Franklin roosevelt, they are great speeches. Words are much more important than many people realize. I remember when Hillary Clinton was running the last time, she accused her competition of just using words. Using words is a huge part of leadership. The great president s of all had that power of communication, lincoln, theodore roosevelt, franklin roosevelt, jack roosevelt, jack kennedy, words matter. Words in dewar and they carry on into the following generation. We still quote them. As did Martin Luther king without the power of his words. That is why it is so important that we all learn to use the english language. One of the startling, marvelous aspects of the Wright Brothers was the quality of the letters they wrote. It wasnt just that they were correct grammatically, they are powerful, they were effective, they were clear, they could be very funny, they could be very touching. They were incapable at the correction of library of congress proves, there are incapable of writing a short letter or a boring one. If you want to get inside their lives, which is what i wanted to do, as, as a human being, that is where it is. What they put down on paper in the english language. I would have wanted to written a book about the Wright Brothers even if they had not succeeded in their mission to fly. So much is there to learn from their attitude of life and their value of having purpose in life, the value of remaining modest. Modesty is so out of fashion today that it is disheartening,. You were brought up to be modest, you didnt break, you didnt act like you are bigger than your boots. You didnt tell lives, you had good manners, the Wright Brothers who yes were mechanics, they never went to college, they never had well. They were gentlemen. When i got to europe and suddenly became famous and they were associated with royalty and some of the wealthiest people in the world, they never felt the least inferior because they have been raised to behave. Why should they feel inferior in any way . Certainly they were as well read as anyone in their time, maybe better. Host David Mccullough, anytime youre in washington want to talk to book tv, we would love to have you come in for an hour and take calls. Spee2 you want to be careful about saying that. Thank you. Thank you peter very much. Host thank you. Next month from septembers 15th annual National Book festival, conversation from private on Tran Tom Brokaw and his recent bout with cancer. A lucky life interrupted his tom brokaws most recent book. Mr. Brokaw, lets start off with a text from a viewer. How are you feeling. Guest i am feeling pretty well, but big news is my cancer is in remission. I have some residual issues, its a Bone Marrow Cancer and it affected my spine. I had to have that repaired. My back is not all that i would like. Spee1, you write. Host, you write about when you discovered up at the mayo clinic, 48 hours before you told your wife, what is that like. Guest not easy. You go into an entirely different zone. One moment moment you think you are 73 in healthy, biking across america. Shooting in various parts of the world, fishing in montana. Then i suddenly have an incurable but treatable cancer that i do not know much about. I did not want to tell her over the phone. I was in a mayo clinic board meeting. I did. I do not want to tell my fellow board meteors members. So i doubt with it. I was working on a documentary of the 50th anniversary of this fascination of john kennedy. I would work on my computer and that and work on my ipad im finding more about multiple myeloma. I got back to montana in the middle of the night, sat on the edge of the bed, said to meredith, you have to understand we had an unbelievably rate life and nothing had ever gone wrong. I have got cancer. It was stunning to both of us. We went from there. Host we are talking with tom brokaw, well have a short time with him, we want to get you involved, 7488204. For those of you in the mound pacific time zone, we are taught taking Text Messages as well 202 4656842 is the phone number to text. Please do do not call that number just text. From your most recent book, lucky life interrupted, as i made my way back to the hotel, i kept checking my emotion. Note why me god, still a a lucky guy, i have the best medical care. We caught it early, unfairly or not i have access to whatever resources i need. Guest that was all true. On the other hand it turned out to be more difficult experience than i dissipated it would be. Even with the help that i had with access to good physicians, Good Health Care plan that ahead. One of the things i read about in the book was that doctors really have to learn how to talk to patients about what to expect. No one said to me, theres going to be excruciating plan because bone damage will come with it. Therell be moments when we tell you something will happen and it wont. So you have to be prepared for that. The thing that i learned on my own is that it was very helpful, in my case, to have my emergency room doctor, a really brilliant young physician who had been through a lot of different things, as my boots men. She did her independent research, they both said well take jennifer on our team at any day. She was extremely helpful to me because she could interpret. Finally that when i was talking to a dr. Like im talking to the dr. Would say, on a scale of one to ten what is your pain level i would say three, three, chewed down behind him and say no. Host is it hard and difficult to get around in montana given the remoteness of your place right now, are you still flyfishing . Guest i am there now, go out every morning and jump into the cold river, get my heart started. Identify fishing. I dont write a horse because a spinal damage. I hope to get back to that. I cant climb the way i used to. Go up and down the mountains. On the other hand, American Healthcare is pretty amazing. In billings, montana they have an affiliated partner with the mayo clinic. So if i need something i can can get down there and get firstclass care. I have had to temper my physical life, i hope to get most of that back at some point. Host what did you learn about the American Medical System with this . Guest if you are in a position like i am, where you have Financial Resources and you can pick up the phone and get help, it is fantastic. If youre down in the middle ranks or the lower end of it, it is confusing. Youre still going to get good care but it is really tough to get through the system. The big thing is the cost. I took a pill this morning, 500 dollars. I hundred dollars. I have to take it every morning. When i was being treated, the same pill is a chemo, i was taking to every warning. That was 1000 in pills. I have a Health Care Plan that covers a most all the cost. Ive been saying if i were a guy i went to a Community College in the middle the country, and i if im making three or 400,000 dollars hundred thousand dollars a year i have my own Health Care Plan i get hit with this at age 55, i dont know what to do. Im not eligible for medicare, my plan doesnt cover, i go to the hospital where their shifting costs around so it becomes a bureaucratic nightmare for you. That is the real issue i think. Communication is a big part of it as well. Host tom brokaw is our guest, the number two text is 202 4656842 phonemac, well begin with phone calls. This is mary in huntsville, alabama. Merry go. Mary go ahead with your question or comment for tom brokaw. Caller hello tom. We were together at the university of south dakota at the same time. I want you to know that at 18 months i was in mail clinic, 18 months with a tumor in in my cheek and i am still here. At three years from 80. I was born september 20 fifth, my folks were both over 40 and should have known better. Ive also been through cancer a couple of times. I think of you often, i listen to to you when you are on. You are quite wonderful. I just wanted to say hello, thats all. Host mary, where in south dakota are you from originally. Guest watchers. He was from near the river. Guest home of the watertown arrows. Caller yes. Host were you able to catch all of that. She was talking about her own medical care at the mayo clinic, shoes there for 18 months. She went to the university of south dakota and you are there as well. So when people see you, do they they want to talk about the greatest generation . Their own health story . Or the news industry today . Guest a combination of the three of them. I still get people coming up every week even though the book has been out for 15 years and one talk about the greatest generation. What their father mother was doing, things, things they didnt understand that they now understand. Now i am talking about multiple myeloma and want to know what kind of regimen i am on. They will tell me what theyre going through. That they will say to me, how come the news is not like when you are on it or when walter was there. I have not usually answer for them. I say you know, if you work harder at it and you dont be a couch potato, you have access to more news than you ever have before. I had a friend who edits the financial time in london, i can get up and read his editorial, his columns, i have to work harder at it. We didnt have cspan at the beginning by the way. When i first started in the business. So you just cant take whatever comes off the screen. You have to become a proactive consumer. Host next call is from lucille in iceland, new jersey. Hi lucille hi lucille. Caller hi peter. Hi mr. Brokaw. This is a question for mr. Brokaw, before i do my question i want to say i saw the exchange between mr. Mcculloch and mr. Brokaw and it almost brought tears to my eyes. These two american judgment. My question is, i am a retired news, news, i worked for 35 years. My own mother and law is very all right now and were working on getting her some longterm help. My question and you said in your book you kept talking about having a liaison to navigate all of the physicians and everybody that is another case. I case. I am doing that for my motherinlaw. But the normal american patient does not have access to a person like that. How, or where can that person, can the people get to that person . Guest i think i understand the question peter but how do you get access to the best care, find out whats going on . There are not a lot of sites, for example something called out multiple Myeloma Research foundation. Kathy who is a victim of multiple myeloma has created this storage house and you can go on and find out the latest information, best techniques, good doctors. You have to be careful about just randomly googling everything. You will read read stuff that is not necessarily true. You have to be able to sort through the truth of it. The best way to do it is to find other people who have gone through these experiences, whatever kind of cancer does. Talk to them, right up your network of friends. Who work who work for you, what was your success rate . If you do that then you can kind of do your own detective work. The problem is, most people going to Doctors Office and treated like a mayan temple. They dont speak the language. They just take whatever said to them. You have to be as aggressive up finding a position or determining the pattern of healthcare as you do about buying a flat screen television, or a new parachute, or an automobile. We have no idea how much healthcare costs. No, people dont ask questions about costs. One of the things tried to get the medical community, i was at the Mayo Medical School a few years ago and you have to be aware of what these costs. Its not going to affect what you order up but when patients come to you, you have to know completely what it is that troubles them and what worries them. Host part of that address which you put in the book, my guess, talking about the cost and Payment System in its current form is unsustainable on a national level. It is too opaque, too, too chaotic, too expensive, too uneven, too inefficient. Guest it is. I have have spent three documentaries on health care in america. One thing i learned very quickly is that if you have an uninsured person come to the er, what happen when they have the Staten Island ferry ran aground that way. A lot of waiters came they did not have any coverage. They lost their like so is very expensive. What the hospital did was surreptitiously, shift a lot of their cost to the rooms where people have very good healthcare. We were able to track how they were able to do that. It was a common practice in america hospitals, it is called cost shifting. They send a dr. Bike to say how you doing today and they say fine and then they get billed for dr. Visit. 250 dollars. That 250 goes to the. That 250 goes to the person who does not have coverage. Its a nightmare for the hospital, its a nightmare for the system, we, we need to have more transparency. Host attacks message from you. What what is one of the best world war ii memoirs that you recommend. Thank thank you for the contribution to americas letters. Guest there are many of them. I will talk about my friend Rick Atkinson who is one of our great military historians. The reason i say that is his book are the most seamless combination of history and memoir. They have so many letters in there and personal story as well. So if you read the book youre getting not only the big picture, the overview, but you are getting from the ground up a book look at what people were going through and what was happening. Their concerns about whether or not they will return. I think rick tells about them unlike any other historian i know. Host rick akin said by the way, and tom brokaw had both appeared on our indepth program. Our three our Monthly Program where we talk with one author and his or her body of work. Tom brokaw, Rick Atkinson you can watch them both on my netbook tv. Org. That program is live again tomorrow and lynn cheney as our guest from the most recent book is on james madison. By the way Rick Atkinson is now writing about the pacific, he, he decided to write about the revolutionary war. Guest he has been inviting me to retrace the steps of george washington. He was looking at the thai con ticonderoga battle. He does all of his own research. He takes my breath away. Host are you participating at all question xp to not yet. I will i been busy with my own book. He lets me know where hes going to be. Host when you talk about your own book this is from linda in california. She text, how does your getting cancer it informed your philosophy regarding life . Guest it made me much more conscious to the fact that i am in the mortality zone as i call it. Ive 73 when i was diagnosed. It just seemed like every day was a sunny day for me. My wife was in such good form. Now now im very conscious of the fact that im vulnerable. That i did have a terminal cancel but it could be treatable. So i am on the roulette real like everyone else who comes long. When im spending more time doing is sorting out what counts for me. Beginning with my family, family, my granddaughters, and my new grandson. Spending more time with them and looking at life through that. We have a granddaughter who started at columbia this week, ive been texting her every day because im so excited for her. I havent even started class yet youre asking me these questions , she said. Some very involved. Host next call comes from tim in milwaukee, wisconsin. Tim youre on the air. Caller thank you peter, mr. Brokaw i respected your body a work as as a journalist for so many years. I miss the old nightly newscast with you. My question was on journalism as a whole. You mentioned earlier that there are so many ways to get information and news, and if you put down and get the guardian, the, the london times come all that, my concern is seems you have to work really hard to get with them and now i get mtr pbs and occasional nightly news. What is your overall think of Investigative Journalism these days . And i want to wish you well to in your fight with cancer. Thank you. Host thank you very much tim. Guest we talked about this a moment ago. What i said is you have to be more breast as a consumer where you get your information, how reliable reliable and credible it is over. Of time. Investigative journalism theres more been done than you realize. These awards are for 35 and under journalist, almost every year we give it to very hardcore investigative journalists. A lot of them are doing it in digital arenas and online. It is breathtakingly good work. There is a Nonprofit Group a firstrate journalist and they are dedicated to Investigative Journalism. They have already won at least two pulitzer prizes. Work is going on out there, you just have to find it. Host are you in favor of the Affordable Care act and how would you change it . Guest i think it is mixed success depending on where you live in what youre doing. Kentucky has had pretty good success. When they deal with states they are giving them a lot of exemptions and letting them do what they want to do. Host . Guest people have to be prepared because the cost of insurance will go up and pretty sharply. My initial reservation was that it took too big of bite all at once. I would would have started with just the uninsured and then rolled and the other things that needed to be done based on what you learn from that. It wont be reversed but it will have to be modified. Host larry is calling in from dayton, ohio. Go ahead mary, this is cspan to a National Book conference. Caller hello. Can you hear me . Hello. Spee1 mary, please. Host mary, please go ahead, were listening. Caller hello mr. Brokaw, i am so so happy to be able to talk to today. I cant believe im getting in on David Mccullough the Wright Brothers and not you. I have watched book review every saturday and sunday. I am in a nursing home. Anyway, i want to tell you about my husband went to Mount Pleasant because he was having trouble and when he came home he sat in his leather chair and told me he had cancer. I sat on the chair, we held one another and cried. We had a beautiful story of life for us. I was 62 when when he died, and he was 67. So we miss him greatly and he was a wonderful man. So that is what i wanted to say about that. I will certainly be reading your book. I appreciate your life, like i did my husband. An example example for other people, i think, they tell me that. So thats what i have to say. Im actually in a nursing home. Host how old are you now mary . Caller , i am now 78 years old. Guest repeat the essence of what she needs for me to answer. Host i think she was sharing her story the fact that her husband came home from mayo, sat down told her that he had cancer and they cried and had a Beautiful Life together. Guest mary and i had the same experience. We sat sat at the edge of the bed. About 1 00 oclock in the morning and i said, this is going to change our lives. I did not have any idea about how dramatically it would change our lives. She is a rock. She is very cool and whatever she does, at this moment she is going to the mountains spending three days setting up camp and doing it. I could not not have gotten through this without her in so many ways. Middle of the night, getting my meds, doing that kind of thing. Then been extraordinarily well organized and always very calm. Never panic. Panic. Eight doctors in our family, many on her side and she should have been one of them. Host this is a text message. Are are you using any alternative healthcare methods . Guest know, i am not. We have a sisterinlaw, merediths sister who is an Integrative Medicine and is talking to me about it. Thus far i have not found the need to do it frankly. I am doing more therapy now. I did do some acupuncture a year ago. It was in montana and i need to do it the longer period of time to relieve the pain in my back. I am finding that physical therapy is taking care of most of my needs at the moment. Host are you pain right now . Guest a little bit. Host your back . Spee2 my my lower back. I had four compression fractures in my spine. I wish i had not not seen it it was pretty ugly. What happens is it is a Bone Marrow Cancer. The four fractures, they were not detected early enough so they repaired them with a cement they shoot into the fracture. I lost 2 inches of height which is a heart is anything to accept. I have to be very careful not to torquing my back. I got up this morning to do my stretching and yoga, back kind of thing every day. Water therapy is very good for me. I do see incrementally that im getting better. Host how long did you have the back pain before he was diagnosed correctly . Guest it is interesting, i had had a complete blood test nine months be for the diagnosis. Completely clean. About three months after that is when the back pain began to set in. I really thought it was a result of this bike trip i was doing in argentina and chile. I got back, do my typical step of ride my bike in new york, got on, got on the plan and went to south africa. Went to zimbabwe on a safari, came home from that, fly fishing over man tannic, back pain would not go away. Orthopedist would look at it and said its your lifestyle time, your 73 and out there banging around. Because they didnt take a picture all the way down my spine, the lower back pain would not go away. My very smart, primary care physician at the mayo clinic was not an orthopedist or hematologist, he said something is going on. On his own, one morning he took my blood test and did what they called evidentiary medicine. He he kept the lemonade things and came to the conclusion that it was multiple myeloma. His thought, well known oncologist was only intricate of done that, hes that smart. That morning i thought i was fine, that afternoon i was told i had this pretty distressing, nasty disease. It turns out i had a hole in my pelvis which i did not realize. There is a hole through it. As my daughter pointed through it i was 50 involved with multiple myeloma. Host next call is from ron in arizona. Caller how are you doing mr . Are you today. My question is a couple of question. In military movies do you have to have a stamp for congress he dont dishonor them . Does that go through the library congress, when someone makes a military makes a military movie from a book or something . Host okay, is that your question . Caller another one. Host you know what, i apologize. Apologize. We are having a little trouble hearing. But you asked about military movies, do do they have to be approved by the government. Host . Guest during world war ii there is a lot of oversight but not now. Steven spielberg and i talked about this. I was living on an army base during world war ii i was four years old, is all propaganda, no one no one got killed on the american side. In 1948 there is an amazing bill made name battleground about the battle of the bulge. It was a great cast, George Murphy was later the senator of california, very, very, very touching and very realistic film. And people died, there is uncertainty about whether they would survive or not. I said to spielberg later, that was a revelation for me because i had never seen that kind of reality. He said to me, i think it is maybe the best war film ever made. Because of the authenticity of the time they made it. So if you want to see a war film, go see battleground. Platoon was great in vietnam. Saving private ryan is a great military film, and they set you guys are walking across the open feels like theres nobody around. You would have been a formation, you would have been behind, you had a better run around the way you were. But the landing itself, all the dday veterans say they did not think they could create that but they did. Host text message from someone who has had a lucky life, what would be your one piece of advice that would be not so lucky. Guest tomorrow is another day. See your life and dont leave your fate to others. Take control of your own life. Remember the sun does come up again and that you get out there and get it done. Look, there were times in my career and life when i did not know whether it would work or not. I came out of high school whiskey, dropped out of college eventually, i was just just a wreck for about three years. My wife, not that my wife, jerked me back into the upright position and i got going again. You have to take control of your life. Host another text. Celebrity does not come with a free pass, you were just lucky with good genes. Did you write down all of your questions before seeing the dr. . Guest no, i did not because i was was unprepared with what the diagnosis was. Ill give you the quick sequence. He looked at the numbers, i did not know what he was looking is looking at and he turned to me and said, elicits his exact work, you have a malignancy, its called multiple myeloma. You know people have died for this, the Vice President for canada on the democratic ticket, but you are in a good place and making progress. That was his opening line. We all wondered what you would send her those circumstances, i remain very cool and went into a journalistic mow. I. I said how long do i have . He said well five years technically but we are doing so much that i think youll be that. I want to look at some more things but that is where we are. How do we treat it was the next question i had. He said primarily with drugs but there is something called stem cell, we will take a look at you to make sure we have it right. I could see behind him, my primary care physician will with the look of concern in his eyes and that was because he knew how much my life was about to change and i did not. I knew i had cancer, i had to be treated, i knew it would disrupt my life and there was a possibility i would die from it. But, i did not know how hard it would be. Host another text from michelle in georgia. With your view of history and that your journalistic eyes watching the selection, what is your greatest concern and hope for our nation . Guest i try not to be the old folkie and say it is better my day. I talked to a lot of younger and older people as well, we, we all agree, it is chaotic. Make on trademark attic than any time i remember. Part of that is the result of social media and the Immediate Impact it has. My biggest concern is the polarization of america. We were breaking us up into parts and no one able to find common ground. The genius of this country has always been theirs are some common ground. I was a White House Correspondent during watergate. I would go to the white house and talk to bobby from west virginia, a big republican from michigan, they were in touch with each other. If this did not go well, how well, how do we pull the country together . That was a big lesson for me. You do not see that anymore. Now as a republican on the floor seem talking to a democrat, here she goes back to the caucus and gets lectured by other people from their party. What are you doing . No noah for all the strength of our we are greater than our strength of all these parts. We find find ways to Work Together and it unraveled. There is a lot of Simplistic Solutions being thrown around right now. We need to examine those. I would hope that as we get closer to the primaries and the caucuses, the voters, voters, and im confident they will be taking a sharper pencil to some of these positions. Host you mention president nixon and his talk. Guest i talked with him for the book. Host in 19731974, what were your impression of the Nixon White House . Guest a bunker. It was closed down every day. If you were a reporter you would go early in the morning, would not get out after after nightfall because you are working all the time. One of the things impressed me the most, let me say about the White House Press corps at the time, we were colleagues during that time. Were so careful about what we talked about. Theres very little speculation and opinion making. I would work really hard with the nightly news, that i would get on the phone and work with the today show. Now i would be asked to go on msnbc and there would be a lot of oio