>> and by being heard. we have about 25 minutes left. i can keep talking, but there are usually a lot of questions. [laughter] so i'm going to go ahead and take questions if you have them. if there aren't any, i will keep going. >> celeste, over here. far back. >> oh, i see you. >> here. [laughter] a couple years ago you came to savannah, and you did a ted talk, and it was one of the best ever. >> thank you. thirteen million views, ladies and gentlemen. [laughter] [applause] >> tell us, if you would, something you learned doing a ted talk. >> next time get a haircut and put on makeup. [laughter] [applause] that is what i learned. [laughter] other people will be watching this. brush your hair. [laughter] yes. oh, wait, they want me to -- here and here. they're going to bring you a microphone. >> [inaudible] okay. you talked a lot about the challenges to great conversations, but you didn't say anything specific about how to have great conversations. >> well, that's because i wrote a book about it. [laughter] and it took me a long time. no, i mean, the number one challenge to having a great conversation is listening, right? and it's not just a matter of none of you are going to leave her and go, she's right, i'm going to be a great listener from now on. here's the thing, human beings are not born knowing how to listen well. we're just not. it's not something we do well as a species. and anyone who's been around a baby knows that, right? you don't come out of the womb knowing how to will listen. you come out of the womb knowing how to scream, and some of us never stop. listening has to be taught. that's the secret. how many of you were offered, at some point, a public speaking course in your life? how many of you were offered a listening course in your life? like, two. it's something you have to learn. quite literally. there's incredible research coming off the school systems in australia and new zealand that shows the only way to become a better listener is to actually work at it. it takes discipline. it's one of those things, it's not like information that you just master and learn and memorize and then move on. it's like going to the gym. like, nobody goes to the gym, gets a great pump, and then you're done working out for the res of your life. [laughter] that is listening. it is exercising a muscle that is not naturally strong. so get in there every day. >> how does the brain react to the voice of artificial intelligence? >> we don't have a lot of good research on there right now. like alexa, if you talk to alexa, we don't really react to it the way that we do to a human being. and believe me, i'm one of the consultants for amazon trying to teach them how to make iowa are lex saw have -- alexa have real conversationings. [laughter] -- conversations. an unpaid consultant, i might add, because what am i going to saysome. [laughter] we don't know. we can't, we don't have any way at this point of measuring what it is that we're responding to in a human voice are. so we don't actually know what's missing in the a.i., but we -- it is missing. neuro-coupling does not occur between an a.i. and a human being. regardless of that movie. her? she? the name of that movie? yeah. oh, she has a question. >> so i'm going to go buy three of your books and give it to three of my family members -- [laughter] and give them some thorough instructions from you. listen was one, but what would the other two be? >> the other one, obviously, put away your cell phone. put it away. and the last one would be if you're not able to have a conversation right then, walk away. if you can't focus and you can't listen, that's fair, that's fine. just excuse yourself. don't put the other person through the pain of talking to you when you can't listen. don't waste their time, just walk away. politely. other questions? don't you worry, i got plenty more. >> so there are a lot of people in -- i'm a millennial, and there are a lot of people in my generation and i'm sure the one below us now finish. >> the i-gen, they're calling it. >> right, right. that's scary. but they would argue that they are having meaningful conversations over text and over social media, and, you know, what would you say to them? i know you're not supposed to change people's minds, but how would you approach that subject? >> i'd say you're wrong. [laughter] i mean, i just, you know, you can't just tell me what you feel. you know? show me the proof, right? and there is zero data. i mean, the scientific opinion on texting and e-mailing is as universal as the opinion on climate change. it's wrong. texting is not a conversation. and, in fact, they have found that even your closest friends and family members are no more accurate at detecting sarcasm in your e-mails than a complete stranger off the street. here's the thing, when i tell people that, they go, oh, i totally believe that. except me, my friends totally know. [laughter] and i say that's not how math works. that is not how math works. we are great at figuring out what other people do wrong. we are excellent at it. but the fact of the matter is we're or terrible at being good judges of what we're doing wrong and what we're not. there's this book called people are not so smart, also a podcast. if you're ever feeling really confident, just read that book. [laughter] it's okay. it's true of all of us. even like really brilliant people. it's true of everybody. but the thing is, is that it's just wrong. a text is not a conversation. and you may be thinking you're communicating well, but you're not saying what they're hearing. they're hearing and reading something different from what you have typed. into miscommunication is the number -- and miscommunication is the number one product failure in business, mostly because of e-mail. it costs $210 trillion a year. yeah, if you want to put it in dollars and cents. >> as a child, i remember hearing children to be seen and not heard. >> amen. no -- [laughter] >> children are told to keep quiet during entire school years. is that part of why we don't talk anymore and we secretly communicate? >> i don't think so. i don't think so, i mean, you're told to be quiet in class because there's too many kids trying to say what they want and it would be mayhem. it's the same in college courses. everyone can't sit there and talk while the professor's trying to lecture. you've got to be able to hear them. and not only that, but that has been the norm for as far back as we have records. i'm not saying children should be seen and not heard. come on. but that's okay. when someone's actually lecturing, i mean, if you guys were all talking right now, there would be a brawl because the person next to you would be like, shut up, i'm trying to hear. and the person would be like, shut up, i'm talking to my mom. and it would be like that church scene in the kingsmen. [laughter] people who have seen the movie know what i'm talking about. there's times when you shouldn't talk, plenty of them. but we're not talking about that. i'm not talking about that. i'm talking about actual conversations which we're not having anymore. what we're having is exchanges where one person says what they think and believe, and the other person says what they think and believe, but they're not actually listening to each other. a conversation is an exchange of information. it's one person speaking, another listening and responding and then speaking and then going back. we're not having that anymore. and that's certainly not what a tweet is. we need fewer hot takes. question. >> i heard your ted talk. it was wonderful. thank you. you did make a wonderful comparison, i think, there your sister, a good conversation in a short skirt. i'll let you to that one, but i do have a question here. i think i assumed, bad of me, that your book was going to be more anecdotal, and it sounds like it's really solidly researched and based on data. how long did it take you to do this, to do the research and write it? >> well, a long time. [laughter] i think there's probably, like, 30 pages of footnotes at the end. it's not fully just science. it's basically split into three kind of chunks. there's plenty of anecdotal, because i admit all the things i do wrong which could have filled another book. and then there's the science behind what we know. and then there's what i learned in my professional experience as a broadcaster and a professional interviewer. it's kind of split evenly between those three things. so it takes a lot. but one of the reasons it takes so long is because when i first set out to become a better interviewer -- that was my initial effort years and years ago -- i went to those same research books that all of us have been reading for years. the ones that say look them in the eye and nod your head and say uh-huh to show that you're listening. and it's crap, that is crap advice. i don't know that those people actually followed their own advice. it count work i. -- it doesn't work. if you're staring into someone's eyes and making eye contact, it's uncomfortable, isn't it? [laughter] it doesn't work. and so i had to start from scratch. and sometimes i had to reach into research fields and science that wasn't about communication in order to get my answers. i had to sort of just forget what i knew or thought i knew about the subject and and also what the hell, what were they writing about? like i don't even understand. there's no way. it's just literally teaching you how to act like you are listening. it is, that's what all that advice is about. here's how you pretend you're paying attention. when the most authentic way to do that is pay attention. [laughter] it's totally believable. so, yeah. and the quote you're talking about is actually a version of a winston churchill quote which says a conversation, a good conversation is like a miniskirt, long enough to cover the subject and short enough to retain interest. yeah. [laughter] winston churchill would say something like that. >> [inaudible] >> oh, okay. hi. >> hi. i'm in adult education, and one of the things that we continue to learn is that lecture-style learning is the most ineffective. >> yeah. >> so can nettic learning where people are actively engaged, how do you have a conversation that includes that component? >> lecturing is the death of good conversation. honestly. if your intent is to educate someone, you're not having a good conversation. i mean, the first thing is, is you basically screwed with the power dynamic because you put yours above them. you made yourself their teach every. there's one part in the book -- i will almost tell you what to say or what not to say because it's completely situational. and if you're paying attention, you'll know what to say. but the one phrase i want people to stop saying is actually. but actually -- [laughter] it's like i'm not a racist, but nothing good will come after it. [laughter] if you feel yourself wanting to say but actually, just stop. just stop yourself. you don't need to explain. and i think the example i used in the book is, like, you're not making the dinner and you're better to interrupt what someone's saying to explain that real champagne only comes from france. i mean, come on. [laughter] just let it go. [laughter] let it go. yeah. and it's the same thing in learning. i mean, what we're finding is that there's all kinds -- we know all kinds of ways to shut a brain down, and a human mind is already really prone to distraction. microsoft does some of the best research around into attention span. and what they've discovered is that on the internet at least our attention span is about eight seconds, which is one second shorter than that of a goldfish. [laughter] in conversationing our attention span is about -- conversation our attention spend is about 30-60 seconds. so when you leave here, get something that has a second hand, a timer, and start telling a story and see how long 30 seconds get you through and then stop. because there's a good chance their attention span has expired. and the other side to that is the human brain can only hold on to three or four things at any one time. so if you're one of those people that starts talking to your spouse and is like, and another thing, and you just are kind of going through all the stuff -- [laughter] you are spitting in the wind, my friends. [laughter] choose one thing. choose one thing and say is it in 30-60 seconds. and then be done and walk away, and everyone will be happier. yeah. oh, yeah. hi. >> [inaudible] >> yes. >> i'm not trying to break line. [laughter] >> you're good. >> i was always told in reading business books and advice from people who know that one should stick to their knitting; that is, know what business you're in and stick to that. why on earth would you change your appearance when your last ted talk gained 13 million listeners or viewers or? [laughter] [applause] i watched your ted talk last night and decided i have to go see this woman. and i'm a little disappointed because, frankly, i didn't think it was all about cell phones, but i understand everything you're saying. [laughter] my daughter -- >> question. >> yeah, there's a question. [laughter] >> the wife. >> there's a multiplication of technology. i'm talking about text messages. >> yeah. >> or forwarding twitter stuff. i forwarded something, my daughter like unfriended me. [laughter] and i called her and i said, listen, this is what i was trying to say. and she said, oh. the human voice brought it all together, so i apologize. >> was there a question? [laughter] >> why would i change it? i didn't. [laughter] i didn't. i just put it in a clip. [laughter] i lied about me learning that. [laughter] >> because we're more reticent to commune be candidate with each other in -- communicate with each other in conversation and that's making people more reliant on texting and so forth, has there within any studies that says we now read differently? >> oh, we do. >> we used to learn empathy by reading novels. >> you still do. >> we not as good as we used to be as readers? >> that's a complicated question. >> thank you. [laughter] >> we are not as good readers, meaning that we don't have an attention span for reading the way we used to. and if you look at the amount, like how much of an article the average person actually reads before they click away to another link or how long a book is from an unestablished author that people will actually read to the end, we do not read as much as we used to. but we have also found that the number one way to teach people critical thinking and reading and have them speak well is to read to them. the benefits that we get from reading have not changed. and it is still true that you can learn empathy by reading novels about people whose experiences are different from your own. the number one most effective way to learn, to increase your empathy -- and this is important because empathy can be increased or decreased. and empathy has been on the decline for 30 years, in fact, it's dropped 40% invest past 30 years. most of that since the year 2000. but it can be increased. and the number one most efficient way to do that is by having a conversation with someone else in which you learn about their experiences and their perspectives. it is no small thing even when you disagree with them. it's helping you. and i tell people all the time stop thinking about the benefit you're conferring on someone else by listening to them. it's good for you. small talk makes you live longer, makes you less likely to have a fatal cardiac event, it makes you less prone to depression knowing, being friendly with your neighbors makes you less prone to diabetes, it makes you less prone to all kinds of diseases. and yet i have a friend of p mine who drove around the block twice because his neighbor was out front, and he didn't want to pull in while he was there and get in a conversation with him. [laughter] those little chats with your uber drivers and your grocery store clerks about nothing are literally making you healthier. so by staring down at your phone so that they don't make eye contact and they don't start talking to you, you are hurting yourself. other questions. >> no. when the comment was made that younger folks might feel that they're communicating just as effectively when they're communicating on their cell phone -- >> yep. >> -- the first thing you said is was that's not true. science has shown, blah, blah, blah. >> yes. >> however, feelings, i feel this way, is legitimate in terms of how i'm approaching that conversation. you seem to stop the conversation at that point and said, well, that's not true. this is the facts. facts don't seem to be as important anymore as feelings. >> oh, not to me. [laughter] >> but -- >> i have nothing but respect for people's feelings, but it doesn't change facts. i mean, i can feel all i want, that i have written an e-mail and it's really good communication. from my end, that may be true. i may have expressed myself in a way that i'm perfectly happy with and i think it is rewarding to me. the question is, in a good exchange of information, did the other person get an accurate reading of what it was that i was trying to say, in other words, was the information communicated clearly, and did i express myself in a way that was effective? that they don't need further explanation in order to understand what he was trying to say. and the fact is texting -- that doesn't mean every single text is not a good exchange. and, in fact, it's a perfectly great platform for a simple exchange of information. what do you want for dinner, chinese food, okay. fine. but i can't make it to your birthday party, so sorry. nope. >> but then how do you use, how do you effectively use the facts that you're aware of from scientific literature to confront that confirmational bias of the other individual? >> i don't confront people's confirmation bias. >> you just did. i mean, somebody said i communicated equally well if not better on my cell phone -- >> no, he was saying other people think that, right? you were saying other young people believe that, not that you believe that? yeah. >> but what if i came to you and said i believe that? >> i would say you probably do feel that, but it's not correct. [laughter] we've got four minutes. another question? >> i enjoyed your talk very much. >> thank you. >> is there any mystery to why it seems like these, you know, alexa and things like that are in the female voice? or it seems very -- [laughter] predominant. >> this is actually quite interesting. people get irritated when it's a male telling them. [laughter] for whatever reason, and they believe -- amazon believes it's because of the that terrible nature of much of the instruction that most people get when they're growing up, that they tend to be more accepting of someone telling them your timer's up or it's time to go to bed or whatever it is when it's a woman telling them. whereas if it's a guy telling them, it's like -- i will say here's an interesting thing that's not part of your question. amazon has now made it if you re in a misogynyst way to alexa, she shuts off. [applause] she turns herself off if you call her the c-word or anything like it. [laughter] she will not engage. [laughter] >> is there any scientific information on what you comprehend reading off of a computer versus what you comprehend when you're reading a book or a newspaper? i've been saying it's a generational thing because i do not comprehend as well all of the computer as i do something -- >> yeah, that's just habit. there's no, i mean, they haven't really found -- some of the best research is going on at uc-berkeley. they have a greater good center which is one of the places we're doing incredible work not only on this topic, but also on empathy. and that's more of a it depends on what you like, right? i like an actual physical book, and i like library books because they smell like library books. but my kid is just fine reading off the computer. he gets the same information. writing, though, you need the actual physical act of writing in order for it to ever make it to your memory banks. if you type notes in a class, it doesn't actually get to your memory banks. >> that's exactly where i was going with my question, is letter writing different from e-mail? >> so this is interesting. there are a few things that e-mail does better than regular communication, and is we only have one minute, so i'm going to make this really quick. one of them is sending an attachment, for obvious reasons, another is sending a list or an agenda or a summation of a meeting. we had a phone call, here's what i heard, and the other thing we found is an e-mail is a perfect good replacement for what would have been a long letter that you wrote. now, you don't get the benefits of physically writing except in microsoft one note where i can write on my tablet with my pen, and then i do get the benefit. other than that, there's no diminution of receiving a letter or reading it on e-mail. same thing. yeah. thank you all very much. [applause] >> thank you all. don't forget the little yellow buckets on the way out if you have any spare jewelry, car keys, excess money, what have you. thank you. [inaudible conversations] >> and you've been listening to author celeste headlee talking about the importance of conversation. this is booktv's live coverage of the annual savannah book festival. we've got a few minutes before david enrich begins. his book is called "the spider network." it's a detailed look at the 2006 financial scam in which bankers, traders and brokers manipulated interest rates worldwide. and we will be back live in georgia in just a few minutes. [inaudible conversations] >> the saving -- the second clan claimed to be continuing the first clan, but it was different in a series of major ways. first of all, it was not secret. second of all, it was a mass movement having somewhere between three and five million members. third, it had women. fourth, it was in main nonviolent. and, fifth, its basic strategy was electoral, and i can talk about that later. and finally, perhaps the most important thing is it expanded what you might call the hate list. the first klan was entirely focused on keeping african-americans down and used lynching to not only punish individuals, but to intimidate the whole pop laughs. population. the second klan, its founders understanding that you wouldn't get a lot of traction by concentrating only on african-americans because in 1920 very few african-americans lived in the northern states, they expanded their list to add catholics and jews. and immigrants. but immigrants is really the same category because in the waves of immigration that had grown larger from about 1880, very few of those immigrants were protestant. and when they said catholics also, they included the russian and greek orthodox. my impression is they didn't exactly register that they were different, but it was equal opportunity bias. >> right. i would add one more thing. i don't know if you would characterize this quite this way organizationally, but this klan was also you might call it a for-profit business. it was extremely entrepreneurial. so this is one of the reasons -- you tell the story of this one guy who kind of came up with the idea of creating a second ku klux klan, and he kind of failed and he kind of -- well, he kind of brought in these public relations agents who used the most modern, sophisticated marketing techniques which included broadening the market, you know, for who you should be hating, and it was basically -- i wrote a book, an article for the baffler a few years ago called "the long con," and it was about how much right-wing politics has devolved into a money hustle. you know, people even before the internet were getting kind of terrifying -- [audio difficulty] letters saying, you know, the left wants to teach your children cannibalism and exed and teach -- and sex ed, and send me $10 so we can save the world. we now know how it works now with the internet. it wasn't messily all that different for the -- necessarily all all that different from the klan which functioned, in a sense, as a pyramid scheme. >> it was a pyramid scheme is. a recruiter could keep 40% of the initiation fee. now, the initiation fee was $10 in 1920, but that is worth over $100 today. it was not cheap. and this is one, this underlies one important fact and that is that very low income people were not in the klan. so, you know, if i recruited you, i could keep 40%, but you could then turn around and recruit somebody else and keep 40%, and this could keep going until there's just no one heft to recruit. and that -- left to recruit. and that's what is the problem with pyramid schemes. but ultimately -- >> well, for some people. >> well, right. [laughter] >> come on. >> ultimately, this was the undoing of the klan, because there was so much money flowing. and i can give examples later if you want. the corruption became too much to ignore, and a lot of klan members became very disillusioned and a little 'em bittered about what was going on. also it's not just initiation fee. let me just mention two other forms of income. they made a uniform in such a way as to make it very, very difficult for a woman to take old sheets and sew it herself. and they did this knowingly in order to make people have to pay for it. but second, people in the klan started manufacturing all sorts of memorabilia. you could get a klan pocket knife, and you could get a klan brooch for your wife. and they were just marketing these things publicly in all these newspapers, and all this money -- completely unaccountable -- was flowing in. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> booktv tapes hundreds of author programs throughout the country all year long. here's a look at some of the events we'll be covering this week. monday we'll be at politics & prose bookstore in washington, d.c. to hear lanny davis, former special counsel for president clinton, share his thoughts on the outcome of the 2016 election. on tuesday we head to roosevelt house in new york city where former white house official and cabinet secretary joseph califano will examine our democracy and share his views on how to bring back trustworthy systems of government. later that night we'll be at new york university for the presentation of the penn america literary awards given annually since 1963 which recognize books in a range of categories from biography and science writing to essays and poetry. and on wednesday at the green light bookstore in brooklyn, investigative journalist vegas, the enhold reports on white nationalism in america. danielle thompson will be at st. answer hem college in -- saint anselm college in new hampshire. later that night we'll be at the free library of philadelphia where britney cooper will examine the power of what she call cans eloquent rage and how it can be harnessed as a resource to bring about change. and on friday, former clinton administration labor secretary robert rice will be at the first parish church in cambridge, massachusetts, to talk about the economic and social cycles societies experience and their effect on the common good. that's a look at some of the events booktv will be covering this week. many of these events are open to the prick. look for hem -- to the public. look for them to air in the near future on booktv on c-span2. >> but the point is i'm making here, i'm sure you've forgotten, miami is a wonderful city. [laughter] a new attitude down there, new tourism promotion slogan. come back to miami, we weren't shooting at you. [laughter] if you think about it, miami and rancho have a lot in common. miami's warm and sunny, rancho's warm and sunny. rancho -- i mean, excuse me, miami is hip. [laughter] rancho is hip replacements. [laughter] miami has a diverse population. [laughter] rancho is warm and sunny. [laughter] the list just goes on and on. no. i actually, no, i really do love it here. i love it here, if nothing else, there's a wonderful audience here, and i can kind of rely on you year after year to forget the jokes i told the previous year. [laughter] for example, i told that joke here last year. [laughter] also i can relate to i'm getting old. i turned 70 in july, i'm now 70 years old. that makes me a septuagenarian, meaning everything hurts. [laughter] but i am 70, or as we say in rancho, jailbait. [laughter] [applause] and it's a big milestone. there are certain milestones you reach in your life as you age, the first one, like, when you really start to feel old is when you turn 50. those of you can maybe remember that. [laughter] you turn 50 and then it's like a horrible thing that happens, and it happens to everybody, you get a letter from aarmore, -- aarp. it's an abbreviation for the american association of retired persons standing ahead of you in line asking for a discount for every freaking thing. [laughter] and i have nothing against aarp, it's a fine organization. it was hard for me to be asked to join it, because i'm a baby boomer. the key is no matter how old and pathetic and wretched and senile and drooling and uncontinent we get -- incontinent we get, we think we're cool. [laughter] we still think we're cool. so it's hard to be asked to join an organization whose membership includes these guys, i see is it all the time, they wear their waistbands up around their armpits -- [laughter] apparently, in case they need emergency open heart surgery, you can just unzip the fly, you knowsome. -- you know? [laughter] but the other thing about, like, when you are 70, when you -- you sort of come to accept all the stereotypes about being 70 are true. every joke people make about old people, about young people and old people is true. the way old people drive, in miami i don't know if you have this here, a lot of people drive by i call it the seeing eye wife system. [laughter] do you know what i'm talking about? where the couple drives, they're always together, but the man drives. always. the man drives. why? because the man drives. [laughter] problem is, the man can no longer see. [laughter] so he's outsourced the seeing part of the striving to his wife who says, it's an arrow. not that way! you know? [laughter] one area in my life as a writer where i can see, you know, the generation difference most clearly, when you do a book signing, at the end of the book signing often there's a line of people who want to get their books signed, but they want their pictures taken with you. even's got a phone, they want a picture with the author. and this can happen sometimes dozens and dozens of times in a typical book signing. so over the course of the year, i'll have this same press that's repeated maybe thousands of times. and here's how young people do it. they hold up the phone, and they take a picture. [laughter] here's how old people do it. [laughter] they hold up the phone, they frown at the screen for about 30 seconds. [laughter] they say something like, wait, i think it's on google. [laughter] then they stab at the screen for a while with a forefinger. then they hold up the phone again and say, okay, smile. [laughter] then they frown again and say is, wait, i think it's making a video. [laughter] then they stab at the screen some more, then they hold up the phone again and say, okay, smile. then they frown and say, wait, i think it took a picture of me. [laughter] then they give the phone to a young person who takes the picture. that's, literally, i've seen that, i don't know, many, many times. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. [inaudible conversations] >> and booktv's live coverage of the savannah book festival continues now. it's new york times finance editor david enrich talking about his book, "the spider network." [inaudible conversations] >> good afternoon. we are delighted that you are participating in the 11th annual savannah book festival presented by georgia power. david and nancy sin terror, the sheehan family foundation and mark and pat -- [inaudible] many thanks to jack and mary romanos for this glorious venue, the trinity baptist church. we'd also like to extend thanks to our individual donors who have made and continue to make saturday's free festival events possible. in fact, 90% of the revenue for the savannah book festival comes from donors just like you, so thank you. we are very excited to have a savannah book festival app available this year. please look in your program for information on downloading it to your phone. before we get started, please let me go over a couple of housekeeping notes. immediately following this presentation, our speaker, david enrich, will be signing festival-purchased copies of his book in telfair square. if your intention is to stay for the next presentation in this venue, please as soon as we are dismissed move forward so that we can allow the crowds that are waiting outside to come in and be seated as easily as possible. now, please take a moment to double check that your cell phones are turned off or are at least silenced so that we won't have interruptions during the course of the talk today. and finally, we ask that if you take photographs, that you not use flash photography. for the question and answer portion, we're going to ask that you raise your hand, and an usher will bring you a microphone. so, please don't ask a question until the microphone is in your hands. in the interest of time and in fairness to other attendees, please limit yourself to one question, and if you would please make sure that your question actually is a question rather than a story. david enrich is with us today courtesy of ron and barbara coley, and we appreciate their support. david enrich is the finance editor at the new york times, and previously he was the financial enterprise editor for "the wall street journal." he headed a team of investigative reporters, and he has won numerous journalism awards including the 2016 gerald loeb award for feature writing. so please join me in giving a very warm savannah welcome to david enrich. [applause] >> hello. this is a great crowd. i was standing here at beginning, and it was empty, and i was a little nervous. but this is my first time in savannah, and this is a really cool city. i'm really glad to be here. and this is without a doubt -- i've been doing a lot of these events since my book was published -- this is without a doubt the coolest venue i've ever been in. so, yeah. [applause] it's a beautiful day, it's beautiful savannah weather, and i really appreciate you guys coming out of the sun to listen to a talk about finance. but i promise you, this is not going to be really boring, and it's not -- i'm going to dwell as little as possible on actual finance. by book, "the spider network," it is a book about finance, but i've really tried to make it a book about humans and psychology and things like that as much as about jargon. so i'm just going to kind of tell you a story about how i came to write this book. which is kind of an interesting tale and i think says a lot about my writing process and just journalism, which people tend to find interesting. so the story starts back in 2008 when a group of "wall street journal" reporters -- not including myself -- who were based in the london bureau started digging into something called libor. it's an acronym that stands for the london interbank offer rate, and most people have never heard of it, but it's really important. [audio difficulty] it's the thing that determines the interest rates that many of us pay on our mortgage, our credit card loans, auto loans, student loans. it's what determines the interest rates you pay if you're a big company and you borrow money in the bond market. it's the interest rate you way if you're a town or a city that borrows money. so this is -- it's often referred to as the world's most important number, and it touches trillions and trillions of dollars of financial contracts all over the world. it's a big number. libor's set every today around lunchtime in london by a group of the world's biggest banks. and it's done in a way that, with the benefit of hindsight, seems really arbitrary and inefficient and kind of stupid, but it made a lot of sense at the time. basically, each bank estimates theoretically how much it would cost them to borrow money from another bank. and that number is expressed as an interest rate, and that's what those numbers could average together, the high ones, the low ones get kicked out, and rest of them are combined into an average, and that's libor. it's set every day, and it's used all over the world. it turns out that no one was paying any attention to how this rate was actually set, the mechanics of it. it was a tax that was delegated to low-level, junior employees within these banks, and they would come up with a number sometimes basically out of thin air because it was very hard to figure out. no one was paying any attention. this was not a priority for the banks, so they would come up with this number in a pretty arbitrary way, split it to this trade group called the british banker association that would compile the number and send it to everyone. starting about 20 years ago, so in the mid 1990s, a bunch of banks realized since no one was paying attention, there was a lot of opportunity, a lot of potential for them to make money off of this in a way that was not necessarily illegal, but certainly not very honest. and they realized that they were making, they were placing huge wagers every day on trades that were connected to libor. they were essentially betting, gambling really on whether libor was going to go up or down, very small increments in the near future, whether it was over the next 24 hours, the next week or the next month. and so they had a lot to gain or lose based on movements in libor. and they realized since no one was paying any attention whatsoever to how this rate was actually set, if they moved their submission, their libor data up by a fraction of a percentage point on a daily basis, that could be hugely influential in moving the overall rate. so by the mid 2000s and by the dawn of the financial crisis really, it had become common industry practice for banks to nudge libor up or down by small amounts in order to make more money for themselves. and that's where the story really starts. in 2008 a couple of my predecessor ises at "the wall street journal" started digging into this number, and they realized very quickly that something was terribly wrong with it. libor's supposed to be a reflection of how much it costs banks to borrow from each other, and that would mean that in times of financial stress like a financial crisis, that number would go up because banks would be charging them, charging each other more to borrow money because they were perceived as being riskier. and if that doesn't make sense to you, don't worry. it really isn't relevant. the point is banks were manipulating this number to suit themselves, and some of my predecessors at "the wall street journal" realized this was going on, and they wrote a couple of very big, front page exposes about this practice. and, you know, the great thing about working for a big newspaper like "the wall street journal" is when you do one of these front page stories, people all over the world take notice. and they get -- you know, it's a very good way to affect change. that's, frankly, why i got into journalism. it's something that you see the power of the media. you writing this, and people take action. in this case these guys wrote these a couple of very powerful, i thought, very powerful stories, and nothing happened. the world basically didn't react partly because no one knew about libor or cared about it. so nothing happened. i was in new york at the time. i moved with my wife to london to be the kind of finance correspondent for "the wall street journal" in london in 2010, and i really didn't care about libor either. like most of you in this room. and i continued to not cower about it until 2011 -- care about it until 2011 when word started trickling out that a number of government agencies in the u.s. and britain had opened investigations based on this "wall street journal" article. it had been secret, but it was kind of leaking out into the press because some of the banks had disclosed that they had received subpoenas and were under investigation. and there's nothing journalists love more than government investigations because we love bad news in general, and, you know, it gets your papers, your stories more prominence. and the great thing about government investigations is it's easy to write about because we can just report government x or government y are investigating this, and it's much easier than to have to actually prove the misconduct yourself. so i and my other colleagues in the british media at the time really started aggressively reporting on libor once again. and of it was kind of a matter of institutional pride for "the wall street journal" because this was something that we felt that we had started. but again, there are few topics in the financial world, much less the real world, that cause people's eyes to glaze over faster than the mention of the word libor. so these stories, while exciting to me, were not exciting to people like you or to most of our readers. and, you know, through 2011, through 2012 we kept trying to write these exciting stories about libor, and they kind of fell flat until the middle of 2012 when one of the world's biggest banks, barclays -- which is based in london -- announced it had reached an agreement with u.s. and british prosecutors in which it admitted trying to manipulate libor. and they paid a very big penalty. but the more interesting thing was that the ceo of that bank had to fall on his sword and resign. and this was one of the first times since the financial crisis that we'd seen an example of an actual human being being held accountable for misconduct at his institution. and the guy in question was a pretty colorful character. he was an american, bob diamond was his name, a brash, quintessential american banker in london. and i don't know if you guys know london or the u.k. very well, but, you know, those types of people don't generally go over very well there. the british don't like the brash american bankers very much. and so bob diamond's resignation was a cause for celebration in the u.k., and it was finally the thing that got on the front pages of the american newspapers, including "the wall street journal." so that was a very exciting moment for me. and yet no one really understood how this libor scandal happened in any way. we still -- bob diamond wasn't really involved in it, he was just overseeing this corrupt culture at barclays and needed to go as a result. one of the things i've kind of been trained to do over 15 years as a financial journalist is you try to tell stories with human beings in them, with human actors. not institutional actors, certainly not numbers as actors. the way to make stories compelling is for them to have a narrative and for them to have, you know, action verbs that are used in a non-metaphorical sense. and so people walking along are doing things rather than just talking about nameless, faceless institutions. and the libor story really still lacked that. until the very end of 2012 when the u.s. and british prosecutors arrested and criminally charged a guy named tom hayes. and tom hayes, very little was known about him publicly. we knew his age. he was about my age at the time, so i guess he was about 34, 35 years old. he -- we knew where he lived, which was in a very nice house in southeastern england. we knew the dates of his employment at a number of financial institutions in both london and in tokyo. so he worked for some of the world's biggest banks including ubs, the big swiss bank, and citigroup, the big u.s. bank. and we knew from prosecutors that he had engaged over several years in a series of what can best be described as incredibly reckless, self-destructive e-mail messages, text messages, recorded phone calls where he said in very brazen, unequivocal, unambiguous terms, move libor higher for me, i'll pay you this for doing it. so he used very colorful language. he seemed like not a very nice guy from the tenor of these e-mails. he was a bit of a bully really. and he just seemed, you know, this quintessential wall street crook straight out offing central casting. and this finally was an exciting thing because finally a human being doing bad things that we as journalists can trace and write stories about him. and so we did. and i was very pleased with myself. when 2012 ended and i came back to london in 2013 eager to take on -- to move past libor and start writing about things that didn't make people's eyes glaze over. one of the things my boss always did was at the beginning of each year, you would go and come up with your thematic list of stories you were going to pursue, kind of your ambitions for the following year. i had a great plan. my idea was to do a series of stories that i'd already given a title to it. it was called dirty london, and it was going to be about all the malfeasance and this shady stuff happening all over london, kind of a bunch of half-baked stories that i was going to pursue. i thought my boss was going to be excited and just pat me on the back and say go get 'em. i went in, and he was like, that sounds fine, but first you need to do the definitive profile of tom hayes. because really we don't know anything about him. and i thought to myself, this just sounds like a thankless, miserable task. this guy's just been arrested in london, he'd been criminally charged. the attorney general at the time, eric holder, had gotten up at a lectern like this and just attacked the guy. there's no way i would ever be able to talk to this guy or his family, and those are the crucial things for doing a story like this. and, you know, no one even knew what this guy looked like. it -- i did not want the thankless task of going down this rabbit hole, and so i said no. and my boss said, yes. [laughter] i said no, he said yes. i threw a small journalist tantrum and stomped out of his office and went back to my desk and was like, look, i'm just going to get this over with. i'm going to put in a day's work and be e done with this. in the first thing you do in a situation like this is a google search. so i just did a google search for tom hayes and libor, and it presented out, you know, there were a dozen stories about the guy, not a whole lot. there's nothing interesting about him really except for one little story in the daily telegraph which is one of britain's, you know, kind of -- i won't even say it. one of the british newspapers. [laughter] it was a very short story, like 2-300 words long, and it mentioned, end kind of in-- it kind of insinuated that he had just sold this technology company that he owned to his wife. that he was trying to hide assets from the government or something like that. and it didn't mention his wife's name, the company's name, but in the u.k. it's very easy to track these thing done. i went into an online database of corporate registries in the u.k., and sure enough there's a company called title x technologies, and sure enough, tom hayes -- with, you know, the same address as the guy who had been criminally charged -- had created a company a couple years earlier and then very recently sold it to someone, a woman. her name was jennifer. and i thought to myself, well, that's tom hayes' wife, that's a good starting point. so i googled jennifer arteri, and she was not tom hayes' wife. she was just very clearly an american, and i could tell this because she had posted pictures all over the internet of herself in various degrees of undress -- [laughter] draped in an american flag -- [laughter] and so, you know, the good thing about that is that, you know, i i love living in london can, but i never at least until the very end learned how to talk to british people. and i don't think they really liked me either. so it's always a struggle. i'm very direct and in your face, and they are not. so i saw this woman is clearly my type of person, you know? [laughter] she's, you know, or she's american. and that was very exciting to me to know that i had an american i could talk to. and that was a breakthrough and an advantage i had over most of the other journalists who were british. so i found her phone number, i called her. and sure enough, she was driving. i got her on her cell phone, and she was driving on a freeway in los angeles. and it turned out -- i was like how to you know tom hayes? you're not his wife. it turned out they'd been business school classmates together. and sure enough, she had volunteered, after tom got in so much trouble, to talk possession of this company. so i just started asking her, so who is this guy? who is tom hayes? i know his birthday, his dates of employment, and he sounds like a not-nice guy from the out of context text messages we've seen. and jennifer opened my eyes to this guy in a way i really did not expect. it turns out tom hayes was mildly autistic, he is mildly autistic. he has people who are -- he had asperger's syndrome. incredibly socially awkward, completely incapable of maintaining eye contact during a conversation. he had some personal hygiene problems. he was not the type of banker -- he earned a tremendous amount of money, but he was not the kind of guy who was going out to fancy dinners or clubs or things like that. he was known in financial circles, it turned out, for he would go out to kfc, get a bucket of fried chicken, big bottle of orange juice and go home and watch seinfeld reruns. so right away this guy's seeming a lot more interesting than i had expected because you want someone who's not just kind of a cookie cutter caricature of a banker villain. that's so predictable. and then it got even better because jennifer gave me to what day is maybe the best -- and i'm overselling this, but it was a really good quote about what tom hayes has done. she said that tom hayes' defense here was that, basically, everyone was doing this. his bosses knew about it, sometimes participated. the entire industry was trying to manipulate libor. and her quote was something to the effect of rigging libor was like spanking children in the '70s. everyone was doing it, no one considered it wrong. [laughter] and anytime you can get the word "spank" into a business story -- [laughter] that is a big, big win. [laughter] so i was feeling really good, and in a kind of a state of slight euphoria at the end of this conversation. i said is, jennifer, look, the thing i really need is i need to talk to tom. get someone in his family or even his lawyers who at this point were refusing to talk to me. why don't you -- she was obviously in close touch with tom all the time, and i told her why don't you just pass on my phone number, say that i'm like an honest, open-minded guy -- which i am, but i'm also a journalist, but, you know? [laughter] she was like absolutely not, that's ridiculous. i kind of begged and pleaded, and she finally agreed with the caveat there's no way i would ever hear from this guy. it was worth a try so i could then go into my boss' office and say i'm really trying. so that night i went home and i was sitting on the sofa with my wife and we were watching tv. i don't know if you guys were in here for the previous speaker, but she really doesn't like people using their cell phones when they're talking to people. sure enough, my phone buzzes, and it was a text message from an unknown number, and it said i'm willing to talk to you, but i need to make sure i can trust you. this goes much, much higher than me, not even the justice department knows the full story. and it was tom hayes. and, i mean, i couldn't believe it. and -- because who, first of all, if you're ever in, like, criminal trouble, do not talk to journalists. [laughter] i hate to say it, but that is not a good plan. [laughter] .. and i was like okay, can we meet? i will meet you tomorrow morning at victoria station which is a busy transition in london, standing outside burger king wearing a brown leather coat. i am thinking to myself i walked into all the president's men and i am bob woodward and the pulitzer prize in my back pocket. i am so excited. i called my boss and you won't believe, didn't sleep at all that night. the next morning totally amped up, and i got another text message, i can't do it. my wife found my phone, took my phone away and won't let me do it. and a pretty good lawyer, kind of wisely -- and i was being a little too persistent, and this is sarah, tom's wife, his life is on the line. if you leave him alone he will talk to you. at this point, from tom hayes, in the justice department, no one knows the full story, that is an exclamatory thing. he hadn't said a word. this is, in journalist terms a nice scoop ahead and i was feeling good about myself. i started -- my boss is a real pain, bruce orwell, one of the best editors i ever had, kept telling me to go back and try again and made it clear he wanted to be left alone. it came time, i told tom i have a few fact checking questions but not respond again, i would love to help you. my wife will literally kill me. this is saturday morning. i was ready to go out with him and i looked at her and i love my wife and i looked at her and i could use this to my advantage. on a whim i wrote back to tom, i hope this is okay, know what it is like to have a ball buster wife. we will keep this between us. do you know what? it worked. i couldn't believe it. it worked. what do you want to know? what do i want to know? where do we begin? i spent the entirety of that day, it was like i had uncorked something. he just needed to get some of his chest and i got this barrage of text messages that would not stop. this is all off the record. that means in journalist terms that i can't quote it or use it but i can use it to help myself. he says you should look into this thing or that thing, i will do that and inform my reporting. the line has been drawn after he said this is much higher than me. he gave new lines of inquiry in my story is getting good at this point. the day before i was about to publish, a few more things to check the one was we were going to mention his wife only in the sense that his wife is an interesting person, we knew her name and occupation, a big london law firm and i was going to mention that. i had never spoken to tom hanks. we had 200 text messages over the course of a few weeks but no face-to-face or oral communication and the phone rang and it was tom hanks and he was worked up. the notion of his wife's name being mentioned in the story was -- pretty scared. he had touched a nerve for some reason and he was a traitor. he engaged -- basically a professional gambler with other people's money and very good at that. he was such a traitor that he now proposed to trade to me which was if i promised to take his wife out of the story entirely, not mention her name or occupation or law firm he would agree to meet me the following day and be my sherpa to understand the libor scandal a bit more. this was an easy trade for me to take because i don't care about his wife and hid her name and occupation, mildly interesting but i talked to my boss and we immediately agreed to accept the trade and did this knowing he wouldn't follow through, no enforcement mechanism, no collateral, he was probably going to vanish. we published the story on the front page of the wall street journal, i was feeling so good, the best story i had ever written and 9:00 that morning my phone rings and it is tom hayes. he says that was disappointing. he thought that i had -- you don't know -- the nothing new in there. he is -- has a lax filter and doesn't really think which is refreshing actually but he did not like my story and wasn't shy about it and i was really sorry he felt that way and then he hung up. i didn't have a chance to ask him to follow through on the trade he made. and to meet with his lawyers who were not happy with him. not only speaking but the justice department which is not smart. his lawyers were understandably furious and said you cannot ever do that again. if you ever talk to the media again without our authorization we will fire you. which is tough but fair. he got out of his meeting with the lawyers and called me and said i made you a promise and i will keep that promise, let's meet. it was a cold rainy day, almost exactly february. four years ago i guess and i sprinted down in london, a dingy café right above the tube station, right next to his lawyer's office and the guy doesn't make eye contact and doesn't have an office which either. i asked two questions that he just went for an hour and a half, i'm not taking notes, just trying to remember everything and the most interesting thing -- out of a paper cup, those little plastic devices that are not quite straws, he took one of those and turned it into origami or something, turned it into an elaborate structure while he was talking to me. i was so impressed with his ability to focus on creating an origami straw while also devoting all the dirty secrets of the financial industry while sitting not 100 yards from his lawyers or their offices. this was the beginning of what would become a years long relationship. and at least occurred by text message which he was most comfortable doing. 's lawyers didn't know, his wife didn't know and the condition was that i couldn't write anything. i couldn't quote him ever again, i could use it. it was enormously helpful and turned into the source of numerous stories exposing dirty london, the london financial world and came to trust me. he was desperate to have someone in his life who would listen to him and actually hear him and not judge him through the lens of this is an evil criminal. i am pretty empathetic usually, like most other journalists at the time i viewed him, and i loved the idea of cops busting as a journalist, nor bankers need to be locked up and i was a cheerleader for the idea and the irony is a banking criminal, and i was meeting with tom at least once a week. this guy is not the big party guy, really true, he loved me taking him out to tgi friday's where he would get something really fancy and didn't drink at all. eventually his wife found out we were secretly meeting and threatened to divorce him and if he continued and we had to develop a more clandestine way of arranging to meet. after a year of this, tom has not been on trial yet, he is awaiting trial, started cooperating with the british authorities to help build cases against alleged co-conspirators and the year or two of jail time, very nice jail inside london and move on with his life, he and his wife had a kids at this point, getting in and out of jail is a big priority for him. halfway through the process after i've known him eight months or so, he had lost his mind and decided even though he had spent 80 odd hours being taped confessing to these crimes and pointing in the direction of people who were acting with him he decided he couldn't keep going, had to fight the charges and the reason he told me was he couldn't bear the thought of growing old and watching his son grow up and tell his son that not only is daddy a criminal but is permitted to be a criminal and didn't feel he had done anything wrong he had pushed the envelope. that is when they are paid a lot of money to do in the entire financial system in his view was based on traders like him searching for little inefficiencies to exploit, whether you have a better trading system or better information or stupider clients or inability to manipulate things around the edges. he viewed that is something he was paid to do, his bosses knew about it and his bosses boss is new, and participated alongside him. if he didn't see what he had done wrong he couldn't bear the thought anymore of pleading not guilty or pleading guilty, he decided he would plead not guilty and fight the charges and at that point his life went into a downward spiral and he got caught again meeting with me and instead of getting divorced he introduced her. and his wife in many ways was the polar opposite of tom, really charismatic and they are both really smart but she was smart in a way that she could have an interesting conversation, to drink a lot and a journalist's best friend, and so we would drink to gather. i was spending more time with tom and sarah van any of my friends. this is for two years with all the while the condition with both of them, i can't quote anything they tell me but i am dutifully keeping notes. and very strange couple. in london in summer of 2015, and the name in this book somewhere, he told me you have so much great material here, you have to get them to let you put this on the record. all your meetings with them. you tell the story of getting to know him, and his life and his world circling essentially. i decided i would ask. and regardless what the verdict was, use everything they told me. thousands of text messages are documented every little twist and turn, and that was exciting to me. it lasted about three months, and an actual cage, a little more civilized, a bulletproof glass box. anyone else would stare at tom, and maintain this fiction better than journalists. and a number of occasions where they found ourselves at urinals and next to each other and unable to acknowledge each other and the trial went on for three months, ended the jury came up with the verdict and he was convicted on all eight counts of fraud. sitting there wasn't thinking about writing a book, how to turn it into a story, and sitting there in the courtroom watching the life drain out of his face, touched me in a way i never experienced as a journalist. we are paid to be objective and stay removed, clearly i failed at that and it was a weird experience. half an hour later with the sentence, he was sentenced to 14 years in prison in maximum security. that was everyone's reelection in the courtroom except tom and sarah and they looked at each other. and they thought they were going to get off and be acquitted. and no idea he was going to get a 14 year prison sentence and be in a maximum security prison, and violent criminals. that was awful. it was also great. journalists know of nothing more than a sad story so this became -- essential the the system was built on the backs of people like tom who are mathematicians and mildly autistic and that is not a rare thing. they are mostly guys and detecting patterns and being laser focused on innovative sometimes underhanded ways of making money that rely on exploiting tiny inefficiencies in the system and a pronounced pattern not only that they are good at doing that but when things go wrong, when the reckoning comes in somewhat is held accountable for the envelope pushing, these are the guys who get nailed. today - to me that was not that surprising but upsetting. i like many other journalists, we cheer for the financial tops and wants people to get busted and like everyone else we yearn for accountability in the banking system especially after the financial crisis where there is very little accountability. we in the press are very good at celebrating these come all charges being filed and prison sentences being handed out. it was upsetting to look back at that and realize a lot of the people who were in jail are not the people at the top of the food chain. it is not the executives, it is low and mid-level traders and brokers and guys like that, probably should have known better than they were doing but they are not the linchpins of the system. these are the ponds. these are the guys who bear the brunt of the penalties for what has gone wrong in the financial world for the last decade or so. and dakota of this story was hayes was convicted of conspiracy to defraud on eight counts of it. the word conspiracy means you are doing it with other people. a bunch of alleged co-conspirators went on trial including one or two of his hire ups and what happened? tom is alone in prison. his best friend is a man who is convicted of murdering his financial advisor, it is a mean prison. and he has really deteriorated, not in good shape at all. on that uplifting note i will take your questions. [applause] >> that was riveting. i can't wait to read your book. i want to know how and what lawyers two of his superiors and other people, how they got off and he didn't. >> good question. and one of the idiosyncrasies of the british legal system is it is illegal to talk to jerry's after trial so in the us there would be a very easy answer. i would've chased down the doors and ask why they voted this way. so it is a bit of a mystery. i sat through the subsequent trials and the turning point to me and some of their lawyers as well was when it became public, the trial was largely about tom hayes's interactions with his alleged co-conspirators. in the course of that they had to explain why tom hayes was not in the dock with these are the guys. he was in prison. when it came out in subsequent trials with tom hayes was serving a 14 year prison sentence you see the reaction jurors had to the notion that was the type of penalty we are talking about. what happened is the jurors thought to themselves it is illegal what they were doing. they violated the letter of the law but doing it in the context of someone much broader and the entire system of corruption. co-conspirators are being tried. they were low-level people in the grand scheme of things. a lot of jurors look at the conduct they had done and the punishment they were looking at and said they didn't want any part of that. the notion that those guys got away with it was not that surprising and they were very sophisticated, savvy and charismatic, much more than cookie-cutter brokers who have, they know how to communicate, look you in the eye and players. there's a lot of manipulating that has been going on during this alleged period. he probably -- the question was is it possible he will get released earlier. the answer is yes, he probably will. you generally don't serve, as long as you are well behaved you don't fall -- serve your full sentence. his kid was 4 years old when the trial started, one or 2 when i first met him. the kid will be 12 or 13. i have kids basically the same age. i can't even think about that. >> why do you have two mikes adjacent to me? have you sold the movie right yet? >> that is a complicated question. we had some interest from tv and film. i would love to see it made into a movie or a miniseries. >> tom hanks and the doctor. >> if it becomes a movie and i minute i know who i want to play me, seth rogan. [laughter] >> microphone coming to you. >> i am a little confused. i thought he made a deal with prosecutors to lessen his sentence. is that implied that the sentence would be even more extreme? >> he made a deal and backed out of the deal so he initially cooperated with prosecutors in exchange for what was going to be a very short sentence but after cooperating with them for 5 or 6 months, he gave 82 hours of testimony to the prosecutors admitting guilt and pointing the finger at his co-conspirators, he changed his mind, he didn't think he was guilty. he had just -- he had been lying to the prosecutors when he said he was guilty just to get this reduced sentence. everyone asked me, do i believe that or was he guilty? one of the things is from the first moment i started interacting with them over text message, i don't think he is capable of saying things not grounded in truth, this is not who he is. he admitted to me on a number of occasions with the benefit of hindsight he had done stuff he knew he shouldn't have been doing and was improper, he didn't know who it was illegal or not but he shouldn't have been doing the stuff he was doing. the caveat, his bosses had known about it and condoned it and participated alongside him and mitigated it but he knew what he was doing was wrong but he agreed to cooperate and backed out and prosecutors came down hard on him at that point. >> what is going to happen to him? what is happening right now to his wife and family? are they broke? is he going to be able to have a life? >> i don't know. yes, he is broke, his wife has moved, and moved in with their parents. statistically if you look what happens to families when one of the parents goes to prison for a long time the data is very overpowering. in the overwhelming number of cases, that is what happens here. sarah once told me one of her fears was their entire relationship, not the entire, 80% of the relationship that occurred under the cloud of this investigation, tom was understandably obsessed with this and it is always talk about. what would happen with the relationship, what would they talk about, what would dominate their lives and even more so now. i haven't spoken to tom in a couple years. and communicate with his wife with some regularity. his mental health has deteriorated. he can't let go. and and his life has been destroyed, and not in good shape. sarah is struggling too. essentially a single mom. luckily is a good lawyer and makes money and her life is screwed up too. she could be doing 1 million things right now. i can't imagine a day goes by she doesn't resent it. her life has been ruined too. i don't know what will happen but wouldn't surprise me if the relationship doesn't survive this which would be sad. >> you said the beginning of your communication with tom was via text message. how do you source the text message? >> normally -- good question. normally you would just say he said in a text message. the previous speaker, was really focused, and normal communication. there's a lot of truth to that. and i don't think this would have happened. the separation that allowed made tom more comfortable talking to a stranger and someone he shouldn't have been talking to and from my perspective i would much prefer face-to-face communication, normal people in normal circumstances you get we 10 times more information out of someone, that helps you understand command ask better questions. 10 huge advantages was i had a written record of everything he and i had said to each other going back years. not as a journalist but someone writing a book, is invaluable. i had one moment i lost my phone and that phone was worth millions of dollars. and i lost it. and figured out witchcraft, and text messages. >> you got to wrap it up. let's say thank you to david one more time. [applause] >> let me ask your cooperation with one. volunteers holding buckets, keep saturdays free, make room for entering people. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> that was finance and are david enrich talking about his newest book "the spider network". this is live coverage on booktv from the savanna book festival. did you know you can access our behind the scenes pictures and videos on our social media sites? on twitter, instagram and facebook@booktv. now more live coverage of the savanna book festival will begin shortly. the next arteries deanne stillman and she talks about the relationship between buffalo bill and sitting bull. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> tell us how psychopathy works on the brain. >> it is on the other end of the caring continuum. it is true that humans seem to be endowed with the capacity for care, with the babies we have to take care of, any human capacity can go awry. psychopathy -- at least partly related to genetic problems, not completely but in part. that seem to result in people having no capacity to care for anybody but themselves. something that exists in severe form in 2% of the population. what we discovered is people who are psychopathic are the opposite of people who are very altruistic. altruists have amygdalas larger than average, people who are psychopathic have the opposite, amygdala is smaller than average. >> the title of your book is about the fear factor. what role does fear or the ability to recognize fear in others, what role does that have in psychopathy. >> one thing we learned about psychopathy from the beginning that has been researched for 60 or 70 years now, people have a they are not susceptible to punishment or respond to threatening strongly. people are psychopathic are reassigned over and over. the way punishment is supposed to work is you view getting punished and you won't do the same thing. doesn't seem to be the case people who are psychopathic have a response. it was suspected something must be wrong in their amygdalas. it is essential for the ability to develop this response. >> host: we have had this discussion. there is the inability to recognize fear in others. how does that play out? humans can't spot fear in someone else, tend toward psychopathic acts. >> the most interesting research we have been doing for the past couple years. what we have discovered is when you see or hear or think about somebody else experiencing fear, in order to understand the emotions they are feeling you have to re-create or simulate that emotional state in their own brain. we know the amygdala is essential for experiencing fear yourself. if you don't have a strong amygdala response when you hear us someone else, you cannot re-create what that emotion is like and you fundamentally can't understand what the other person is feeling, you can't empathize. >> what would stop a normal person from hurting the other person is in there. >> exactly right. if one of us saw somebody who was frightened by something we were doing our ability to simulate weather experience would be like would be enough to stop us from doing that thing. if you don't have the ability to do that you go right on ahead. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> here is a look at the current selling nonfiction books according to the washington post. topping the list, fire and fury, michael wolf's expose of the trump white house. >> i look at the best-selling books according to the washington post continues with mark madsen's advice on leading a happier life. ronan bergman looks at the secret operations of the israeli defense forces in rise and kill first. harvard professor steve lapinski and daniel cause prizes that lead to breakdowns in democracies around the world in how democracies die. and wrapping up our look from the books from the washington post from the nonfiction bestseller list, and aaron hernandez convicted of first-degree murder in all-american murder. many of these authors have or will appear on booktv. booktv.org. >> let me put you back on station again now. and breaks the news that your sister-in-law, congresswoman gabby giffords was shot at a shopping mall. what went through your mind, how did you deal psychologically? you weren't coming home the next day. what challenge is it for you? >> it is challenging when you hear your brother's wife who is very important to me was shot in such a violent -- most shootings are pretty violent. to be a victim of such violence, 6 other people were killed including a 10-year-old girl, others injured and she sustained significant injuries. later i was told she had passed away. i immediately got on the phone with my brother, talked to him as much as i can, support him as best i could, took some time for myself. i was commander of the space station at the time, had a job to do. i tried to compartmentalize, separate what is going on from -- on earth with responsibilities in space and focus as much as i could on that. and take care of my brother. i wouldn't say there was anything like a serendipitous kind of thing but a good time that allowed me to cut the cord a little bit with my fellow crewmates that were up there and let them run with some of the stuff because they had been there a couple months at that point and i was going to leave them a couple months later so that was a little bit of a good thing that allowed me to set them free little bit. that is the worst part of being in space for a long time, it is not your personal risk or worrying about what could happen but what could happen to your family on earth. >> mark was also training. and the decision had to be made in washington mark is the person who is going to have to make a final determination as to his fitness, whether he wants to do that. your experience on station absent not being able to do anything, did allow you to help him at all in making that decision or is that not even playing in? >> we talked about a lot of things about it but in the end it was up to gabby. she made the decision. despite her injury, she recognized the last opportunity to find space, important the crew to be training with. and they start all over with the commander. he was on the fence about whether this was the right thing to do. in the end it wasn't his decision. >> i call it a national tragedy. >> a day of mourning the monday after. and >> it was a call from don -- from president putin, we had a conference the next day. and i was moved a little bit he spent most of the time talking to me and saying we support you, the russian people are behind you, this is a terrible tragedy and dedicated most of the conversation to checking on me and making sure i was okay. but i will read a little bit of what i said after she was shot. this was during a moment of silence, national moment of silence, said this over the radio in the control center and whoever else was listening, i would like to take some time to recognize a moment of silence in honor of victims of the tucson shooting tragedy. i would like to say a few words. a unique vantage point aboard the international space station, as we look out the window i see a beautiful planet that seems inviting and peaceful. unfortunately it is not. these days we are constantly reminded of the unspeakable acts of violence and damage we can inflict upon one another. not just with actions but irresponsible words. we must do better. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> here are some books being published this week. look for these titles in bookstores is coming weekend watch for many of the authors in the near future on booktv on c-span2. >> national book critics circle comprised of literary critics, authors and members of the book publishing industry announced finalists for the outstanding books of 2017 including jack davis's look at the gulf of mexico. francis fitzgerald's history of evangelism in america, russian-american journalist's report on the generation of russians who came of age during the vladimir putin regime. and the art of death, kevin young's bunk and roxanne gates's memoir hunger. booktv has covered several of this year's finalists. >> it means losing people we love. one thing i learned about the dying writers, writing about this, even with my parents one of the things i realized, to live the best life you can, don't have many regrets. >> do we do the living find that message? >> basically we want to put this on our minds and don't really want to concentrate on our mortality because it is depressing. one from christopher actions in his book mortality, he founded at the end or before that, the difference between living and dining and just living is you are constantly aware we have an expiration date. for most of us it is fuzzy, a possibility, but for dying people, they know every single day is a gift. ideally it is great if we all lived like this. >> you can watch these programs in full on booktv.org. and all six categories, head to bookcritics.com. >> it is now time for the next daughter from booktv's live coverage of the savanna book festival at trinity united methodist church. in her latest book other diane stillman -- deanne stillman describes the relationship between buffalo bill and sitting bull. >> good afternoon and welcome to the historic trinity united methodist church. we feel fortunate to be in this beautiful space which was made possible by the generosity of jack and mary, i'm honored to serve as volunteer for the 11th annual savanna book festival and so glad you also participated in this year's festival. it is presented by george power, david and nancy cintron, the shia family foundation and mark and hats. we want to thank our literary members and individual sponsors and donors who made and continue to make saturday at the book festival a free event. 90% of the revenue comes from donors like you so thank you very much. we are excited to have a savanna book festival apps available this year. look in your program if you would like information on downloading that apps to your telephone. a couple housekeeping notes. following this presentation, our author, deanne stillman, will sign festival purchased copies of this book. if you want to stay in this venue for the presentation that will follow this presentation please move forward to make room for people coming in through the big front doors. a couple technology announcements, we ask that you take a minute right now to double check with your cell phone is turned off or in silent mode so we will have electronic interruptions during the talk. the other is if you have cell phones with which you want to take photographs please make sure you don't use a flash. for the question and answer portion i am going to ask that you raise your hand. i will make eye contact with one of the ushers who will bring a microphone to you. please don't begin until you have a microphone in your hand and in the interests of fairness to the attendees and efforts to make as many questions as possible happen please make sure you limit yourself to just one question and your question is actually a question rather than a comment or a story. deanne stillman is with us today. christine and jim. deanne stillman is a critically acclaimed writer. her latest book is blood brothers. and the strange friendship between sitting bull and buffalo bill. it also tells the story of annie oakley who was a friend of both of these men. the book received start review and was named by true west magazine and he millions as the best book of 2017. deanne stillman is the author of desert reckoning, the winner of the spur award and los angeles press club award for best nonfiction. her book mustang was an la times best book of the year and was released in audio with angelica houston, frances fisher and others. she is also the author of twentynine palms, los angeles times best book of the year with to thompson calling a strange and brilliant story by an important american writer. we have an important american writer with us today so please give a warm savanna welcome to deanne stillman. >> thank you so much. trinity united methodist church and my sponsors. and my books blood brothers about the strange friendship between sitting bull and buffalo bill. from annie oakley. my journey through this story, let me talk about how i came to write this. this very strange story about a strange friendship. some time ago while working on my book mustang, the saga of the american horse in the wild west, i learned about a strange and heartbreaking moment that transpired outside sitting bull lapse cabin while he was being assassinated during an ambush. a horse was tethered to a railing and at the sound of gunfire he started to dance. trained to do something in the wild west buffalo bill's famous spectacle of which sitting bull was a part for four months in 1885. i couldn't shake the image and as i began to look into it, the horse was a gift to sitting bull from buffalo bill. presented when he and home for him at that time was standing rock. the fact that buffalo bill had given sitting bull a host -- horse was significant. this was the animal the transformed the west and was stripped from the tribe in order to vanquish them. it was a gift that sitting bull treasured along with a hat that cody had given him as well. after sitting bull was killed buffalo bill brought the horse back from sitting bull's widows and according to some accounts road it in a parade and then the horse disappears from the record. it was the legend of the dancing horse that led me into the story of sitting bull and buffalo bill. and a portal opened into something else. strange voices coming through the portal. it was all strange, i told you. and other than the fact that he was my next story and it was calling and at some point down its trail. later i was i was well along the path i came across another image. it is now on the cover of this book and it captured my attention. it was taken for publicity purposes while sitting bull and buffalo bill were on tour in montréal and its caption, friends and 85, i began to imagine these two men on the road, sitting bull on the horse, crisscrossing the nation, visiting lands that belong to the lakota, uncrowded thoroughfares built on top of ancient paths made by animals and the people who follow them with william f cody, another mystical figure of the great plains reenacting wartime scenarios that had one outcome. the end of the red man in the victory of the white leading is a parade in celebration of the wild west became the national scripture. what were the forces that brought these two together i wonder? what was the nature of their alliance. where they each trapped in a persona, a veneer that was somewhat true. behind the projected ideas in which they were preserved, who were they in day-to-day life. there is was certainly an unlikely partnership but one thing was obvious on its face. both had names that were forever linked with the buffalo. when man was credited with wiping out the species, so that was hardly the case and the other was sustained by its very life. there were two sides of the same coin, foes and friends as the photo caption on the publicity poster says so this image too entered my consciousness, two american superstars, icons not just of their era and country but for all time and around the world. what story was this picture telling and how is it connecting to the dancing horse outside sitting bull's cabinet. can't answer all of them.

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