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jet fighter pilots come to texas to train to take off their insignia for their names that indicate if they have anything to do with taiwan air force because taiwan doesn't exist as an official entity. our way of talking about taiwan we are authorities of what? so neither the chinese are right and part of the american side of the 100 year marathon or they don't involve themselves much with taiwan at all or there is little going on and they are competing for taiwan. who is going to win that and have mcdonald's hamburgers and everybody learns english a-qwex when we are telling them that you are not a country or is china going to do better because they say we are all chinese. they read the textbooks very carefully. but it's pretty clear they are part of the history so who is going to win the marathon for the laws of taiwan? washington or beijing. >> thank you very much. [applause] it's been a lively discussion. the book the 100 year marathon is available. i will bring him sitting here so that you can get signatures. thank you very much. >> with a panel discussion on concussions in the future of football from the second annual festival of. panelists include mark, co-authors of the league of denial and battle for truth come a sports agent steinberg and also author and poet mcdaniels >> i would like to introduce the panel. steve is a writer with espn andr wi withth his brother mark and is the co-author ofhe the nfl concussions into the battle for truth and "the new york times"onthe best-selling book on the nfl co efforts to cover the link between football and brain damage. steve worked as a foreign correspondent for the "washington post" where he won the pulitzer prize for international reporting for his investigative series on the role of mercenaries in the iraq war. he is the author of big bully rules america's mercenaries fighting in iraq and the co-author of the duke of havana baseball, cuba and the search for the american dream. his brother is an investigative reporter for espn and mark is a member of the enterprise unit which produces work for the award-winning program outside the line which i know many of you have seen. they also serve as reporters and writers on a companion documentary of the same name for the award-winning program frontline and the earned the prestigious award as well as an enemy nomination. with colleague lance williams the earned national honors in 2004 and 2005 for their coverage of the steroid scandal in baseball and in the book game of shadows it became an immediate times bestseller and prompted major major league baseball to investigate steroid use in the sport. do you see a pattern beginning to develop? lead steinberg is regarded as one of the greatest sports agents in sports history and one stretch during his career he is the agent that had four overall pics over a seven-year period and the number that he represented in his career is unmatched in nfl history at one time half of the starting quarterbacks were his clients. he founded his practice in 1975 and has since represented over 250 professional athletes including troy aikman, steve young, bruce smith thurman thomas, then robert burger and many more. he is currently the ceo of the sports and entertainment and advocate for player safety and is the host of two national conferences on the subject of concussions in the nfl. finally the fourth member this problem mcdaniels the fourth year as a football player having played for the oregon state beavers and kansas city chiefs. he is assistant professor of african-american studies at emory university and his scholarly interests include african-americans in world war i and african-americans into the intersection of sports and civil rights. his first book examines the career of african-american jockey isaac murphy and we would also like to welcome the audience around the country on c-span book tv. the issue you came to the forefront because of a book that steve and mark have co-authored so we want to issue a statement of how this issue came to their attention and then we will invite lee for the sports administrators and then we will invite the players perspective on this issue. so steve and martine mark i will turn it over to you. >> we really want to thank you for having us here. it's our second time back at the festival and it's amazing how huge it's gotten and we are grateful to the year. i will give you a quick synopsis. for us getting into the story there's been a lot of good reporting done on the issue of concussions in football prior to us jumping into the story in 2011. our colleagues at espn peter greg have done fantastic work and alan schwartz at "the new york times" and others but one of the issues that haven't been addressed was how did it address a problem that was becoming a huge public-health crisis not only at the nfl but at the youth level and for us you've seen the pressure was rationing up considerably. in 2010 the commissioner was called before congress and just hammered by the representative henry waxman for basically raising the question asked of the commissioner is there a connection between football and brain damage and by this time there have been a number of stories out trying to raise the specter and the commissioner did with the commissioner has done repeatedly which is off the question and say we are going to let the medical people decide that which the representative was not only dismissive but divisive and i think a lot of medical people were because for them to question the question had been answered and to this day it seems to be the position we are going to let the medical people decide. for us our book was an opportunity to reflect back to begin to percolate in the early '90s in large part because of a few other folks and we wanted to get at the core and the book was presented in the decades of the denial of the two-pronged front by the nfl in which they went after scientists raising the question about the connection between football and brain damage and is off to ostracize them and minimize their statements and at the same time essentially taking over the medical journal on publishing paper after paper after paper and there was no problem playing football and no connection and nfl players have different brains and the rest of us and were not susceptible getting the kind of concussions that would cause brain damage and that is the message that percolated for years and the book is an effort to do that and any high-level publicity accompanied by the documentary that generated additional focus around this issue to the point now that there is an ongoing dialogue and i will steve talk about where we are now. >> one of the things when we started to get into this was we had an opportunity to talk to a lot of football players and get their thoughts on what was going on so you had on the one hand the nfl with all of its resources to deny that this was actually a problem and yet we were going from player to player seeing the incredible devastation that had been and we believe that it was directly attributable to their careers in the national football league so you had this tension people have this tension people were feeling left out and abandoned and i think like many problems we solve that it wasn't something that simply affected the players but something that affected everyone around them and so we tried to him as much of a sort of granular way to lay out what this looked like and so when we began the book we knew we wanted to start at patient zero and what we did is chronicled what had happened and what had happened as he had gone from being this person that the person that was extremely conservative stable, a hero in the community and somebody that was a great family man to somebody that was completely unrecognizable to his friends and family and he went from somebody that was financially conservative to spending every dime his family had and he ended up living in his truck as a transient shuttling between wisconsin and pittsburgh. he had incredible physical problems as a result and even beyond his obvious mental health issues he would go to these extremes. his teeth started falling off so he would superglue them back into his mouth. he had incredible trolls -- trouble sleeping and when that didn't work, he purchased several mail order stun guns and had his sons were his friends literally teaser him to sleep and so it gave you an idea of the magnitude of the issues and i think that as we saw over time as the book came out and we were able to draw some of these issues resolve the tension that exists and continues today and on the one hand that is it is a major public health problem in the country that affects thousands of kids and parents and players all the way up to the nfl and then not only as an entity but what football means to the culture. they are still an currently popular over 100 million people watched the most recent super bowl. our employee or is a $15.2 billion contract to broadcast monday night football and they have that contract for a reason. and so that tension is at the heart of where i think we are now and it's going to be really fascinating to hear what he has to say about this and where we are going because i don't think that anybody totally knows where it is going to end. >> you hosted a couple of conferences. anybody that would want to come throughout what kind of reaction did you get an ulcer from your clients and players what came out of it and what did you learn from having done that? >> first i want to thank the festival of books to be surrounded by other people that love books in the same thing and a mind-boggling presentation they do and incidentally my book is the agent by 40 or career making deals and changing the game so i had a practice that profiled the players and looked for all what role models that would trace their roots to high school. in 1989 i had half the starting quarterbacks in the nfl and i watched troy aikman gets hit in phoenix and knocked to the ground and blood was coming out of his senior and for a while he looked like he had died and it truck type -- patch required me -- petrified me. they had beaten the 60 minors for football super bowl and they suffered a kind concussion. he looked at me and said where am i. did we win the game and if i play today? >> his face brightened up. five minutes later he looked at me and he says why am i here did we win the game and i almost thought he was joking but this went on ten minutes later and i finally broke down on a piece of paper the answers to his questions and it terrified me and i thought felt a crisis of conscience because if my work with athletes was designed to enhance their lives and lead them into fulfillment and how was he it's conscionable for me to enable players to do an act to be that would lead to encephalopathy and the rest of it but we didn't know anything. we've are told by doctors over and over again that there were no long-term consequences from concussions and one hit doesn't lead to another and two in proximity to each other don't do anything so i held a conference where we brought the leaders from across the country manufacturers tried to approach it in different ways and we had a whole series of players and ironically gary plummer was one of the players that now has dementia so we issued a paper and not much changed. we did it again in 2005 and then we had robert and kevin and of the whole series of narrow chests that have been with me on this from the start and they have done the studies are they told us three or more concussions or an exponentially higher risk of als, alzheimer's and parkinson's premature for nobody coming comic traumatic encephalopathy and depression. so i called it a ticking timebomb and undiagnosed health ailment and now any time they hit a defensive lineman at the inception of a football play it produces a low-level hit. so you can have an offense of lineman walkout after playing high school college and pro football with 10000 hits and none of which have been diagnosed but the aggregate will almost certainly do much worse brain damage than the knockout blows. so we do baseline testing we have better diagnostic techniques for the bottom line is that it isn't healthy to rattle your brain like that and i said 50% of the mothers act julie knew what this crisis leads to they would've told their kids you can play any sport but not tackle football. it would be people that knew they were going to get brain damage, so i've been working on how much -- helmets and there's a compression system we've been working on all sorts of ways ultimately stem cell research but thank god for these gentlemen because it was lonely for year after year and elliott was a rheumatologist and headed to have his brain studies and research. i am not a doctor but i don't think that rheumatology is the brain. [laughter] and what he told players over and over again is that there is no risk for concussion or long-term effects. one doesn't lead to another and that's what they told the players so when you are tempted to say they know the risks no they didn't. they were lied to. one last thing and i will shut up you have to stick this against the culture of health denial. they were told to ignore pain. real men don't get knocked down in the lineup. we would've known about this and if they understood what this was that we were suffering from. i have had players play. if you said it's the biggest priority and after that the athletes turn it on the head. so you get athletic denial and young men and it's difficult. by their oath especially if you have kids who are again about college and sports. >> you played in the national football league. take us inside of a typical game of the battle line of scrimmage. how violent is it and were you aware of the dangers of concussions? >> let me make it more than just a football player. i am a historian and i'm someone who thinks very deeply about different issues besides the idea of concussions. he brings up a couple things about impoverished communities and the idea that sports like football, baseball and basketball are there ways out or the command using the families and so this will have an impact on people so the nfl at others are billion-dollar industries and i acknowledge and recognize that and so we understand its escalating and it's grown because the popularity has grown that people have more disposable income to follow their favorite athletes and if you're a kid to want to be like them so the marketing of the nfl has made this not impossible but we are up against much more than just educating them about the future of their bodies and their minds if they pursue sports in this particular way so that has to be acknowledged there is something here that has to be recognized that will make this a difficult task. from the standpoint of a former athlete but played college professional football i think that's the way in which we are groomed as athletes to not just suffer through pain or injury but to have a common object if the team's objective is to win and you want to be supportive of their intention and you want to be supportive of your teammates and so if you've sprained an ankle and give them something to your knee you want to suck it up that's how you're supposed to represent your manliness even at the age of ten. so that is a social conditioning that we have to also address and understand what does it mean if you're 10-years-old and your coach is telling you to suck it up and fans are telling you to do the same thing. those that played in the nfl when you are a free agent and someone trying to secure the position on the roster and you know you cannot find your way to the sideline because of an injury, you are going to continue to play foggy headed or not and so just from the standpoint the idea of the health and future and life and livelihood, all those factors play a role when you make a decision whether to speak up and say i can't go. when you think about the rookie behind you that wants to be in want to be in the position of making six figures every year that's a difficult decision to make. so you suck it up and maintain the assault and continue on your way. not that you don't enjoy playing football. it's something i thoroughly enjoyed. i enjoy the game. i enjoy sundays and i enjoy training camp, but i enjoyed the game. when i go back and visit -- i went back to shoot at oregon state and i was on the sideline for the first time in 15 years and i had forgotten to charge you get from being in that space. it's a limited space if you've been there before you know how it feels and so it's all so very alluring of course because there are certain ideas you want people to think about because you are in that space and able to perform. thinking in terms of what's happening with concussions and my tenure in the nfl from 91 to 2000, i've lost several good friends. junior was a contemporary of mine and a teammate of mine in atlanta that committed suicide and mike webster was in kansas city as a way to training assisting coach so i know the names and i have a guy is and you could imagine in my household with my children and wife we think about these things. we have to. as has been stated i was a defense of and for my career and every play was a collision and every play you are sustaining these many jarring as of the brain over a ten year period. what we are looking at is the man sitting in front of you has whatever it is we are trying to understand and how it will escalate at some point if it may come of that it's not everyone it it's not everyone who has the same results as the junior or some of these other men who passed away. >> finally the last thing i want to say it we were talking today when you brought up troy aikman coming and i didn't think about this until that moment, that in 1988, oregon state played against ucla and we were down and they didn't win a lot of games in the 80s believe me i was there. [laughter] to play at the rose bowl with someone like troy aikman on defense and the running back there was a roster of future nfl football players and so beat up why you are to play this game and every play was an important important and i beat the offensive tackle bad and i got past them and i ran right through troy aikman and the way that you're supposed to. [laughter] the way that we are taught to play the game, you make the play. you don't run out and touch a guy and say you're it. you make the play and make sure that he is down. i hate him so hard he was out and i didn't think about that until now because we have a highlight film. think about it years ago we had a highlight film that represented both play as a turnaround for the game and potentially for the oregon state football team. so, imagine being responsible for that play and now reflecting on it thinking about that person that was on the ground. so not everyone will be able to do that because if it is part of the game you don't necessarily think that those individuals who are playing against but when you know the people, it is a difficult thing to revisit because you know potentially you have what they are experiencing today >> they came to be known as the dissenters that were willing to take on the nfl and one made the comment that if only half of the mothers in america understood what was at stake they wouldn't let them play football. that was ten or 12 years ago that statement was made. have you seen in terms of the numbers of kids playing the game and the feeder system entity have you seen an impact in that area? >> at the scene that was described in the book where the pathologist had discovered the football players and did the autopsy on mike webster he was presenting data to the longtime specialist for the pittsburgh steelers and in the middle of the meeting he paused and said do you understand what you're doing and he said i think i get it and then he just sort of moved on and he said i want to ask you again do you understand what you're doing and he said i think so. so why don't you tell me and he said 10% of the mothers in america believe that football causes brain damage that is the end of football and i think what we are seeing now we did a story about a year or so ago about the participation rates and it dropped on the order of 10% over the three years since this issue went before congress and really became a public health issue and i think everybody in this room has had a conversation with somebody about their own kids or about the potential impact and i think a number of people are making the decision that no, the risk is too great. i think the question to me what does that mean long-term doesn't mean that theater system to the nfl is going to dissipate the extent and i don't think that we are nearly at that point. it's going to be decades before we know and there will ultimately be the science that decides this question that if the prevalence and the rate among football players is a huge number, then that will obviously have a seismic effect on the sport but we are not very yet. >> one thing that is interesting i agree with steve not just because he's my brother, we often do not agree but i think it's true we are well in the future but before we know the nfl isn't currently waiting for the answer and if you look at the way i think it is instructive if you look at the way that the nfl has marketed this issue for years it was all about the violence of the sport and that was basically it. you could go back and see these films and it was about the hardest possible hits on the field and it was just visible. you felt like now it's really shifted and it seems to be torn in some ways because of course the violence is what compels a lot of people to love the sport and i'm one of those that enjoys it and while it's true it is an appealing piece they are grappling with this issue and they've begun to market themselves towards mothers and we addressed this in the book and we've done follow-up reporting where they proactively have gone after moms and they brought them into nfl headquarters and they try to educate them about what was worked can be safer designed to suggest there is a way to play the sport without a head involved and when you talk to former players about this program you hear a lot being skeptical because this idea that if you watch the way the game is played at the speed that is played and the level that matter where actually, the suggestion you can somehow figure out a way to navigate in your head out of a play seems fairly ludicrous and so the nfl ever the last is pouring a lot of money into that issue and that's where they are seeing that a decrease in a lot of participation rates and you see the shifting of marketing standpoint. >> the question is the book is called league of denial that there is another arena going on perhaps among the players. could you comment on what reaction you get when you carry the news about the potential dangers of concussions and on the player standpoint do players want to know this and are you willing to receive and old misinformation and implications? >> i would like to say just a word about the question that you asked. first of all this is not just a pro football issue is a collision sports issue. it is a college and high school football issue, it is a hockey issue, field hockey issue and girls that had the ball in the soccer in some studies had been showed to have lower test scores and when it comes to kids, the second thing i would say the brain is still information when kids are nine, ten, 11 12. you can actually work hard for the development of the brain if you get hit wrong and enough times. so, when you talk about permeating youth football now i love football, too and i have spent 40 years working with the biggest stars but understand this, the sudden top-rated shows for weeks in the season on the nielsen rating and television were nfl nighttime football never happened before. this country is so crazed that football in america is a pregame show out rated every other form of entertainment, so pro football is the most popular television show. 40 million people a week play fantasy football. the estimates are 20% of the computers in use during the last season and businesses reduced to play fantasy football. so you are talking about an obsession that we have and second, college football. so, we could go through all the little changes we've made and the other thing we would love to say it's because the concussion settlement hasn't been approved totally we don't know what the nfl would do if they were not worried about the live debate code liability that would come from things to show that they actually knew a long time ago. i've tried to get all of the players to do a scan. they should regrow capillaries to actually start to reroute the brain and he only damaged brain. it hasn't changed at all. i would call up a player that had a concussion and explain everything to him. then robert sperber had a concussion and i would say so you understand that the risk of you getting a second concussion in the next game unless the rest is much higher and you understand that in close temporal proximity is a perfect marla jekyll's storm. so do you get that one game isn't going to make a difference in your seizing? then i went to his mother and father because they are my best allies and he played in a game. i haven't seen very much at all but i will tell you this but we'll we will start seeing this manifest while the players are playing they will start having a symptomatology in the 12 and ten year career. it's not going to take 20 years and that's why we are sitting on top of an epidemic because the big strong players in the head have changed. if you didn't have -- i have a player for the cardinals leonard davis he paid 375 pounds and he could run a sub 540. [laughter] >> what is the reaction that you get when you talk to former players aware of this issue and you eluded he wielded into the mindset earlier of how important it was to stay in the game how willing do you feel that the active player would be to a growing understanding of the risk of concussion >> some tell you that there is a great possibility that you are altering your life and the more hits you sustain and if you receive concussions if you are in a position where that is kind of part of the course you are going to do damage for your self and if they are paying attention and berries any information being circulated from the parent or loved ones there should be a genuine concern. those i played with in atlanta there are lawsuits i am learning they are coming to get her to sue the teams, kansas city in particular there is a question about how much was known and those that had several concussions so their families are concerned that eventually they will experience what we have seen with junior and shane and mike webster. so they are more concerned about the outcome of this and they are aware of it but i am not clear necessarily of the percentage moving to either pushing for regulations or pushing to retire early because we had a great time talking in the green room and the idea of retiring at this point is one thing but i think there's something else we have to understand because there is so much available right now if you play out to contracts you don't have to play again unless you really want to especially if you have a life plan if you figure i will spend five years and i will retire in 27, 28 i'm going to get my law degree and study business and i have to release of the first 25 years after then i start a business so if you have been thinking about the play they will shorten that they have so much money to moveon. but the injuries that they will incur over that five-year period where they are in the trenches i had to concussions one on the kickoff return when waiting for the return to pick up the ball he dropped on looking back at him waiting for him so i can turn and leave and turning automatically having the guy in front of me still i ran down the field but on the sideline i was loopy but stayed in the game so you have these scenarios but the former players and current players because of the amount of money it is a very lucrative occupation that if you make the choice to pursue you could say i'm going to play five years and then i'm out. >> we would like you to work your way to the microphone so that the audience on c-span book tv can also hear the question. give your name and indirect your questions. >> my name is tony. it's all about the players and the league and it appears to me that the game has changed the way that it's being played and it started in the 70s and the 80s i think. it's just an act totally different pace and i think that is when the concussion problem started increasing exponentially. my father played in the 30s and 40s and you know, they played with whether helmets at that time. >> let's get to the question quickly to get as many as possible. >> have you seen this happen has the game changed the way they play it up to the sick steve's verses later on a-qwex >> it's a traffic accident on every play because when you have the bodies moving in space and time that are bigger stronger faster and when you have linebackers at the 270 pounds and they run a 5-40 it's a traffic accident on every play and i just want to add one thing. i sat next to ray field right when i gave the presenting speech at the hall of fame and he gave a brilliant speech, nuanced, inspired young people, it was wonderful but now he has dementia. i would add in 1972 gave a great date. you have football and now it is a commodity and a commercialized endeavor for the television audience. so if it wasn't exciting it wouldn't have been on television so you are playing to the audience in a way as well so having time constraints and the opportunity to sell to the national audience, that accelerates the importance of football and for someone like me that watched as a kid that wanted to be like the guy on television so if you're in the '90s and you are a kid playing pop warner you want to make a hit like your favorite receiver who caught the ball blindly and boxing out and so what we are seeking television are the ways in which a young student athletes implement their heroes. >> a lot of negatives end up in positives. we have the space program that we lost a lot of astronauts but we got communications and other products and we have military that we lost a lot of people that we have the interstate system and the internet do you see things that football is doing bringing to more a more focused on the als and dementia and is that causing more research leading to more tours and more benefits. >> there is a race to see who can be the first companies to develop helmets and again it just protects against fractures but they help to attenuate the energy deal used for motorcycles bicycles everything. so yes and above research being done to provide a nasal spray that stops the brain from swelling and all of this will have the same effect on the space program. >> there was a narrow -- nero biologist working on posttraumatic brain injuries in things like progesterone treatments. we are talking about actually healing the brain and so you have these different opportunities but whether again we are talking about the mission of something so these types of particles would be available in the sideline patriots to have an opportunity to test these type of protocols would be important for football and boxing and hockey and for soccer and so i think that you are correct there is an opportunity that we have a stopgap right now and it is due the admits this will have long-term effects and did it well what can we do to help heal the victims. >> it doesn't matter in this one sentence there is hundreds of millions of billions of dollars to be made off of preventing concussions. i console over a few companies that are there and it's like the first person who gets there guess what, concussion alzheimer's -- i went to six companies on stem cell and they told me they think they are three to five years away from being able to insert the stem cells and restore. if we can send a man to mars we can't make a helmet that protects people? engineers profit motive. >> this question is to mr. steinberg and do you anticipate that as it has become more accepted do you anticipate increasing going forward to help players with those liabilities in helping to kind of offset of the liability? >> the players agree in the massive suit to accept a settlement offer for them and the future and a lot of ways of $975 million. $975 billion might have been closer to actually dealing with the incredible pain and the rest of it. so, you know why do the players not do this? the older players right now want the money so it's the same reason they took 55% of the growth and agreed to take 47% in this current. we are not talking about players off the field are not the advanced guard of the workers party. [laughter] they are non- labor activists. they think about now and all the rest of it. the guarantees are going up in football because we have a salary cap so they are starting to guarantee the salary for first time until the last couple years only a signing bonus was guaranteed in a football contract. the years of play or not guaranteed. baseball and basketball were completely guaranteed so they could be anytime for any time for any reason. we are getting a few more guarantees. >> i watch more college football than the nfl. but i do think that giving concussion checks and i'm wondering if you feel that is very effective in preventing further injuries in the game. >> i think that there is certainly more awareness around this issue and the nfl has put in place an increased level of eyes and the sky people basically watching out for this so people see circumstances where the guys are coming off of the field and maybe the players are even more attentive to become to talk about this but the players just want to play. >> i know in college football if the test that they do is positive they don't come back on the field until they are tested further. >> )-right-paren and that's true in the nfl. if there's a suggestion that a player suffered some sort of a coverage and they go to the sideline and one of the questions raised by many experts is whether you can diagnose the concussion. so that's where the challenge is really increasing but especially challenging i think the dynamic i've always said that the hardest job the trainers have the hardest job i think because they are serving of the impossible roles. they are responsible for the team and at the same time the trainers and so they are supposed to be responsible for the health and welfare of the players and that is an impossible job to try to deal with and i think that dynamic is dealing with this issue and the decision. >> i go to concussion conferences and speak all around the country and they have all the new technologies and the company's right there. they are trying to get a better way to diagnose the sideline concussion's and all that. so again, the free-market system is allowing that to happen. but just remember unless you are laid out flat on your back and don't get up quick the -- it is almost hard to see if you are on the sidelines what just happened. as we are detecting this out of this. >> my interest comes more from the league of denial. they are able to detect it now, why can't the nfl just say we will not let a player come on before a certain amount of time since the players clearly are not going to take their own interest into that? >> there is a protocol when they are diagnosed and have to go through a series of tests to determine whether the levels are at the backup place which he's essentially able to perform again but what's interesting is the baseline testing at the beginning of the year and then they used to determine if use that to determine if they are qualified to go back into the play, but they've talked about basically cheating the testing so in the start of the season they will basically take the test and in some cases to get a lower score so that when they come back into the baseline a pass because again they just want to play. >> it's interesting there is a technology where the helmet sensors can be implanted to detect the number of hits that are occurring and the amount of force generated into the sensors are being used by some colleges like north carolina for decades now and they've accumulated an enormous amount of data and there is a guy who is a narrow scientist who's been trying to get the sensors used in professional football for a period of years now and in just a couple of weeks ago they announced again that they are not going to use them and the reality is that if they did use them they would immediately know a lot of information about the amount of force being generated and how many times people are getting hit in the head. to use the expression it's kind of a no-brainer. [laughter] but the reality is that it's the league doesn't seem to want it and the players don't want it because they don't want that information used in contract negotiations and so where does that leave you with 20 get to the bottom? >> the college game two seasons ago and there is a presence of the protein marker in the blood if you sustain and they found that in a game with no concussions no diagnosed concussions 70% have the marker which is a precursor to long-term injuries. it is the protein that gets on the brain. >> i just moved here from texas and i worked at two different high schools. my question is about injuries i don't see that much about what they are and to me that is the problem. i was going to work with some junior high kids and the different ways we could practice and go about taking the hits to tackle and i've been educated with heads-up and i've done the testing and i know how to do those tests and read the results but how do kids and parents interact and how come there is not more coming from "the wall street journal" and the post and the times about the injuries? >> there is still even in the scientific community a lot of debate over what the sub concussive blows mean. the blows are the issue that can eliminate this problem without the support. it gets to this question of prevalence again it's the sort of dosage that we need. how many concussive pits beneath the turns out that people are getting this and we are going to they're going to be facing a real question. .. question is an issue that is being pushed especially by boston university that the cases haven't been diagnosed and there are questions about what role do they play exactly and are they really -- is that where this is starting and spreading or is it something different? >> from the nfl perspective of course they love the fact that this is not a conversation right now and frankly because it is the definition of the sport it is the coalition but i think if you noticed they can only handle this in so many ways that are basically saying football is a problem and so the answer is we are going to legislate all of the huge and the hard hits that you see because that's what we can do and that is what it looks like to be the problem. but when you look at the data that suggests it is an issue i don't know what the current numbers are good when we look at the look at book at the time the boston university folks it was the preponderance of the cases that this narrow degenerative disease for offense and defense of wine in and playing the core of the sport so it's being talked about but the answer is to focus on the celebratory heads to say look we are going to talk about this. >> is that arizona or alabama? >> my name is michael and my question is both mostly for professor mcdaniels. do you think that the denial is the fact 75% of the week is african-american. from the standpoint of somebody that is african-american a high percentage are seeking opportunities to create social mobility and so it is to better the physical attribute and take advantage of the money available and therefore also help your family community is a narrative that we all hear how are things and get these contracts and they are willing to sacrifice for their families. you can have tv contracts and enforcement appeals and everything attached to this game that we play that is a business that it has to be if you admit to it all these connections will unravel. no one wants to lose and it's on the number of levels too so they want to take advantage of what they feel is their opportunity and take advantage of what they see as their god-given gift abilities. so in the family community as they are looked upon as men whoo are making a way for their families. you have these articles that deal with the golden goes to extract student athletes of urban environments more than football so that's part of what we are seeing right now is that you have these young men. what is it about they were not willing and one of its alumni said we don't have the right athletes here we need to get the job student athletes we just need the football players to get the best athletes in here and so at the end of the day and how to sign those new contracts. [applause] >> don't forget to become a friend of the tucson festival of books so we can make sure that it remains free and to support important literacy programs in our community. if you would gather your things and without us quickly as possible and don't forget the gentleman will be outside and again, thanks for coming. and audible conversations [inaudible conversations] >> >> she is the author of shirley chisholm cattle as a for a change. next thursday author of elizabeth gurley flynn who teaches history at st. john's university and specializes in the history of gender and labor and politics in the 19th and 20th century united states for over previous publications include breadwinners as well as several articles with a distinguished lecture at the organization of american historians. a former student of mine mine, just to get the nepotism straight, up cindy is an assistant professor at lehman college and also on the faculty of the mccauley honors college at the graduate center. and then writing a brilliant dissertation from the grassroots center. her first book urban appetite for food and culture release april 2014 by the university of chicago press. the manuscript for urban and appetite not surprisingly for the prize of the best manuscripts that year. publishing in commonplace and in history now. kerr research of catherine beecher to be published soon on the lives of the american women's series. the next book is a biography of 19th century african-american thomas downing. i have question is for all of them and i will make sure they keep their dancers' brief enough that they will have time to ask questions. tell me the subject and what is the most important accomplishments? cindy? >> thanks for coming. my subject is catherine beecher 19 century reformer and educator. she is different from the other biographies that she does reflect 19th century development over twentieth century development. she was a little of the martha stewart of hurray age that she was a proponent of a lifestyle with the emphasis of domesticity and motherhood and she was neither. but she also made a name for herself fuzzy education reformer. >> thanks for coming. as a panelist to come together for those groups of women and i am excited because not often are they put together. elizabeth gurley flynn lived 18931964 and was a tireless advocate for socialism, feminism and free speech. starting her career for the industrial workers of the world and later became of leader of the communist party. both she defended the right thigh of free speech with the red scare following world war i and also world war ii. she spent the majority of pro-life to persuade the american people that socialism would be happier or more secure peaceful or just more equitable system to provide much capitalism can be. needless to say it is a controversial zero message and that is one of the reasons she was such a strong advocate because she was the center of her life. >> rating on shirley chisholm a girl from brooklyn to -- it whenever last interviews she said she did not want to be known as the first african-american woman elected to congress in 1958 and did not want to be known as the first african-american and first woman to mount a serious campaign. i assume 90% of you already know that but speaking in schools and colleges across the country space has heard of a lady who paved the way for the election of barack obama. she wanted to be known as the woman who lived in the 20th century to be a catalyst for change which i believe she was. on what to address just one very specific achievement that resonates for all of us when she was of legislators she was responsible for this seek legislation that enabled high school students from underserved high schools to come to the city university to get the support services they needed to stay in school and graduate. and today the students at the city university of new york looks like the population and you talk to any professor and the reason restage at cuny to is because of the wonderful students may get to teach. >> it is the pleasure to read about angela davis who like many of the women on this panel, and many of the subjects is a very well-known and legendary activist she is still with us today and is a contemporary and historic figure so that makes my task interesting. angela davis you may have seen her she comes to new york quite often in and gives seminars. but she is well known for her activism in the 1960's as part of the communist party and the black power movement and the movement for black feminism and also well known for her physical in nature as well as her role in the '60s that is iconic with the movement to free angela davis from her incarceration so she is known all over the world and the image of her is also very familiar. / her biographer with contemporary activities to trace back to think about the ways her incarceration in the '60s and involvement for radical social change and empowerment of black women in particular in working-class women can be brought together to understand the complex being. it is exciting to work on her. >> i wanted to throw out of some other questions whoever feels moved to answer can do so. one element of your subject childhood seems important to shaper into a strong woman? what role did her family and community play? >> that is of a good question because catherine beecher was done member of the most famous family in the 19th century. she was extremely influenced by her father. you may recognize the name because her brother was henry ward beecher foods statue i passed on the way here and her sister who was even more famous was harry to beecher stowe -- period beecher stowe and abraham lincoln that it is a lady who started the big war. so catherine beecher came from a very famous in -- family of reformers her father was pretty famous minister in connecticut. and without question that influenced her development. he placed expectations to reform society that is necessary for that evangelical project. the second great awakening in particular was a perfectionist movement to perfect society to make their ready for the second coming. so he sent the children out into the world to make changes and catherine beecher rose to the challenge. she was not a radical like some of the women represented here but some of that comes up as we go along >> barbara i know you want to talk about this. >> i could talk about shirley chisholm all day. [laughter] but i should have begun with the historical society for all of you. teeeighteen childhood was extremely important with lou she became as a working-class daughter of caribbean immigrants and when she was a very young girl her parents who were very poor living in brooklyn center to live in barbados is she was raised by a very strong fester and grandmother in she was in barbados the moment when the movement for independence from britain began the beginning of the socialist movement and when i went to barbados to research what i found is a socialist and labor and working-class organizations as were far more advanced with reproductive rights the in the united states. so while she writes about this in her own autobiography i can only assume being raised by strong black women in a moment of great stress tollhouse with consciousness us of a woman with tremendous pride. >> in the 1970's to coin the phrase well-behaved women seldom make history. [laughter] lot rule stage your women break and which ones did they follow and why? >> 4058 think despite her upbringing to because of an abominable to the a.d. is of communism and to be an activist a angela davis coming into her own born in 1944 growing up at the time of the emergence of the power movements and she stepped aside from some of the it is of nationalism of politics and infuse that with class analysis. with the connection between zero her share and class to speak to women in particular. even there she was part of a movement of people to make social change she was a little of the outside to because of her stance as a woman to put her in a symbolic way there were many times the actual angela davis were rejected by people who may have aligned with her. so she would plays her own path. so walking on the path that many leftist organizations would open the doors and was very influential in that way. >> elizabeth gurley flynn was known as the rebel girls of a better image so that reminds me of angela davis because her in bed was so significant so this young woman standing up on a soapbox proclaiming it was a striking image so to embrace the idea but one of the things than interested me that to be leftists of the left in terms of politics. was a little bit more conventional she never got married when she was pregnant at 17 after she did get married briefly the guy was incidental to the baby she didn't feel she could be the unwed mothers though even then she was not that interested she felt she had to marry him. >> although her mother was a feminist and father was a socialist to put those victorian dash values and a set to their daughter to behave respectfully and she was aware in some of those did not share her radical ideas about sensuality and she did not want to alienate them. so she felt she had to get married. >> what about catherine beecher? image she was very bad. [laughter] catherine beecher was not a radical she definitely advocated a prescribed role for women. although had ridings for working-class women because those were largely of the middle-class women. they really believe that's there were more equal but emphasized as many people did said difference between they should capitalize in order to create a safe for themselves so she believes women should have a role in the public's fear but she didn't think it should be a role of the employment or of political, and -- contest and argued against suffrage that put her against isabel beecher who was a suffragists. but even with that she believed they should play the role and so for raising families. so how could they do that? so that is a link to work with education. and sexually to raise well-rounded children. >> what do you think was the most surprising thing? i am a biographer as well then you say i did not expect this. i never realized this. day you have a thought? >> one of the most interesting things is the history of barbados. and the connection between barbados and the united states. of the domino sugar building brooklyns wells was based on sugar and the connection to barbados. led the of one thing that i will say the one i did not understand is the of misogyny against shirley chisholm. to be so i'm real and so deep and when she wed get up from her chair and the congressmen would washdown her seat. disgusting behavior. such to make them cry in public but if you buy my book gore read it you will see what the nixon administration did it was despicable it was very gendered and rationalize. so the men in the congressional black caucus and the misogyny was mind-boggling and they're really bothered me deeply. >> we should not be surprised. it catherine beecher angela davis, elizabeth gurley flynn and shirley chisholm sat down together for dinner club would they talk about? is it a commonality with political orientation? >> i'm sorry i was actually thinking about the chicago dinner party in all of the historical women sitting down for dinner and i think this will seem off the wall but after a couple of glasses of wine they may get to the question food does your hair? one of these has a very distinctive hairstyle that communicates. think about catherine beecher with those curls it is very labor intensive. and i know from talking to barbara. >> and then naturally one of the things was the same hair dresser every week. so was it to these shares ios mean? it is part of the public image. >> let gatt before her election to congress. >> any other topics? [laughter] >> i really like that. >> and the more open and way i think they may talk about what it may mean to be an activist in how to respond rejoices that they made to what extent does that leave them isolated your lovely? those are often times not focused on. those that live as those questions as they go around to change the world to make a sacrifice and vague to make consequences. i am curious to find out of those types of topics and. >> that if they are married briefly and two of them were single. is this a topic of conversation about what was gained or lost? >> definitely. she was married to her work and devoted to her activism she didn't feel like she had time to have a family and she missed that. her mother and her sister helped to raise her son because she was so busy with all of her work. >> first of all, i would talk about what was served for dinner. [laughter] and if it is prepared in the 19th or 20th century but this is the commonality even though they don't have a lot in common but catherine beecher was engaged but her fiancee died then she made a decision to not follow into a lifetime of domesticity not create her own household but played the role as a reformer to abdicate and open schools and eventually she wrote lots of books about education and domesticity event on the lecture circuit and was very much a public figure and in the -- in this century it was done but it was very difficult to be a married woman and also have a public role. that is the martha stewart reference but that is what i mean that in order to be an advocate in public or female lecturer or education reformer she had to be a woman who was not running a household. that was the decision and that she made that made her different or placed her in her time as a 19th century american woman. >> shirley chisholm was married twice the first husband was mr. shirley chisholm very supportive of her the first seven or eight years when she was in albany then when she came into congress in washington and he worked for a detective agency and was her bodyguard. what she may have had in common is she loved to dance and was the first one on in the last one off. share is also very close conscious and was considered to be the best dressed woman in washington d.c.. pricing if there was the dinner party that favored be wary of each other at first for golf --. this i know angela davis said it would thank thank you for being the only member of the black caucus to raise money for may. -- we. the issue was larry of the communist party so footnotes how they but have felt about her. and as an active member of the party of with the you speak about having catherine beecher show up with two black women working class and communists. >> she would be very confused why everyone is sitting at the table. [laughter] i think that is an illustration there really would be liked she came from an alien world into the late 20th century realm. >> she would be amazed as a black woman going through college her devotion as a point of contact between the two women. >> were any of your women teetotalers? >> i've not saying she was a drunk. [laughter] in that case there is no problem at all. [laughter] >> she did talk a bit about temperance. 19th century reform movements were linked to though women's rights, abolitionism, reform rights, abolitionism, reform , temperance, associate probably would not have. >> something to interject as i encounter these abolitionists reformers the difference i think between the seriousness of angela davis and the fact the reformers from the 19th century they followed water cures and strange diets and so they were in engaged in a lot of activities with those 60s hippies and much less like people who were seriously engaged in temperance and reform and abolition and in their personal life they were of little nutty. >> that is akin to the 1960's in terms of reform and there are links. i always bring a back to froude. [laughter] said diane reformers there is a precursor to vegetarians and the health movement some environmentalism, and catherine beecher to not only talk about domesticity but also talked about health because she had bad health and a lot of those health reformers had health problems. there were reasons for that they were very nervous there were peptic and i think there are links of the reform era and angela davis even the direction and those reforms were taking. >> and i want to open it to the audience because i would imagine in you have questions all the way to listen to them talk all night. would anybody like to ask questions of all or any of them? >> i have a question in terms of all the subjects. reducing when they started or finished if they felt they had made a change or an impact? >> good question. >> that is a great question and i think she definitely felt she made impact her career rissole broad born in 1890 and started to speak on the new york city street corners when she was 15 and was active all the way through her death in 1964. i think she saw a huge changes in terms of women's roles touche transform and she actually was supposed to suffrage during the suffrage movement because she thought it was a waste of time and was not radical the ninth but then in retrospect she thought it was a huge shift of women's consciousness of they had gotten the vote to become politically active and the was important. and she also felt her work on behalf of civil liberties made a difference with their activism that helped to establish the right to free speech and that was something around the time she died that was getting picked up by a new generation and so she really was encouraged of the activism of the '60s. >> candled lot of ways angela davis was purposeful the ways it wed dovetail with her request for education and her travels to feel seeking knowledge and information and to constantly revised when she was thinking as a philosopher on many issues to embrace the nonconformist answers to you questions of punishment or the male or female hierarchy's so i do feel she was the fate through people who were doing the same thing so as a college student interacting with leaders i feel she was moving through the activist world and was aware of those many changes so round her and they feel she constantly be made herself and embraced platforms where she could talk to people what she thought were potential solutions to the crisis we were facing an even it was challenging the industrial complex or male or female relations to speak out against sexism and in favor of communism, she was aware the world around her was changing and she was an agent of that change. >> win shirley chisholm died in 2005 she felt she had accomplished and she was extremely aware of the problems that had not been resolved but when she looked back at her life to play a pivotal role in transforming the all white democratic party in brooklyn, of course, opening the way for african-american women to get elected to congress with the congressional black caucus. in her book the good fight with her attempt to run for the presidency in 1972 she ends by saying maybe i opened the door of a little bit for the next african-american and the next woman which clearly she did. i feel she did know she made a significant accomplishment in a 1945 u.s. society. >> i did recognize the commonality that may not be an accident the dollar had long lives and careers. so that allowed them to have a song retrospective and also with catherine beecher spending almost the entire 19th century port in 1800 died in the 1870's so talk about change, a board in to a rural society and when she died united states just on the cusp of being the central power. and she changed as well. schaede did move away from her evangelical reasoning for reform and women's role and to raise more professional role for women. so i see her as a bridge between the republican motherhood with the 18th century and the period where the mother's role was seen as raising could republican sons to enter. >> as in the early republic not as a democrat. tuesday idea of raising a a virtuous citizens but the social worker municipal housekeeper model and towards the end of her life that is her she would see education going so she had an idea she played an important role for women may be even paving the way although she may not have corporate of debt of the direction of those reformers who were more radical in their political ideology. >> throughout your research how did you plant on the woman that you chose to read about? >> she told me to. [laughter] that is the shorthand of my career. >> i knew you could not resist. [laughter] >> we have a list of some women who we thought really eliminated. the goal of the book is to eliminate the historical moment these are not biographies that are pulled the use of women as a way of of movement for technological changes for the economic changes going on in their time period to learn about history as well as the history of these women that some of them they came up with the women that i had never heard of. these were women that i knew nothing about and i was supposed to know everything and it turns out it was a perfect subject to eliminate that era that they lived so i said run with it and go with it it doesn't matter it is not that household name like teeeighteen should have been but it when you finish reading these books you can say now we understand the early 19th century or the progressive era or certain periods that i never really got from reading a book that was only about the president's so it is in the series of face -- famous women that you all pac-10 you can speak to why you picked them. >> i started a the teeeighteen project from college to the question baby why a to reduce this? to the women of gender studies and nobody includes half of women's studies so to me this erasure of african-american women of color effuse a it is more than heartbreaking to all of us but they don't understand the country in which they live is because they don't know the complexity and the real challenge facing us so restarted the of teeeighteen project please, look at the archives but i had already started research on that. that is why did it. >> my work on the '60s is about the black power movement and angela davis always comes up is assume she was a card-carrying member of the black panther party so even though she was not the direct subject of my research wanted to know more about her because of her contemporary ways to organize black feminist jews speak out with the million man march and came out to speak about changing diet and food practices in the revolutionary way. says she is constantly in the news and then to knows the angela davis of the '60s but then angela davis the scholar who had written several books political and philosophical to talk about contemporary issues and she is a very well published author so i felt i knew her in the different ways but i didn't tax of the opportunity to put that together into a life to think of her in a more intimate or in cheerier way of who was a she? especially being so iconic oftentimes it is a figure is and what is an what is a legend. >> i was intrigued to by elizabeth gurley flynn because i knew she was important but she doesn't really fit into women's history or of labor history and it isn't clear because the arrow where she was active it would be with the suffrage movement and she wasn't a part of an ad and for the labor movement the fact she was a communist made her a problematic subjects for barker phase so people put her aside so i felt she was little neglected and i was intrigued because she has a memoir called the rebel girl for the first 20 years of her career that is a vivid first-person account but i knew well lasted almost 60 so i was interested to find out about the rest of her life. >> but they were both very a flirtatious with the men. [laughter] so even when elizabeth gurley flynn was older as a sexy checked senate that is one of my favorite things to discover to be poland's or letters. and she definitely a captive going. -- kept it going civet they all had younger men then did 10 years period for she was a lesbian woman than there was that phase of her life as well. [laughter] >> there is another area of commonality. [laughter] i am joking. [laughter] again carol did not tell me to write about catherine beecher but a move would be representative? i thought catherine beecher was a good example because even though she is representative of women's experience some she went west and which affect and to housekeeping reform and sent when she represented in the work with the ideology of domesticity with of major developments stemming kisses of a question directed to angela davis and teeeighteen would you think they would think of the movement the structural development? >> [applause] -- angela davis is a big supporter of the movement and speaks against racism to think about connecting data movement to local development. associates has been an uncompromising voice. also she is somebody who was politicizing her education how she expresses her politics to do her job as the professor but her activism on and off campus she was one of the figures like cornell west that were taking on subjects that were not popular or perceived as controversial but she is very uncompromising in her support. i think that is a good question as well. if she remains a member of organizations were of political resistance with the industrial complex but to paraphrase it is obsolete. always pushing people to a challenge whole role of capitalism in this someone who has followed that same is ideological track in some way to is critical of capitalism who advocates for socialism with that ideological strand with that movement. . . >> and other prison rebellions. she was usually one of the few congress people called in. she, as i said, she supported the black panthers, she raised money for angela davis when no other president -- no other member of the congressional black caucus would do so. and for other black revolutionaries, joan byrd. and she wrote in both unbought and unbossed and in the good fight that she understood the anger of young african-americans and why it was expressed the way it was. and when asked to denounce the fact that the panthers supported her presidency she sort of answered i thought in a beautiful way, she said you all should be glad that this black militant organization is coming back to electoral politics as opposed to denouncing them. [laughter] >> [inaudible]
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