Tell this young lady how much we officiate her. Thank you. [applause] thank you so much. [applause] thank you. If a georgetown person wins the drawing, it is going to be mighty suspect. I want you to know how to take his seat because these are strictly by the numbers. I will not load and i will pull from the middle. Pull from the middle, okay. First, read the row. All right. We will do this for some drama appropriate to a theater. The row that has been written or. The row would be jay. And seat number are you ready . All right. We owe jay, c. 26. [applause] this is for you, rather jay, seat 46. [applause] your name as pay him thanks. Enjoy your book. [applause] in the booth, as soon as we can you kill these flights. Thank you for coming. We appreciate. We are according to get her back for the second book. Thank you so much, everybody. It has been a pleasure. [inaudible conversations]. That all happened tonight on cspan2s booktv. Up next on booktv, after words with guest Host Chuck Todd of nbc news. This week dr. Ben carson and his latest book one nation what we can all do to save americas future. In it for prominent former neurosurgeon and president ial critic proposes a road out what he calls the u. S. Decline. He contends these solutions appeal to every americans decency and common sense. This program is about an hour. Host dr. Carson, welcome. I think the best way to store before you delve into your book is to delve into you. So tell me, you have a very inspirational, i grew up there tell me where you grew up. Guest i grew up in detroit. A couple years in boston also. You know, my mother came from a large rural family, got married when she was 13, rural tennessee. She and my father moved to detroit. He was a factory worker. Some years later she discovered he was a bigamist. She had the response that at the point with only a third grade education of trying to raise us on their own how. Host how many of you were there . Guest myself on my brother. We were particularly good students. Thats putting it mildly. I was the dummy, thats what everybody called the. Host a neurosurgeon now and youre a dummy. How do you go from the dummy to neurosurgery transit and one used to tease me and call me names. My mother, and i think any success ive had, you know i can contribute to god and my mother. Shes always seeking wisdom and came up with the idea of open your eyes and looking around you, and she noticed that the homes that she cleaned, people did watch a lot of tv no offense. And they read a lot of books. She looked at where we lived. She looked away they lived comments about the click in her mind, if i can get my voice to stop looking at tv all day long and start reading. She imposed that on the. Host did you have a favorite tv show . Guest i love anything. Host whatever was going . Guest you did need to tv guide around. I could say what was on every station. She basically restricted as to to or three tv programs per week. And with all the spare time she said went to read two books of peace from the Detroit Public Library and submit a written report. She couldnt read but we did know that. Host when did you find out she couldnt read traffic later on in high school. She got her ged the same year i graduated from high school. Host no kidding . Guest yeah. But anyway, by making us read, which i hated, something happened. I used to admire the smart kids in the classroom. I was always saying how come they know all these answers . They are the same age i am. But as a starter reading all this and the teacher would ask the question and i knew the answer. It got me excited and i got to the point where if i had five minutes i was reading a book. I went from being the dummy to the top of the class in the year and a half. Host give me the first book that you read. Guest chip the dam builder. Host my dad made me read profiles in courage. What was it for you . Guest chip the dam builder. It was about a beaver. It was a cool beer, ive got to tell you. Cool beaver. I read every animal book in the detroit libra and the nested reading about plans and rocks rs because we look at the Railroad Tracks and theyre all these rocks. I could get boxes of rocks. Soon i could invite any rock. Host suddenly youre a scientist and you didnt realize it. Now starting to make the connection. That may be sparked your interest transferred one day a Science Teacher held up a big black shiny rock and to does anyone know what this is . I didnt raise my hand because i never raised my hand. Nobody gets i raised my hand. Everybody turned around but couldnt leave, they said this will be how larry is. Host we known as a jokester . Guest they knew i couldnt possible know the answer so the new would be dumb. I said its subsidy and. They did know whether they should be laughing or be impressed by the teacher said thats right. Then explained how oxygen was formed and they were shocked but i was more shocking anybody because it dawned on me at that moment that i wasnt stupid. The teacher invited me to come host what grade is this . Guest fifth grade. The teacher invited me to come to the lab, got me involved in taking care of little animals. I started looking through the microscope discovering the whole world of protozoa. Host do remember the teachers name transferred mr. Jacob. Host how long ago . Guest that was more than 50 years ago. Interesting thing is i went back to that school and this was several years ago with good morning america, and they wanted to sort trace my roots. Mr. Jacob was still there. Balding and potbelly. Host are we all at some point . Guest i want him to show them the animals because he had a red squirrel, tarantula, jack dempsey fish, all these things. He said oh, we had to get rid of those things a long time ago. Host did you have a relationship with your father . Guest not a strong relationship. We would see them periodically. The last time muslim was the day i got married 39 years ago. Host did the second, he had, did you have a relationship with those halfbrothers come halfsisters . Guest no. Host did you ever forgive in . Guest absolutely. I kind of look at the big picture. My mother tried to make up for all that. And my father, you know, he was involved with drugs, alcohol, women. Nothing wrong with women but you cant have more than one, okay . Thats the problem. That probably would not have been the best influence on me. In retrospect even though i was devastated as a kid, i was praying let him come back, now i realize that perhaps it would not have been the best thing for me. Host detroit today, what would you be doing . Guest first of all, the same thing i would be doing almost any place, bring back some fiscal responsibility, fiscal common sense. A lot of people blame the unions for what happened to detroit. But i actually dont you need to do what you need to the a golden egg, give me the egg. Thats all they want a. Host they represent their members and their members want a better deal. Guest right but executives in the big three auto companies, they have a one year, five year, tenure, 15 your plan. They understand all this and a new if they kept competing with the and eventually there would be a problem. They kept doing it anyway because they knew they would have their golden parachute and they would be long gone. Host you blame as much of executives as you do guest the same thing i see around the country. Let it be somebody elses problem. Host you know, you have gotten this spark of enthusiasm among conservatives. Conservatives. Have even surprised it is come from conservatives . Did you assume you were a conservative when you did this . I get the impression you want always a conservative. Guest no. Well obviously, like most young people, growing up in a place like detroit, when i went off to college i was a radical. Host would you go to school . Guest yale. Host what is a radical at yale . If you told me radical at berkeley i would know. Guest they were radicals. There was a black panther rally, you know, Kingman Brewster was evil and all this kind of stuff. But it was just though it was at that time during our history. Radicalism was very much accepted among young people at that point. I consider myself really more of a logical person than i am a conservative or liberal or anything. Im not all that fond of labels. But i say most of our problems are easily solvable if we could just throw away the labels. I indicated in the book i would love a situation where Party Designation was not on the ballot. Where you had actually know who that person was. Host in a lot of cities, mayors races, thats the case. Its not surprising to me guess whos getting stuff done these days . Mayors. They dont have the baggage that comes with a Political Party right now. Its an interesting so eager to yale, and when you decide im going to be a doctor . Guest i actually decided that when i was eight years old. I used to love Mission Stories in church. It seem like the most noble people on the face of the earth. Great personal sacrifice, bringing mental, physical and spiritual healing to people. I said thats what im going to do. But when i turned 13 having grown up in dire poverty i decided i would rather be rich. So that point i wanted to be a psychiatrist. Host decided a psychiatrist was a better way to make money than guest on television, dr. Lawrence, plush offices. Host who was a psychiatrist that you are referring to . Guest most of the tv programs where you its a psychiatrist host they were doing it. Guest i started reading psychology today. Everybody would bring me the problems. I would sit down and host give me a nickel, tin since. Guest and i majored in psychology in college. I had blueberry professors like it was really pretty exciting. But when i got to medical school i said, you know, everybody is special gifts and talents, and what are yours . I started to make about my life and realize i had a tremendous amount of eye hand coordination. Host for a surgeon, that is key. Gasping and the ability to think in three dimensions which is essential for neurosurgeon because you do with a nebulous mass. And you have to be able to keep in mind when all the tracks are even there you cant see them. If you dont have good threedimensional skills you are host howd you know you had that skill . Guest from some of the jobs that i done annually performed extremely well like working in a steel factory. Host what did you do in the steel factory treachery crane operator. Right after i finish college. Host interesting. Guest you are driving these enormous beams of steel through narrow areas and dropping them in the bed of the truck. And that they would let me do that after one day of practice host a little scary. Guest i said, these guys see something in the that they dont see very often. Host the next guy up. Guest no, no. That was a summer job and a lot of the guys who worked there probably didnt get to do that. But, you know, as i thought about it i said youd be a tremendous neurosurgeon to a lot of people thought that was strange because at the time there have been eight black and nurses in the history of the world. But to me i didnt think about that. I said this is what my talents are. This is where im going to go. Host i hear in surgery that basically in some ways the rotations, the one rotation where people can identify the best surgeons are sometimes the Plastic Surgeon rotation in some way because youve got to be artistic and precise at the same time. Its more of, now we lampoon it in some ways. But there is some truth to that. Guest a lot of my career was developed around craniofacial surgery with the Plastic Surgeons which is why i have an apartment in plastic surgery. Host you are not practicing right now. Do you miss the . Guest i miss the way it used to be. There were a lot of things in the process of changing. Most people when they chose medicine, they chose it because you had a great deal of autonomy. You could sort of figure out, wow, im going to solve this problem. And in the days come in the early days they would be like a kid from believe you are someplace that had this incredible problem, and didnt have resources. I would just say, overriding and take your. Host you figured out because you want to solve the problem of. Guest and nobody said boo because the hospitals had a big enough war chest that it was okay. Once the Insurance Companies got to the point where they could dictate how much theyre going to pay and hospitals no longer had a margin, and then you want to do what . For free . Are you kidding me . Its a changing so much and so much bureaucracy and stuff. So one of my goals in life is to try to make medicine fun again. I want doctors to get it get up in morning and be excited about going to work. Host should doctors be getting rich . Guest i think doctors should be well compensated. Rich is a very different thing. I know a lot of rich people. Doctors that are rich. Host who should be paid more in our society, teachers or doctors . Guest i would say its an irrelevant question. I think, you know, ma people should be paid for what they do. Recognize that doctors spent a very long time and training to be doctors. They go to college, they go to medical school for four years, internship, residency. Host so you argued we say its 12 years of simply postgraduate work to be a practicing neurosurgeon. Guest it takes a long time. Theres a lot of sacrifice involved. And even when she do start working, youre working extraordinary hours and then youve got the port issue. With neurosurgeons its particularly bad because everybody thinks everything is supposed be perfect and theyre getting with very high risk real estate. That was one of the reasons that had a real problem with socalled Health Reform that doesnt include tort reform. They can even be serious. Host rhetorically the present would talk about when push came to shove. Let me ask you, your christianity is throughout the book. Science and faith sometimes collide. You are this highly scientific mind, and youre a very deeply religious person to some people would say hey, that doesnt compute. That doesnt always compute. How does it can be with you treachery first of all i was im not deeply religious but i have a personal relationship with god. There is a difference. Host let me posture there. What would be the difference . Guest the difference is that religion tends to be more form, and faith tends to be more substance. In the name of religion a lot of really silly stuff has been carried out. Host the middle east right now. At any point in time. Guest exactly. However, people who have a dip relationship with god i think of a tennessee deeper relationship see religion into the way. I actually believe that science and faith can be really quite compatible. Ive had some interesting discussions with Nobel Laureates who say, you know, how can a person of your intelligence believe that, you know, not created heaven, earth and all this stuff . I say, well, how can a person of your intelligence believe that something came from nothing. Explain to me exactly how it works. Well, we dont understand everything. Okay, so ill give you that theres something. Just, theres something. And now youre going to tell me it explodes, and we have a perfectly organized solar system to the point where we can predict 70 years when a comment is coming. The earth rotates on its axis going around i mean, so that just happened, right . And they say, well, you know, if you have enough explosion over a long enough period of time, then eventually one of them will be the perfect explosions and thats what will happen. And i said, so if i blow a hurricane for junkyard over billions of years, billions of times, eventually after one of them it would be a pretty formed 747 ready to fly, right . Well, thats what youre saying. And i say youre welcome to the plea. I have no problem. Im not going to denigrate you because of that. Its just that requires a lot more faith than it does for me to believe. Host if someone asked you are you a creationist, the believe in evolution, you would answer guest i believe that god created heaven and earth. I find that much easier to believe. Because you to recognize that you take somebody like Charles Darwin who, as you probably know, started out in a seminary. But he got to the point where, you know, he goes off to the galapagos islands. He start seeing stuff. Hes never seen finches like that anyplace else. He said, thats evidence of evolution. Well, it depends on a look at it. Two years before, which he did know at the time, there had been a severe drought. Billy finches who survived were the geeks have enough to break through the seedlings to extract what actually is happening is that you have a creator who is given his creatures the building to adapt to the environment so you have to start over. Host it sounds like you believe in natural selection. You believe in sort of some parts of darwinism not the whole thing. Guest i may not call of darwinism but i believe in a caption. Creatures with the ability to adapt to environment. If i would agree to i would certainly get my creatures that ability. Host is at 6000 over billions treachery the earth . I dont know the answer to that. The bible says in the beginning god created heaven and earth. Period. Host ive had some people say one day could have been a billion years. Guest but we dont know. Host people have created defend creationism sank 6000 years guest i would say theres nothing that tells us how old the earth is in the bible. It could be billions of years old. But also i believe the reason that god is god is because he can do stuff we cant do. So if you wanted to create something that already had age in it, he could do that. Absolutely. Thats why he would be god. Host and so your scientific education, you feel like does not conflict with your faith, your billy . Guest ive never had an instance where my belief in god has conflicted might ability might ability to be a good neurosurgeon. Host alec baldwin every character he played with an absence of malice and he was a surgeon with a god complex. That is is supposedly stereotype of surgeons. Is that just an unfair hollywood view of most surgeons . Guest well, theres no question that there are some surgeons are fairly large egos. And, in fact, its especially gushing even get people host you can be confident. Guest those are not going to become surgeons, okay . So does select for the kind of people but i know a lot of incredibly nice surgeons, incredibly caring, decent people. Host i guess i get why they might have a god complex because the theyre the only ono can solve a problem in their head, right . And thats where this comes from a little bit. Guest and its unfortunate, but host how did you prevent it. Its easy. You at Johns Hopkins. You are the elite of the elite. How did you keep your head from getting a god complex . Guest because i personally remember, and still remember, where i came from. And i also recognize that a lot of things depend on a lot of other s