Accidents, the particulars, the details, the things that are all different but all affect all the time. I am much happier with that metaphor been with the people in power and the restof us metaphors. We have to share a microphone. So rosenberg in his book is at the end that Machine Learning does operate alike like a rake. It tests a whole bunch of possibilities and settleson one. Four factors we dont even necessarily know, we cant explain it, but we do that. In line with that i would love if you would tell the crowd about chicken flexors. Chicken sectors are an example used by philosophers of knowledge. This is all real. So its important to chicken producers to be able to tell the sex of a chicken because generally they want the layers also known as a female and the males are just fed and just expense so theywant to get rid of the males immediately. So there are chicken sectors who can look at a chicken and tell you what sex is. They can be really fast and incredibly accurate in doing this and they cannot tell you what the observable differences are between amale and female chicken. They just cant. We still dont know and so if you want to become a chicken sex or, just so you can say or have a card printed up, then you get trained by an existing chicken sex or and ive never said the word chicken sexer so many times in my life where you pick up a chicken and you say male . No, next one. Mail . Next one and you gas and over time you get this power, youre able to tell what sex it is without being able to tell how. This isvery , its a good example for philosophers of knowledge who are committed generally, traditionally to the idea that knowledge is something you can explain and justify because otherwise its just a guess. When you start its just a guess. When you know you should be able to point out why or say look at these wingtips are pointy but we dont know. And Machine Learning, this is one of the cases where Machine Learning works this way. Indeed, our brains operate without explanation, with the chicken sexer and Machine Learning are similar and our brains operate like that. We dont know why it works, but it works. So theres lots of examples of this but you can do a regular scan, so it to a Machine Learning system thats been trained in a particular way, a particular application and it will tell you things about the person who owns theeye. What gender, i think some age stuff and a whole bunch of heart Health Related things. One of the cholesterol, i dont remember which and the like. The thing thats interesting about it is that neither the Computer Scientist nor human doctors can tell whats in the scan thecomputer is paying attention to. Maybe theyll figure it out but as of now, they cant tell and it may just be some odd combination of a set of factors that we are really not put together. Maybe jackson sexer can train somebody, might be an interesting experiment but Machine Learning can work this way. It works without giving us any general rule or thing to look forward to, pointy wingtips or anything like that. As a vegetarian you do not want to watch videos because the male chicks are thrown onto a Conveyor Belt and ground up alive. Enjoy. Thanks for that, chicken fingers come next. So i want to talk for a minute about the Regulatory Regime thats starting up in the world. We must be able to control it, we cant control the universe but we can control that. Indeed when i started working with computers, im no developer either that anything we have to do with a computer was, you could always find out what was wrong. There was always a reason what was wrong and you can always fix it. You usually do that by blaming microsoft for something but you fixed it. Thats not the way the world operates now but now you have regulators coming in saying we must have accountability and theres a lot being written in congress to look for algorithmic accountability. To try to make the algorithms accountable. One thing you hear often is be transparent, show me the algorithm. No one would know what the hell to do with the source code of an algorithm. Its gibberish, it changes all the time, it depends on the data and another says open up the algorithm to know its impact. We might know how to do part of that but we dont really know how to do that. But yet our lives are more and more going to be served by algorithms that predict reliability what youre going to want next and theyre going to do a good job of it. And they may have bias as you mentioned before. They may have other problems. Do you see a way that authorities either cultural or governmental will be able to regulate and manage this algorithmic Machine Learning ai world or is it beyond them . I am worried about this as well. There are certainly areas where we want regulation. Not to mention there is very strong evidence, convincing evidence some of these algorithms have amplified systemic prejudice. Unacceptable. There are areas where we want regulation. Autonomous vehicles, self driving cars powered by Machine Learning, we need somebody other than the Car Manufacturers to decide what he systems should be lets it optimized for. What are their goals . One goal is fewer fatalities. You could end the list, dozens of things it could aim for, so to speak, including lower environmental impact, shorter travel times, comfort counts. We dont want, i dont want the Car Manufacturers to be in charge whether anybody looking over the shoulder about which of those. We are allowed to say as a culture, youre a big, rich car company, luxury car into going for comfort. If that turns out is going to optimize it for that means youll get worse mileage, we are killing the planet, we have a right to say no. There are tradeoffs among all these different values. It makes it very complex. To say what we need is algorithmic transparency, im not even sure what that means. Its really not what you need and its going to vary from case to case. In the case of autonomous vehicles, a lot of it could be achieved. You could regulate what we want them optimize for and insist on transparency of the metrics, of the outcomes. If the cars are continuing to kill a lot of people, thats an important metric. If Energy Savings are not going down, and to do what we do with products which is we send them back. We do a recall and the manufacturer is required to get it back up to snuff. We dont require manufacturers to tell us what the process is. Slicing and prove we fixed it, now its doing what is required to do, we dont need to insist on transparency. Rather than algorithms, we will need data transparency. But even that is complex. I dont think regulators are capable of analyzing data. Thats a pretty specific skill set, a deep skill set. Maybe the transparency for that may include, on the samples diverse . Where did the samples come from . Are you representing the community and the people affected by . Whats the vetting process and what are the outcomes . Theres different places where you could insist on transparency and some solutions you dont need transparency. We need to know regular get it right. It will vary by Aircraft Safety pretty well despite, okay fine, but we do it really pretty well. Its going to vary by product and its going to be a nightmare of struggles because the impetus will always be among regulators to do the simple thing and the thing that crushes everything, so long as they get the outcome they need, and we will lose some benefits that we need from that. Its a scary time. I have two more questions and then i will come up for any trepidations or joys or fears that you may have. By the way, i was at google i o, the Developers Conference last week with a bragged most the time about Machine Learning. What struck me most was dictating Machine Learning models that exist that were 100 gigabytes and gotten down to half a a gigabyte. What that means is entire model fits in your phone. Even an inexpensive phone. They showed heartwarming video of a woman in india who is a mother who is illiterate who needed her kids to read to her. She could point the phone at the sign. It would both read the signer translated and read it out loud because entire model existed within this small little bit of minerals, whatever its made out of. And so i think well see more and more and by the way, that reduces fear of privacy violation. Because the old model all your data went to the cloud. Now can happen locally and all the conclusions go to the cloud. Theres a lot of developing happening. You will see more and more and more which is why you want to buy the book. Its going to be in everything. Intel inside would become Machine Learning in sight. Lets go to the internet and ask us and them, and have a discussion. So the net i think of as a connection machine. Thats the relationship of Machine Learning and the net as they both enable or use or export connections. Connections among dated in Machine Learning, connections among people and information in the net. I get into argument all the time with people who tell me that the net is a medium. Like the one he worked in, like what is surrounding us. I argue, no, that its something new. And i get into this fight all the time. The reason it matters because i think we dont want to bring the same presumptions and regulations to the net we had in another world. Its also a power relation, call it a medium and jet set up, assume to set power relationships which dont necessarily exist on the net. Part of what ive been thinking is that if you do a chart of how many people, and government looks at it, is a big circle that says media, inside his broadcast, print and internet. I think thats wrong. Instead all drop a bigger circle and called the internet inside that is a little circle called media. Inside there is one called medications. As of the circles outside that are being drawn in by newtons gravity. Finances, maybe 15 inside. Retail, maybe 25 inside. Crime, 10 inside. And so on and so on. So im coming to see that the internet describes society. In this way. In my field in journalism we keep covering the internet as if it is a technology story. And then come to see its not. Its a story of people, a story of net is our behavior on it. Everything would talk about, its not that technology screwed it up, its that we screwed ourselves. Maybe it amplified. Maybe it made it easier. Maybe it made it worse. I dont know, but the internet is made of people. Im starting to wonder about i need to, i was talking to a communications school, and i thought thats kind of retro. Whole school around media. Why isnt this a school around the internet . How are we studying the internet as society, as the future . Not predicting. The dumbest job title i can think of is futurist. But understanding the contrasts of where were going what would it mean in your view because you basically done that through your books, small pieces loosely joined was about how we have connections that are not as clear as it used to. Everything is miscellaneous. Similar about knowledge, too big to know was our brains are too small for all of this. Now in this when youre looking at how the machines are bringing their own order to this that we dont have. As you look, what you done really is, since the manifesto, trying to understand disney world that is ruled a great measure by internet. How should we be studying it . Hash it would be understanding it . What should we be doing with this in universities to make this more clear . I dont know how disciplines get started historically. I i know its complex and i dont know how you do it, what the forces are that actually get universities to commit. I dont know. I agree that the internet is uniquely important, has not turned up the way some of us thought initially. I attribute a lot of that with my own blindness to privilege. Optimistically, oh, what im doing on the internet, which is a positive and light and goodness, anybody who encounters this will be liberated to find more information to make connections which is crucial to internet. That turned out not to be. Thats an assumption privilege people make about life. It is, for me it support for e same reason, many of the same ways and reasons Machine Learning is, that the architecture of the internet gets repeated and made visible to us, even when were not hang attention. Its a architecture of an ability that enables you to go anywhere you want and, on the net, and contribute your own stuff and make new things. Its at generative connective architecture that at its best enables us to do more of that. At its worst, it does the same thing except what results are all of the evils, the passing around a false information, the bullying and the gathering together of clusters of bullies. Thats also inherent in the internet architecture, but that architecture is one that enables and thus gets us the value connection when way or another, even when we do it negatively. I think that same repetition of architecture, having some defining impact on how we think about the world, is now about, it is already being repeated in the world, thanks to Machine Learning. I take that as being my arc. I didnt think i had an arc but i think probably i do, and thats what almost all my books have lots of flaky pieces on the cover, loosely joined. We will share one microphone. Repeat the question. Im going to come out and we will share one microphone here. Does this wired one work . I see, dont go out. Repeat the question. You will yell loud enough for my old theaters and i will repeated for the recording old ears. Any questions or desires or fears . Yes, please. That gentleman wants to know about chicken sexing, because we all do. Is that a human being that does that or is that a machine . No, its a human being. Machines cant do because the oldstyle machine, you have to do what to look for. We dont know what to tell what to look for. Its the human occupation. It really wellpaying because for some reason a lot of people dont want to do it. It involves gently squeezing a chicken and, a check, and newborn check and peering at insides. It may not be an occupation that is glamorous, but it is pretty wellpaying and is very mysterious. [inaudible] well, you know. If you compare it to awaken other things, people got trained during world war ii as those of the worst to recognize in aircraft, the type at a glance, and a lot of it was a distance. You cant do it, but the way the country was they were told i may not get the example right but a zero has rounded wings and thats how you can tell from of the things that looks like it except the other one is tilt up a little bit, just like identifying birders, when identifying a bird flying pastorally quickly. You can program a computer. You can tell a tell a computers what to look for. If you dont know what to look for, you cant tell the computer. This is a field where Machine Learning might, one assumes that Machine Learning trained on enough instances would be able to do chicken sexing. As far as i know theres no research being done on this. Probably hard to get a grant for, is what im thinking. How do they know they are right . So how did you know you never know if those really a female. Yes. How did he know since its a male, they discarded, never know. This is not the right answer but there are competitions. People race to see how many, how many they can do and how many they can do correctly. The experts get new 1 as checked by other people. Of course you know when you let a mail through and they grow and they are not laying eggs. You know you got that wrong. As far as we know there are astoundingly accurate at enormous speeds. [inaudible] repeat the question in an evolutionary process of the going to lose the ability to make the source the decisions we outsourced to the machines. So in terms of evolution and genetics, i mean, im not a geneticist. I suspect not because evolution works exactly that way. Nevertheless, its an important question and one that is been asked for a dress for a long, long time. Socrates i think argues against reading, against literacy. So this is fifth century. On the grounds that first of all you cant have dialogue with something written, and is all about dialogue, so that come why would you want to just read one side of the story . And he says we will lose our memories. Theres no need for us to exercise and user memories because we write everything down, and that absolutely has happened. The odyssey, the ill get is i think 16,000 lines and it was passed along, before writing, generation to generation. And so there were people who could sit down and recite the iliad for you. If anybody here and recite the 16,000 lines of the iliad, unwilling to listen, but no, weve lost that ability. However, and to socrates thought, is that they could really stupid. But he was wrong about that. I dont think any of us would give up literacy on the ground that the literacy makes us smarter. Because we have greater memory because we write things down. We accumulate knowledge because we write things down. Its a huge win, even though we lost that skill. Its not clear, i dont know if the source of decisions that Machine Learning systems and make, thats a skill that we need and we will become, in this case, socrates will be right. Well just become stupid, incompetent and unable to operate in the world. So i cant make a prediction. Ill tell you my little experience of this, very quicy is, i have terrible sense of direction, always have. I was born that way. I get lost all the time. I now have and rely upon, making universal sign of the cell phone, you know, the routing software gets me everywhere but actually makes me worse at directions because a get somewhere and i know cognizant math at all. I know told me make the next right. Thats the extent of my sense of space, his voice saying turn left in 400 feet. I am pretty sure as made my already terrible sense of direction worse, but i dont care because me and my machine are smarter than i was. That is always been the case. This is the philosopher, andy clark, scottish philosopher, makes a basic point, he makes very complex points as well but a basic but which is we think and work with machines. We think that weve been taught to think it has very lonely life to be thinking your head. But he says weve always thought in the world with tools, whether its the old greek shepherd who cant count but takes one stone for each of the sheep is watching and then when they come back he drops a stone for each. Hes counting with his hands, counting with stones. Picky smarter with the stones and is without it. Likewise, all the way up, a physicist cant do her work without a whiteboard. That means she is stupid because she cant work without a magic marker no. As we think out in the world with tools and you look at the entire system. And me with my navigator, im way better at navigation, way smarter than it was before. It may well be, ive no idea, we may lose our ability to make those sorts of decisions because we outsourced them to machines. But thats okay. We are not lonely thinkers stuck in our heads. Thinking is something we do with her hands as well as her head and her hands are making us smarter. If Machine Learning and a smart phone, thats going to make us smarter. I do need to say, however, by way of exposure, i work parttime as a writer in residence embedded in google, and Machine LearningResearch Group that is responsible for the marble you just talked about. They are like three desks over. Fantastic group of people by the way. I think were going to see a balancing act coming forward, where book stores, google does, i dont know anything anymore. I was never good at it. Were going to balance positives and the negatives. The problem is where do we do that . I think were in a phase right now where will you at all the negatives. Even i still like that even though im a techno optimist. If Machine Learning means we make more money or we save lives or we, through automated cars or through disease detection, then i think india and say good in the end we was a good and we welcome our new masters, but we will see. Anyone else . More about the i guess but the way i think of it is, you read like goldmans social intelligence. Talks about car ruining the committee because people are no longer walking down through the square. They are cruising through the own. I dont know if you touched on it necessarily, people just think the advent of all this tech is ruining the way humans interact with one another, not necessarily how to operate in a tool setting. If that is component touched upon in your book, like the depreciation of the interaction of humans . So yes. Its a really good question. Very coherent. I may not as coherently represented. People are concerned, you point out, about the degradation of Human Interaction because of this technology, that we i was added we dont do it as much. Does my book talk about that . Is that an okay summary . Okay. It touches on it. Its not at the heart of it. Theres a slight, let me talk about this briefly in terms of ai, Machine Learning. Where there are very real concerns, so there are cities that turn to Machine Learning in the hopes they can solve all questions, answer all issues. All we need is she learning and we can fix it. Is a lot of positivity about this. Its amazing new technology. Even when that Machine Learning can help in some way, theres been i think thankfully a fair bit of recognition and push back now on the idea that Machine Learning can fix anything, or in general, technology by itself fixes anything. Especially with Machine Learning. It is a product of humans in very important and direct ways. So Machine Learning lunch from david and data represents humans, including in our ways that horrible, but we choose which dated to put in. Which means if youre designing a medical system and help it will figure out how to warn people if theyre going to come down with diabetes or whatever, which is real, all right . You see in all this data medical records as much education at a stretch to make his correlations it turns out its may be able to make, predictions about your health that your human doctor cannot, and these predictions are accurate. I could means to assess theres a 65 chance, then theres a 65 chance. The fact 35 of the people say i didnt and that with diabetes, that stupid, are missing the point. 65 means 65 . So the systems have humanity all the way through them and are choosing which information to put in, what algorithms we use, its an art and a science. We can tune it. We can make decisions. Humans have all about it. But even beyond that, the use of the systems, and i think this is a really important point that many people are making now, some very, very effectively, that you have to look at these systems in the larger system of our lives in the case of the city. The followon effects, who it affects immediately, the unexpected effects its going to have it because all the places where we use are themselves system. They are complex, haddock systems themselves which are subject to large changes based upon, large effects based upon small changes. You cant just drop the step in and walk away and say problem solve. You have to be really thoughtful and careful in consulting the community really seriously. Not as a pro forma thing. You would have to be listening to the committee that is being affected by this, and the community nextdoor and the community is being ignored in order to decide whether this thing is even working. It may look like it is but it may be having terrible effects on your city. Very small changes can make that system thinking i think is a crucial part of the change that we are going through. Makes life way more complicated, but its really important. I think the other thing that is implicit in everything you write about here is data, and date is or data are our friend, right . Information, knowledge, its proof, evidence. Thats all good. But then your arguments about probabilities and you feel left out. So i have prostate cancer, and now here, the medical committee arguing well, it doesnt pay to test your it doesnt say that many life so its not worth the. In aggregate that may be true but all i care about is my nether region and whether ive got it or not. We have to reassert our humanity in this process. We have to say that may be the probability, but i dont like it. The reason i dont like it. Im going to enter into a political debate about this, and thats where the political process of public conversation i think enters into this. Yes with evidence and with data and think second a form our decisions and the may be better at us predicting things, that they may not see all of the implications we must still assert. Any other questions . Let me and here if i may. I will go back to the gutenberg. Two scholars of university of Southern Denmark came up with the notion of a gutenberg parenthesis which says simply that before gutenberg, knowledge of past around through memory, through mouth, was change along the way. There was a little sense of ownership or authorship. The Business Model was simple. One scribe, one book, one year. The aim was to preserve the knowledge of the aged because were bunch of dummy. Then along comes gutenberg, nothings are contained in a product called a book. There is an health and an omega, beginning and in. This sense is an example, becomes a organizing principle. The Business Model becomes clear as copyright is invented. The aim of that textural world is to honor the experts, dr. Swanson wrote a book and we honor for that. Then they say we come to the other end of the parenthesis now, say once again knowledge is passed around, remixed, changed. Theres less of a a sense of ownership and authorship. The aim of all of this is not to reserve the knowledge of the ancients or even to honor the experts. But as my friend David Weinberg once said, the smartest person in the room is in itself it is the network that connects our knowledge, that make the connections happen. I want to read one little bit from the book. Why have we so insisted on turning complex histories into simple stories . Marshall mcluhan was right, the meeting is the message. We shake our ideas to fit on pages, sewn in the sequence that weve been glue between cardboard stops. Goods of books books are good at telling stories, as all knowledge, when we let it. But now the medium of our daily experiences, the internet, has the capacity, the connections and the engine needed to express the richly chaotic nature of the world. This comes at the price of the comforting illusion of copper intention, and Artificial Intelligence has been teaching us the last question for you, my friend, as youre surrounded in a gutenberg age and tests, what happens to us . [laughing] how would i know . Books seem to have a one might point out, you read that from my book. Theres a complex answer to this, part of it boils down to a single word answer, the hypocrisy. Part of it comes down to recognizing that books are a genre, a form, an artform is not to say, but its a form of art that has value because of its limitations. Books seem to have a great deal of persistence. We are 25 years out of the gutenberg parenthesis. Where happily and feel very home at home in a bookstore here to browse and buy some books before we go home. I dont see why that is going to stop. Certainly i hope it doesnt stop before people buy my book. [laughing] on so on that night we went to mention that you kennedy do that and get it signed by the officer of what you think of posts here and think David Weinberger and thank you for your kind attention. Thank you very much. [applause] [inaudible conversations] booktv continues now on cspan2, television for serious readers. [applause] okay. Wow here so how many people here are from the Washington Area . How many from outside of washington . How many have never beenee to te book festival before . How many have been to all 19 of them . Wow. Okay. Were going to have a very interesting conversation today with one of the countries leading i was the intellectuals and colonists in tv commentators, at office. His new book is the Second Mountain. How many people read this book it . How many people are going to read this after its over . All right. How many people are going to get an autographed copy from david brooks . David, thanks for doingav this. Before we go into this book, the Second Mountain which of it and its a good book, will go through it. I like to go to it about your background. You grew up in new york . Lower site of new york. My parents were somewhat leftwing, and so the story i tell about my child is when i was five is within the late 60s, hippies would go just to be. They put the garage can garbage can on fire, i saw 5dollar bill in garbage can and i reached in the fire and grabbed money and ran away. That was my first step to the right. At age 8i read a book calling paddington the bear and decided that i wanted to become a writer and ive been writing pretty much every day since and in high school i wanted to date a woman named bernice and she wanted to date another guy, i was like what is she thinking, i write way better than the other guy. What did your parents do other than being hippies . 1950 progressives but my father was teaching at nyu, scholar of victorian literature and my mother scholar of victorian history. The phrase was think british, act british. So what they did was gave their kids names, super english names like norman, irving, milton, sidney thinking that no one would ever they they were jewish. So your last name jewish names, brooks. Brooks was changed in world war i because it was too german. I was a b minus student. How did you get in the university of chicago . In those Days University of chicago admitted 70 of applicants and i went to chicago because the Admissions Officers at colombia decided i should go. You didnt get in. What did you want to study . Political theory, chicago in retrospect, chicago was the turning point because of great culture, the best thing about chicago is a Baptist School atheist and i took the common core, i wrote 16 papers, i probably wrote 20 and we had in those days professors that were refugees from germany and they when they taught you books they taught you as keys to the kingdom, how to live if you studied the books well and read them seriously, if you burn with enthusiasm people will come from miles to watch you burn and the professors had the enthusiasm and so they really introduced us to the great world ecologies and taught us to take reading really seriously and then they taught us and if you live in washington and seeing the world, most of what you see world in distorted way and theres a quote from john, says the older i get the more important the more i think the most essential thing in life is to see something and say what you saw clearly in a short passage, millions can talk and millions with think and millions can think for one who can see and author that told story, just see the world clearly and disciplined us to try to do. How did you in the university of chicago . I did better there. Theres a certain point where you learn to work. I learned to work. So how did you decide what it was going to be, did you know you were going to be a writer . I knew i was going to become a writer, i didnt want to be academic because im not good at abstract thinking . You didnt want to go to Investment Banking . Theres a higher calling but i would have had to been able to do addition and multiplication as i understand. When you were an undergraduate you met william, how did that change your life . I was school columnist for the newspaper and came to campus and i wrote a vicious parody of him, buckley, one called the buckley review which he merged to form buckley buckley, a jun bunch of jokes about that and he came to campus and gave speech to student body and at the end of it, david brooks if you are in the audience he said i want give you a job and that was the big break. He gave you a job . Sadly i was not in the audience. [laughter] i was literally out, i was hired by pbs to interview and if you go to youtube, you will see 21yearold with big glasses and show socialist, i argue the point, he destroys in about 6 words and the camera lingers on my face as i try to think of something to say. What did you do when you graduated . I worked for a year, best job i ever had and then i covered chicago politics for something called the City News Bureau in chicago journal, that was harold washington, first black mayor come in, the council wars. Did you get a job at buckley eventually . I covered poverty on the south and west side and i thought i was seeing a lot of bad social policies ahead of unintended consequences of making probably worse and that may be more conservative and i called buckley up and said is the job still there and he said yes, and moved to new york. Worked for National Review . Totally shock, you forget how buckley was, he lived a lifestyle that was unimaginable, youre a kid and suddenly on park avenue and they put a finger bowl in front of you, you have, why is soup so watery. Had you been conservative . I think by that time i was happy when thatcher won, but mostly in chicago they assigned me a book revolution of france and at the time i hated, i loathed the book, i wanted to create new ideas for myself and this is a guy that said distrust your reason. Conservatism is based on modesty. The world is a really complicated place, be careful how you think you can change it, do it gradually, incrementally and as if you were operating on your own father and what i saw in chicago social change gone badly and seem to confirm and i wasnt conservative as National Review was but suddenly sometimes when you get close to people you idealize and you see faults, did you see faults in buckley or did you idealize him . His son wrote a book and showed some of the dark father of father, add, his father couldnt sit still when christopher graduated from yale at the commencement and he left, christopher had to have lunch after own commencement alone and that side of buckley i saw, he couldnt slow down, he simply could not slow down. On the other hand, he asked me questions about everything, he took me to concert, he took me yachting, surrogate father for 18 months and what i saw in awesome capacity for friendship. Estimated that he wrote more letters than anybody else in 20th century, any other american because he was constantly staying in touch with his friends and great thing is that conversations at his home were almost never about politics, they were about ideas and literature, he was not primarily a how long did you stay at the National Review . I did that for 18 months. Thats it . That was short. Seemed long at the time. What did you do next . I came down here and i began two, mui movie critic. Did you have a background on movie critic . I went to the movies every night. [laughter] i had seen a lot of movies. Being movie critic was fun, i got to meet and best interview of my life with jackie, i was sitting in a hotel room and wife walks in and plays music, and then jackie walks in and goes like this and its just me and him in a room. [laughter] hilarious story after another. The one i remember is hes outdrinking with joe demaggio and bets a thousand bucks that he can race him around the block and beat him, for those who are younger than 40demaggio was a professional athlete, and jackie weighed approximately 2,000 pounds. As demaggio turn it turns the corner. They take off, they run around, they turn, and once again, he gives him 2,000 bucks and half an hour later back in the bar, demaggio says we raised around the block but we never crossed the bottom side. So all right so your movie criticisms were well received or not . I think well enough. I will say that being critic ruined credible of movies, you cant get lost in the movie anymore, when you meet the people making the movie you can see Financial Decisions on each scene. What did you do next . By then i was at the wall street journal and became correspondent, they sent me in early 90s, this is the part of the world you will cover from iceland, from scotland to cape town. In those days i covered nothing but good things, i covered the independence of ukraine, the berlin unification, mandela coming out of prison in south africa, peace in the middle east, it was all good news. Did you ever go to greenland or no . No. I put in a bid for it. [laughter] so, okay, you so you did that for a while, youre a Foreign Policy expert, what did you do next . I should say i had the best interview of my life in russia, there was a coup against regime and stood up in tank in Russian Parliament building and ran into 90year old woman, first husband had been killed in civil war, second husband and boys were killed in battle and her third husband was sent away and disappeared, she was sent away with her people and ended her life hanging out sandwiches in front of Russian Parliament building, she had personally experienced event of soviet history and it was one of those burning moments that you see history right in front of you. What happened next . I came home and i saw that American Culture had changed. I grew up i went to high school in place in pennsylvania and when i left people wore green pants and buck ties and when i came back it had the first anthropology, i never thought that a story would come to pennsylvania. New culture had come into being and was first chapter of my book. When did you write that . Are. That came out in 2000. The theme was . 60s value with 90s money, basically i came home and looked at New York Times writing page, mergers and acquisition page, it was like goldman marrying mckenzie, you couldnt have the tensions would be too great and they wanted to prove they were not money hungry so they had a code of consumption to prove that they were authentic progressives and so, for example, one of the code was you can spend money, as much money as you want used by the servants. You could spend a lot of money on kitchens, you had the nuclear reactors, stoves, nubby fabrics, you had a whole code that i basically made fun of. When did you began writing for the New York Times . So i went to work at weekly standard, make the republican moderate and reasonable and [laughter] how many years were you doing that . I was 9 years. Well, i really began to figure out what i actually thought and in 2003i got a call from gail call collins and i took the train up and on the way up i said, no, no, no. My best length is 3,500 words, 850 words are not my best length and she asked the question and before i was going to say, no, has anybody ever said no to the question do you want to become a New York Times columnist and they said no one ever said no and i had failure of courage and i said, yes. All right, what year was that that you began . 2003 and youve been writing how long . How many columnists did you write a week . Two a week, thats 100 a year and its a lot. I joke about being conservative communist, not a lot of company there. How long does it take you to write a column . It can be 2 and a half hours and it can be 20 hours. The length of time i spend working on it has inverse correlation on how good the column is. Do you say i dont have anything . Not, thats not allowed. Thats not the way it works. Suppose you write something thats 820 words, you need 30 more, where do you get the extra 30, you to fill out 850 . Character. [laughter] were you surprised of the leadership that you produced with those columns, how many people now read them and i assume youre pretty well known as a result of those columns . I dont know. Well, i will say that the joke columnists tell about their job, seems good for the first two weeks, you have to keep producing. [laughter] but i actually the first 6 months on the job were the hardest professional. You spent time with the other columnists or people on the New York Times or are you at home and send them in . Im on the dc bureau, 3 other others are on the road so much that we dont see do you ever have trouble coming up with an idea or do you have plenty of those . I have desperate trouble. So i used to think like its just sheer desperation, i used to think if i got hit by a bus and i lived i could get a column out. My only desire is column ideas. I remember fantasizing about winning the lottery, testify not the money but get column. When did the pbs series start, news hour. News hour started in 2001. How frequently you do that . Every friday and two most wonderful men i know. Every friday you have to show up in washington or wherever,