Live at 10 00 a. M. Eastern on cspan, ondemand on cspan. Org Supreme Court or on the cspan radio app. Hello and welcome to the Atlanta History Center virtual talk series but im virginia prescott and im your host for this talk. Tonight and talking with lisa napoli about her new book up all night, ted turner and the birth of 24 hour news for you can purchase the book directly from a cappella books and the link is in the chat on the right of your screen and the link is also at the Atlanta History Center website. As lisa and i talked please submit your questions and use a q a feature at the bottom of your screen and will try to answer as many as we can as time allows. We will be broadcasting excerpts of this interview on Second Thought this friday and you will hear me do what we call a re id to keep consistent sound while we are going. So excited to speak with lisa napoli who got her first journalism job at cnn after interning at cnn new york, and bc bureaus as a teenager and she is a reporter for the new york times. And many other outlets. She is author of two previous books radio shangrila and ray and joan and that is about the man who made the mcdonalds fortune and the woman who gave it all away. Lisa, thank you for being with us. Really, really excited about talking about this book. Back at you prayed thank you so much great i use the Atlanta History Center for research and im delighted to be virtually with the constituency now. Glad to have you. I think its difficult probably for some of the people watching to imagine life before news was accessible all time. Before Television News looked before when this launched four years ago. [audio difficulties] until ted turner turned the switch on w tcg channel 17 over on west peachtree street on all night there was no tv all night and it was really hard for people to imagine but before cable had come along and before ted had the Idea Television stopped after usually the late movie and it was off all night until it fluttered on at dawn and the idea of an allnews or all anything channel was like a spaceship from mars. Crazy and unimaginable. The man behind this moonshot, ted turner, people are interested to know channel 17 here in atlanta made him a legendary figure here also owning the Atlanta Braves helped a lot but his early life may not be so wellknown. He inherited the business of billboard business from his father, hard drinking, womanizing, magnate who ted worked for on and off so what were some of the early signs of this persistent, risk loving entre nous or that he became . Science is a good word because he was in the billboard business. He inherited the bill board business and from the very beginning he saw and he was theatrical and saw grandeur and even the billboard but it wasnt enough for him and so as he got first into radio and then into tv he was a no holds barred conversation. The person he did really in any measure was steel the braves telecast by coming in and over bidding for he did not have money really and he certainly didnt have the audience but he stole it from w fst but you would have heard from people that he would stomp on peoples desks and say bye add time from me even though they an idea who he was or why they should spend money on add time from him. He was just a very colorful and no filter person who was persistent. The classic business story, entrepreneurs story did not take no for an answer and didnt let anything defeat him, even the fact that no one was watching his television station that he spends money that he really didnt have on. This business that he start started, this all started with tragedy and was left holding the reins of his fathers business after his father killed himself. Yes, and started buying radio stations and then dispersed uhs station, wg cd channel 17 and give us a sense of how frenzy uhs or even cable stations were at that point when he bought it . I dont know who is out there but for people who might remember the time when you had to get up off the couch and turn a dial to tune into a station and maybe have rabbit ears on top of the television to just precisely tune in a station uhs versus vhs it was the super friends and they called it the lunatic fringe because it was very hard to tune in and even if you had the right devices and there was very little that was airing on it and they had a really scramble for programming. It was a big gavel and it sounds glamorous by television station but that kind of television station was really in the netherlands at that time and men who got into the business and was mostly men were real risktakers and hoping it might get parlayed into a different sort of tv. So for ted to take the chance to go into that business was just wild in and of itself and then to do things like woo away the braves and start putting others sports and sporting events on the channel and crazy things, crazy movies that no one else would air, crazy commercials and build touches legendary and his crazy newscast in the middle of the night all of that combined to create a television station that people slowly but surely started jeanine and although they didnt always admit apparently. Tell us more especially people who dont know and im sure people who knew bill touch when he was on the air in the concept. [audio difficulties] as part of the licensing to run a television station you needed to show a certain amount of Public Affairs on the air. Ted was decidedly anti news which is why the story is such a great story. He wasnt a crusading news fellow at all but crusade against the news but had to put a certain amount of it on the air and bill touch was a young announcer and a young radio announcer who basically stumbled into the station and i hope he is other entities out there and say hello, bill. He stumbled into the station with all these other young folks who are just tantalized by the prospect of television he basically has been the sort of guy that drew the short straw as a station announcer who had to do the requisite newscast and is evolved over time into a fun requisite newscast that was not like any other. Now we have lampoons on the news all the time but they and he and the crew in the middle of the night or it aired in the middle of the night did a jokey newscast because they didnt want to do a serious one and had to persuade their boss in the station manager that it was okay to do this and that it was fulfilled the sec requirements for news and it became if they did it tongueincheek for themselves and but it turned out the station was being fed out around the southeast and ultimately around the nation and it became the signature of one of the entire station. Along with the georgia Championship Wrestling and one critic called it a masterpiece of bad take but it did started being broadcast and there was an sec rule change in 19 survey to which meant that but question was why were people watching a georgia station in nebraska. Because they could . Again for us now even those of us were members it is so hard to imagine a time when it was a few stations and went most of them went off at night if you are left up at night in kansas and there was bill in the middle of the night doing funny things it seemed like it was life trade you kept watching it because you are so thankful there was a late night movie and billed to entertain you. It was a proof of concept without them calling it that. Basically this story is about the perfect marriage and i love that it centered in atlanta and not in a typical Media Capital like los angeles or new york or dc basically ted and his merry ban of tv folk together the moment in Time Technology allowed were pumping out what they were doing first locally and then regionally and then nationally and showing the power of 24 hour news and the power of cable which is very unsexy thing and you know, in trouble right now but then it was like the internet and about the tesla of television at that time that allowed tv to rev up and help us to new heights. It was also a shot across the bow at the three Major Networks that had been deciding what news was and what programming should be for a really long time and created this wild west. Ted turner wants and but hes not a news guy and considered it a downer so what was the appeal for him and all news 24 hour station. Once he got word that a little upstart called Home Box Office was playing around with cable the same way he played around cable going regional then just in the typical area where it was licensed and when he heard about this one jerry livein and his hbo and how they would be made up to a satellite and broadcast it around the nation he wanted to do that to a new jerry livein would do it with a movie and movies had to license it and get all the rights to it and he wanted to do it maybe with a sports but if he did it was sports it would cannibalize the main ingredient of channel 17. He thought maybe i will do it with music and someone said thats a dumb idea but no one will ever watch music on television so finally the last grasp of what he could do with this technology and it really was a way to use the new technology was news and all news radio had just started bubbling up in some markets and even though that wasnt his thing that was his entree into using the satellite as a way to spread as a way to spread the station throughout the nation. And led to copyright. News has no copyright, extensive way to produce but they found the expense away and that the next part of the story. Heres a question from gm who says im really enjoying the book and since then he started doing joking news late at night to fulfill the sec requirements for Public Service programming did anyone at the fcc take notice that they were doing comedy rests on Current Events rather than straight news connect. I never noticed anything that suggested that and then maybe if someone out there knows but there are no records from that station and everything i found was cobbled together from people personals archives so no, ive never found anything. Part of that is part and parcel of the fact that nobody really cared but no one was really paying that close attention and the station manager apparently is a gust and austere on premises and he basically took issue with it and bill said nobody ever said there is a rule that it has to be serious so they managed to get away with it. There was not that much oversight of the stations that time because so many people went out of business with them and ted picked up another one and a fire sale in charlotte because the man started that just couldnt make it add up so they were really the lunatic fringe. There was a serious nest involved, hes a journalist that [inaudible] the program was everything that was wrong with Television News and becomes a major player in creating cnn and had a vision far beyond what the big screen networks are doing. What was his vision and how did ted turner come into this . He felt embodied a number of men at the time who were trying to walk those networks. For years people have been trying to pierce that network string a hold on not just the news but on entertainment but the problem always was that it was impossible to bust through because they owned literally the airwaves and so reid had been struggling in various jobs over the years to figure out how to do it as had some other men and basically he had been trying to settle news to ted for wtc g as an independent and for years that a new service that he was involved with an or one that he started, one previous to the one he started that he was involved with and he just wanted ted to get on board and independent stations across the board and ted kept saying no, no, absolutely not. I hate the news we will never do the news and ted did decide to do news and that is who he called with reese and reese would as hardcore news as ted was anti news so they made a very unusual pair but they both had the same role in mind and that was busting the conventional system of the networks. Someone just commented that ted was known to say he was cable before cable was cool. Yes, he did not actually say that until the early 80s after cable did start getting cool because up until the point it was cool nobody understood or cared and even people who work for him for the large part thought he was crazy and the other thing he did that i have not mentioned yet was along with bill and playing movies and sports no one would buy these commercials time from him so he got into this direct mail and again, today, go on the internet and order something in a second and it will be at the door in a couple of hours but back then if you could go or watch a Television Commercial for a product like a knife and order it and get it delivered that was a thrill and also besides it was utilitarian and those ads were the mainstay of the bar casting and as he able to get that station were out and out in the beginning ads were coming in United States and the caribbean and the evidence because there were no ratings that there was a hunger to watch the stuff. We will put a point in the caribbean because this comes into the story later. Teds renegade reputation was wellestablished by then and the idea of him starting a new station was like attila the hun running summer camp for the elderly. [laughter] there are so many great quotes in this book because he such a colorful character but there is a wonderful scene where reese comes and needs ted at a ramshackle station and this was a place where, you know, rain and smoke snow comes through and the snow is coming to the roof is a bit of a dive and they talk about what it would take to create a new station so can you give us a little sense of that conversation. Well, basically you know, they were at odds because reese could not imagine that you would start a new station in a place like atlanta in the late 1970 1970s. Ted wanted it to be in atlanta and he didnt really understand exactly what he wanted to have on it except that he wanted to have this channel and reese was very excited about the idea of finding his star and they felt they needed some journalistic credibility because teds reputation at that point was super wild and was yachtsman of the year, publicly crazy and all over the place with women and so they needed somebody sobering and reese said i think we should try to go after dan rather and it wasnt entirely clear who dan rather was to ted turner. That is how checked out of the news world he was and that story comes to reese and i dont know if it was absolutely true but i believe it in the sense that ted just did not watch the news and it wasnt important to him and it wouldnt make sense that he wasnt certainly home at 630 at night when the network news ran because he was too busy working all the time. And sailing. And running around with his lady friends it wasnt clear that he would he would know who the most famous news or second famous after Walter Cronkite it may be someone they could go after and dan rather and cbs had just come back on another show if they had enough money they could woo him and he was confident. That was part of the challenge but they were apart in atlanta far from new york and los angeles and the television capitals that were there at the time and the other challenges reese had never even produced an hour of Live Television and he signing up to do this 247 network, 365 days a year so it was a real hustle to find that staff and turn this abandoned country club into an elaborate set and newsroom. What does it mean to bring people to atlanta . What challenges . Also to add to your point theres not entirely clear that even veteran newspeople saw that this was an intoxicating proposition and a lot of people saw that it was outrageously insane that anyone would watch this in the newsroom is cleaning your vegetables and back to your question basically ted found at the location or his people from the country club at tech would be the old Progressive Club had been sitting there for years and maybe be developed and maybe not the sole club had rats in it and they had to retrofit it pretty quickly. Satellite dishes had to be installed and they were not common and he was going to have the largest array of satellite dishes ever installed at that point but also besides the equipment and there is a lot of story here about the changing technology was the Human Resources and as you say convincing people to move to atlanta for not too much money for something that might not work and was not a foregone conclusion. Basically, reese and his folks Ted Kavanaugh was a chief producer and they decided they needed to get cheap labor, tried and true, was to go out and find young people were willing to work for less than minimum wage and to have the starry eyed moment in television that they cannot get because there were only three networks and there was no chance for them to get work if they werent the creme de la creme so that is what several of the men including Ted Kavanaugh went out and went to Journalism Schools and rallied around people and meanwhile hundreds of tapes were streaming in to the makeshift orders on west peachtree street because there were people in local news who were dying to have the chance to be on the air or to produce network news again, there were that many opportunities at the actual network so there were people who were willing to put their life on hold and the other thing that happened that was also incredibly unusual at the time also was people find it fascinating is that hiring couples was a verboten or keeping couples if you had met your husband or a guy at the television station you worked at one of you would have to leave. So reese could get a twoforone and one was a camera person and if one was an anchor woman he went for it and it was cheaper to move them and of course they were invested in the place was marching towards this deadline of june 1, 1980 and pitching in with the tech drive facility and help the tax basically making it all up we do know they did pass on one upandcoming journalist amy opal or winfrey so with charlie rose but they were able to snap because the stories are markable of how they got this in a year and its like out startup of course that happened and it crackles with excitement this frat house atmosphere and how fresh were the stories were people told them to you. You know, some people held back the really fun drugs and checks stories that i still hear about now especially now the book is actually out and it was a big wild toga party and but everybody who i talked to was so thrilled to be sharing that moment in time because whatever they did with the rest of their lives other they stayed in television or scurried out of the business after a year they all had a number able experience because how often do you get to build someone completely new in many ways because after you had the thrill building from scratch everything in the aftermath is going to seem hohum and youre wedging into an existing structure but this book was so much fun to write in part because there was no clearcut obvious source, cnn did not help me in any way. Even if they had i wouldnt have relied entirely on what they had to say because this is so completely not a corporate book. It is so anti or on corporate and not the message that you want to get out about a place that might have failed and everyone who came there did not know what the heck was going on and it wasnt a clearcut blueprint towards success but really here for majestic experiment could have been a tremendous accident. Were talking to lisa napoli, her book up all night in our conversation was recorded for the Atlanta History Center virtual author talks series and question from ricky who said the book was wonderful from the attending memory in the mid to early 80s was like a front row seat to turner and cnn. What, if anything, then make the book that wouldve liked to have included an in other words, what was tough to edit . More about drugs and sex a lot of it i couldnt verify and, you know, it wasnt supposed to be completely tawdry but actually it was or i was very proud that i was able to distill this very contrary moment in time and i know i left things out but i cant think of anything major that i felt wow i wish i couldve been able to wedge that in in the sense of excitement is really what i wanted to convey and makes me happy if someone feels like that it was there. I dont know if im feeling your line of questioning by saying when the biggest things i found and i wasnt sure id be able to find was when ted turner went to cuba to visit fidel castro who, apparently, had been pirating the signal almost from the inception of this channel and was very delighted that ted turners staff and office made a copy of the video for me and i wanted to see it for archiving purposes and their interaction and an enormously controversial interaction but the head of a network and even one most people do not know when make the trek to cuba about enemy number one of the time or one of the avowed enemies of the United States and noodle with fidel castro and his private island so fascinating twist in the book. He was basically a conservative and the fact that he even accepted that invitation and why do you think he did. I think he was dazzled the world leader was actually watching what he brought and it was a thrill and if you make something well that someone consumes it and was so uncertain and hed gone through so many obstacles which i detail in the book that could have killed cnn before it even started and even once it started it was what we would call a soft launch now that it wasnt guaranteed that it was going to keep going but it was only a couple million homes to start. The idea that all of the support this about enemy of the United States was issuing invitation was incredibly flattering. On a certain level ted felt that he was never really taken seriously in part because of his behavior and now all of a sudden the idea that somebody who enormously was serious would be reaching out and wanting to talk was not only lifechanging from him in terms of the course he set cnn on after that but affirming for him to. They had to cite at cnn to even get themselves part of the White House Press pool and again it seems like such an obvious thing and now especially since its an issue all the time but that it was not and it was not easy for anybody on the fringes of those networks to penetrate that very, very long to enter a circle and all of a sudden after that or it was basically still fighting it to have fidel castro say id like to meet you. Is heady. Thank you, you presented a very transformational moment in the life of ted turner as well that this television station and the thing that was growing in leaps and bounds and fidel castro was pirating basically the signal but there was cnn headline news, cnn and it was moving into Global Markets and to Cnn International and he began to see it as something more than just a money maker more than a risk but something that could actually change the world. How deep do you have that one for ted turner . I think it went enormously deep and important and not the most captivating part of the story that while that was going on the world was changing simultaneously and that was hard for us to remember that that was a moment in time but it wasnt just ted who was experimenting but lots of other people were experimenting and all around the world and this technology was revolutionizing everything and all sorts of good medications so he was able to, as he marched on, penetrate more markets and more nations and he got hungry and the fever of that was a thrill for him that he was going to beat this person using the wires that were wiring up the world to transmit this force for good. That was intoxicating to him as well. Yeah. Absolutely. How did cnn avoid hiring union broadcast technicians and how important would that be to cnn in the early days . Enormous. And never wouldve worked without it. There was another reason atlanta was incredibly wonderful place and all there were issues in new york and dc they got around it by an los angeles by jobbing out to a third party and it was controversial and one of the reasons that the White House Press corps did not want cnn in it because they were using non using non union labor but there was no way cnn with the budget it had could ever have got off the ground at that moment in time. Yeah. Im glad swan brought this up because i love this character. Among the many characters in the early days of cnn with Ted Kavanaugh gun toting newsman we still get to see his and at the book pretty how long did he stay and what was his biggest impact . I will take the second part of the question first. Ted turner or Ted Kavanaugh rallies the troops and literally was a ringleader. I was on a cnn anniversary call and an alumni call in honor of the 40th anniversary which i forgot to mention is part of the reason the book came out when it did. It just happened. To hear the reverence and adulation for ted all these years later, 40 years later was magnificent. I knew the people revered him and i knew that he was this commanding presence and commanding force but he basically got everybody motivated at a time when they really werent sure that it was going to work. He wasnt even sure it was going to work. It was magnificent a few weeks ago to see people and the respect that they gave him that were delayed. They never had a chance to thank him before that was a real privilege to witness that. Basically ted went on to start, Ted Kavanaugh, went on to start as cnn two which is ahead headline, another huge legacy of his for sure. You know, that whole book in itself and to the person who asked before when i left out there are many books after words from the time that i chose to stop this because there was just no way to write it all the time. Aol, time warner have written wonderful books about but cnn two was a creation of Ted Kavanaughs stories about the formation of cnn to our fantastic and then after that he went and did some special projects, special reporting and investigative reporting man a unit for a while within cnn so he wasnt there a terribly long time given the place has been around for years but every Single Person along the way who interacted with him he is a memorable person and im honored and privileged to have gotten to know him in the course of writing this book and to help tell the story because i think its really important. It was such a big deal appeared we know it went on they are june 1, 1980 despite checkups and a lot of old order News Organization that say cheering for its fall. How will they find this news but it is because cnn had to fill time that a crew was following president reagan to his speech in the Washington Hotel in marc. Could you set that scene for us. Why was it such a big deal for cnn . That was an amazing day because a year after cnn went on the air it was still only in several million homes and there still werent that many homes in the nation that could receive it because cable was not, cities were not wired for cable at that point but that twinned with the animosity of the networks and the jealousy and the disbelief on the part of the networks that anyone would care about news 247 combined to make a perfect storm on march 30, 1981 and the president was shot and there was a crew and always a crew in the White House Pool was always with the president in this event and in case something happened to him. Cnn was not allowed to be part of that pool and they happen to be inside, as you say, at the speech that he gave was just time filler for cnn which you then needed a lot of at that point. Basically its a long story and a detail it in book but basically it was a day that put cnn on the map in the minds of the press corps and that helped make them aware that there was, not just a zest for the news, but the dangers that were introduced because of 24 hour news. Because of the immediacy of news so we are not releasing and measurable form since president kennedy had been shot. Invite anyone who was a student of media history which of course i am in a major way go on youtube and watch Walter Cronkite talk about or any of the other anchors who talk about the shooting and subsequent death of president kennedy and you get a flavor for why 24 hour news is a very dangerous, as well as riveting and convening force, and that day the president reagan was shot in 1981 really was the worst fears about news and the news being reported like a sporting event as it was unfolding and all the attendant and inaccuracies that could happen as a result in the cascading effect of bad news being delivered instantly and we live at all everyday instantaneously, you know, constantly to our peril and detriment, i think but that was one of the first times that we saw that. Right, you cant fact check in real time. This idea that the news not reporting it in its aftermath anymore but while it is unfolding is one of the things that reese really wanted to do and this is the big question i think that readers are left with especially during the first decades of cnn, whether it was covering significant things or creating significant by creating them. And blamed for creating this turn of breaking news, breaking all the time so is the origin of 247 news something we should celebrate . While, you know, personally what i think i avoided it in the book and i thought it was really important to write this book now and of course i didnt know when it was in progress that we would be in the situation that we are in right now of course but i think its super important for people to have the dialogue and we dont have dialogue anymore and we shout at each other and that is why i welcomed the conversation with you because news has deteriorated and debilitated our society and im very sad about it and i feel, you know, im beyond minor player in anything in the media but i am so grateful not to be working in daytoday media right now and i struggle with its impact enormously which is why i think i enjoy writing the history of it because i think its only if we study the history of it and if we just shut down the polarization or trace back the polarization that we have in our Society Today to the news pre cnn because certainly president nixon railed against the press as much as the president today does in a different way and the press was different but weve been seeing a societal breakdown because of television and televisions inception and before that we saw it because of radio inceptions and i think my last book was about the creation of fast food and the woman who took that money and gave it all away and i would say the same thing back then. I cant solve why we became enamored with eating food out of packages as we ran around but i can explain how it happened and understanding it makes me a smarter and more thoughtful hopefully human and consumer and i will say the same thing about news. If you think about the breakdown and even the beginning of the book that ive drawn out here up all night because for those who have not read it it does begin in the late 40s with another incident that was set the tone for Television News and if you look at that arc of the 40, 50, 60 years you really get hardcore sense of how society and media have broken down. That is a longwinded way of saying but also unite in the heart of what happened in the story is that you write about and people who buy the book is just a terrific way to frame the book too. The sort of like what was going on in the 40s when people couldnt keep their eyes off the story about Human Interest in the now can keep their eye off the latest political spats being chewed over and over but i will try to tie a couple questions from the audience here and that whether or not ted watched his channel and he was pretty hyperactive guy but also one of the surprises in the book was learning that ted was essentially a conservative and how over time it morphed into this institutional reviled by political conservatives like ted turner that was in the 70s and 80s. Well, it is so inducing because it takes someone of a certain age which i happen to be to remember that politics did not use to enter into a Television Channel and never would have produced the news, as i say, president nixon felt the news was too liberal back in the late 60s and early 70s. However, it was not a world that we live in today and was absolutely not teds intent and i point out that it was a conservative at the time that he started cnn because i wanted to see that it was not about politics. He did not start this with some admission that he needed to have a political agenda but fourth and in fact he would not have allowed it if he had and he was afraid when he joined him that maybe there was some undercurrent of that and quickly realized that that was the case and what has become today and as i frequently say in 1996 when fox started that is when cnn had to shuffle and respond to competition. Until it had competition the issues that were raised were basically those about accuracy and what is news. I raise the question what is news, is a little girl in a well news . Is a shuttle exploding in the aftermath news so what is news . But once fox came along and had its very decided point of view that forced cnn to scramble and of course, that is a whole other book in and of itself and im sure has been written. Im not going to read it but weve lived it. Weve lived it. That is what causes this polarization and Political Force that these channels have become. Ted turner was used to wandering around the studio in his bathrobe in the middle of the night hitting on women and saying outrageous in office often racist things and would so be canceled today this is very much about a time capsule and a time when things were quite different and thank goodness for many, many reasons. But im also wondering about the people he spoke to them what they think and what ted turner thanks of what happened to cnn in the people who were there during those early days, how they feel about what happened because this is a very idealistic project. I cant speak for all the people and there were three people who were there at the beginning but i will say that i noticed in chatter. Places on social media and in talking with people that there is a sense of distress about what news and what cable news has become. You know, that was just an unthinkable concept back then that you would introduce you may have a commentator on but you would never have what we have today which was a decided point of view from cnn or from fox and from msnbc. I think the people are sad and perhaps disillusioned about what has become of it for sure. Absolutely. I know i am. I find it unwatchable but i think that everybody is proud to have contributed again, not to speak for everyone but i think the people are proud that they were there at the creation and should be. It was an exciting time. Its just like a car and i was going to say henry ford in the car but henry ford turned out to be a very polarizing person as well but any invention, any creation raised to cover the internet and covered the internet and the very beginning of the web and that was an exciting and thrilling time where we were always asking the questions of its impact and societal changes that were spun forth because of it. I guess i dont mean to sound so nambypamby but i think its important to talk about how it changed our lives and how the computer changed our lives and made them better and richer but also distracted us, fractured us. I dont know if im answering your question that wait. I think what you said, its a discussion paid theres no pat answer for Something Like that. You know, the toothpaste is out of the tube and its evolved in a way that it is evolved and so lets go out on a right and triumphant note because we had a comment that i never really addressed here. Ted turner, the sailor. The yachtsman, the winner of the americas cup. I know that was part of the revelation for you writing this book was seen who he was in that part of his life someone who really could run things in a really determined way. You know, every single day i was writing this book and even now when you just said that i get chills thinking about it. Yes, he would have been run out of town today as many men would have been from that era. It is fair to point out that that era was a completely different one. But when you think about the weight ted turner lived his life, he lifted so large. We should all have a fraction of the gumption and excitement and thrill that he had in his life and to watch those old sailing films, if you can see any of them, they are complete and total thrill to see him young and handsome without a shirt on with these handsome men on the side fabulous engineering creation in the water working so hard to gather and just so exciting to see and to see him at the baseball game a few days later screaming his lungs out chewing tobacco, running bases around the field and its just, he lived life to the absolute fullest and that was all way before Jame Jane Fonda came, there was this gleam in his eye. That man sees the moment and was born into beans and took the means and grew it but i was such a privilege to read and understand him again, very complex character but as i get older myself i look for people i want to look at and say who i hope his fractured state right now that he knows that he lived his life in such a grand and he lived it. He lived it. Thats what we can all hope. Did you speak with him for the book . I know his dementia has progressed. I did and prayed i didnt even try friendly. Theres so much he said and that he wrote that was written about him, speeches he gave a knowing hes in the state he is in. It just seemed, you know, almost pointless and cool and and biography what youre doing is trying to go back to a moment in time and yeah, so no. I did not. I wish i could have known him when he was younger. We are a couple of minutes over so i just have to ask you and i know there is a movie deal in the works and thats kind of thing can go on forever and its not in your control but you have any inkling of who would play ted . [laughter] its so funny, im a popculture dunce that i havent gotten a clue but the people who did buy the rights have mentioned that it was too bad that George Clooney wasnt a little younger because he wouldve been a perfect, perfect ted turner bret i am so bad and i welcome everyones suggestions, not that i have anything to do with it but it would be so much fun. Who would play ted kavanagh and bill tosh, that was as important to me so i hope it gets said and i so want to say quickly what i do not say in the beginning, i did get assigned bookplates to a cappella so if anyone wants signed book im happy to get one to them so yeah. Such a great book and its so much fun reading it. Its a right good romp. Thank you for sticking with it. Thank you for being here. Those unbelievable stories that we did not get to the combined leases napoli book up all night and theres a link to the book on the right screen. It will be broadcasting excerpts from this interview this coming friday at 11 00 a. M. And you can stream it from gbp news. Org or from our app. On wednesday jessica will be interviewing heather about the bears and on thursday author sayyid jones and lehman are in conversation about writing and i will be back on tuesday july 212 talk about life in the transition with bruce weiler. Its a good book collective stories from people who been through wrenching life changes so a very timely book in its own way and theres a full schedule and zoom links at Atlanta History Center. Com and thank you all for joining us and i try to get in as many questions as i could really appreciate it and by, lisa. Thank you so much. The Supreme Court hears oral arguments on the Affordable Care act in the consolidated cases of texas beat california and california v texas. This is on tuesday at 10 00 a. M. Eastern on cspan. The healthcare law was challenged by texas after 82017 republican tax law eliminated the penalty for not having healthcare insurance. Listen to the oral arguments live at 10 00 a. M. Eastern on cspan, ondemand cspan. Org Supreme Court or on the cspan radio app