course, yeah, yeah. But ira is my editor. We have this relationship that started eight years ago which is ira edits stories and im a comedian and i have a fascination with stories and he has a fascination with comedy. When i work with him, he defers to me on issues of story and i comedy. We perform on stage and making the film was an extension of that and that was my role. Was there anything both of you didnt want the film to be . Yeah, so many things. A studio film, to be honest with you, if this is a studio film, i dont want to spoil anything. A couple ends up together in the end, everybodys happy, successful in the exact same way. I dont know, like, its not these guys, its john cryer and claire danes. I dont know, these arent the actors. Its bigger stars. That was in the script and in the cutting it got more real. There was sort of more hollywoodish turns than we thought. There is a whole plot, line of them trying to get a new theater for themselves, keep the group going, all of the test audiences who would show this film twice a week when we were cutting it to public radio would have them come out and watch and people wanted to see the characters. We wanted it to feel more like life than movie which is a little lost in cinema. The film i love is the big chill, han in and her sisters, broadcast news, bob and carolyn, td and alice, and the films that feel like life and they dont make those in the movie system because they dont make ten times the money. Rose thats bob altman. And also the sense of it looking and feels whats the example oh, the movie once about the irish busker, and he meets the girl from the czech republic, and youre going, am i watching the documentary . But it has a real sense about it. My direction almost always to be accurate was just imagine this is being watched and ten years from now in france with subtitles and we want people to go, we should go see the improv, like we want to trick them. Rose how are you promoting this . Were right here. This is it. laughter im refusing all other interviews. I mean, its a weird business problem because to be in any movie you dont have that much money for advertising and basically you have been trucking the thing around the country. We were talking about suicide squad. I have two beefs with that. The rating was pg13 and ours is r. And in suicide squad, they spray people with machine guns, hundreds of people are killed. In our film, no one was killed. We cursed a handful of sometimes. Adults smoke pot. What. Thats it. Thats against the law in many states but in suicide squad they have a 90 million ad budget and we dont have that. Its just me traveling around country and saying if you like movies like this, go see it. Rose dont think twice is the movie, opening in hundreds of theaters next week. Dont think twice. Dont think twice. Com. Rose that will help you find the movie. There you go. Dontthinktwicemovie. Com. Rose dontthinktwicemovie. Com. Back in a moment. Stay with us. Al hunt this is the season of the boys of summer, baseball. 30 major league teams, half of which have a shot at the world series, but also in thousands of smaller cities, towns and little hamlets, young boys and girls are playing americas past time. One of the most special is corenda, iowa where players have gone to pursue their dreams over the summer, among them, ozzie smith. Mike tackett has written a marvelous book the baseball whisperer about the town, a legendary coach and values and virtues of a small midwestern community. Thank you for being with us. Thank you. Why this town,. Its a place to provide opportunity, where they open their arms, extend their families and give an opportunity to players, a place in the Southwest Corner of iowa two, hours from anywhere from omaha, kansas city, des moines. Ive never been there, hard for you to find it, yet a place that attracted thousands of young men coming to chase their dream to play baseball. Most from college. While the story is rooted in baseball, its more about baseball. Its about this place where theres a sense of community and openness, where they give of themselves, they give of their time, they give of their families and dont expect anything in return. The coach who really launched this was a legend, he passed away while you were writing this book, merle everly. Tell us a bit about him. A fascinating character. He grew up in the depression in rural iowa. His parents got divorced which was unusual at that time. He had a very tough youth. He dropped out of school. He started drinking. He had all sorts of problems and was living in omaha, nebraska, with his moth who are said you need to go back to clarinda to get your self straightened out. The community took him back in. He eventually met a coach and the coach redeemed him by challenging him. He wanted to be challenged and for someone to see the potential in him he knew he had. He found that in the coach. He became a standout athlete. He found the coach did Something Special for him and he gave back. The town, 5,000 small, but they took in these players. It really is im a little bit envious of you mike tackett because im not from the midwest, but there is Something Special about little midwestern towns, isnt there . I would like to think. So part of it is there is a calm. People have a slower pace, its not a cliche. This particular place is the kind of place you think lives in myths. The square has local businesses, the county courthouse has been restored beautifully and everyone knows everyone. They turned down a walmart because they wanted everything to be local. Absolutely and doesnt happen often. It is a book about the town and the man, when we talk about the players, we have to start with the greatest ozzie smith, hall of famer. What was it like when ozzie smith got there . He grows up in South Central l. A. And goes to the corn fields of iowa. His coach puts him on a plane, never been to the midwest, and the only word he can summon is corn, the only image he has of coming to the midwest. He lands there, goes to the practice field and merle thinks heres this skinny 140pound kid, hell never make it. He grabs a bucket of balls and hits them harder and harder, left and right, ozzy doesnt miss a single one. And he looks up and said, coach, dont you realize you cant get one past me . And he knew he had someone special. Did ozzy do his flip . He did which a lot fewer people thought but became a significant move. One other thing about how he ingratiated himself in the community, all the players had to have jobs. Ozzy worked on a construction crew and his job was to run a jack hammer. Hes 140 points, and h he said he used to go to the games and his arms were still shaking from running the jack hammer. In 1982 after ozzy was there, the st. Louis cardinals were in the series and he invited them to be at his house and be his guest. What happened . Ozzy got guest overs, bought a card table, was trying to take it out of the box and a stable went right into his thumb. This is the world series, the shortstop, they really need this player and hes thinking, oh, my gosh, what will i do. Merle says, do you have a lemon . He says, yes. He said, get it. He said, stick your thumb in it. It stung and his thumb was healed al hunt has he stayed in touch with corinda and the community . He did. The everlies got to go with the playoff games with him in st. Louis, when ozzy was inducted in the hall of fame he had two seats reserved for the everlies in coopertown. He goes back every year, stays in their home like a surrogate son. Hunt thats great. There is another ball player that went to the majors, daryl miller, brother was regie, cyst was sister was cheryl. When he arrived in iowa, he was a fair player but things didnt start off so well, did they . No. Merle was hard on him and he wondered why he was mean to me and merle was tougher on catchers. Rose he thought there might be a racial component. He thought, wow, is this guy a racist . Then he realizes hes not and ends up loving merle. One of the things merle would do is have the catchers learn the position, he would take a catchers mitt and put plywood on top of it so they wouldnt catch the ball, they would learn to bloblg the ball. The guy would like to brag what good great basketball players and he said my little brother and sister could school you. No doubt about that. Hunt you got a number of good reviews. St. Louis, des moines and m. L. B. Com. One exception, the wall street journal, said this book was nice and sweet but a naive trip down memory lane with the old saw, it was better in the old days. What i got from that is the reviewer had a point to make and it was going to be all these people who talk about nostalgia, thats wrong. In doing that i think he missed the point of the book which was to go way beyond baseball and any notion of nostalgia to tell the story about a place. But on the other hand, you know, you take the good with the bad and try to accept it. It. Hunt thats for sure. But he said the book suffered under the illusion that baseball is more to be about George Patton and john wayne who were merles idols than brice harper and mike trout. No doubt about it and one of the reasons, ask brice harper about the history of the game and he can tell you a lot of things, hes very fluent. Hunt he studied ted williams batting habits. The trouts and the harpers, we may not read about them as much, but they engaged in that kind of discipline and hard work and that Old Fashioned working and taking 500 swings swings and everything, didnt they . Thats not naive and Old Fashioned, thats still current. Thats hard work. You can argue they work out harder than some of the other players because they know thats the way you separate yourself. How do you think the game changed . How is it different than when ozzie smith came up . I think in some ways its more about power now. The players are physically bigger, you can see that. Its more about speed and pitching. There were the pitchers like sandy koufax who could have pitched in any generation but now more throw 95 miles an hour and above and more people can hit the ball further, so its a power game but power that can be neutralized because power pitcher can sometimes neutralize a power hitter. Hunt thank you so much. Rose for more about this program and earlier episodes, visit us online at pbs. Org and charlierose. Com. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications captioned by Media Access Group at wgbh access. Wgbh. Org rose funding for charlie rose has been provided by and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and Information Services worldwide. Announcer this is nightly business r with tyler attention walmart shoppers. The Worlds Largest retailer surprised investors when it raised Profit Guidance for the year, as many of its peers continue to struggle. Behind bars. The Justice Department will no longer house inmates in private prisons, sending shares of two forprofit Prison Companies tumbling. Death by another name. Is there an fda loophole that is helping medical Device Companies mask fatalities . Those stories and more tonight on nightly Business Report for thur good evening, everyone, and welcome. Ringing up sales. Seems like its been quite a