So i knew of course that taft succeeded teddy and they would run against each other 1912, but then you always go back and i know scott does too, you want the primary sources, the letters and diaries and private journals for historians so when i found the 400 letters between the two, i realized they become friends when they were in their early 30s and an odd couple, teddy who is marching around everywhere doing wrestling and boxing and taft wayne between 250 and 350 is not doing much wrestling and boxing at that point, but they liked each other and the opposites almost attracted and teddy brings them into his cabinet, he becomes the most important person in his cabinet even though all his life he wanted to be a judge, never a politician, from from that he decides hes the man i want to succeed me, he runs the taft campaign, gives him advice at every moment, the only thing he did not give him a vice was the Campaign Song which i dont think teddy wouldve approved of it was get on a raft with taft, if you got on a raft with 340pound taft, you would not be on a very long. Anyway he is sure hell be beloved as a president teddy goes to africa, he comes back from africa and hes been told by his progressives that taft has become too much in coziness with the old guard of republicans in the congress betraying the progressive legacy. It really was not that because he did try to do what he thought he was doing but he did not have the skills of a public leader and did not know how to deal and give a speech. So teddy decides because the progressives wanting to run against taft as a Brutal Campaign in 1912 and of course because theres two republicans running, one in the republican nomination that taft wins and then of course the party roosevelt does he runs on the Third Party Campaign opening the door for the democrat to win, what was so emotionally moving for me is the heartbreak when they broke was much greater than i realize because the friendship had been much stronger and i love writing about these emotional things, it allowed us to be much more a straight linear story. Great. Woodward wilson came into the picture and he was elected and he went back to progressivism, talk about that a little bit. Woodward wilson went back to progressivism big time taking the foundation roosevelt, not 22 Woodward Wilson had put there, really built upon it and what wilson wanted to do, its kind of ironic because most peoples image of wilson is a very presbyterian minister son, in fact he was extremely human, he was extremely emotional and very passionate in what he wanted to do above all this is to humanize the presidency. So where Theodore Roosevelt had created a relationship with the press, word word wilson wanted to advance that and what he did was hold press conferences which are president had never done before, everything he did was toward personalizing the white house and toward that and wilson came in with the most aggressive, Progressive Agenda that we had seen and he brought about largely through this process of humanization and he did it by showing up at the congress. Wilson had an extremely per kill your view of how the legislative branch and the executive branch should function. He thought being a political scientist that the two branches, get ready, you have to work with me on this. [laughter] he thought they should cooperate caught back he thought literally they should cooperate the government. And so wilson did something president s had not done since john adams in 1800, he showed up in the congress to conduct business, he brought back the president appearing to deliver the state of the union address, Woodward Wilson delivered 25 addresses to join thousands of congress, he actually showed up in a little room that sits in the congress which was designed for president s to come and work with the congress. I think a lot of president s have failed to find this room. Im not naming anyone. [laughter] but i think they have failed to find it because it has a rather tricky name, it is called the president s room. [laughter] lbj. Really, he found it big time and thats why so much legislation got past, these were guys in johnson was in many ways in the smithsonian tradition of getting in there, rolling up your sleeves, a being cracking a few legs and arms interesting and thats what wilson did, with that we immediately saw within the first few months of the wilson a administration, the lowering of tariffs, the introduction of the modern income tax chat a graduated scale so the richer paid more, we saw the establishment of the Federal Reserve system which has been basically the basis of the American Academy for the last century. He went into labor eight hour workdays, workmens compensation and so forth, put the first jew on the Supreme Court, all these things, progressivism for Woodward Wilson was about leveling the playing field, he was not antiwealth, he was not antiwall street buddy was antitrust, he was against unfair competition. In anywhere he sought he tried to fight it. He both alluded to the fact that theres a lot of parallels between today and those times, are we in another gilded age. I do think one of the things that produced the great gap between the rich and the poor is a 20th century, as i said the whole economy had shifted, he used to be if you were living in some country term, the richest person might be the doctor or the lawyer on the house on the hill and suddenly with a massive trust forming in the 1880s and 90s, the railroad spanning the country and oil industry coming, your millionaire sidebyside with immigrants in their slums, one of the interesting things the turnofthecentury the case of life had spread upper because you had telegrams replacing letters and exploited in the tabloid press and people were saying there was a lot of nervous disorders because of the pace of life is so spread out, think about it today with the pace of life speeding up even more by the inventions that we have now, the problem is yes we are in some ways in another gilded age, that progressive era, the mobilization of the country to handle these problems has not seemingly emerged. So as a result, im not even sure the pulpit has the power it did in both wilsons time in teddys time when they would give a speech, it would become the common conversation in the country and reported in full even by the time the fdr went on his chance, you could hear 80 of the people would listen to his chats, paul said you could walk down the street in a hot chicago night and not miss a word because everybody was sitting in the kitchen and listening to the radio, by Early Television you would listen to the whole speech up to reagan when there were three networks, now the media itself is divided the way it was in the 19th century, the National Newspaper that came along as my time they return of the 20th century, im writing checks right now or 1913 anyway, the National Newspaper that emerged in the early 20th century, replacing Partisan Press in the old days you would only read your newspaper if youre republican or wig or democrat and republican newspaper lincoln gave a great speech carried out on the shoulders of his people and the democratic fell on the ground and in the same speech, then we got away from that with National Newspapers, National Radio and National Television and now here we are again divided mia you only watch your favorite cable station and you only hear part of the president speech, the pundits tearing it down before hes even finished in our Attention Span has diminished, the guys that i wrote about, they were given two years by mcwhorter, ray baker, William Allen 50000 word pieces month after month after month and people read them and talked about them, im not sure that anybody would be given that amount of time by a newspaper or magazine today and the expense accounts that they had in the, not a read that they had in the Attention Span to talk about it, i worry about where the country is going in terms of her influence on the government mcwhorter, a guy who ran the magazine at one point said theres no one left all of us and sometimes i think that is true for us too, but where are we, we complain whats going on in washington but we havent figured out how to do something about the paralysis that is there. I think the fragmentation in the media is only going to continue because people make up their own newmedia all the time, the social media and the blogging and the fact free media, that is happening all over the place, how has president wilson been treated by the media. He was treated pretty well by the media baker ended up working in wilson. I love baker, he is my favorite. He is wonderful and really spent his final years, not only working for wilson within writing nine volume eight volume biography of Woodward Wilson, he sold it to oregon, one of the most glorious pieces about wilson was written in fact it was so wonderful i found myself not quoting it because i thought it made me look to partisan in wilsons favor. But i think its quite true what you have been suggesting about the factual isaiah and of the media because what we have lost and you really articulate why, we just dont think as much anymore, we just react from the got and thats why we flock to that cable station that speaks what we think we think even though we havent thought it yet. [laughter] but i think thats a big factor today, but wilson had a very brute relationship with the media up to and just into the First World War which wilson ultimately brought us into, at that point, this becomes one of the great irony in the wilson story that the most progressive president that we have to date, im not even forgetting tr but this president became the most repressive, suppressive of the press, which he did during the war, revitalizing sedition acts that really had been quiet certainly sense the days of atoms but somewhat with lincoln they were brought back and in fact wilson used to cite lincoln all the time saying im do nothing he did not do, thats a good cover of lincoln. What is interesting people asked me what Teddy Roosevelt wouldve done in todays world of twitter and i think he wouldve loved it, his great strength was to reduce complex problems into shorthand language, so is this great deal, everything that scott says wilson believed in that fairness and im not going after the rich with the wealth and unfair means that im not going after the poor unless they havent taking care of the opportunities, the rock of class hatred, he would say is the rock on which the country will founder, but not only this great deal but speaks softly, even give Maxwell House the slogan good until the last drop it said he drank 40 cups of coffee a day, somebody has to explain the Incredible Energy of this character. I think that is true, he wouldve loved twitter because you cannot shut him up. He would have a continue, he loved being in the center of things, this is to strengthen his weakness, his daughter said he wanted to be the bride at the wedding and the corpse of the funeral. All of this made wilson crazy because he thought that tr was a character of a man and in fact somebody once pointed out to tr, he said roosevelt, you and wilson really have the same objectives, yet so many of the same principles that you believing, youre so much alike, why do you attack him every day and roosevelt said i think that is true, i think hes a weaker version of me. That is great. Wilson was from Princeton University before he was president and every environment affect them in a positive or negative way, how did help his governing. I helped him in a positive way very much because he was trying to tear down the ivory tower, Woodward Wilson was the poor son of the presbyterian minister who had a good fortune to go north to college from georgia and the carolinas where he grew up, virginia where he was born went to princeton in new jersey, there he found a very exclusive campus, he resented it as an undergraduate and he became to resented as a professor, he then became president of the college and it was at this time he decided now i have the ability to change what this colleges, wilsons predecessor in the presidency of princeton was a man who used to brag that he ran the finest country club in america, there was no question about it, this was for the sons of the very, very rich, wilson tried to tear that down and it was in doing that, he began writing about what he was doing and speaking about what he was doing, this is how the most meteoric rise in American History occurred because people began to look at wilson, he used the princeton campus as a great metaphor for america, he believed Higher Education should be the great catapult for people, the anybody from any class in a country that has no classes in that incentive country anybody was educated and works hard should be able to leapfrog, go up a staff on the latter, so wilson became famous for this, so much so that some of the political bosses in the Democratic Party were attracted to him, thinking he was a perfect combination to be there puppet. Mainly he sounded very progressive and performance but also he was a professor so he was very weak and little did they know when he got elected governor of new jersey which he served for about 18 months, the first thing he did as governor was kicked out the machine that put him in office. So everybody saw, this was no week college professor. Lets turn to the women in the president s lives, and the woman behind the man, i always wanted my husband to be more like nancy reagan for in a sample, im interested in how these women, what so interested me, there are three women that i write about in the each made choices that they had to make even though they were narrow choices so women at that time came from a family where her father had been wealthy, lost to shipping business and became an alcoholic, she lived very near teddy when she was a young girl in a wealthy area and they had to move to a modest home and she drew a protective curtain around herself, she love teddy from the time she was young and he and she were boyfriend and girlfriend in college and they had a fight in his sophomore year in college, they broke up and he fell madly in love with this beautiful young girl from boston, alice, he married alice to the devastation and she died in childbirth a few years later and he went to the badlands, depressed and thought he would never love again, the light had gone out of his life but he went back and married edith and it was a strong joyous marriage, all she wanted from the marriage and from her flesh was to give and ship strength in the sanctuary to her ever restless husband, she should first lady, she had no intention of being a public personage, she would not give her views on political opinion, what mattered for a woman was only to be in the tribes when youre married and when youre buried, when she left the first lady ship, very little known by the public at large but very much known by her family, not only by contrast growing up in cincinnati had ambitions from the time she was in adolescence to do something but her father sent her brothers to harvard and yale, she decided to start teaching to her mothers dismay thinking november, was deciding if you dont stop this work and she decided she might not marry as a result but she needs him and he adored her and really respected her independence and he made her his partner in his whole career, she is partly responsible for him choosing politics eventually instead of the judicial route that he was on, she wanted the more expansive life, she helped with his speeches, his strategy and she became an extraordinary first lady in the first few months she was there, very active is concerned with working women, she brought the cherry trees to Washington Open her guest list to a lot more people that have been there before, created a public park with free content and incredibly sadly for him and altering his presidency two months after he was inaugurated when she first got an article written in the New York Times about how extraordinary she was, she felt as if they were on a president ial yacht collapsing had a devastating stroke, she recovered her power of walking but never to speak connected sentences again, he spent days and days trying to teach her how to say phrases, glad to see you, happy to be here so she could come to the reception and participate, this again you never know how things alter, but this absolutely contributed to his troubles as presidency. And lastly, out at tarbell growing up in northwestern pennsylvania watches the frustration of his mother and family because her father is an independent oil producer making more money than he ever dreamed any been a teacher with standard oil, the occupants undoes his business and had to worry about family economics, and the time shes 14 that she will never take a husband and she does not ever get married because she become the most famous journalist of her era and when she writes her standard oil, the newspaper kept recording that John D Rockefeller was willing to pay anyone who would become her husband and take round trips around the world and never let her go, it is so interesting to think today, however, much struggle that we still have is women balancing home and family and work, those choices are so much broader than they were, that was so interesting to see that the each made a choice that fit their own needs and own desires and its a way women were an indispensable to the husband, the 21st ladies and very, very different ways. Scott how about mrs. Wilson. He has a bunch of women. You certainly did not. I feel as though were on the old show where you have to come up with the most pathetic and most marine think stories that you have, Woodward Wilson had two wives, not at the same time, the first was a young woman he met in georgia when he was a