from officially serving in combat roles.. she lives in austin with her family and works as executive coach and consultant goes back to her all mamater guest lecturing at university of texas. she speaks publicly about her experiences in the military. fight for increased military effectiveness through equality. we're so pleased to have her here. without further adieu. m.j. hagar. [cheers and applause] >> thank you so much. thank youbook people. you guys have been so wonderful and warm. wherever you bought your book, return it and buy your book from bookpeople. thank you so much. i've been speaking for seven years. i am so nervous right now because i'm speaking to a bunch of people i know and love andun respect, many of whom are in the many o audience, our toes masters. i would ask you not evaluate the speech. -- toastmasters. i'm blown away how many are here. i want to save time on one-on-one with everybody because i haven't seen you in a while. my mom said speak for an hour. somebody told me be brief, be funny and be seated. i will find something between those. i will read a short excerpt of the book and talk for six or seven minutes. then we'll get to the signing. a brief disclaimer before i give this story. i don't want to give away thee punch line. actually maybe i should do the disclaimer afterwards because i don't want to give away the punch line. goodness, i lost my place here. already going to well. all right. so at this point i have gone through pilot training. i've gone through my first sit of deployments, applying for the california air national guard. toward the end of the two-month operation i was talking about briefly in the book of course, we were looking forward to upcoming break where most of us planned to spend time back at home. at the time california was experiencing one of the worst wildfire seasons in recent history. before we were able to leave we were immediately retasked from the marijuana eradication mission we were on to pull out marijuana from the forests, we were retasked with helping local firefighters and protect them out of local forests.ou we were protecting the same forest we pulled out marijuana. this was almost like navigating through a terrible storm.e the storm was so thick, we couldn't rely on vision alone to navigate. to see each other in the choking cloud the maintenance crews had to mark up the helicopters with hot orange pink.wi it was tough as nails war fighting machines, with hot pink and candy striped and j 94 painted on our belly to signify jolly 94. we would augment our team with air crew from theories of the squadron. my crew included reis hunt and our squad commander, director of operations. second-in-command behind our. squadron commander. steve was the flight engineer. steve was flight engineer on the day we got shot down. matt was experienced gunner. his code sign was blue. like in the movie "old school." he was easy going smart dudede always quick to smile. four of us gone together as missions we were kept as a crew rolling into the wildfire suppression undertaking. locals were as mad as us as angry on marijuana eradication missions because we win creasing cost of their pot. they were just as mad on us on j these missions because we were dipping out of their ponds in the wildfires. they used ponds to irrigate theg crops. where fire suppression works. firefighters tell us where they want us to drop water on the ground. reese was excellent aircraft commander. instead of doing everything himself he knew he had a young copilot eager for experience, that was me. unnerving for him he let me take controls. while we were filling water bucket, so the aircraft hovers down over the water, and fills water bucket slowly stands back up, parachute like assembly on the hook of the belly of the helicopter. as i flew the helicopter i could hear back enders calling out 20, feet, 15, 10, 5, filling hold, start back up. that is the point where the bucket was at the top of the water. at this point i started to slowly lift the bird up so the bucket would open and fill with water as we climbed. this is rather delicate operation. you're asking a lot of your engines to lift this much extra weight. at higher elevations it can be a recipe for disaster. in event of emergency or power losses those pilots are ready to hit the dump switch to release all water out of the bucket. with all this at forefront of his mind roost carefully guarding controls as i was on the stick. there are language that i'm going to skip. who the f is this guy at 12:00 steve called out as i breathed evenly trying to hold a perfectly stable hover, slow climb while keeping all parts of aircraft out of the water. if i crept forward i would have to correct backward would put us in danger putting tail lower than the nose. it was incredibly dangerous if you weren't holding a very solid hover. i looked out the glance, angry bearded middle-aged man on a quad bike, yelling out us 10 feet with the water level. this put him eye he level. sense of unease permeate cabin.u he was mad at once we con if miss indicated his weed or he was pissed we were talking water in middle of a drought. this was not a good situation. he could throw something at usa and we could end up drowning in this -- hole. there are kids mere here. shoot as us we have no way of defending ourselves. as i slowly push the stick forward, unfortunately the lunatic was directly in our traffic lane, our take off lane as trees around us preclude ad different track. we would have fly right over him which normally we would never do. oh -- waters away somebody said. we reported with chucklei glan quickly. i glanced over at reese. he had expression on his face of uh-oh, i looked down. somebody had accidentally tripped bucket switch because the guy on the quad gotten 200 gallons of water. [laughter] from the back i hear, ah-ha, we got you f-er.you, y steve shouted to the uproar just laughter., gosh i read this book four-month compressed time. it is all coming back to me. i haven't read it.he b he began, yeah, let's go find another place to dip. we had a good chuckle, began looking for another pond. found another place with new bucket full of water we flew back into the action. we stayed high enough above the flames to prevent action to the aircraft. we were careful not to get too close. sometimes we pushed it. that day we were flying as low as we safely could to our spot chosen by firefighters on ground. we saw large tree on fire on a hill to our left. i don't know if everything burned around it had burned down or everything was taller of the 70-foot tree can was completely engulfed in flames. we got a little too close, i could feel the skin at nape of my neck starting to ping like a bad sunburn. he was clapping loudly. that was too close. i inhaled so much breathe i couldn't breathe or talk there for a minute. i thought my adviser would melt. steve glanced at me as we continued flying straight ahead. we weren't used to affect of aircraft and crew flying on this side of the fire. we were concentrating flying high above it. the fact it was on our side we were not prepared. let's not do that again. at end of the day we smelled like chainsmokers. suffered from heat exhaustion. the trip to the hotel was pretty quiet. the crew was exhausted. we usually want ad shower and good night sleep. three days into firefighter we had a lot more fun. we were becoming firefighters. which had to make the best of it. we could identify various areas of the forest by seminole of smoke as each type of tree burns differently. wow i explain one morning as i began the first trip into cloud of smoke. i hope we're not on a trash site.re i hope there aren't any animals reese said. it smell as like a skunk. you people in austin got a lot faster than i did. great, steve, that will help me score with the front desk chick. sure, steve, smoke is keying you from getting lucky. [laughter] whatever you need to tell yourself. we all laughed. intellect of the day pretty much went from there and traded jabs. laughed at one another. started giving pilots on radio crap as we tried to get more gas. your skill doesn't determine fuel flow. it was good natured rib having guts to squeeze one more dip out empty fuel tanks. not a smart thing to do see who flies longest on your fuel tank. we may have pushed it a little too much ourselves. flying until we were running on fumes.n eventually the fun day came tol. an end. time to drive back to the hotel. blue pointed out diner on the route. despite exhaustion we grabbed a bite to eat. maybe during this meal i thought i was heat exhaustion wastt getting to us.g, uncomfortably giggling when you're up to long, working out in the sun. we gobbled more food and eyeing pies in the glass case. we texted other crews to see who could join the party.. we were having way too good of a time to call it a night. reese thought it was good to text squad commander. no one seemed to realize this wasn't a great idea. it was 10:00 at night. we started ribbing each other. he hit with sobering. what i read made me lose my dinner. i looked at reese across the table realized he gotten the same text. are you guys high, the text said? i think we'll have to test your whole crew when you get back. you have to understand, as military aviators we did not have experience at this. we get tested every 90 days. if you had done this child, wasn't really path you would set to go into the military some wer looked at each other three seconds in terror, until reese let out a -- [laughter]. began laughing his ass off. we laughed in suit at ridiculous suggestion.id three seconds later i stopped laughing. we were all high. the fire we were working must have been a cannabis field andis good-sized one. at that. we told blue and they shook their heads. none of us had experience what being high was. we looked around at each other laughing and panicking. steve's eyes are bloodshot.es steve's eyes are us a bloodshot, blue said. everything was lot funny irthan usual that night. we never got the urine test. we knew what was going on. i was glad to finally experienced it. i couldn't have pick ad better group of guys to experience it with good old jolly 94. later i realized drugs are bad and hugs not drugs, that's right. [laughter] [applause] should have prescreen ad that story a little bit. i've been speaking seven years as i mentioned. i always tell variations on same story. it is the story of the shoot-down. i have to be honest with you, it is all of chap are 8. it was published on "marie claire."." it takes way too long. i don't want to keep you guys too long..ke it will be a long line for signing i think.g so that story has a lot of lessons, a lot of leadership lessons in it. usually it is about how to change the world, how to become accomplished person. i look at the crowd tonight, i simply can't give that speech. i just respect you so much. you are accomplished. i had a speech last night in denver, i was talking to a bunch of college students. i can talk to them about it. i will change it up a little bit. i apologize in advance this is difficult thing for me to talk about i will try to nutshell it. 2007, first deployment, we're playing xbox 2:00 in the morning. all of sudden radios go off, everybody galvanizing into action, everything gets serious. we're called out on medevac. we're in afghanistan. did i say that?he we get into the aircraft, start taxing i out. we get more details coming over the radio. that is my baby crying. causing a physiological response.ologic [laughter]gh poor guy. so, so we start getting more details over the radio. we hear that we're going into an area that is incredibly hot. they will launch two apaches with us. that is not normal. they only do that going into tho worst areas. and pointing out to say, local nationals. . e going out to save a 3-year-old local national who had some lung burns because he had walked in on his dad making a bomb, and the ferrettizer and chemicals in the be air burned his lungs. clearly, we were willing to go into anything to save of this particular life. when you're launching to save a kid, it's a little different. and, you know, we start up the rotors, and you can feel the rotors pulsing, and it's kind of, you know, it's similar to how i the crew is feeling, you know? the crew is kind of not very jovial, not joking around like we normally are. some people try to crack are jokes, it's just not landing, and we realize this is going to be a really to we realize this is going to be a very tough mission. we had out common for landing. we had a night goggle vision landing which some from the audience know that's one of the worst things. you would rather get shot up and do that. we execute a good landing go naked on the ground safely and are special forces medics will get the patients and now it's time to sit and wait. sit and wait for them to bring the fusion back. i do see some movement in the corner of my goggles so i turn and i look and we are steppingis through checklists and there's never a letdown time. i announced to the crew what i see and there is silence in the cockpit. i see a mob of people starting to form in this town and they are pointing at us and talking to each other and then they start walking toward us. the mob is getting vigor and people are coming out and there are more and more people and noo they are running at us.the wo this is the worst possible scenario because we don't want to pick up and leave. we don't want to hurt anybody and honestly even though they are running at us and we are terrified we are saying what is that noise? some people haven't even seen a car let alone a helicopter and we don't want to get hurt ourselves.in in the aircraft we see our brothers and sisters that i would die for so worst of all possible scenarios. i break my silence until the patch is what i can see. as i kind of hold my breath because we don't really have a procedure for this i see this apache come through and just buzz from 10 feet and you can hear like the needle off the record. everybody just kind of stops. it was a perfect show of force. didn't hurt anybody but show them this is why i buy our guys -- when i meet them and if you are coming to hurt us or check us out you can check us out from there. we took off uneventfully and it was great treated it was a high stress transmission that we were doing because we wanted to win the hearts and minds and stabilize especially in a town that is so anti-u.s. military. so that story is the culmination of me following my conscience and my dreams and my heart and my calling and it probably comes as no surprise to you guys along the road there were a lot of people who tried to stop me from accomplishing that come either well-intentioned people who were trying to protect me or didn't think i i could perceive and want me to be happy or didn't think i was tough enough or didn't want to see me in combat or any of the reason that ias never let anybody deter me from my task.k. i faced a lot of door shut in my face that later i had a reporter asked me how did you push through all that failure? he gave me a minute to understand what they weresh talking about and that meant all the doors close to my face. i never thought of it as failure i guess. i never thought of something making it harder for me to accomplish my goal. think it's so important when you think about following your dream you know i would challenge anybody to come to me for mentoring and with this crowd is kind of hard that i would challenge anybody who is having a midlife crisis i will let you guess who i'm looking out over there. it's definitely not my husband. [laughter] i would challenge you to identify what is your passion and then flick away the barriers and the naked people who tell you your dream is wrong and explain to you why you can't do it or why you shouldn't do it and just put those away. right? including fear of failure and the reason i picked this to talk about, when i have written this book and i've reached a lot of people and gotten hundreds of o e-mails from people across therp country and i have never readd one e-mail that said i reallywad want to be a pilot and i tried really hard and i couldn't make it or aged out, not once.e- but i have gotten some e-mails from people saying i really wanted to do what you did but i was so afraid i couldn't make it that i just didn't try. then i got an e-mail from a woman who said i wanted to be as combat helicopter pilot and i wish i had read your book five years ago because i think maybe i could have done it but i was so afraid i would be then i would fail and what would that mean for me but your book will sit on my shelf forever as a reminder to me of what could have been. that broke my heart. my wish for you guys is thatyous nobody and nobody that you allll know was ever in that situation because the most important thing to point out about that story is i was 24 years old. do i reply in tell her you still have four years and you can still do it? giving up so young i just couldn't believe it. i'm shifting my message from being a change agent the world to don't sweat something like fear rejection or failure for trying out a new dance on the dance floor, writing a book, pursuing a career that you are afraid you are going to fail at. so what? i have failed the several things. doesn't say anything about yousn so i think that's important. what i would say to her and i may reply back to her are some words of wisdom that i haverd heard recently. fade rarely comes upon us at the hour of her choosing. the person said to me in a serious moment i said wow that is really deep. where did you hear that? he said that? she said -- [laughter] so my favorite learning momentgh of that whole story is the inspiration is everywhere. doesn't have to be in a book but a kennedy and a children's cartoon and let's make sure that is what our kids are watching and we glean from lessons from that too. find what inspires you and sterger hard. follow your heart heart. put the bears away adult let negative people stop you and gea out there and change the world.. thank you so much for coming. [applause] that's it. i hope you guys have some goodq, q&a because i think were about to sit down. are we going to do that now? great. yes. >> >> i'm really excited about your book. your mother-in-law told me a movie is also being made. what can you tell us about the movie? >> well so i'm an introvert i mean like myers-briggs 260 extrovert in a very private person and i wrote a book about the history of rescue in afghanistan when in combat.e my agent convinced me the only way i could get the story out is if i told my story and under duress and she promised me it would be a couple hundred books sold to my friends and family and it was about my shelf and inform this very academic -- and she lied. [laughter] six weeks after the book was sold the movie rights were sold in the book wasn't even written. now i have to write the book a return this jacket. it just happened so fast and angelina jolie is set to play me, obviously. [laughter]i walk thr i walk through the grocery store and i get mistaken for her all the time. so the great thing about her being attached other thing than the fact that she is attached is it attracted this other talent and me got jason holt who is the guy that adapted american sniper so very excited about the quality of the script. to be able to hand your story over to someone and let them do whatever they want with it. i'm not sure what it's going to go out. should be shooting sometime around summer. no questions are off-limits, guys. this book deals with some really tough topic so feel free to ask me. >> who is going to play your mother grace? [laughter] who was it that plated not mommy dearest?[lau [laughter] no, i don't know. that's probably going to be i was always picturing sally fields. meryl streep. jessica lange is the amazing. love jessica lange. any other questions?? all softballs. >> can you tell us what happened to that so-called flight surgeon that you examined? >> i don't know what happened to him. kevin is talking about a story in the look where i was assaulted and was promised that it would not practice medicine and a more enough to give away the book but when i was trying to decide whether or not to stay in the air force or get out and join the guard i got put up for an award. my mom was trying to keep me in the military. he really died many put me inng. this ward for the group and the people i was competing with work with three other groups and the medical group came up. he and i were competing against each other so i assume he is off practicing and maybe he learneda a big lesson because after the assault he ran and told onn actn himself on his own actions so maybe he was disgusted enoughou with himself that he hasn't done it again but i doubt it. yes. so much for the softball questions. >> you mentioned go with what inspires you and i was wondering over the last few years if there has been a group or anything that has inspired you and kept you going in the direction you want to go? >> well i got my mba. [applause] and there is my family and toastmasters but i worked hard. it's legendary. i was in the best class ever.] [applause] leadership optimistic rateen organization and i encourage you to google it if you don't know what it is. >> is there anything about thehs books perception that surprised you? >> the success of that has surprised me greatly. a mean to sound ungrateful because i know there are many who would kill for this opportunity am very grateful but if i knew it would have been so successful i don't think i would have done it. anything that scares me and i think a lot of it is the abuse that my family and i suffered by my biological father that's in the book. anything that scares me i confronted. speakin the other thing that scares me the most out of anything is public speaking.s of the but the success of the book has been very good. >> hi i'm curious if when the gentleman that was protectingyo you against the water if that was really an accident? >> it was a total accident and i guess i didn't articulate it well or maybe it's part of what i skipped. reese was guarding the controls. and the dumps which is on the collective so as i was reading the collective is watching everything and guarding the controls. he didn't fess up immediately but it was a few minutes later, that was me. [laughter]r] so it was reese, yeah. >> i guess my question is i haven't read your book and i apologize for that, you talked about the brotherhood and sisterhood of your unit and with the idea in combat you want to get that recognition as well. what would you hope for the military to understand certain branches women are just as equal as men but for some reason their perception isn't always that wa? so what do you have to say to that? >> you know i think that there are a lot of people who thundered understand how the military works and a lot ofointn pointing that they are out of context.xa for example there is a physical fitness test that is designed to judge how healthy you are. a healthy 18-year-old female can look different than a healthy 55 girl mail to include weight,nu blood pressure, number push-ups and those kinds of things. everyone no matter what your job is get this test. the way the military can tell how much you're going to cost them and help it if it's later. it's like 1950s insurance standards kind of stuff and by that standard will probably arth be different but i'm fine withi that because i don't want toto o stop some young lady who maybe can't do a push-up because i've seen that before or wants to work on paperwork or be in aa supply trip or something like that i don't want to stop her from doing that by saying everyone should have to meet the standards.ve however there's another physical fitness standard to get into a certain job so to get into a different school to be able to do whatever your branches and i think those standards should be there. if it takes as many push-ups for this march or whatever you need to do to do that job i don't understand why that'sight. controversial. >> my husband and i are both marines and we go back and forti that he fully supports women in combat. >> if they can do the job. have you ever seen a man who can do the job?ob i have but if someone can do the job you should get the job. there ethnicities that are stereotypically smaller framed, better at this are better at that and many people may even meet those stereotypes that weou don't make decisions about what opportunities give to those people with the stereotypes. we say go for it, give it a try and you hold those prejudices. top marley said that he hoped people would look at skin color the way they look at eye color. your eyes going to see the difference that you are not going to make a judgment about them. by record is you have blue eyes that doesn't say anything about you and i hope we can get there with gender that we are not soe surprised we can accomplish something today get told thate all the time. unless they mean because i see certain barriers i will accept t that complement the otherwise that's a backhanded insult saying that i should have been able to do these things. so surprised you were brave under fire producing plenty of women under fire and i've seen plenty of men who were brave under fire. >> i'm. in the military i'm sure you have many who supported you and many who oppose you. what would you say was your most surprising unlikely person ofrcs support or source of support in the military? >> i would say 99% of people were supportive. the worst iteration of the script that came out was the female heroin fighting the m discriminatory machine. i said that's not going to the screen with my name on it because the men i served with i have so much respect for. there was a very small number that tried to stop me and somebody said to me tonight i'm surprised things haven't changed since your time in the military today think things have changed. there are so fewer people. the culture of time is still there but i will say that i hate giving the spoilers out that there is a man and that's not really his name who genuinely didn't want me in his squadron but he was the stereotypically chauvinist, i have so much respect for him. he was an older army pilot who was one of the best pilots i have ever met.t. don't tell him i said that and i really wanted to earn his respect you know and it wasis heartbreaking every time he dissed me. always seemed like every stupid thing i did i would look up and he would be standing right there, i swear. i did stupid things. i was watching an aircraft taxi and fly in and land the taxi and i was interested in what was going on with the aircraft. we were going to do a hot-swap and i was looking and looking and i bumped my head on the window and i was like and i turned and looked and there's doug.th he was like -- like oh my gosh. every time i did something like that it was right in front of him. another time is running out to the aircraft and he was like slow as was safe and say this fast mj. and take the extra 10 seconds and walk fast. i was like @whatever and i totally slipped on the rocks anw pages went everywhere.hy i was like why always in front of him? b maybe it was because it was in front of him but we got shot down at the perimeter. it i was the only person whowh returned fire that day and some of the guys on the other aircraft didn't perform that well and the next time i busted into the emmys chewing his cigar and he said you did good kid an that meant more to me than all the medals and the world that i still don't think he see things women should serve but yeah that surprised me. >> since you joined the military until now in your crusade to have women more involved ine combat, have the opportunity how much is the needle moved?? >> a lot. so the validating thing about this fight for me was i took an oa oath to support and defend the constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic and i thought this policy was a threat and a domestic threat and the reason is i saw the impact of the policy so without going to academic the policy was intended to keep women out of ground combat and what it did do was keep women from being assigned to jobs whose primary role was to take ground combat to the essence. commanders in the field needed to use women in those jobs anyway. they needed women to go when with the bad into the towns in the tribal council to pat-down the women that were going to show up to make sure they weren't wearing -- and the creative female engagement teams with the marines. sometimes your best marksman is a woman, sometimes your best whatever happens to be a woman and you can't use them because they don't have an assignment into this role. what they would do is rotate them on every 45 days and attach them to units where they didn't know the people in the units. there's nothing worse, well there probably are probably things worse than going to combat with someone who you don't know who is untested and you'll know how they have trained. you don't know how they are going to respond and you don't know their strength. you can't anticipate what they are going to do.th me and my crew i knew we would talk over each other but we were writing a checklistmultan simultaneously. when you go into combat with people you don't have that with its -- so i worked to get the policy repealed so that we can have all those spots open by the falling close to what it needed that needed to be closed whereac before all jobs are default closed and he worked hard to geo them open. the joint chiefs of staff unanimously recommended we would kill the policy so was at my lawsuit in may against the military. it wasn't like that. all of us were on the same page and fighting for the strength and military effectiveness of the military we love. >> i would also like to make a comment about your mother. >> i would too. [laughter]ghter] >> and i'm sure you have. i met her about 18 years ago first meeting at toastmasters and she was about to give the speech. she spoke for approximately 1010 seconds. she said i can do this and she sat back down. now as you know we can't shut her up.ound t you are such a personification of her. >> thank you, thank you. [applause] my mom joined toastmasters and that was her first are and they gave her a round of applause and about her -- empowered her.ou >> hi is that a public server but he can see it with enough with equal? >> pay is by rank. pay is by rank but there iss active duty pay and combat pay and stuff like that. it's more you are not going to be chief of staff of the army if you have had served in combat. that's my impression. definitely certain branches. you have to be a combat warrior to go to the heights of that branch of that's how it should be. you should know it's the price so it was about bringing in the commanders. it was about opening opportunities so they would get credit for the things they werep doing and it was about the candidate pool for some of these jobs and raising the bar. even if they select all men youd have twice as many people applying and succeeding and they got a better candidate.be i didn't fully answer -- to that answer your question? at an answer the number of opportunities are open to all the jobs. secretary carter to announce that haven't been exceptions. they had some really tough schools. they had female majors graduate and i don't hope they gotri assigned yet. other countries do.when the field came out and said when they were in their research days whether or not they were going to allow women into these rolesd they were the ones of the bursa came out and said we are not to say that women can't do it and it was hard for anyone else to make the case. any other questions?ey you've got a mic. >> i was actually fortunate enough in my experience to have a ceo that was a female. i was wondering, so actually you introduced the eight pst was basically a concept of meeting insurance needs. i had actually never thought of that but that even educated me. so actually my question was the female -- told me and i was a little bit before you but i guess the excuse given to me was that the emotional, if the female dies in a unit the emotional response from it is significantly worse than if the mail dies so i wondered what your thoughts were on that. >> yes, i have a lot of them. i think that is a very real but concern but it makes a lot of assumptions. it depends on the woman, okay? when you are charged withke protecting someone weaker than you whether it's an official charge or where she is a combat photographer embedded in the marine unit and somethingg happens to her. they were charged with her protection but because she wasn't a combat trained warrior but she was a woman who was with them they felt protective of her so when you put women and men in combat situations and the ground combat exclusion policy where you through the men and nobody knows if they are going to be tough for what you have that problem. you have other problems too. have cohesion problems, you have all the problems that you care about when you have that type of situation. those things didn't happen to me because of a couple of things.s. first of all i didn't put up with competing for my section and that happened quickly early on and i think that's a leadership issue. that's a mentoring issue we need to make sure that our young women that are entering into it understand that.at it's also less told them young men to a young sandra. this boys will be boys thing infuriates me not for the reason you might think because it's a huge insult to the men i know who have served that i have so much respect for. that's insinuating that you don't have control of your cells. i used to be in command, not all of you, i used to be in command of 18-year-old troops. i know you command different ages a little differently but it's just a leadership thing. i expected a lot of them and i didn't have a lot of problems and aircraft maintenance with a male-dominated group. so i would say if you are charged with taking care of someone weaker than you then you are in charge when something happens. when you have an animal that you are charged with taking care of you are devastated whenn something happens that animal. i'm cracking jokes but the point of it is you have charge of someone they are people that i open doors for her take care of them carry their groceries in for them. i don't know who those people are. not you, no. if you are shoulder-to-shoulder with someone in the ship and you have venus williams on your side and justin eber over here you are going to feel more protective of the biebs because it's a national honor and you were going to think she can handle herself. when i was shot i had blood all over me. nobody wants to defend me. i had loved all over me. you would think the fact that i was the one hit would have triggered this ultra-masculinewa chivalry and it didn't, trust me. in fact my gunner turned to me went to our patients, one of our patients are getting a littlehi hysterical which made another one a little upset. he turned to me and he said this is why we don't want women in combat. first of all that's great to be so comfortable that you can say that to me until comfortable because i was very heavily armed.d.need he didn't look at me as someone that needed to be protected.ve he knew i could handle myself fine. we trained together, ate, slept and we didn't shower together. the point stands it's all in how you integrate people. the integrate them and as equals then no i don't think you have a problem of seeing a woman her. as a medevaced pilot i saw a lot of people hurt in the most devastated person i saw was an oda guy whose best buddy had been hit and his best buddy with the medic so unfortunately he was hit and nobody have the expertise.fo we all have this combat -- but that doesn't really do anything. he was in the back of the aircraft with the soldier that fired and it was heartwrenching hearing the sounds he was making bawling over his brother. when you get close to people it's going to affect you emotionally but the fact that they are women, but you know and i don't want to take too long on this, let's say that it's true. let's see seeing women hurt or killed is too much for them the men to handle.ce do we limit opportunities for women because of how the other f half -- or do we focus on helping them giving them the tools to deal with that? do you know what a me? we are not a country that legislates based on population. we legislate on children because they need our protection. women are strong and they don't need legislative protection. we would never legislate that women can't walk down our late late -- allie at 3:00 in the morning. we should do that though we don't live in the middle east were some of those countries demand that you have an escortea or something like that. [applause] >> you are a great storyteller. >> a thank you. i get that from my mother. >> can you comment come you talk a lot about things during the time in your military penny can you comment -- comment on what it's like for men versus womenfr after combat. how does society treat those people differently or not? n >> the only difference that i have seen are one women will it get ptsd quicker than men and that this a couple of things. in my opinion it skews the data because some people say that women experience it more. i raised my hand and said i had ptsd on my crew because all my crew -- i didn't have the ego not that all men have the ego but there's a ribbing that goes on between men that's less apparent with women and i would go and talk to a counselor and then i come back and they would say well what did she say?at ish tell her you are having this dream about a tiger in the mall. i would say no, if you have ptsd you need to go talk to someone. that's one difference and i think female veterans get treated differently.eated i haven't experienced this but i've heard one female veterans claim there were a couple of people in the va that did not believe them and didn't assign them a disability rating. they were some kind of logic station and they said you were a supply trooper. you won't have ptsd. a supply troop on a convoy that had an ie they came under fire and i fired back. you know what i mean the stories go on and on from there. i have seen posted on thee internet, this never happened to me, women veterans parking in combat veteran spots that are designated as a militarythat are friendly town and they are getting nasty notes on the window saying how dare you parked in a spot reserved for dr nations -- and i'd say i'm sorry i guess he met the man. that's unfortunate. i have a purple heart on my car just so i can get free parking at the airport. people think a husband for his service all the time but he is the greatest response. he's always like, you are welcome. [laughter] so i guess we get treated a little differently. >> what will you do if one of your beautiful children saysr they want to go into life or death job like you have done. >> i would make him drop and start doing push-ups first pitch he told me she wanted me to be a marine. have you heard the story about how my step-daughter came to me and said she wanted to be a marine and i said drop and do push-ups and we will do push-ups together now on your elbows, now in your hands. and a couple of weeks later she came to me in tears and she said why would you let me think i could he a marine? and i was like what kind of question is back? what do you mean. she said you didn't tell me that was a boy's job. i said that's not true. i'm going to do something about that but i don't know what you than i was all fired up and the next day they called and said that elect he liked to join her suit? it's going to be really hard. you could get some people that hate you. i was like let's do it because t didn't want her to grow in that world today couldn't believe it was 2012 and somebody was telling her that. so i would assess, going back to your question i would assess that specific yet and that kid if i don't think they're going to be happy in that role i'me going to support them but i'm probably also going to educate them on what it means to be in that role. if one of my kids is an adrenaline junkie like me who you know will slip on a bunch of rocks that can handle themselves at the reins then i think i'd be comfortable with it. i don't know that really answers your question. i just want them to live a fulfilled life. you kind of go where you're calling is. >> i noticed in looking through the book that there are some blackouts in it. are those voluntary or required? >> it's a voluntary process tomb make your manuscript to the dod to let them review classified information that talk about survival training in there and i take that very seriously and i talk about a couple of missions that take very seriously and i wanted to make sure it didn't put the men if it was classifies or if it would put our troops at risk. they came back with reductions that i thought were so rigid it was. i used a couple of code words in their that are intended to confuse our enemy if they are intercepting our radio communications. i was a little iffy about that. they didn't care about that. they wanted to blackout the name of one of the -- even though he's a physical therapist now. whatever they chose to redact i could have fought up that would have pushed the obligation date even further. my publicist was like people like to see reductions. it proves that i took the step which a lot of people are getting in trouble for writing books now didn't do that process >> you have been emphasizing over and over again about different lessons and issues that the military has brought to light in our country. initially speaking i think we are at a point in our country and like when we were kids where military is providing -- what lessons can we take from the military to apply to the tissues we have going on right now?w? >> for example when we integrated the military racially there was this uproar about how it was going to disrupt the cohesion we shouldn't forcend people into this in the military is not there for social experiment and the leaders went sorry we are doing it anyway and they do the same thing with denigrating women and the same thing with repealing "don't ask don't tell" and them integrating and letting people come out and they've been supportive, senior leaders have been supportive of the transgender situation. i think the lessons we can learn like ceos and senior leaders and corporations is change management would tell a would tell us don't force something down everybody's throat. you can get away with in the military because people are told to do what they are told and to great extent they will even if they do it begrudgingly. they are used to taking orders that they don't like so it's not foreign to them. i would like to see a little bii more change but when the change fails and people are still angry and don't want to see it then just do it. people will get over it and they're not going to be talkingg about it again i guess is probably the lesson i would take from that. does that answer your question? no, not at all. i knew it would be a hard one coming from you. you mostly know how to get hold of me if you have anymore any more questions. >> mj can you talk to us about the military and how it has changed. the 21st century military has changed with asymmetrical warfare and technology. that how was it when you entered and how is it now? >> a lot of people want to make the combat situation just about physical standards and i'm fond of saying when the taliban was encroaching on our perimeter they weren't going to say who can do the most push-ups and that person can go you know what i mean? it's not as much of a hand-to-hand combat but i don't stand appearance say that being able to be incredibly physically strong is not a very critical aspect of being a combat warrior i've seen people -- you could make the argument that pilots won't be in ground combat but then i found myself in ground combat. i was cleaning my weapon all the time.i' his gun jammed that day and i i said you want to bromide? do you want to borrow a nice? i think the fact that it's more technology, people care more or understand more about theality to think on your feet and be tactical and to understand survival. i was in charge of survival andu training. if you don't -- no one wants to go to the super super bowl with a team full of quarterbacks. could argue having a quarterback is the most important thing to the football team and you could argue that the most important thing but who wants to go with it team full of quarterbacks we have to look at your team ando say your strength is making fire your strength is getting food your sink is finding water your strength is navigation and really get the most out of your team. if one person isn't as good at hand-to-hand combat you still have to be able to scale a wall with a full pack if you get infiltrated to the wrong place and have to reposition to a new place. there's an element. you only have to maintain an element of physical fitness. the reason i think that question is of relevant is when we talk about standards. yes there needs to be one standard but that standard should be arbitrarily high. there are certain jobs that take real pride in the fact that no women can meet the standards or something like that and i get that, i do but tell me what the job requirements are common tell me what you want the person to be able to accomplish and they are going to be lofty goals and they should be to maintain our elite status as a military but then when you say you need to be able to pull a 200-pound unconscious marine from a flipped over mrap that's on fire than you know what they -- pull a 200-pound dummy and give them 45 seconds whatever it is that you decide is the standard. don't say 15 pull ups equates with pulling that marine out. we have seen apple gymnast who goes to the standards but would she be able to do that? i don't also widely set standards for push-ups and polyps and think of that equates for the job? make sure they are job specific, that's my goal. [applause] >> hey mj. i'm wondering what is your next challenge or what's coming next? we continue to be involved in this mission? >> that's a good question because normally in thinking about what scares me the most is preparing for the zombie apocalypse. i'm not really sure. i guess i'm only focused on parenting. i have a two and a halff old -month-old going back to work after leave but i think i want to move to france for somewhere where i can get along maternity leave. my next big challenge is i want my kids to grow up not sheltered but not terrified. how do i walk that line and show them how lucky they are to live in a country where they have freedom. people with poverty have big screen tvs and cell phones for there is no suffering in this country, don't get me wrong. there is -- do it in a way, i want them to not aso terrified and i don't want them to live in a cabin in the woods surrounded by concertina wire but finding that balance is my goal now. i want to say one thing before we end. i encourage you guys if you were into the anecdote that i was reading it like for you to go to my twitter and click on the youtube video because there's more to that story that i didn't share with you that i did want to bring everybody down but i think it's a beautiful story and i'd like to honor the people who are involved in that story for spreading that word and letting people know there's more to that story.y. the 11 minute ted talk and it's at mj hegar.bl i'm really blown away by thely e support they thank you so much. [applause] [applaore everybody starts to get up since there are so many t of us i want to make this as as efficient and as safe as possible the line is going to start here for the signing and it's going to go-round wrap around the staircase so we don't block the stairs. let's start here and we are going to wrap around the staircase.e. also, hold on i know a lot of you know her and their friends and family and everything but if you want your book personalized please tell us the name so we can write it on a sticky note for the sake of efficiency. i know you know her but please just tell us her name -- yourr name.. >> i haven't slept a whole lot. >> all right, thank you guys. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> extreme books. do you know what my staff gave me for christmas last year tax two, not one, two ant farms. [laughter] i have one on my desk at the presidential library and one in my office at home. why? because i'm always telling them that the most important political book that nobody read or read for political book written in the last 10 years would have made us all much healthier. it's e.l. wilson to social conquest which is i think less than 250 pages long and he's a double pulitzer prize winning microbiologist. the combined weight of all the ants on earth is greater than all the combined people on the earth. why am i telling you this? [laughter] because in the conclusion of the book i say the conclusion is of all the species that have ever inhabited our earth and we know there are hundreds of thousands of them, they are sadly disappearing at the most wrap it rate and 10,000 new study says the most successful species that ever lived if you define success is we have repeated chances to be wiped out but they failed. here we are. we are still around. the most successful species are ants termites bees. not the biggest, not the strongest and he says what do they have in common? these are the greatest cooperators. they found ways to work together to solve common problems and build stronger features. and he said people are the greatest cooperators but their great strength is we have a conscious conscience and consciousness and we know it so it makes us arrogant that we think we are smarter than we are so we tend to slice and dice ourselves in ways that and that and threaten our ability to escape one more existence threatening challenge. this climate change thing, no one doubts that it's numerically verifiable that more than 90% of the scientists say this is an existential threat to our planet so now, i'm not saying they are wrong but they might be wrong. i'm just saying we just have the coldest march in new york in 100 some years. i was waiting for global warming to come back. i get it, we can make all these jokes but name me one other thread every parent in this audience, name me one threat that you wouldn't take seriously if you thought the odds of doing this were more than 90% better than the odds of doing that? see that child in the backseat? is a 100% chance your child will survive a crash unless the car completely collapses. 5% of people say no, that's crazy. put a kid in the backseat them just let him roll around. nobody would do that, right? that is what we are doing with climate change. we are throwing the kid in the backseat and letting them roll around. >> trump had enough resources and a time you could knock him out but in addition to did something i couldn't have done and i look back on it as one of the great acts of genius in american politics after fdr inventing the fireside chat. this is part of why he wrote it nobody in the city understands donald j. trump as a primetime television show for 13 years. it was the top show in the country for four years. because it wasn't on pbs and because it didn't follow "downton abbey" nobody in the city understands that so nobody in the city said the day he announced a guy who knows television that well is by definition formidable. he writes about this in "the art of the deal". decisively. what trump had learned in new york in the 80s was that any publicity which if you printed your name correctly builds strength so he was happy and this is part of it. i think you should modify what he is doing in terms of tweets and all that and i told him 10% less trump would be 100% more effective but he had figured out early on that if he could engage the media, the hunger of the 24-hour day cable news system and the power of facebook and twitter meant that if he could just take all the air out of the room so all these other guys are running around raising money in order to be able to buy tv ads to be on television and trump would get up in the morning, he would tweets and that would set up his argument with "morning joe." he would call "morning joe" and morning joe would but i take his colonnade argue for 20 minutes in and made calls "fox and friends" and they have have a lovefest for 25 minutes and then breakfast. he's already generated you know so all morning the media is covering the argument the trumpets in the middle of and at 10:00 in the morning he would do a president to keep the momentum up and 10 in the evening he do in our candidate for free so in the course of a normal champion day he set about $1 million free media. meanwhile all of his competitors are off the air running around the country trying to raise money to be able to get on the air at what was happening was the share name i.d.. there's only one poll in the entire campaign were trump is not ahead in the nomination. he was the front-runner the day he announced except for one poll where dr. carson pulled ahead. yet nobody in the media and this is an interesting example nobody in elite media could save themselves if he is the front-runner every single poll could it be he's the front-runner because everybody in the washington elite knew he couldn't be the front-runner because then everything they believed would be crazy and since they couldn't be crazy yet to be crazy. he was crazy he couldn't be the front-runner even though he was the front-runner. this went on so i'm in a situation where i'm watching the so-called experts who by the way have learned nothing. the stuff you get on tv today is as stupid and is wrong with the people who laugh when he announced the people who left in the primaries that people who laughed in the convention the people who laughed in the general election. they haven't learned anything because it's a repudiation of their own life's other choices i can believe in a fantasy which at least validates me or i can decide the world has changed dramatically and that invalidates me. i picked a fantasy and that's literally where we are right now it's interesting to see a dance continues for the next three years because i think gradually trump will figure out an angle to break out of all of this in a way that will be historic. >> people haven't learned from the campaign. >> look at the whole rush of fantasy. what happened election night was the democrat said hillary can't have lost and certainly donald trump can't have one so somebody cheated. putin cheated. you're right, this is all putin's thought and that means there must have been collusion. they must have colluded so for the last six months everybody on the left has been walking around town chanting watch for the rushing connection, look for the collusion. turns out even dianne feinstein the ranking member on the committee said there is zero evidence of collusion. there was obstruction of justice over the collusion so the fantasy that didn't occur is now being replaced by technik way the president of the united states cannot obstruct justice. the president of the unites states has achieved executive united states and if he wants to fire the fbi director all he has to do is fire him. if john f. kennedy had fired j. edgar hoover over investigating a wiretapping of martin luther king, jr. with people if i was obstruction? so it's not really collusion so what is the latest leak from the "washington post" whose record by the way running anonymous leaks has been "the new york times". an enormous achievement and i get the post credit for their energy and enthusiasm. they've been more consistently wrong than the times which is in the olympics of stupidity and enormous challenges. the latest thing is we will not be able to get anything out of russia and not able to get anything on the collusion is now looking at finances. when i was speaker i oppose the independent counsel because what happens is you bring it up lunch of high-priced lawyers to get up the regular career. they're going to find somebody and the fitzgerald case where call me brought in the godfather to his children, fitzgerald in order to appoint a special counsel when they knew there was no crime because in fact valerie flame was no longer protected name of the cia and they knew who had done it, richard armitage had leaked. they still appointed an independent counsel who promptly decided his mission was to give a change. it's the most grotesque example of a mischaracterization and the danger the power of the government. you go back and look at that case, that's fine very worried about mueller, not that mueller is a bad person. mueller is a patriot. mueller is a guy who served with great distinction in vietnam. mueller had no doubt is a person who's going to do his best but he's surrounding himself with a collective group of people who are going to lead the witchhunt and i encouraged everybody arthur miller is the crucible which is about the witchcraft trials in the late 1760s in salem. i said that's the mentality of the left-wing. the left-wing is engaged in the sale of witchcraft. we know somebody is bad and i wonder who we should burn at the stake. .. reat to be here at politics and prose again. this is the fifth installment of our race in america series. i want to thank politics and prose for the vision. a a lot of playings don't have the vision. this book store has set the tone for book stores round the nation to talk about such a sensitive hosue, matters of race, and, yes we were the authors and

Related Keywords

United States , Togo , California , France , Afghanistan , America , American , Venus Williams , Jason Holt , Jessica Lange , Meryl Streep Jessica Lange , Buta Kennedy ,