Impeachment of clinton which was a fiasco, a couple Government Shutdowns. We are headed potentially for something thats so much worse than anything weve ever seen. The shutdown itself is a Little League baseball game compared to the world series of fiascos if they let this debt ceiling, if they tolerate it to fall. I all my reporting cant come up with an end game. I still think it wont happen and i think any kind of end game you come up with is only going to kick the can down the road on these other issues. But i think right now we are headed for a potential political and economic cataclysm unless serbia somebody gets wisner the next seven days. Rose chuck . Well, charlie, there was one thing the president did is he put himself out there supporting something that i know that both major and i have been hearing over the last couple of days which is the president will support anything boehner sends him that is quote unquote clean without any of those extraneous politicallycharged amendments on both a spending bill and a debt limit and hell tape it for any length of time. So six weeks, eight weeks, something very short term. President very explicit that hed be willing to sign that and then essentially agree that in that sixweek period theyd be locked in some form of negotiations. He even got into the so he sort of outlined what he was willing to say which could be, arguably, a compromise. What was astounding to me is boehner took that offer and called that agreeing to that Unconditional Surrender. So while i was somewhat optimistic that the president was at least painting the kick can can down the road end game scenario that albert was just referring to there, babers response to it tells you that maybe we should have no hope that this is going to end the way we all thought it was going to end. Rose major . Well, charlie, what we have is a disagreement about how to talk and when to talk. Both sides say theyre willing to talk. John boehner has now reduced his sum total of demands from House Republicans to a conversation. A conversation that has no known or defined conclusion. Just a conversation. Thats a pretty flexible definition of what republicans would agree to. The president said hes willing to negotiate about a broad number of topics, even changes to his beloved health care law. So both sides have staked out positions that are negotiable if in fact, they want to find a resolution. Rose mark, it was i think last friday that there was a story the times that the speaker had said he would not allow a default. Are we s where that idea now that the speaker will not allow a default. Well, you know, the speaker is said to have said this privately to his colleagues. On the weekend, on the sunday shows he painted himself into much tougher corner by saying that the u. S. Was on the road to default and he wasnt willing to rule it out and, you know, i think to pick up on one albert said, a big part of the president s message today was his trying to bat down this idea that either a default is inconceivable or that a default isnt as cot strofk as some people would say it is. He basically made the point that it is everybody bit as ruinous as you think its going to be and he went after people who are trying to argue including some republicans that we should test the proposition. I think also he was responding a little bit to what we wrote about today which is that the Financial Markets continue to view default as one Hedge Fund Guy put it as a black swan event. Just something thats so inconceivable that its not really priced into the markets yet. Sy think the president was trying to say today it is conceivable. Rose theres also this question about negotiations back and forth on this. Is the president on firm ground when he says im not going to me gauche because they ought to do what they are supposed to do. Thats what they were hired to do is to pass debt ceiling and also vote on the budget and i dont want to do that. I dont want to the negotiate because if i do well be doing this all the time and well get nothing else done. Is he on film ground in making that argument . Well, i would say that ultimately hes the guarantor of the nations credit worthiness. So i think its a difficult argument to say that im not going to negotiate because this is what these people are hired to do if youre really staring down the barrel at a default. Which is why i think he did open the door to this shorter timetable negotiations, some form of a clean c. R. What the interesting thing about that is he said in the same breath we cant keep lurching from one manufactured crisis to the other. And thats in fact, what hed be setting up if he were to engage in some timebound short period of negotiation. Rose chuck, you were shaking your head. No, it is. In one breath the president was saying we cant keep doing it this way on the other hand he was basically offering boehner a way out. You know, any time you negotiate with somebody on high stakes and you think that you have to come to some sort of agreement you want to give your opponent even if you think you have to upper hand. I think the president believes he does. I think you look at the polls he believes he does. I think the democrats certainly feel and this is Senate Democrats in particular believe that by agreeing to certain spending levels, by agreeing to have this short term that they have already come halfway to the republican position at this point and that theyre not going to give any more ground until the republicans simply flip the switch on the government and temporarily raise the debt ceiling so as to just shift the cataclysmic event that could take place on october 17, shift it to november 15 or december 1, whatever it is the agreed upon number so i think that it doesnt whether he is or not on Firm Position, i think the president believes politically hes certainly in pretty Firm Position on this. Charlie, this is an Important Note there and the white house wanted to make this clear after the president s press conference ended that even in accepting a six or eightweek or nineweek increase of the governments Borrowing Authority to avoid default, the president would do that with no conditions applied whatsoever. The White House Position is he wants to break the president , that is wants to break the fever of House Republicans either assuming that a default doesnt matter or its not as economically injurious as the president and other economics say it is and also break the fever that this can be a forcing mechanism in into which they can inject conversations about policy disagreements of long standing with this white house. Those are the two things the president wants to do. Now, is he on historically accurate grounds saying that the nonnegotiating position is tenable . Well, if you look at the history of this, no, hes not. Other president s negotiated lots of policy compromises around a debt ceiling increase. The one difference the president makes is under those circumstances the question of default was never a real live time bomb. The president believes it is now and he has to diffuse it and the only way he believes he can diffuse it is to not accept any conditions at all around a debt ceiling increase. Rose charlie, let me jump in. I think you have to differentiate between the shutdown and the debt ceiling. I think the shutdown is something that politicians will play politics with and thats happened before and it will happen again and its unfortunate, there may be a political price to pay, its an inconvenience. Some people really get a raw deal. But that is a different issue than an actual default. Major is right, there have been games before but nothing like this. This is unprecedented. Frankly, there should not where a debt ceiling. Its a silly an akronism that is only used by politician but to play to get this close to it to play to the point where there is a something close to a 5050 possibility that well default is this is where the president does have the high ground. Much more so than on the shutdown and i cant going back to what chuck said before, i cant quite understand john boehner here. There have been so many different John Boehners it depends on the day of the week. He obviously is feeling tremendous pressure. I suspect he hates his job. And he probably realizes that okay if they do kick the can down the road for six or eight weeks, as chuck said earlier, what do you kick the a k down the road to do . The same problems that existed going back to that that supercommittee of two years ago. Theres no deal to be had will there. Republicans wont will only accept a deal that just involves entitlements and democrats say no way theyll do that and dont forget you have Congressional Democrats as well as obama. So that is a nonstarter. So its hard to fine you can do little thing, the medical device tax could go but thats not very big. Its hard to find what a deal would be. Rose very quickly, charlie. The issue here is boehner this isnt about finding the votes and boehner believes that he is Holding Together such a Fragile Coalition inside the Republican Party and the problem is he has a Tea Party Caucus that, frankly, anything that isnt some sort of Unconditional Surrender on the president s part when it comes to health care or some of these drawing the lines in the sand on spending, theyre not going to accept any form of compromise. Boehner knows that so he has to draw this line. But boehner is holding this together. This isnt about saving his speakership. This is about making sure there isnt open warfare inside the Republican Party because of a compromise that looks like to the Tea Party Wing of the party capitulation to the president. If it looks like that which is what boehner fears then katie bar the door, every republican official is in deep trouble with this fervent its a minority inside the Republican Party but its an active one and they could cause real damage. Rose chuck, i know you have to go. Thank you so much for joining me. You got it, thanks, charlie. Rose let me come to you, major. What pressure points remain to be used that have not been used . Is anything that is not being utilized to bring some negotiation or some capitulation or some blinks that will end up with no disaster on october 17 . The only one i can think of right now, charlie, is the calendar itself. We are entering a phase of american politics in which external events, forcing mechanisms, appear to be the only way in which Congressional Republicans and Congressional Democrats and the president who disagree about issues are forced into an agreement. Outside external events, the National Process of legislating things, holding votes, having committee meetings, matching leglation and horse trading, all those other historically reliable means of resolving differences do not currently apply, forcing mechanisms from the outside like the pressure of a Government Shutdown which loomed for a while that were now into deeply, for the eighth day, that wasnt forcing mechanism enough. The default scenario is the last biggest and most historically important forcing mechanism ever and to pick up on al hunts point, if that is not the forcing mechanism, if thats not the vice that takes these disparate interests and shoves them together, if even for six or eight weeks, we have really entered a fundamentally new era of politics where political indecision and the inability to reach compromise and a deal even an unsatisfactory one begins to inflick economic harm not just here but throughout the Global Economic system. Rose and, mark, if you hear that argument, what do the 20 to 30 members of the Republican Tea Party who are behind this sty that very argument . To some extent we havent really tested it yet in the sense that as we get closer to it and as the markets begin to react that argument will be made to them ever more vividly. I think some of them play it down. Some of them try to argue that, well, we dont know whether its really this calamitous. Thats, again, what the president was trying to knock down today in the news conference. And, you know, he pointed out himself that even flirting with a default as we did the last time was enough to downgrade our debt for the first time in eons and raise our borrowing costs. So as you get into these kind of external events that major was talking about those members of the caucus will have to answer those. And some of the arguments they are making that maybe this is survivable or theres a way to do it thats not calamitous, that will be a harder and harder argument to make. Rose the end, al, does the president have to negotiate simply because he cannot allow default because he understands the consequences . I honestly dont think hes going to on the question of the debt ceiling. Charlie, i think there are two possible escapes, one doubtful, the other dangerous. The doubtful one is that the senate goes ahead and with ten or 12 republicans votes a clean debt ceiling bill and they say okay, weve passed a bipartisan debt ceiling. The problem is that those 50 or 60 Tea Party Members of the house could care wlaesz those ten or 12 republican senators think. The more dangerous possibility is sort of a replay of the tarp vote in 2008 where we actually go into a default for a day or two and see what a financial cataclysm it is and they quickly rush to try to rectify it. But, boy, that in itself is incredibly dangerous. Rose al lab, thank you. Mark, thank you so much. Major, good to see you. Good to see you, charlie. Rose well be right back. Stay with us. At that point, you put the tail on the head of the zombie and hit it very hard on top with one of the bureau drawers and then you kick it backwards and leap gracefully laughter applause Rose Margaret atwood is here. She had written more than 40 books of fiction, poetry and critical essays. Her work has the rare distinction of attracting both critical and commercial success. Her new book, maddaddam, completes a trilogy that began with oryx crake and continued with the year of the flood. Im pleased to have her here at this table again. Welcome. Thank you. Rose is a trilogy saturday . It was hard for me. Rose because . It was really long and also i had to keep track of all the little details. Sort of like continuity in a film. So if the person has blue eyes in this scene then theyve got to have blue eyes in that scene. Rose and when you set out the do this, do you do it because you cant put it all in one novel . Well, i didnt intend to do three when i did the first one but right ter they realized there were going to be a lot of questions so i went sbe the corners of that world to explore two other groups of people but it did take me a little bit of time. Rose whats the theme here . The struggle for survival . I think the theme is probably like a lot of books of this kind about imagined futures. The theme is really human nature. So who are we really. What are we capable of . How far can we change without ceasing to be ourselves . Rose do you begin with that big idea that you want to have and then you create characters and then you create what happens to your characters plot . I think i begin by thinking about extinction. Rose really. What it would be like if we were all facing engs tings . Not just us but various other creatures on the planet who, indeed, are facing extinction. But we have faced extinction in the past several times and we did make it through so we might this time as well. Rose this is called speculative fiction. Thats my term for it. Its in dispute. laughs rose so its thinking about the future and speculating what it might be and making it fiction . For me it means faking about the fiction with things we already have. So 1984 is speculative fiction. Star wars, Science Fiction fantasy. In another galaxy far, far away. 1984 this planet, stuff weve already got. Rose and this is a reference to noah and the origins of the bible . To adam, yes. So in the first book, oryx crake, theres a web site called mad mad and its logan is adam named the animals maddaddam. Rose what kind of world are you depicting here . Im depicting two parts of that world, number one, the future before, number two which is when a man made virus wipes out most of us. Mad mad. Rose which is a possibility. yes, people are indeed creating my cobs in the lab. Rose that could escape. Or somebody might take the top off the box on purpose. Rose so it could be malicious behavior. It could well be. Is. Rose is there anything different about creating these characters versus other characters . Your novels . For me no. I like to give my characters a past and i like to let them eat food. So novelists dont allow their characters to eat. The you notice in daschle ham met nobody ever eats. So i like to give them a parent. Youll notice that Sherlock Holmes has no parents. Hes got a brother but no parents. We never hear about the childhood of young sherlock, do we. Rose no. But i like to have childhood rose you want all of your characters to be fully functioning human beings. Well, i like to know where they came from. How come theyre like that. If. Rose how do you explain hour come theyre like that . Well, you know, you never really know, but in a novel eer since the 19th century in Great Expectations we like to know a little bit about the characters childhood. At least i do. Rose so what interests you the most in . This line of conversation were having now, are you interested in politics . Are you interested in International Terrorism . What is it . Do i have to choose . laughs rose fair enough. But all of these things, its a novelist garden. Thats where the novelist goes. Im interested in just about everything but not all novelists are like me. Some people wouldnt say well, im interested in my hometown or im interested in my age group or im interested in new technologies or im interested in large friendly dinosaurs. Rose or im interested in spying. Yes. In fact, there are associations that you can join, International Crime writers and things like that and International Thriller writers. Rose or Science Fiction. And people get together and discuss things and on twitter, for instance, why is it always in block . Those people will answer. And think eel tell me why its a glock. Rose you really are deep into the internet, arent you . You have 700,000 or something . Thats not me. Thats rob delany. Rose how many have you got . Ive got 426,000. Are you writing things that you hope will generate more people . I got into this by accident. I was building a web site back in 2009 and they said rose what was this called . The web site . It was a web site for the year of the flood which is the second novel in that federal ji and id never built a web site before, i didnt know know anything about that stuff so they said you need to have twitter and i said what is that . And they said oh, its simple. And i said whats the point of it . And they said give it a try. Rose and you gave it a try. And did it resonate with you . I had a twitter coach. Rose you did . Yes. Who helped me out. Mcchain gries and you can find him on twitter. Rose what did he teach you . He said make it short. And he put a shoutout to a couple of his twitter buddies and so i do that for other people. Rose do you follow people on twiter . Oh, yes. Rose oh, yes, who . So ive met people through twit we are, believe it or not. Rose they Say Something interest and you say id like to talk more about that. You start a conversation with them and sooner or later there they are at your read or e. M. S. You find yourself for instance, neil gay man, i initially interact with him that way and gaye man and we did an event together at the edinburgh book festival. Rob delany i havent met yet but i just got a copy of his yet unpublished book. Rose how is it . Its extremely funny and quite crude. Rose crude . As you might expect. Rose do you think you could write about pretty much anything . The skills that you have, your core competence is not only command of language, for sure, story telling for sure, and so whether its Science Fiction or whether its crime or whether its a western or whether its has to do with the drama of a small town you can do it all because those things those skills are transfer to believe all those subjects. Up to a point. I find it very hard to write from the points of view of people from other countries. Rose oh its not hard to write from the point of view of a tourist in that country. Where you basically dont know whats going on. But to be inside of a person from that other country you would really is to spend a lot of time snoochlt. Rose does that include britain . Yes, it includes britain. Rose really. Yes. Rose even though youre part of the commonwealth. Well laughs we talk different. Rose especially youre in quebec. But how are you changing . Youve had this enormous success and you keep going strong and this is 40th is this the 40th . Ive lost count. Rose have you really . What do you think it is . Were using the over word. Were saying im over 60 years old. Ive written over 40 books. We dont go further than that. Rose because you dont care or its not worth making that delineation. It sounds really like a lot. Rose it does. Well, it is a lot, isnt it . It is quite a lot but i have to explain that its cumulative. So you take the amount of years youve been on the planet and you divide the number of books into that and its not that prolific. Rose py maybe a book every two years or well, thats not really speedy. Joyce carol oets was rose but shes infamous for how prolific she is. Famous. laughs oates. Rose laughs i stand corrected. Youre right. Renown. Renown. That covers just about everything. Rose how about well known . Well known exs extremely good. You can be well known for just about everything. So, yes, its not that fast, really, it just builds up and they dont seem to go out of print so it looks like a lot on the shelf. Rose now theres this idea. I had a conversation this week because of an interview i was doing with the Time Magazine writer who has written about how people, he believes, and he would cite. The picasso is one and einstein maybe is another are creative and that creative abilities grow because the more they learn about Brain Science they believe that theres a regeneration that takes place and when you marry that experience it adds to your creativity as you get older. Are you buying this . Im certainly liking it. Buying it and liking it arent always quite the same but ill go along that. Rose but youre at the height of your powers, are you not . Who knows. Rose you might be Getting Better next year. Or i might be getting worse. Well find out. However we do know and this is just in that playing certain kinds of video games keeps you from getting dementia. Isnt that good . Rose thats very good. We thought it was the death of our children, didnt we . Yeah, grand theft auto, apparently thats a good one, im told. Rose you may know better than i but it is true because we worry about the Attention Span of our children. On the other hand we know that it is in fact certain kinds of video games enhance the neurocircuitry and all that. Well, this other news just in which is pretty good news rose you get a lot of news. Yes, guess who tells me all this news . My twitter followers. Anything that comes across their canvas they tell me. Rose couldnt you be doing this all day . It certainly sucks you in. Rose it does, doesnt it . Have you been able to resist being suckd . Well, ive got other things to do but they do direct you any time. Rose heres what i would like that know if you tried this i believe you must have. So youre writing your next novel and youre letting writing chapter by chapter in your you want to let your readers know where youre going and what youre doing there becomes a collective among all the people that are twitter that follow your tweets with of involvement with your creative process. Rose that exists. It does. Rose it does . With you . Apparently. Its called watpad and i have done a story on it with a cowriter called Naomi Alderman and its called the happy zombie sun rise home. We did it chapter by chapter and people could follow along as we were doing it. And, no, we didnt have it plotted out ahead of time. Rose okay i know about that and ive read about it, too. But im asking even if suppose you set out to write a novpl and you got a thousand people who follow you and you really take them along the journey and solicit their opinion for what the character would do. That is what happened to Charles Dickens in the 19th century. Rose they would write in. They would say youre being too mean to this character. Rose so what do you think about this idea . Im not there yet. Rose what would get you there . Jo i dont think anything would quite honestly because i think what i like with the book is to be able to start on page one and not know whats going to happen you can do that on watt pad but i also rewrite a lot so where would we be when were going along to maybe chapter and then i started rewriting chapter two. Rose but you get to the end before youry write . No, its a rolling barrage. I rewrite as i go along. Rose if you get to chapter 10 that you wont go back and refix two . I might. Rose oh so you may be do both. Its always going on at once. Rose see i would think there would be easier just me. Just sort of work back so i want to end up here and have them take this route, this route, this route. This is whats so exciting about what you do. Before i get them there i want them to be here and then you can sort of figure out all the things and you can put things in chapter two that we may not take note of by what happens in chapter 5 we see how relevant it was that chance meeting Edgar Allen Poe said famously that mystery stories are written backwards. Which they have to be. Because how can you sprinkle the misleading clues unless you know them. Rose i didnt know hed said that. He invented that form. Back in the 19th century with his character who was the granddaddy of all the detectives that we have in fiction today. Rose heres my picture of you, all you do all day is read and tweet. Thats entirely false. I did the ironing. Rose do you really. Oh you have somebody to do the ironing, dont you . No, i think its very rose therapeutic . I think it induces ideas to do a repetitive activity that is not connected with writing. Rose so while youre there ironing your mind is wandering all over the landscape . Well, we dont like to put it that way. Rose how do you like to put it . It is thinking in a focus way about something else. Rose are you unlocking a part of your brain that is your unconscious brain . Yeah, i want to say its Something Like that but everybody will tell you its the same thing. Rose that they have great ideas when theyre not thinking about it . Its the eureka path tub moment. You know, archimedes. Rose have you had many eureka bathtub moments . Not in the bathtub. I like to read in the bathtub. Rose while ironing . The occasional idea. Gardening, digging. Rose gardening would be good i would think. Gardening is good. Rose because it gets you outside. Thats better. Yes, as well as you get food. Rose what do you not have that you most covet. I would like to be all ther. Rose would you really . Tall is great. Once upon a time i was the average size for a female person in my generation. Rose which was what, 56, 57 . Youre so cute. 54, not an inch less. Rose laughs but they put something in the milk and now youve got all these tall young people and theyre really rose so the average height of women is growing. It seems to me and its not just the extra high heels. Some new material that causes them not to break. Rose so youd like to be taller. Is that the most thing you most confidante . Id like to be an opera singer such as joan sutherland. Rose her particularly . Rose her particularly but maybe not looking exactly like her. Maybe looking a bit different from her. Rose maybe a bit taller . She was tall. Rose was she really. 5 11 . Maybe it took a big frame to encompass that yeah, i wouldnt mind being that tall, id just like to look slightly different. Different hair. Rose a friend of mine has a concept called the ovarian lottery where you were born influences obviously oh, really. What about when . And when, too. Rose where and when. Just before world war ii we wouldnt have had rationing and i would have been all ther. How about that . Taller. Rose i grew up in the story telling community and that appeals to me. So did i because my importants were from nova scotia. Rose do they tell stories in nova scotia . Yes theyre oral raconteurs, mostly embarrassing stories about other people in the family. Rose one of the things youve predicted were straight into biography here. One of the things you wrote about was sex enhancement drugs. And . Rose well, whered that come from . laughs out of the newspaper, basically. Rose really . What is it, viagra, all that . It was postviagra. Viagra had already been invented and there were a million viagra jokes making the rounds. Youve heard some of them. Rose i did. But people then started working on various other but this is a very old concept. It used to be called aphrodisiac rose indeed. So theres folklore about that. Rose because youre so well read, are there aphrodisiacs that come from some plant and growing only in nova scotia . laughter i think you should ask them. And if it did they werent going to tell you they wanted to keep that to themselves. Rose well go harvest that place. But, i mean, are there . With your vast knowledge, you read a lot. Have there been aphrodisiacs that have been proven to be true . Im not going on the record about that. Rose do you know . I actually dont know. I dont know how proven to be true it works. So you have to have a control case. Rose it seems to me if it was true some Pharmaceutical Company would have been there. Unless the substance was so cheap and not copyrighted so that they couldnt make money out of it. Like, you know, some sort of herbal tea which they do, of course, log quite a bit the herbal tea area. Rose so this is coming from me so bear with me. Are you instigated . Rose provocateur. I just feel like provoking today. All right, go to it. Do your worst. Rose every time i ill bet you theyre following how much . Rose ill bet you a hundred dollars or dinner or lunch. Rose its gating cheaper. Rose laughs no, i eat well. Ill pet you that the most frequent google of you is Margaret Atwood and hand maidens tail. Oh, you would win that bet. See but its changing. Maddaddam is now creeping up and i did google today an item thats in the first book which is called chicky nugs which is a form of chick thans grown on a headless chick than grows multiple breasts, wings and drumsticks. Rose is that right . Its fiction. Rose its not in mcdonalds. So you made up a headless chicken . I made up a head lech chicken. Rose so thats what they reference. So if you put chicky nugs on your search it says economicy nugs then you find it being used as an item in the language. So its entered the language. Rose what else has entered the lang sfwhaj probably the hearing aid maids tale was used quite a lot in the latest president ial election as something republicans should not do people were saying please republicans the hand maids tale is not a recipe. Rose are you happy . Am i happy . Rose uhhuh. Of course im happy because happiness is a byproduct of being interested in what you do. Its not a goal. You dont go out looking for sort of unadulterated happiness unattached to anything else. Rose what percentage of people do you think are actually doing exactly what they should do . Very few. Rose its a sad thing, isnt it . Well, i think you know what has happened is that peoples natural inclinations and capabilities there are not enough places in the world where they can do those things. Rose you can love acting but if theres not enough theater you got it. I did them on the side you usually find in somebodys life or place where theyre doing what they like and then theyre having this other thing that they do to make money. Rose well, i really like talking to you so sthaung. Rose thank you. Rose great to see you again. Rose this book is called maddaddam. Its the third in a trilogy, as i said earlier and im always pleased to have Margaret Atwood here. Back a n a moment. Stay with us. I think they now recognize that having wealth if you use it intelligently can be a means of accomplish manager good things and i feel all of our six children use the funds that they have wisely and well and im very proud of what theyre doing. Rose you have said i think before to me you think you hope your legacy will be that you have used the wealth wisely. The that is certainly true. And along with that i feel very proud of the fact that i brought up six children who were, i think, going to make their own mark in the world. Are making their own mark in the world in a very constructive way. Rose one of those children is his daughter Eileen Rockefeller. She is the great granddaughter of john d. Rockefeller, the founder of standard oil. She currently serves as the founding chair of rockefeller felon throepy advisors as well as the family fund. Shes written a memoir. It is an explo ration of identity and a look inside of one of the most important American Families in all of our histories. Its called being a rockefeller becoming myself. Im pleased to have Eileen Rockefeller at this table for the first time. Welcome. Rose thank you, charlie, its a pleasure to be here. When you write a book, its not an easy task as you found out. No, its not. But i have to say that the six years of writing it were a lot shorter than the 61 years its taken me to become myself. Rose laughs now what does that mean . 61 years is when you see yourself fully formed and this is what its about . Well, i hope ill never be fully formed. But im evolved enough to be able to incorporate the rockefeller as well as the eileen. Rose is it hard to be a rock feller . Yes. Rose because much is expected . Much is expected. Its both a great opportunity and a challenge. And certainly i have received many, many benefits and along with them come the responsibilities of doing well. Rose you say without anxiety and desire to heal it i would not be writing this story. Yes, you know, i think anxiety is a great motivator and that when you can work through it it brings you to whole new places in life. So for me this book was about healing my relationships with my family and really coming into a new place as eileen, myself. Rose why did they need healing . Well, every large family has for competition for attention and ironically in a family bring up where there was so much material abundance there was a sense of scarcity that i shared with my siblings for attention. Rose meaning that you felt isolated, alone, not yes, for several reasons. One, because my parents of necessity had to travel a lot and my father was away for business a great deal. And then also being the youngest of six children by three years to the next oldest meant that i wasnt part of sort of the core group at that time. Rose so whats the big best of the legacy that you had to have . I think best of the legacy is a caring for fellow human beings and a deep connection to nature. Rose some of that comes from your mother . Yes, indeed. My mother was very good at helping us balance the everyday responsibilities and finding, as she needed it, restoration in nature as well as the playfulness. Rose i had the good fortune to come to know her and david and to have males there and to flow of her passion. Oh, she had passion. Rose for the land. A great passion for the land which shes passed down to all six of her children and its also a passion for the environment and that is something my husband and i have worked on very hard to help stem Global Climate global warming. Rose what do you think of the giving pledge . You mean the every opportunity and obligation, every right a responsibility . Every possession a duty . Rose laughs yes. I know it, first of all. I live with it. And i try to do well by it. Rose and when you look at the history of the rockefellers, tel me who the people tell me how those that sort of resonated with you. Well, the one who resonated most with me ironically i never knew personally and thats my grandmother. I actually dedicated the book to my grandmother and my husband paul and i dedicated it to grandmother Abby Rockefeller for giving me the dream of belonging. I actually did have a dream of her the night that my oldest uncle john died in a car crash. And i was in a wilderness area and she came to me in a dream and she was walking through the house my parents had given me which had belonged to my grandparents, to her, in their lifetimes. And she was telling me that i could change any of the pictures in this house. They were Arthur Davies and japanese prints and she said this house is yours now and you may change the pictures to be whatever you want. And for me that was a permissiongiving dream. Rose was there anything in this book that was hard for you to write . Oh, yes. Lots of things. Rose which part . The things that had to do with my siblings. But the beauty of doing this book is that i have been working with my siblings and they have been been working with me and theyve vetted every single chapter that has anything to do with them so i know that its going out in the world with a kind of partnership and with the new story of our relationship now. Rose you could only write it because there there is a new story . Im only interested in publishing it because there is a new story because thats the piece that gives hope to others who will carry we all carry around our relationships from our family of origin whether we like them or not and we put the faces of them on our husbands or wives and our friendships and children. Rose now, is the story here is the essence of this story being a rockefeller, becoming myself that in the end its love that heals . You got it. Love that heals. Thats right. And its also that its not as much whether you have net worth as whether you have selfworth. And i think thats the important mess only along with love because selflove is what ultimately allows you to love others more deeply. Rose and how do you find selflove . By listening deeply. But getting more accurate mirrors to yourself, people who see you deeply and as opposed to often the family which can see a projection of themselves on to you. Rose your mom. You said shes famous for her pranks. She was famous for her pranks. She one time put the pictures the modern pictures in one of our rooms in the house in new york city upside down and it took two days for my father to notice. But she waited and finally she said darling, i think we should go into the other room to have coffee after dinner. Because he hadnt gone in. Rose oh. And then he was shocked and he said peggy, what have you done . This is shocking beyond belief. Rose what affected your relationship with hr . Rose what affect midrelationship with her . What did you have to sort of what did you have to deal with . Well, i had to deal with her bouts of depression and anger. You know, it wasnt easy for her to come into this family. It isnt easy for anyone to come into the rockefeller family. Rose now, why is that . Because there are Great Expectations and as my mother said you will get double praise and double blame. And so you its true. And she wanted to be a leveler. She wanted to connect with all kinds of people, the farm manager and the butler. Same as my father, by the way, just as much as any prime minister. Rose you helped her through her depression. I like to think that i did. She called me a comfort and i was always there as best as i could be to help cheer her up. Rose in this book you say you were as much eileen as you are a rockefeller. What do you want us to understand by that . That you are a human being whose name is eileen and thats as important as the fact that youre a human being whose name is rock feller . Absolutely. The key here is we all come from some family or other and we all have the task of becoming ourselves. Rose what would you change about the life you have lived . Rose wow, what a great question. I think only thing i would change would be to have found more ways to be together as a family growing up. But, you know, the great gift of my fathers lon jeff city that what he was unable to the time he was unable to spend back then hes made up for spades since he retired from the chase manhattan bank. Rose including to the children and great grandchildren. They go on trips together all around the world. They all do. Rose hes now 98 and just got back from somewhere . From paris and london, yes. Rose just showing the great grand kids is it great grand kids . He now has 12 great grandchildren. Rose showing them the world he knows because wherever he travel there iss an instant sense of mr. Rockefellers here. Its showing them the world and imprinting upon them the value and importance of family. You have something that people know about which is called empathy which is also a part of Emotional Intelligence. Yes. Rose where did that come from . I think that came from trying to read my mothers moods and help her. Rose so by empathizing with her then you saw that it had consequence . Yes, it had positive consequence and it influence midinterest in Emotional Intelligence which later led me to cofound the collaborative for economic and social and Emotional Learning with Daniel Goldman and about six others. Rose its having its own success. It is. Its wonderful. Well, he is, but social and Emotional Learning when put in schools and programs has now been proven to increase childrens academic aptitude by 11 . Their grades. So the gruel family fund is what . Weve concerned with Climate Change and weve chosen coal as the area to stop as much as possible then rose have you talked to senator rockefeller about that . Well, yes. But i tell you, mayor bloomberg really heard the story because our 150,000 grant to sierra club in 2007 which started the whole campaign against new coal fired power plants has ended up with his giving 50 million to sierra club for the same project and it was because we insisted on a business plan. Rose that shows you Seed Community do a lot. Exactly. So thats something paul we dont have huge resources, nothing like my father, but its therefore more important that we look for root causes and act strategically. Rose being a rockefeller, becoming myself. I lean rockefeller. Thank you. Rose thank you very much, charlie. That was pleasure. Thank you for joining us. See you next time. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications captioned by Media Access Group at wgbh access. Wgbh. Org many of us are trying to find ways to build a more Sustainable World for future generations. Were concerned that our planets wellbeing isnt as secure as it once seemed. Ma theres only one brand, apple, that has a longterm policy not to disclose its supply chain. Angelei we dont want the sort of development that wipes out a way of life for people, that wipes out a culture. Gariguez we did a hunger strike. We are willing to offer our lives and we are willing to die. Interpreter what happened in ituzaingo is a hidden genocide because they poison you slowly and silently. Interpreter we shared in the realization that Common People must come together to defend their rights and we must never give up. The new environmentalists ordinary people effecting extraordinary change. Lake turkana provides a vital lifestream for the people of the severely challenged desert region of kenya. A proposed dam on the river that feeds the lake will threaten the very existence of the inhabitants of this vast, arid landscape. I think there are all sorts of questions about the dam. There is longterm implication of environmental damage and the loss of livelihoods and the disappearance of a lake which provides fish. And the fact that aditional nomads and pasturers are being forced into new areas, crossing International Frontiers to find limited amounts of grazing and this has always before and will again, for many years, led to conflict. When Richard Leakey brought the whole issue about whats happening with the dam, he basically brought me documents and said, well, its your people and you go on with it. I had never done any activism. I didnt even know what i was getting into. That was the funniest part. But i needed to do it because, if i dont do it, what am i going to tell the next generation . While coming from this community, i had stayed out so long that i had to come back and really integrate myself to understand what challenges i was going to face. Ikal angelei and began to gather the communities together to hear their concerns. The response from the people was devastating. Interpreter my sons are fishermen and that is how we survive. We live on the fish that they catch and the money that it brings in. A lot of people here depend on the lake for their food, so all of us are very worried about what might happen upstream with the dam and how it might change things here. Interpreter if our government is unable to come to some agreement and stop the dam, then there is no point we will be better off if the government would dig a grave for us and, as soon as that dam begins, we can all walk into that grave. Angelei we dont want the sort of development that wipes out a way of life for people, that wipes out a culture. Thats what, for me, was going to be lost. It wasnt easy. It was hard. There were days id go to bed, really, and cry at night and ask myself what am i doing