Please welcome ben mezrich. Hello everybody, thank you for coming out on a friday night. Its getting getting a little chilly but its still nice out and i appreciate everyone coming on a friday night. I will get to once upon a time in russia in just a few minutes but i know whenever i go see a band i always hate it when they never play the hits. I want to do a little bit of the hits first and how i got to the story. I never set out to be a nonfiction writer or a journalist. As a kid i always hated nonfiction and i didnt read much of it. I was obsessed with television and bad tv like say by the bell m3s company and all of that crap. My parents, fearing the worst, made a rule at home that we had to read two books a week before we were allowed to watch tv. So at a very young age i became a speed reader so i could watch tv. I watched everything. By the time i graduated from college i knew i wanted to be a writer. I wrote and i wrote and i wrote nine novels in a year. I dont recommend that f
And now try for on booktv. Former meet the press moderator David Gregory discusses aids and religion in his book hows your faith . Is interviewed by sally quinn, Founding Editor of on faith. Host david, tell me how you came to the title of your book, hows your faith . Guest it was a question posted made by president bush who asked me that question numerous times. I write about in the book just before i got the job at meet the press as i was getting it. He had heard that i was studying with some we both know, erica brown, political scholar, moderate orthodox woman and is trying to deepened my faith. I was meeting with him in the oval office and were talking about the economy. He was giving me advice on how to whether public scrutiny and then he said, gravely, how is your faith . Every time he asked the question i found to be such a penetrating question. People might be startled that he would ask the reporter covering the white house that question but i never found it inappropriate. Ther
To you. [applause] thank you very much. It must begin by apologizing for holding you up from a 20 minutes. Now that no work is revitalizing traffic at this time is impossible but thats a good thing i think so while i apologize im also happy that i got caught up in the works overflow traffic tonight. Its my role to lay out the ground rules for our conversation. We will begin with the author Dale Russakoff making a presentation. She will then be followed by the three panelists who have joined us to an affect react comments on what dale has written and what she will say to us tonight. Dales comments will be about 15 minutes. That means that panelists will each get about 10 minutes to respond. Is that all right panel . Again have ongoing conversation after those initial remarks have been made. After they have made their presentations then we will open the floor for comments, questions from the audience and i think we have a microphone here. We may have another mic somewhere in the room but
Inspired the. Host its not very usual as we both kn host its not very usual as we both know for secular elite liberal east coast journalists to talk about their faith. You talk about it the way george bush and jimmy carter did and its kind of offputting to a lot of people that are atheist or agnostic and who are how have you found the reaction to talking so openly . Guest i wouldnt accept the liberal label that you gave me. I am talking about the journalist crowd. Guest i havent gotten that reaction at all. There might be people that are not used to it. I am not walking down the halls with it but i think people were respectful of it and i guess i think you are right to talk about this very openly its something that takes people a back either because its not their think they are not people of faith or they think that its culturally anathema to speak of faith so openly. And i dont think that that is the case. Im still a journalist and i understand what that means that theres a lot of peo
Applicable to antiterrorism methods, i dont know. I think all of these models are heavily data driven. So one would need a lot of data. But to the point that these models, these predictive modelling are able to predict things that may relate indirectly to terrorism or criminal activities, the systems are suggesting that we are going that way. Other thoughts on that question . Theres a system in chicago that the Chicago Police department has deployed which both has been touted and criticized, but it does somewhat the neighborhood or block level predictive deprediction bs as to criminal activity as well as i understand individual level identifying people who may be either victims of crimes or perpetrators of crimes. Again, both touted and highly criticized. Any thoughts or comments . One quick one creating a feedback loop. You see every crime that occurs on corner acts and draw an overdrawn example that you thought it was real dangerous. Thats the main one from my perspective. So this is