Want. All of those things are capped right now, which would mean just in real terms that instead of about 123,000 being the cap, one donor could give 3. 5 million to Political Parties and candidates. There was this moment during the oral arguments when Justice Scalia told solicitor general verrilli that compared with the billions of dollars already spent on federal campaigns by parties, candidates, Political Action committees and super pacs, he said, i dont think 3. 5 million is a heck of a lot of money. Does this surprise you to hear that from a Supreme Court justice . Well, i will say two things. One is 3. 5 million is a lot of money, i think, to just about anyone except for the, you know, the adelsons of the world. But the other thing that i will just say, and this was made by another commentator, talk about chutzpah. So the reason that these people are spending millions and millions and millions of dollars in the last election is Justice Scalia. You know, theyre the ones who allowed this to happen in the first place. And so scalia and the majority on the court . Scalia and the majority on the court. So for them to say, well, weve got a giant problem on one side, so the solution is to create a giant problem on the other side, well, they are the reason for the giant problem that they were describing Citizens United . Citizens united. In response to scalia, solicitor general verrilli said, i dont think thats the right way to look at it, your honor. If you think that a partys got to get 1. 5 billion together thats about 450 people you need to round up, less than 500 people, the solicitor general said, can fund the whole shooting match. Its a remarkable statement. Although ill just tell you my worry is bigger than general verrillis worry. So he worries that 400 people will fund the whole shooting match. My worry is that once 400 people realize they can put funding in like that, therell be 800 of them or maybe 1,200 of them, that more money will move into the system because people will realize just how far their moneys going to go, just how much influence their money can buy. That takes us to a world where money plays an even more powerful role in politics than it does now. And ill just say, i mean, i believe in the First Amendment. But its hard to imagine money playing a bigger role than it did in 2012. And yet it looks like were heading in that direction in 2016. But can it be worse than it is now . You know, i actually was one of the people who thought it couldnt. But it never occurred to me that the Supreme Court would be striking down contribution limits. So we actually could see something thats much worse than we have now. This is a deregulatory court. And in Citizens United made it very difficult to regulate what was called independent spending, thats the money that you spend on your own in favor of your candidates. And right now its the wild west in independent spending. You can spend basically as much as you want often without anyone even knowing that youre spending the money. So what were looking at now on the contribution side, which is the amount of money you give directly to the candidate for him or her to spend as much as she, in the way she wants, that looks like its moving into the world of the wild west as well. I read some Research Last evening that in the last election cycle there were 1,219 of the wealthiest donors who reached or almost reached the limit now prevailing. Yes. Well, i will just say those numbers actually could increase for the following reasons. Reaching a limit of 123,000 isnt really that influential. Thats the point of the limit, that even if you reach the cap of it, youre not going to be the person who gets a seat at the table automatically. So 123,000 is just not that much money in politics nowadays if youre thinking about how much is spent for all the campaigns. However, if youre someone who can fund an entire senatorial campaign, if youre someone who can give a chunk of the president , what the president ial campaign needs, youre get a seat at the table. So those numbers may underestimate the number of people who are going to want to do this. But when you can spend 3. 5 million, you can get a lot more influence and people still start to say, hmmm, that sounds like a really good use of my money. Well, you say seat at the table, but dont you really mean they can set the agenda, they can buy the ads that determine what we talk about in a campaign . They can actually destroy an opponent with spending money in negative advertising . Its more than a seat at the table. Its actually worse than that though. I worry not just about their ability to influence the election, but theyre going to influence the governance agenda. So if you know that the people who are funding your campaign are against this legislation or in favor of this legislation, its going to be very hard for Party Leaders not to Pay Attention to that fact. So its not just a seat at the table on election day. Is a seat at the table for the next four to six years when theyre governing. It means they can in effect buy the policy outcomes they want for the legislative process because the incumbents they have supported with 3. 5 million or more are going to be paying attention to them when they come to the table . Its not the direct kind of thing, bags full of money in exchange for votes, but its ac way because it shapes the whole background of politics about whats allowed to be talked about and what isnt allowed to be talked about, about what kind of votes are going to happen and what kind of votes arent going to happen. So what it means is wall street is going to be controlling the congressional agenda, but main street is not. But, the majority in the court would disagree with you because remember in Citizens United they said well, if corruption were the issue here, if we could, if you could prove a corruption, ms. Gerken, we would listen to you. But you cant prove corruption. This is just the politicians give gratitude to their donors, but its not a quid pro quo and you cant demonstrate that it is buying these policy outcomes. Thats right. The Supreme Court in Citizens United changed the standard. So it used to be in fact that what Justice Kennedy called ingratiation and access, that was corruption. And that was corruption under Supreme Court precedent. In the early 1990s, in the early 2000s thats exactly the definition because the rest of the Supreme Court, the majority that once held understands that politics is more complicated than, you give me money, i give you a vote. They understand that corruption can run through a system in a way thats far more pernicious and deeper but subtle. Justice kennedy has a much narrower view of what constitutes corruption. And that has been the source of deregulation in Citizens United. Yes, if we saw a baseball player before he bats hand a wad of cash to the umpire, wed know that thats corruption. But we dont see the donor handing, the politician, the incumbent senator or congressman handing a decision to the donor, we never see that. We never see it, but we see it in the aggregate. Just take a look at what happened when we had the biggest financial crisis in history. Wall street was right there helping write the legislation, working on all kinds of pieces of blocking things they didnt want. Look at what happened when we had health care, something at the core of the interests of the american people, the Insurance Industry was right there. Those are the people who have the money. Those are the people who are capable of setting the agenda when they can give this much money. And theyre the reason why legislation looks like it does nowadays. What do you thinks been the main impact of Citizens United . To create what i think are shadow parties. So in the olden days, right, money went through the parties, money went through the candidates. But now Citizens United has made it possible to raise inordinate amounts of money outside of the party system. So this is karl roves crossroads gps, this is the super pacs. And the thing thats amazing about these organizations is theyre not really independent. Theyre technically independent, but theyre being run by the campaign staff. They are constantly interacting with the campaigns, which means if youre a politician you can have your cake and eat it too. You can be part of the party which has lots of limits right now, before mccutcheon on what it can raise. But you can have your shadow party with your guys raising money in exactly the way you want them to and running ads for you. Why do you call it a shadow party . Theyre doing all the kinds of things you can do in a campaign, theyre framing issues, theyre running ads, theyre helping candidates get elected. The one key difference though is that the Party Faithful who are the people who knock on doors, the foot soldiers of our democracy, the people who show up at rallies with donuts, the people who put signs on their yard, the people who go drive people around to get them out to vote, theyre in the regular party. Theyre not in the shadow party. The shadow party is for the big donors, the elites, the top campaign staff. But the regular everyday people are still stuck back in the old party. Which is more powerful, the old real party or the shadow party . Right now, were seeing both of them sort of neck and neck in terms of power. But ill just say if we continue with this deregulatory strategy, we may see the shadow party by virtue of the fact that all the money is there be the one that really matters. I mean, theres a great story that was run in politico right before the election about romney. And romney didnt have enough money inside the party to get him through november. And so what politico asked is will karl rove whose independent money is whats really bringing romney through to the end of the election, will he just cut romney off . So now imagine for yourself youre an important player in republican or democratic politics. Do you want to work for romney or do you want to work for rove . Who is the most powerful . So the worry over time is that the people who can raise these giant sums of money are the ones that are going to be the most powerful. You call this a deregulatory court. Explain that. So one of the things thats been really interesting about the Supreme Court is that in cases that people know about, Citizens United and in lots of cases that they dont know about theyre gradually pulling away at the regulation that was passed by congress in mccainfeingold. So mccainfeingold was actually a big Campaign Finance bill that changed the system entirely. And people thought it was working. But little by little, quietly the Supreme Court just pulled one thread out of that cloth after another. And as we see now, theyve pulled enough threads out of it that the system has begun to unravel. And now what weve seen is, thanks to Citizens United and the courts deregulatory impulse, were seeing these donors are coming back. You know, the empire always strikes back. Theyre coming back fiercely and theyve got a huge amount of money in the system. I have to think this is somewhat if not all wellcoordinated. I mean, james bopp, who is the lawyer who was the intellectual architect of Citizens United was a player in this mccutcheon case. He didnt argue the case, but he signed onto it. Mitch mcconnell, leading republican is a vacuum cleaner for money in congress. The court thats come into play as appointed by one conservative president after another. Is it wrong of me to be skeptical . I would say this is a movement. This is a group of people who decided they wanted to achieve a goal which is deregulation, and they have been working bit by bit, case by case in order to achieve that goal. Now, in some senses thats what everybody does. If you think about the olden days, you know, the naacp litigated some cases to build the precedent that led to brown v. Board of education. So jim bopp is doing that for a slightly different kind of purpose. But for the last ten years, he has been bringing case after case. And it used to be youd read his legal arguments and youd think, theres no way that could win. Under current precedent thats plainly wrong. But what jim bopp has done is change what the precedent is. And now we are at a point were seeing arguments and briefs for example that Public Finance is unconstitutional, that a variety of challenge, of things that have been sort of the base of Campaign Finance over time are unconstitutional. And thats because this group of lawyers using test case after test case has managed to push their agenda through the courts. What is their goal as you see it . I think their goal is to simply deregulate money in politics. I mean its hard to see whats left when theyre done. If you look at the arguments theyre raising below, pretty much everything is going to go. And if everything goes, were going to be back to the days prenixon where prewatergate, which prewatergate, where theres a lot of, theres money in politics and its virtually unregulated. Anybody in that movement would say to you, this is really about free speech. The court has said, free speech trumps all other priorities in our society because without free speech we have no dissent. I think that theyre right to think that the First Amendment is squarely implicated. You always worry when the government regulates what people can do in terms of political speech. So theres no question that all of these things should be subject to scrutiny, to a look by the court. But we also have another value in our constitutional system which is called equality. And the worry is that if you interpret the First Amendment in such a wooden way and such an extreme way that youre eventually going to undermine equality which is another deep value embedded in our system. How would it undermine it . It would undermine it because people like my parents would have no say at all in the political system because theyre not the ones with money enough to get the attention of politicians. They can vote. Isnt that what its all about, voting . People can vote, but you need to get your message to them. People can vote, but you have to help have a campaign thats going to help them get to the polling place. People can vote, but you have to have an opportunity to tell them what the issues are, to shape the way the conversation takes place. So one great description of politicians is that theyre conversational entrepreneurs. Theyre the ones who frame the agenda and tell the american people, heres what were talking about and heres some ways to think about it. If one set of politicians because of the of the money backing them is able to dominate that conversation, then you worry in the long run that the vote isnt going to be nearly as meaningful as it is now. And now you have the independent groups that can frame that conversation. Theyre really these outside groups with all the money at their disposal are now determining whats discussed in the campaign. Well, i mean, i will say that the best argument from mccutcheons side is that once you have Citizens United, which is giving these independent groups so much money, you should let the parties catch up. And some mccutcheons arguments would let the parties catch up to whats going on independently. And i understand that argument and i believe that its important for the parties to be able to hold their own with the independent spending. But the more obvious answer and the one that the Supreme Court talked about during argument was, well, maybe we should rethink Citizens United. Because again as i said before, just because weve created the wild west on independent spending, it doesnt mean that the right answer is to create the wild west on the party side. Maybe the answer is actually to go back to a world where we have some regulation on both sides. Do you think Citizens United can be reversed . Citizens united depended upon one vote, which is Justice Kennedys vote. It was a very close decision. And when it was made we didnt really know what the effects were going to be. And oftentimes the Supreme Court does change its mind when it makes a decision and the facts on the ground turn out not to be what they thought they were. So it is perfectly acceptable for the court to rethink what it was doing because the facts on the grounds turned out to have changed. What do you worry about most with this mccutcheon case . So the one thing that weve always sort of hoped about the way money is working right now is that maybe in the long run the incumbents who are inside the parties would feel like they were being beaten by the independent spending and they might have some reason to regulate it. But if you create a world where the incumbents can get all the money they want from inside the system which is what mccutcheon is pushing us toward, the worry is that no one has any incentive to regulate whos in power. And in a world where no one has any incentive to regulate, were not going to get regulation. The core problem in election reform is that the foxes are guarding the henhouse. And so every politician would like to preserve his seat. And if the regulation helps the politicians and the incumbents, theyll keep it. And if it doesnt, they wont pass it. So my worry in the long term is that we pull all the incentives out for change because the people who are most interested in these questions and know the most about these questions are the politicians who will be opposing the regulation. And in that world its almost impossible to get reform passed. Everyday people, the polls show they realize, 70 , 75 realize that theres too much money in politics. And they just say, they throw up their hands and turn away. Is that your experience . I think the better way to think about it is theres always going to be money in politics. But it matters where the money goes and how it gets there. So just to give you an example, even with independent spending which has been really terrible in the last few years, if we could trace where the money came from, that would make a big difference. If when you see one of these ads run by americans for america and it seems really wonderful and it tells you how great coal is, i think if people and people hear americans for america and they think its just an ad. I think if people heard at the end of that ad, this was paid for by the coal industry, theyd think differently about the ad. When we, you were talking about, you know, this all goes back to voters. If we just give voters the tools they need to see whats actually happening to realize where money is in the system, it might give them the weapon they need to fight back. Well, in his majority opinion written for the court at the time for Citizens United, Justice Kennedy said disclosure is perfectly acceptable here, if were going to make the system work. But when the disclosure provision was put before the senate, Mitch Mcconnell and republicans filibustered it in effect, they throttled it, they did not let the senate vote on disclosure. Well, this is another example of what you would call chutzpah. Because when mccainfeingold was being passed, what republicans like Mitch Mcconnell would say over and over again is, we dont need to cap anything. We dont need to shut down the money, we can just have disclosure and transparency, and thats all we need. Now, a few years later, its not just that theyre refusing to pass basic disclosure and disclaimer rules, but it even gets worse than that. The lawyers are now arguing that corporations are intimidated if their money was disclosed. So you see lawyers in court and outside in the public arguing that giant Companies Like walmart or target or exxon are scared to give money into politics because theyre feeling so intimidated by threats. Now and this is just where it goes beyond the level of absurd. They invoke precedent from the Supreme Court from the battle days in the, when the naacp membership was being threatened with lynching. So its one thing to say that, you know, in the 1940s and 1950s people might get lynched for expressing their political viewpoints on race in the south and that theres reasons to protect that. But its quite another thing to say that we should worry about walmart and exxon when theyre giving money in politics. That is not a First Amendment concern. If in fact the Supreme Court says disclosure is fine as the court said in the Citizens United decision, yes, we should know and its okay to know and its legal to know, why are senator Mitch Mcconnell and others in congress preventing disclosure from happening, from passing it, from approving it, from saying, yes, lets disclose the source of this money . Because the people who support senator mcconnell and the Republican Party would prefer to give this money anonymously, secretly through shell corporations. An example, the Insurance Companies put a lot of money into the chamber of commerce. And it was the chamber of commerce that was saying things about the obamacare, not the Insurance Industry. It looked clean, right . It looked like it was just the business interests being expressed by the chamber of commerce. But it was really insurance money funding that. Thats a problem. Thats a problem because you cant evaluate the message if you dont know who the messenger is. Heather gerken, ive enjoyed listening to you and learning from you. And i thank you for taking this time to be with us. Thank you so much for having me. Historian Joyce Appleby came to town the other day, and i was eager to meet her. Her new book is out this very weekend, in which she ranges across 400 years of history with characters from Christopher Columbus to charles darwin. Shores of knowledge explains how the curiosity of old europe broke free of church dogma, creating the world we inhabit today. Her earlier books also follow threads that connect our past to our present. Read the relentless revolution a history of capitalism, and youll get an interesting take on how and when capitalism and democracy do and dont get along. And above all, read this one, inheriting the revolution, in which, as one reviewer put it, she perfectly captures the world created by the sons and daughters of the american revolution. Joyce appleby taught for years at San Diego State and ucla, where shes now a professor emerita. She served as president of both the organization of american historians and the american historical association. She still lectures, reads widely, spends time in the garden, and continues to feed the curiosity that drives every book and article she writes. Welcome. Thank you, bill. Pleasure to be here. You have had such a long and prolific life as a historian. What were you looking for . What were you after . Oh goodness, what a question. I dont think that i ever had a longterm goal in mind. But you mentioned curiosity. I was curious about things. And i think that is the key to an historian and probably a key to all knowledge makers. What do you mean, curiosity . What is it . Curiosity is kind of an itching desire to have a question answered and an answer doesnt exist. I used to tell my students that everything they learned at the university was the answer to somebodys question. And if no one had asked a question, that answer wasnt there, that knowledge wasnt there. So i think thats something thats fascinating about curiosity. And of course this last book is all about curiosity and its being unleashed. Because curiosity was not held in by respect in the Catholic Church or the christian church. It was just seen as a lust for knowledge and asking questions that only god knew, so you werent supposed to ask about eclipses or tides or comets or anything of that sort. And so the origin of the shores of knowledge was my curiosity about how curiosity was liberated. You describe how the foundations of our knowledge, of life, of the sciences of life began in that 400 year period from Christopher Columbus to charles darwin. What was the question you wanted to have answered about it . Well, as i said, curiosity had been proscribed. And europeans, hard to believe, europeans werent very curious. They didnt travel much, they are very secure in the knowledge that they knew everything that was needed to know. And then they encountered these two continents and a cluster of islands in between them with this exotic flora, these strange animals, and even stranger people. And they didnt know what to think because their understanding of the cosmos was that there was adam and eve, there was noahs ark, and that contained the worlds population. But where did these people come from . And this was such an insistent, it was really an imperative question. Because they had to figure out whether how they were going to maintain their orthodoxy or maybe move outside of it. And a lot of them did move outside of it. You said they had to be blindsided when they took these journeys, made these discoveries. What do you mean . Blindsided. I mean, just smacked. Wow, who are these people . What is this topography . I suppose blindsided sounds sort of violent. This is more, oh my goodness, what a revelation. This exists . But to get there, they had to overcome what youve described as this lid on curiosity that the church had kept on the natural world. And despite men like galileo, the church succeeded in making ignorance a doctrine almost. Right. Well, it was ignorance of doctrine, it was a dogma that had to be protected. And a dogma, for its effectiveness, had to assume that it knew everything. But i dont think curiosity drove columbus to the new world. I think he was an adventurer and a very religious man. I think he wanted to get to the spice islands. He wanted to get to asia. It was the people who came along with him and were just astounded and in particular, a group of men who wrote about what they had found, they wrote histories. They even drew pictures because they had such trouble describing what theyd seen. And it was those men and their it just came back at a good time in europe. They came back when there was a vernacular press, that is to say a press outside of latin. And printing was getting cheaper and they wrote these books, there were a hundred publications about the new world produced in the first 20 years. So i think thats where the curiosity came in. How do you explain that burst of curiosity . Oh, i think there are so many things to i mean, you know, was the puma a tiger . Was the llama a camel . Was the alpaca a lamb . You know, they tried to fit everything they do what we all do. We try to fit whats new into what we already know. And it just didnt work. And the more they tried to fit, the more they had to look at this phenomenon and examine the hoofs or the tails or ears. And this led to, oh, well, we could find out more about this. And the more they became curious about the exotic things, the more they became curious about the things around them. Youve said we cant have curiosity without imagination. Why is that . Well, because i think curiosity depends upon your imagining Something Different from what exists. I think it absolutely has this radical notion that we arent bound by everything that we see and that were told. And whats astounding to me is that its not just curiosity, but within two or three generations of the discovery of the new world, theyre not only questions, but there is the capacity to invest hundreds and thousands of hours into getting the answer. Thats what science takes. It cant be casual curiosity. A lot of people can have casual curiosity. But to move forward, youve got to have people with an intense persistence. And there again, imagination comes in. Imagining answers. Who were these people . One of my favorites in the 17th century was van leeuwenhoek who was in the cloth trade. And in the cloth trade, he dealt with magnifying glasses to look at the threads, the weaving threads to assess it. And then he started making what turned out to be the microscope, magnifiers with greater and greater and greater power. And then, he wanted to put things under his microscope. Hes the first one who had a microscope. So he would put a frogs leg under it or a fish fin or a grain of wheat. And then one day, he put under his microscope a drop of water. And guess what he saw . He saw what he called all these little beasties wandering around. He had discovered microbes. He had discovered the world of bacteria. Well, this had the effect of creating a sense that theres a difference between appearances and reality. There is a reality that cant be seen by the naked eye. And this, of course, was a great spur for the curiosity. Im taken with this sentence from the book. Passing from amateur passions to sober investigations of biology, geology, and astronomy, curiosity upended the grand christian narrative of the origins of life and the place of our planet in the universe. With what consequences . Well, the consequences, i suppose, are you and me. A frame of reference, right . Right. Theres also a real intellectual difference. Because the enemy of curiosity is dogma. Dogma is certain, this inerrant, this is truth. But thats not true about science. Scientists, inquirers, these amateurs, they know its a process. And what theyre finding is tentative. It might be replaced or returned by someone, or modified. And i think thats why today those people who are dogmatic have so much trouble with science. Because they think that science is like dogma. Its inerrant. Theyre saying, absolutely that this is true, when theyre really saying, this is as much as we know now. But were going to know more. Its a very different intellectual approach. The church was trying, at its best, to protect believers and everyday people from the terrors of the unknown, from hell, from fantastic creatures that occupied the seas. They were trying to protect believers with the safety of dogma. And thats whats so interesting about the beginning of the science is that they produced a different kind of stability. They produced the stability of, well, there werent sea monsters out there, maybe there arent sea monsters. These fish arent going to do something i dont expect a fish to do. You know, so that there is a slow replacement of the stability of dogma to the stability of at least knowing something, of having the world friendlier. I remember we visited the place from which columbus set out on his first visit right. And being struck with the thought that, as they said, no one knew what was out there. No one knew where the oceans led or what lay in the oceans, right . They had a lot of speculation, there were human beings with dog heads and sea monsters that were going to erupt from the ocean. I mean, there was a lot of speculation, which really made it difficult for columbus to convince a group of men to sail with him. Its an amazing story. But its one of intrepidity. Just intrepid. Just, you know, were going to do this. Were going to try it. Weve got the courage and the guts to do this. But heres another perplexing thing. They were curious to come to this new world, to find out what it looked like, what it was made of, and they found these amazing people, the native, Indigenous People. But very shortly, their discovery of these Indigenous People led to their exploitation and enslavement. Its very interesting, the exploitation of the people, because the people led to a great deal of speculation, where did they come from . One man went through, were they phoenicians, were they finns, were they scythians, were they romans, were they greeks . They went through all the possibilities and finally concluded that they were something new. And i think the exploitation came with the need. Because the people who followed columbus, most of them are adventurers. Theyre just out there to plunder, as we know with pizarro and cortes. And then they if theyre going to exploit it, they need workers. I didnt know until i read your book that i think it was by 1526, 1530, some, there were more slaves imported from africa right. In this area than there were europeans. Thats right. There were six times more africans than europeans i think by 1565. Its just staggering. So in a way, the unintended consequences created an american experience, so to speak, that was founded on a vast system of slavery. Thats true. Thats true. But then thats a part of capitalism, that desire to produce goods for the market and to use whatever you can to produce them. And they were busy, you know, one thing they did was create sugar plantations. Think of a world that doesnt have any sweetness except for the occasional honey that comes their way. Think of introducing sugar. This is these are the richest islands in the world when they were producing sugar. Took incredibly intensive labor. Just such a cruel system. Your cast of characters in the shores of knowledge ranges from Christopher Columbus to charles darwin, this period of 400 years. Did you come upon one thing they all had in common . Well, the great ones had genius. I mean, when we get to the 19th century and alexander humboldt and charles darwin, they have genius. They have this sense that we could understand how nature operates, what the powers of nature are. I confessed that i had heard almost nothing if anything about alexander humboldt. What did he do for us . Well, hes really the worlds first ecologist. He had a great desire to understand how the Natural Systems interacted. He was a mineralogist, he was a geographer, he was a geologist, and he traveled, these guys traveled heavy. He came with sextants and quadrants and meters that could tell you how, what the intensity of the blue water was. And he just measured everything. And darwin had read all of his travel journals. And when he got to the new world, darwin said, i used to admire humboldt, now i adore him. Darwin called him a grand progeny of scientific travelers. Exactly. Its amazing. You hadnt heard of him, i hadnt heard of him before i studied this. And yet in his day, he was seen as second importance only to napoleon. A contemporary . Born the same year. And on the centennial of his birth, its amazing to learn in your book that one word appeared on the front page of the new york times. One word. Humboldt how do you explain that . As i say, i think they were so thrilled with the man, and he wrote about 50 volumes, unlike darwin. He just wrote books all the time. He, like darwin, was stinging in his comments about slavery. I learned this from your book. But when his famous book appeared in this country, the american version of his famous book, all the references to slavery had been excised. Isnt that astounding . How do you explain it . I only know that they did that because he said they did that. The other thing is that darwin also rejected this idea that there was a difference in the races. And this is phenomenal because in the middle of the 19th centuries, when we get these theories of racial hierarchies, theyre just, you know, and and we begin to get the development of eugenics, i mean, right right, exactly. But even before eugenics, that white race at top and you go down with each color. And they just both, both, really the two greatest scientists in the Natural Sciences of the 19th century, both utterly rejected that. And what a shame that they werent listened to. Humboldt, darwin, and many others, as you write defined our modern world while loosening the hold of religious dogma over the imagination and over scientific inquiry. How then do you explain the resurgence of religious fundamentalism in our time . Well, i think it was just too shocking to think of human beings as being what they are because of descent through modification. I mean, what a concept, as opposed to thinking you were created by god or that you had some essence, essence that was always there. Do you think this was isnt that true today . Isnt evolution still the enemy . Well, there are several parts of this country, including my home state of texas, where there are significant numbers of people who would like to return us to the belief system of 1492. And im not exaggerating right. Where does this lead us . Well, it doesnt lead us to curiosity, ill say that. It doesnt lead us i mean, we do have an attack on science now, cutting back on funding, you know, we have certainly in our politics, we have the resurgence of dogmatism rather than curiosity about how programs might work out. Theres an insistence, we know how theyll work out and if we dont like them, they shouldnt be. I mean, theres certainly an attack on obamacare. You might just take this, well, lets see how it works out. This is a very important goal to offer healthcare. But no, this is wrong, this is bad. As a historian, what does that tell you . Looking back over the span of time, what is whats happening to these currents of resistance to science, to knowledge to imagination, what do you draw from that . I dont know. Thats a very difficult question, bill. I really cant explain it. Can societies evolve backwards . I dont think so. One of no. I dont think so. I mean, one of the fascinating things to me is that we have a political system today, probably only in the last ten years, i dont know, that seems sort of moribund and rigid. And also, youve got to recognize the element of racist in this. This long sense of a dominant, white male authority in the country and today you have, you know, this racial diversity, you have women in positions of power. I think theres thats why i dont think this is going to last. So you think whats not going to last . This rigidity. Its not going to last. And this is a terrible thing to say, but i am old person so i can say it. I believe in reform by the grim reaper. I dont think its going to last because i dont think theres a rank of young people who are that frightened by the diversity, the demographic diversity and the presence of women and the changes in our society. Theyve come very fast, really, you have to admit. Last 25 years of our life. Exactly. We didnt ask question about women or slaves or hispanics in American Culture until about 40 years ago. So we didnt know anything about them. We didnt teach anything about them. But, you know, i dont think americans can get away from how central the issue of race is. Its pretty its quite a foundation when you introduce an enslaved population and its a significant one and with it, its not just enslavement, its the racial prejudice that has to exist in order to defend and accept it. Thats a heavy legacy. And i think were making amazing strides. But it and yet . But it takes time. So where do you see this racism playing itself out today . Well, the hatred of obama might be one place. Its not just a hatred of him. I remember, i grew up during the new deal. People really hated roosevelt. But they didnt delegitimize him. And i think that obama, there is this, just, unwillingness to accept that hes president. How many people feel that way . Im sure its no more than 10 or 15 . But its a very vocal group. I dont thats just one explanation, but i certainly see it. And there are all kinds of other places where we see racism playing out. And i think that many people who are optimists like me want to say, oh, weve made such progress. And were unwilling to see until its brought home to us by some event. Well, its fluctuating progress here and there. And its moving forward, but not in a strong phalanx moving forward. Put this new book, shores of knowledge, in the context of your earlier works on america, inheriting the revolution and then the relentless revolution is there a thread that connects these three books in your life and your interest and your curiosity . I suppose there is. And its a kind of a chauvinistic motive. I mean, i think ive always been fascinated by the freshness of the United States and the tolerance for things and just that wonderful openness to possibilities. It was fascinating to me, curious again, that the first between 1776 and 1800. And i thought, hmm, i wonder what these people who had never been subjects of king georges, never been colonists, how did they react differently . And i was interested in how they interpreted what had been given to them, kind of encapsulated in the declaration of independence. And its kind of interesting, they didnt have the accomplishments that europeans had. They didnt have any great art, any great architecture, any great novelists. So they celebrated what they did have, which was their initiative, their hard work, their gogettedness. And these are all sort of cliches. But there was a lot of truth in it when you look at how fast that nation was settled. People leaving nice, comfortable little farms and taking their sons and daughters and moving into the ohio valley and then beyond. In inheriting the revolution, you told how this first generation after the revolution took the Founding Fathers gift to them, the revolution, and infused meaning into it. Succinctly, how did they do it . They certainly, you know, gave all the proper vows to freedom and liberty and also equality. There was an equalizing Movement Among the whites. Not with black relations, but among the whites after the revolution. And there was a tremendous admiration for ambition. And they did this in part with biographies. They had their heroes and they wrote about them. And they also celebrated their accomplishments, but they werent traditional ones from a highly cultured point of view. They were doing things, you know, taking medicine out to cincinnati, ohio, and founding a medical school. Or moving the line of settlement further and further west. They did this obviously because they had writers, they had novelists, they had newspapers. Newspapers, americans had about four times the number of newspapers of any other country in the world, despite its small population. And what did that mean practically . It meant that everybody was up on the news. They were on the same page, so to speak right, yeah, right. And you know, america got a lot of travelers in the early 19th century. People wanted to come see this place. But they call commented on the phenomenon that people in the country were not rubes. They knew as much as people in the city. They were reading the paper. Thats really different. But what does it say, joyce, that americans today, Many Americans today, no longer feel as this generation of americans did, about their capacity to shape their destinies . Theres a great deal of futility and despair in the country, as you know. I think its because the economy is not serving them as well as it once did. I think one of the things that i discuss in the relentless revolution is the dominance of the Financial Services in our economy. But the Financial Services have changed dramatically themselves. They used to be facilitators of enterprise. The bankers, they lent you money or they issued stock for you, or what not. But they had become players in themselves with their own goals and their own goals are often inimical to those of the country as a whole. Theres very strong shorttermism. I mean, we find that bankers, for instance, are playing a greater and greater role in the management of corporations and they want results for their shareholders. Well, often quick results are antithetical to whats needed for longterm development. So that seems to be a major problem. But we have money brings power, but it doesnt bring responsibility with it. Now power without responsibility is pretty dangerous. And capitalism brings Creative Destruction. Well, Creative Destruction is very its great for the economy, but its hard for the society. Some of us believe that the defining issue of our time is the relationship between capitalism and democracy. What do you think about that . Well, i think it is. And i think one of the most troubling aspects of that relationship is that they have a different capitalism really is amoral. But democracy is not amoral. Democracy is moral. It has a sense of the wellbeing of the whole. So i think there is that tension. But what has changed, through complicated processes of fundraising, one another, is that government is really no longer such a neutral player. Its kind of a patron of business now. So i think that the government ought to be much more concerned well, i was mentioning the Creative Destruction. U know, this sounds great, yeah, get rid of this old method of making metal or producing wood, whatever. But it closes down factories, it shrinks towns, you have all the social problems, and its up to democracy to protect that. The other thing is, capitalists act like they dont need government. Yeah. They need a strong judiciary, they need to have a legal system that guarantees the contracts, they need to have clean police and clean politicians. They need all of these things that create the stability that is essential to capitalism. You know, all these early explorers, or many of these early explorers and discoveries you write about were statesponsored or sponsored by the king or selffinanced. And we forget that about capitalism today. It depends upon this culture. I dont think we forget about it. I think were bamboozled. Were told over and over again that its a natural system, like aerodynamics, and you cant interfere with it. Well, its not a natural system. Its a totally social system that has changed dramatically from generation to generation. Composition of the factors in capitalism, but also the changes in the way in which the government acts. Look at the new deal. Here you have capitalism absolutely down on its knees, and you have a program that put people to work, program invested in our infrastructure. I mean, that spending brought us out of the depression, and well, look at the and were not having that today the way we should. You say in inheriting the revolution, that this generation of americans quickly established a new identity for themselves as americans, given the raging inequality today, given the vast diversity in this country, given the clash of opinions and values and beliefs, can we create a new identity as americans . What is an american today . Do we want to create a new identity . I think we want to recover whats best in us. A tremendous respect for each individual, a belief in expanded ambits for action and thinking, an admiration for innovation, a respect for the law, a belief in an independent judiciary. I know im sounding like a terrible chauvinist, but i do admire the best qualities in our country. Joyce appleby, thank you very much for joining me. The new book is the shores of knowledge new world discoveries and the scientific imagination. Been a great pleasure, bill. At our website, billmoyers. Com, theres a rogues gallery of the people really behind the government shutdown, the big money ideologues pulling the strings of congress. Thats at billmoyers. Com. Ill see you there and ill see you here, next time. Captions by vitac www. Vitac. Com dont wait a week to get more moyers. Visit billmoyers. Com for exclusive blogs, essays and video features. This episode of Moyers Company is available on dvd for 19. 95. To order call 18003361917 or write to the address on your screen. Funding is provided by Carnegie Corporation of new york. Celebrating 100 years of philanthropy and committed to doing real and permanent good in the world. The kohlberg foundation. Independent production fund, with support from the partridge foundation, a john and holly guff charitable fund. The clements foundation. Park foundation, dedicated to heightening Public Awareness of critical issues. The herbal period of time foundation, Whose Mission is to promote passion and creativity in our society. The bernard and audrey rap aport foundation. The john d. And kathryn t. Mccarthur foundation, committed to building a more just and peaceful world. More information at mac found. Org. The bessie and jesse fink foundation. The hkh foundation. Barbara g fleischmann. And by our sole corporate sponsor, mutual of america, designing customized individual and Group Retirement products. Thats why we are your retirement company. Rose welcome to the program. Tonight we take a look at the brain and hearing loss. What is there in the history of brain biology in which improvements in technology really had a dramatic impact . Theres no better precedent than whats happened in the hearing field. Its spectacular. The other point thats interesting is all three of the winners of the award started off doing fundamental basic science. They then started a company and one of the functions of the company was to help them do their science better. It supported the science. So this is a beautiful example of interaction between university and by technology for the benefit of both. Its really a model of how this should be done. Rose a look at the brain and hearing loss for the hour. Next. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. What happened . What happened . Hi, jade i, jade is that mom youre hearing . Yes what happened . Mama right. I understand uhhuh it opened up. Rose helen keller once said blindness separates us from thing but deafness separates us from people. Hearing loss affects 48 million americans. That is 15 of the population. Most of those cases are currently untreated. In recent years there have been break throughs in the treatment of hearing loss. Ingeborg hochmair helped Pioneer Development of the cochlear implant. The device stimulates the main auditor nerve that sends message to the brain to signal hearing. She recently received an award for her work and she joins me along with one of her patients, max. Max received the implant at the age of two. He is now 19 years old and about to begin college. Also joining me, a distinguished group of scientists, david corey of harvard university, frank lin of Johns Hopkins university, ruth bentler of the university of iowa and eric kandel, the nobel laureate, professor at Columbia University and a Howard Hughes medical investigator and my friend. I am pleased to have all of them here. This is an important subject and this is an important award, the alaska prize is considered by many one of the most the f not the most distinguished prize for science and medicine you can receive in america and this is what you received when you were awarded this prize. Ill ask eric just to tell me a moment what the lasker prize means. Its the most important award america gives in biological sciences. It has three categories of awards a clinical award, basic Sciences Award and Public Service award. And it is for the scientists a major indicator for the likelihood of getting nobel prize. Over 80 lasker awardees have won nobel prizes. Rose you hear that . laughs two general point, charlie, is very interesting. Someone that we were so enthusiastic about the initiative and when we began to think about how to explore that more we thought of a precedent for the initiative, what is there in the initiative in brain biology in which improvements in technology had a dramatic