How a scientist and a Parrot uncovered a hidden world of animal intelligence and formed a deep bond in the process. In this excerpt from The Massachusetts School of Law’s Educational Forum; Professor of law Diane Sullivan interviews Dr. Irene Pepperberg on her book: Alex and Me: How a Scientist and a Parrot Uncovered a Hidden World of Animal Intelligence and Formed a Deep Bond In the Process.

The following is a very rough transcript of the above video courtesy of YouTube Captions:

hello and welcome to the educational
forum
i am your host diane sullivan
those of you who know me
know of my love for animals and know of my best
friend and companion winnie
on todays show we will sit down and talk
to dr irene pepperberg
about her best friend and companion
and african grey parrot named alex
irene has written a heart warming book
entitled alex and me
how a scientist and a parrot discover a hidden
world of animal intelligence
and formed a deep bond in the process
irene begins by telling us about her
first connection to birds
oh I was about four years old my dad
got me a little budgie
the shell parakeets from you know woolworths
we lived above a store there were
no children around
my mother really didn’t want children so
she took care of my physical needs but
there wasn’t much emotional connection
my dad was working full time going to
school and taking care of his ill mother
so he was barely there he’d kiss me good
morning and I might not see him till the next
morning
so he bought me this little budgie for
companionship
what role did the succession of parakeets
play in your life
they really sensitized me to the intelligence
of these birds to
the personality really of these birds
each one of them was a little bit
different and each one of them was
equally fun and entertaining
you were a vivacious reader of books so of
course you read doctor doolittle
what impact did that have on you
Interestingly I don’t think it had that
much impact at the time other than the
fact that i had budgies that could talk
to me so it made complete sense
what i find interesting is I’ve gone back
to these books
and found that that this fellow was a
very good ethologist because he writes
about the different ways the different
animals communicate
and of course now how many years later
we’re learning that
much of what he was suggesting
is actually true well thanks to you we’re
learning that in chief part
even today irene there are substantially
less women in science than men
and back in your day
you were really a pioneer i’d like you
to tell us a little bit about your
high school years you graduated was it
third in your class out of sixteen hundred
students
and then you went on to college so tell
us a little bit about your interest in
the sciences and you’re pursuing at
least a college degree in the field of
science
well I remember being always interested
in science my father was encouraging me
to be a biologist he was a frustrated
biochemist
but when i took high school chemistry it
was a very interesting period
um women were obviously not majoring in things
like that
and i was so frightened about this
chemistry course ’cause everybody told me how hard
it was
that i borrowed the books over the summer
and started
teaching myself a little bit of it so
when i got to class
i knew this staff and then i found that it
was interesting
and i like the order
of it
and i did really well and my high school
chemistry teacher just kept encouraging
me said hey
you know you’ve got an aptitude for
this go for it
and so i’m applying for colleges and
the high school
you know guidance counselor’s
saying well you really you know maybe you should try for
vassar and things like that and I’m going no no no
I’m interested in
science
so he looks at me says well apply to
m_i_t_
and I go but women don’t go there
and he says yes yes they’re accepting women
you know you should look at this
and he arranged an interview with one of
the women who was actually
there and she came come back to our
school and talked to me about it so I
entered MIT at sixteen
i was one of the
large classes we were fifty women we were
the first large class of women out of how many students
out of about twelve hundred thirteen
hundred
so fifty women out of approximately
twelve hundred students were now women yes
OK now did you continue your
passion with chemistry
yes i did i graduated got my my
undergraduate degree there I then
went into graduate school
in chemical physics at harvard
and it was very interesting that
particular year we had a lot of women in
our class
and it turned out the reason was not
that harvard was becoming so you know
pro feminist
but it was the year that the
deferment draft deferment
for men ended
for graduate school
and they needed teaching fellows sure
and the men weren’t couldn’t apply anymore
they were all dropping out of graduate
school to become high school teachers
or doing anything that would give them
draft deferments
so here we were this the class was about
half women it was amazing and we of course
we thought oh wow harvard’s really
paying attention to all this but
it was you know other reasons
an ulterior motive
right and it was not a very friendly
attitude there towards women it was really
quite difficult
certainly I’ve heard that to be true
and and hopefully it’s changed a great
deal today i don’t know if it has or
hasn’t do you have any
inclination well you know i hate to bring
this up but you know you remember it wasn’t
too long ago that larry summers
made some comments about women in
science that’s correct that’s correct how
quickly we forget
tell us a little bit if you would about
what motivated you or why you were
interested in studying
human animal communications
so i’m halfway through my doctorate at
harvard in theoretical chemistry
i’m realizing that what i’m doing is
interesting but
i basically saw the handwriting on the
wall that was what was going to take me
seven years to do
computational mathematical modeling
as computers got better it was probably gonna take
a computer you know seven i thought at
that point seven hours now it’s probably
seven nano seconds
and I stopped being terribly
interested in it and was thinking you
know where am I headed and it was also
incredibly difficult as a woman at that
point sure I mean there were no
harvard had not a single woman on
faculty in chemistry
i think they had maybe made their first hire
in physics maybe
and they kept telling us well there
aren’t any qualified women to hire
and we’re looking at what about all of us
that you’re graduating
and but that was true across all of the
sure the school’s so I’m watching these nova
programs on animal human communication on
the signing chimps and work with singing
whales on the dolphin studies
and i think back to my work to
my
budgie’s you know they would talk to me
why isn’t anybody doing this with a
parrot parrots can talk so i had this
ephiphany
that i was going to switch fields and do
this and i did finish the doctorate in
chemistry first
good for you but i spent forty
hours a week finishing the doctorate
and forty hours a week training
myself in linguistics and nuero- biology and
psychology
in anything i could
to get my hands on and of course harvard was
great for that
because of the libraries you know
you could just immerse yourself the museum of
comparative zoology and the psych library
and read anything you needed ’cause it was
there
right your husband at the time david accepts a
position at purdue
and you decide to acquire your own
african grey parrot
and of course
alex comes along very special bird
so tell us about the acquisition of alex and
a little bit about your early years
your early
uh journal entries what it is you
write
well we started i started
by first putting in a grant proposal to
do this work i get to perdue
and
at the time the attitude was no no we
hired your husband you’re supposed to
stay home bake cookies and make babies
and i went i don’t think so and so it
took i could spend an hour explaining
what i went through but finally we got
them to put in a grant to let me put in a
grant proposal
and the reviews came back essentially asking me
what i was smoking
because most studies at the time were
working with animals that were
genetically close to humans
genetically close to humans so
the great apes uh the last common ancestor between
a parrot and a great ape was two hundred and eighty
million years ago
not so good
um also most of these studies were using
animals with large brains such as the
dolphins parrots have the brain size of a
shelled walnut
again not-so-good most studies using
birds used pigeons
they used skinarian operant training you
starve an animal down to eighty percent of
its normal body weight you put it in a skinner
box and you go from there
and i wanted to just
talk to the bird
so there were all these arguments that I
wouldn’t be able to maintain my
professional distance
so it was quite
quite a difficult set of reviews that
came back
but i decided to persevere i went out and we
got alex uh… tested out all these
different pet stores the one
criterion
was to find a bird that was domestically
bred
which in the nineteen seventies was
quite difficult really
because most of them were being imported
from africa
they that meant that one bird in ten
made it from the savanna into someone’s
living room
so the one crit
you know criterion I had was to find a hand
raised
bird I found a pet store in the chicago area so we
drove up they were eight or nine birds
in the cage
i had the fellow working with the birds
pick one because i didn’t want anybody
to argue that there was anything special
and he just scooped one up in a
butterfly net
flipped him on his back trimmed his beak his
wings his
you know toenails and
put him in a little box and said here six
hundred dollars please
and that was how I acquired alex wow
and then i resubmitted i worked
with alex and we started getting a few
labels
and so I resubmitted the grant and this time
i was really lucky i had somebody on panel
who was studying bird song
and that meant that this person i don’t
know if it was a male or female but I could tell
from the reviews it was a bird song
person
recognizing striking parallels between
the development of vocal communication
in birds and humans
there had been a lot of work being done on
that in the early seventies and said
alright this woman isn’t crazy
this may or may not work but give her
money for a year and we’ll see what happens
explain a little bit about vocal
cognitive ability to the audience
uh… when you look at these parallels
these are mainly originally done with again
songbirds but we know that in both birds
and humans there’s a sensitive phase during
which exposure allows development to proceed
most readily
so just like for humans where
you and i could learn a foreign language we’d
sound better if we learned it as a child
the same is true of songbirds okay they can
learn other species songs but
they’re not going to sound as good
as if they learn ‘em when they’re babies
and they can learn
they both have babbling or practice
periods where they experiment with the
sounds that will ultimately become part
of the repertoire
they need to learn the context in which
to use the songs just as children need to
know
you know what’s that versus who’s that or
inanimate versus animate objects
birds need to learn
what to sing for territorial defense
verses mate attraction
and even at that time we knew that there
were specific parts of the brain
that were responsible in both birds and
humans and that they were somewhat
analogous
for the learning the storage the
production of these vocalizations
after a couple of years with alex if you
have probably the
very best trained bird in captivity but
you still cannot obtain funding really
for experimentation and development
how do you account for that
well it was interesting we got you
know we got the first grant for a year we got
the second grant for another year
then the reagan administration
came in and there was just a general
overall cutback in government funding
for everything
so instead of being fun the national
science foundation instead of being funded
twenty percent
went down to about ten percent
funding so it was only really
standard types of research that were getting
funded at that point mine wasn’t standard
um so we got a little bit of private foundation
money
we barely got through when funding came
back again we got funding again
then nineteen eighty six we’d just done a most
incredible study with alex on concepts of
same and different
green wool
how many green wool
how many green wool
four
good parrot good boy
uh really breakthrough work I put in
my grant proposal
it comes back you know great proposal
but we’re again we’re out of money
and this is you know this is not
standard research so
yeah you were in the top twenty but we’re only
funding the top ten
but you don’t give up
no and it was this type of perils of
pauline
lifestyle that every time that alex did
something incredibly exciting
we’d get press you know publicity i’d be
invited to
incredible meetings you know international
congresses to present the data
and then it would be like clunk how are we gonna
keep the work going
that’s right
tell us now
some of the delightful accomplishments
of alex tell us
a little bit about his use of the word
no
or na as i understand it well
you know we were training him to identify
all these different objects he learned to
identify
like fifty objects and seven colors and
five shapes and quantities up to about
six over the years
but the issue was we started with
objects that he wanted to obtain
so it was very easy to teach him to label
those things ’cause hey these were fun he wanted
the wood to chew on and the paper
to tear apart and things
then we started getting in to objects that
weren’t quite as much fun
so we had to teach him
the label want
so that he could ask us for what he
wanted as his reward
to separate identification from
requests
but sometimes he still
just didn’t want to work
and he started with this little
na
when he didn’t want to work or
he’d do things like we’d show him an object
and if he were
not working with us we’d say well i’m going
to go away i’m going to give you a
timeout
so he learned to say i’m going to go
away and he’d walk
to the edge of the perch away from us
sometimes he’d give us all the wrong
answers so if the answer was one color
he would repeat the six wrong colors
why did he do that
i think it was more fun for him it made it
more interesting
i think at some point if he could have said
i’ve already done that
he would have because
i would need you know sixty sometimes
a hundred trials
for statistical significance he would zip
through the first dozen or even
twenty trials ’cause it was fun it was a
new project
and then it was like hello
we’ve done this we’ve done this already
don’t make me do it again
yeah it’s boring
you describe in your book which i must
interject is a wonderful book
what a wonderful read
in any event you you say that during your
years at purdue you and alex are like
vagabonds as I recall well we you know
we did not have our own lab space
basically
they shifted us from
whatever was convenient from one
place to another
i think we had at least three maybe
four different
laboratories depending on who needed
what space
so um
you know it was just ok whatever as long
as you let me do the work we’ll do it
but it was really difficult because each
time we moved the lab
it interrupted
the training oh sure it did and I would imagine that it
was difficult for alex initially to make
those transitions am I wrong about that
no it was you know it was hey
you know this was different space is it
safe
you know and it took him awhile to to get used to
each space
describe some of the tests for colors and
shapes tell the audience a little bit
what that was all about well the idea
was could an animal understand
categories ok and categories in a
hierarchical sense the idea is not just
that this is you know what’s green and
what’s not green
but that green and blue and yellow etc.
formed a
category
that could be lumped under the term
color
and another category like two three
four five six corner that be lumped
under shape
and paper wood and rawhide under material
so the idea was learning a categorical
concept label color shape matter
and then learning which colors went
under that
so that i could show him an object that
had color and shape and material and say
alex what’s this
block what color green
what shape four corner what matter wood
so he understood all those concepts and it also
meant
that i was getting away from rote
responses
so that when i showed him this subject he
never knew
oh
what to say until he heard me
ask a question
wow that is significant sure
yes so it was not simply stimulus
response
oh I see this thing every time i see this thing
I say green uhn uhn he had to think he had to think
he had to wait for my
question how many orange rock
how many orange block
say better you’re right how many orange block
you were right but it wasn’t clear
six good parrot another particular comment
that alex sometimes would make was the
use of i’m sorry
so i can’t wait to ask you this did he
feel remorse no there was actually no
contrition
uh… it was what he learned to diffuse
a tense situation
it’s the same thing that you see
ritualized in animals
where a dog will will present its jugular
as if to say you know oh
i’m sorry you know kill me it’s ok and
of course that diffuses and aggressive
situation
and so alex learned to say i’m sorry
to do that and it started because
he was sitting on a perch and i had
coffee some coffee and i wanted to go
outside for something
and i put the
coffee cup away from where i thought he
could possibly get it and i come back
whatever later and there he is on
the floor with the coffee cup in pieces
all around him
and of course the first response like
any mother type person you say aah!
you know what happened how did you do
that
and then you stop and go this is a bird
you know and you’re ranting it’s not his
fault this was an interesting thing
he went to explore it he knocked it off
the shelf he ended up there and then of
course you’re worried that he’s hurt
so you pick him up say i’m sorry i’m
sorry i’m sorry
and he put the two together oh she’s yelling
at me and then she says i’m sorry
if i say this she’ll stop yelling at me
wow and that’s where it
came about
what a great story
how does alex react when he sees
himself in the mirror
the first time one of the students had
actually taken him into the wash room with her ’cause she
was afraid to leave him
for fear that he would break
coffee cups or you know whatever
and so um there’s a shelf in front of the
mirror and she puts him there
and you know he starts banging he says
what’s that what color
and she looks she says well that’s you alex
you’re a gray parrot the color is
gray
and so the problem was of course that
messed up any mirror study we could do
because she had already told them him it was
him
but he learned the color gray that way
wow
david’s post at purdue ends where do you
and alex go next
we end up at northwestern david gets a
job at the university of illinois in
chicago and i get a visiting assistant
professorship
at northwestern hallelujah yes
but visiting assistant professorship
means it’s year to year contracts okay
so that’s not so good tell us the
banana story
so we’re
trying to train
alex and another bird we thought maybe
we could use another bird as a model too
so
a
a person i know at northwestern brings
in his bird and i say so what’s your bird’s
favorite thing and he says apples and I said
okay we’ll train apple
and so we start
training apple and alex you know over the
course of sometimes doesn’t want to
learn apple but all of a sudden starts
saying want banary
and I’m looking at him what
so i call up one of my colleagues who’s
a linguist there
and he says oh oh
lexical elision i say what
and he say well you know banana cherry
probably tastes a little bit like a
banana it probably looks like a large
cherry
so he’s made up this new label
and I’m going ooh okay this is pretty cool
wow did alex
really in hindsight know what he was saying
oh most definitely most definitely i mean
that was the whole point of the study to
design the experiments
to show that he really was
so as i mentioned you could show him one object
and he had to listen for my questions
we could show him two objects and say you know
what’s here key how many two
what color bigger green
you know what’s
different
you know color
let’s explore that a little bit more the
concept of
same and different and why that’s
significant
it’s very significant because early
studies on same different with animals
really weren’t looking at same
different they were looking at identity vs. non
identity
so you show the animals two objects and if they’re identical the
animal said same
or hit a button that said same or
didn’t match the sample or something
like that
and if they were
different
you know they said
not same
and when people started
thinking about this particularly david
premack was very important in this
started looking at this and thinking well
wait a minute if the animal or subject
really understands concepts of same
and different
they could tell us
what attribute
was same or different
so it you could show two blocks the same
size the same material
but different colors
and if the animal really understood a
concept of same and different they could
tell you that it was just the color wow that
was different
and they could transfer that to any other
two objects
that had nothing to do with the original
blocks in which you were training
but you could take out you know
balls and say okay what’s same or different and they could
also respond ’cause they understood the abstract
concepts
of same and different
pretty unbelievable
wow
your marriage ends
you spend most of your time in the lab
with alex what was that period in your
life like
well we had moved to the university of
arizona and this is my first real
faculty job
so although i had been this visiting
assistant professor now it’s not just the
teaching
but it’s the faculty meetings and that’s
on top of running this huge lab now i
mean thankfully
I have space I have graduate students
we get more birds
so I’m working about seventy-five
eighty hours a week
when i’m in town and doing a lot of
traveling I’m being invited to a lot of
places
also even though we have good support
from the national science foundation atthis
stage
I am only given support for one graduate
student and i had three or four students
the department would pay for one so I
set up the alex foundation to raise money
to support the other students in the laboratory
good for you
alex develops a fungal infection
tell us about that and most particularly
when he says want to go back
uh… aspergillosis it’s a rather
nasty
infection this was actually while we were
still at northwestern
and I have to take him to the veterinarians
and they’re testing him
basically they tell me no he has to stay here
we can’t do this on an outpatient basis we
have to have him here all the time
well he’s never been away from the
laboratory and all the students and myself
so I’m and putting him in this little
tiny hospital cage and i’m walking
out the door
and we had this i’m sorry which had
been before
and also he used to say like want to go
back if he was you know on the back
of a chair he’d say you know want to go back meaning
take me back to the cage
things like that
so here I am walking out the door and
there’s this pathetic little voice going
i’m sorry come here want to go back
which you know so I’m trying to explain to him no no i’ll
be in tomorrow I’ll see you tomorrow just like
every day I tell you i’ll see you tomorrow
i will be back
it was it was really difficult
did he understand that do you think
it’s hard to say
it’s hard to say but I initially i don’t think he
believed it but when i stepped i started
coming back
okay every day i would you know
it was it was a nightmare i was actually
in the process of moving the lab
so i would get up in the morning go in to
northwestern teach my class
then get into the car drive roughly an
hour to the vet practice stay with him
until
you know the edge of rush hour so i
could beat rush hour traffic back to
northwestern
and then spend evenings packing up the
lab
to deal with all the stuff and preparing for
courses and
writing the papers and things
so once he got the into the routine that
i was coming back every day
then i think it was much easier but
initially there was no trust that
I’m in this weird place your leaving me it’s
like a parent leaving a child or any yeah or
any pet owner having to leave their animal at the vet
which I still
refuse to do can’t somehow do that but
in any event
tell the story a delightful story in the book i
had a real laugh
about grays tending to speak like their
owners
oh yes i’m not sure which which one
you’re talking about in the book the kick your blank
story
oh oh that was my friend um it was
not alex okay this was not alex this is
my friend
debbie and michael
smith who had a bird named charlie
parker
and
that bird sounds exactly like michael I mean
exactly i was actually there in there
house and debbie has
charlie on her shoulder and she picks
up the phone says hello and the bird
says hello
and she says no no no you don’t have me and michael you
have me and charlie on the phone
because the person at the other end of the phone
will think it’s michael thought it was michael
and so the story in the book is there
is these some really obnoxious
agent you know wanting to sell them some
insurance or whatever and debbie’s
trying very nicely to you know just get
them off the phone
and at some point the bird kicks in with
this
kind of expletive deleted type thing about you know
that you know
just get off the phone and it’s quite
embarrassing had it been somebody they had
wanted to talk to but at this point it
was really quite pleasant because the
bird
did the dirty work for them
so that’s typical of an african gray
they will develop
a voice that mimics their owner oh yes
alex supposedly sounded very much like me
um we had one incident at northwestern where
I’m coming back after lunch and i opened
the door and there is some guy in the
lab and I’m what’s this and he’s a looking at me
and
what’s going on and he said well I knocked on the door and
somebody told me to come here
so i did and alex was separated from
the thing there was a little curtain in
front of his place so that
when people would come in and out
they wouldn’t directly interrupt him
there was a little entryway
so this man is standing in front of the entryway
and I said you know
and then somebody asked me what my problem
was and i said that I had come here
to fix
the pipe that was was you know leaking
and and
i didn’t see anybody and then you walked
in and of course it was
alex
introduce us to griffin
griffin is a much younger bird
he is a really little sweet character
he’s like the little boy who knows all the
answers but is kind of intimidated
by the bigger guys in class and that
was alex intimidated him
but um i needed a second bird
to to
to do some more research to test some
things out to prove that alex wasn’t
some avian einstein
and a an avian vet arranged for
me to pick up a bird in georgia
and a the gal who had the aviary
sets me out on the floor with all these
little baby birds she had picked out
and already weaned
older bird about fourteen weeks it was
weaned it was flighted
but she thought you know let’s just see
so she puts me on the floor with all these little baby birds
and this seven-and-a-half week old thing comes up to
me
wee wee wee wee wee pulling at my clothing looking at me
and she
you know terry looks at me and i look at
her and she says um i think you’ve
just been chosen and i said but i don’t
know anything about hand feeding and she says we’ll
teach you well
you can’t learn that much and it’s very
dangerous to hand feed
so um and this is something don’t ever tell me
if there’s anything i can do for you
because i
bring people
and my friend debbie from salt lake who
was a vet tech at the time
had told me that
so i’m calling her from the athens
airport from the atlanta airport in
georgia
and I’m saying debbie remember what you
said well here’s my credit card get a
flight
at to
you know Tucson I’ll meet you there you’ve
got to train us because you’re a vet tech
and you know about hand feeding
and i don’t want to take the chance with this bird
but everything works out everything works
out
you become almost a slave to alex
as he’s quite successful in
labeling things then he starts demanding
i want x y and z correct
oh yeah oh yeah and you know you get to the point
of
no you can’t have this right now now
let’s do some more work before
we do this
cute story alex was a show off
i’ll use that word loosely
and he was very happy in the lab
tell us about the time you take him home
well I would take him home
not very often but sometimes over
holidays when the students weren’t there
and he really wasn’t too happy at home because
he didn’t have the students
called themselves parrot slaves I mean they
were always there
at his every whim
and if i took him home you know i mean i
would
leave him in one room and i would go in
the other room to do something and he
would be alone come here come
here
but he he got used to it after awhile and he
did like to sit there on the perch
while i would sit there and work
next to him that was that was really
good so one time i take him home
and unbeknownst to him at this point some
little screech owls
had started to nest in the eaves of the
house
and so i take him home
and all of a sudden it’s want to go back want to
go back want to go back and he’d often
do that for the first moment or two and I’d say
alex just wait a minute let me get your
food let’s get the cage set up
he just wouldn’t stop this time
and then i see the little screech owls
and obviously there was some just innate
fear of this predator type bird even though
the screech owl was probably smaller than he was
but it’s this predator shape it’s
this predator bird
and i pull down the curtain and I’m going see they’re
on this side you’re on this side
but alex had what was called object
permanence he knew that they were
you know still on the other side of that
curtain
and i just had to pack him up and take him
back to the lab that night and
I just didn’t dare take him home again because
i knew
he would still believe that they were there
wow my favorite of all the stories in the
book
is at times when you would be
exasperated or angry or whatever the
story would be and you’d come in and maybe
just louder than life alex would
tell you irene to calm down yes what was
going on there well sometimes you know
he would get obstreperous and we would
say alex calm down
and
so he learned the appropriate context
in which to use that phrase
wow discuss alex’s attachment to
individuals like spencer
yeah spencer was actually probably his
favorite
you know human after me
and
spencer went to africa to do some
studies at one point
and alex would sit there going
sir sir come here sir he couldn’t say
spencer so he’d say ’cause the s’s are hard
and s p is really hard
we found out later how hard s p was
so he would you know jump off
the perch that he was on and and clickety
click and walk into
the room you know spencer’s office and
you know sir
sir oh wow
it continues to be a struggle to support
yourself
oh yes oh yes right now we have a small
national science foundation grant but it only
pays part of the
the fees and so i spend and awful lot of
time
going to bird clubs going to
fundraisers sure
i’m trying to we have to raise a hundred
thousand dollars a year to keep the lab
going
and that’s a significant amount of
of money
so we have an online store in the
alexfoundation.org
where we sell alex foundation things
t_-shirts sweatshirts mouse pads you you know you
name it
to try to make raise money for the lab
well i hope our audience will do some
shopping on that website thank you
i another plug is that there are
buttons so you can join something called i give
which is an online um
system where when you join you we five
dollars and then
you go there first
and almost anything else you buy online
we get a few cents on that purchase
and it doesn’t cost you anything
the merchants who are part of this
donate a few cents of every purchase
oh
wonderful way to help that’s right it
doesn’t cost you a cent
tell us about alex’s transference of
none from same and different
that was a very exciting story
we are
at the point doing number comprehension
we’d already done
number production
so you could give him a big tray of
objects red and blue balls and blocks
scattered around and you’d say how many
blue blocks
and he could look at this big mess of
stuff
and and count out
the number of blocks we had
other data that shows he really was counting
that’s right
say it better
you’re right
say it better
that’s right key how many how many
how many key
two you’re right but production isn’t the same as comprehension
because you can have small children who
you give them four marbles and they go
one two three four
there are four marbles and you think they know four
but if you give them a big bowl of stuff they’ll just and you say
give me four they go like this ’cause they don’t really comprehend
fourness
so we’re doing a study on comprehension
so it was a very similar type of tray to
the other study
this he had been working on numbers for
ten years so these trays were getting
pretty boring
but now the task was okay what color
six or what color three or something
like that
and he’d have to find the set of objects
so again they were like
you know several different keys so there
would be blue keys and green keys and
purple keys all mixed in
and it was you know
how many what color six so he’d have to find
the six of them and tell me the color
so the first dozen trials or so as i
mentioned before first dozen trials or
so
he rips through it it’s somewhat fun
’cause it’s a different type of question
but then after the first dozen or so it’s the same stupid
tray the same stupid object and he
starts acting up
so what he does is he
you know will turn his back when i show
him the tray and start preening
or he’ll take his beak and he knocks everything off the floor
or he looks at it and you know let’s say
the color is
you know ther’re blue purple and green
things on the tray and i say what color
you know six
and he gives me all the colors that are not
on the tray
to make it clear that it’s not that he’s
making a mistake
he’s just not playing not playing the
game
so you know we switch to giving doing using
jelly bellies to see if he’ll you know
work for a jelly bean which isn’t a great
thing for a parrot but you know one
a day not so bad we’re doing one trial of this a
day to keep his interest
and i walk in one time and i’ve got the
objects on the tray and there are three four and
six things on the tray and the question
that day is what color three
and this time he looks at me and he says
five and I go no alex what color three
five
and we go back and forth several times
and part of me is thinking
there’s not five things on the tray
what’s going on here you know
the other part of me is going
he’s not turning his back on me he’s not
throwing things on the floor
he’s not giving me random colors
what’s with this five
so I finally look at him and I say okay smarty what
color five
and he looks at me and he goes none
there were no five things on the tray
he transferred absence of
an atribute
from same and different
to absence of stuff
it was a zero like concept
in western civilization we didn’t get
zero till the sixteen hundreds
years ago dan had suggested i
do something like this
and i thought oh this is really too hard
he couldn’t possibly do it
wow but not only had he done it but
he had manipulated me
into asking him the question
that he wanted to answer which was a
whole nother
level of complexity in his behavior wow irene
that was probably the most exciting thing he’d ever done
how about
discuss purple and want grapes
okay that was the preliminary
thing we had tried with this okay
that’s what i thought yeah we had
done one trial so i put a bunch of things
on the tray
without
a purple object and the task at this
point was you know what object is
green
and if there were you know a green key
he would say key and he did that quite quite well
so here i put all these things on a tray and i
say okay what’s purple
hoping he would say
none and he looks at me and he goes
want grape
wow so I mean he had sort of
you know
gotten a backwards thing and it wasn’t
a bad thing to say
but it wasn’t what i wanted and that’s when i
decided no you know we can’t do
this
none thing then
years later he
pulls it on me
at this time in your life you’re at
Radcliffe
your fellowship ends
you have your thermostat at fifty-seven
you’re eating tofu which as a
vegetarian i say that’s a great thing
but a lot of people not fourteen meals a week
but a lot of people wouldn’t agree
so tell us
what’s going on
financially in your world it’s really
tough I mean I’m on unemployment
uh… my colleagues at at harvard and
Radcliffe are trying to figure out you
know how to help me
and we come up with the idea of putting
in a grant proposal
on optical illusions
how do these birds literally see
the world
which was very exciting because
I mean parrot
vision is different from human vision the
eyes are on the opposite sides of the
head
they see in the ultraviolet which we
don’t so they have better color vision
than we do
but the question is you know in terms of
perception
their this visual system of theirs is is
wired
somewhat differently than ours do they
perceive the world
in the same way so we setup a series of
optical illusions that we were going to
present to alex
and the first one which is very simple
is called muller-lyer
it’s very fancy term but you all know what it
is it has two lines one has arrows
going this way one has arrows going that
the ones with the arrows going this way
always looks longer so we made the two
lines different colors and we’d show it to
alex and say what color bigger what color
smaller
and he could tell us the color and if he didn’t see
the illusion
he would say none
so we put in the grant proposal of course
it’s rejected the first time
but we tweaked it to fix it up
the way they wanted and finally it is
accepted
and we’re pretty excited about this
hallelujah
is a bird’s brain
the same as ours
well yes and no no okay this is this is
an interesting you sound like a lawyer
now
when you look at a bird brain it looks
nothing like our brain our brain has all
these they’re called
gyri and sulci it’s all these
you know it it it’s all these
hills and valleys and it’s
very complicated looking
you look at a bird’s brain it just looks like
a blob of stuff
okay very smooth
it turns out that even in
nineteen hundred’s kalisher
was doing work showing that they were
birdbrain areas that seem to be
responsible for intelligent behavior
at the time they called it a striatal area
it seemed that birds with the largest
striatal areas the parrots the crows the
jays
would would do better on intelligence
tests
than those birds with the smaller stratal
areas relative to the size of the brain
and
fast forward to the nineteen seventies
and people start looking at the song
learning centers
and started realizing that they were
centers of song learning that were
similar to our language learning centers
but i’d still go out and give talks and
people would say well there’s no
cerebral cortex in the avian brain the
part of the brain that’s in
mammals and primates is responsible for
intelligence
and I’d say look
you go find it because the bird is doing
this stuff and he’s using something to do
it
well nature reviews neuroscience two
thousand five jarvis et. al where et. al.
is twenty other neuroscientists
they publish showing
all this work they’ve been doing for a
decade showing that the avian brain has
a cortical like area
it’s developed it’s derived from the same
palial area
as the mammalian brain
going back into two hundred eighty
million years ago to the dinosaurs
and that those birds as we knew
before the parrots the crows the jays
with the relatively larger
area
in this brain
again is responsible for these
relatively more intelligent behavior
so it doesn’t look like our brain
but it functions like our brain
wow
what are some of alex’s favorite
activities
he really really loved chewing up boxes
he liked to practice his vocalizations
so sometimes he would
get inside the box which was a little bit of a
resonating chamber
and he’d sit there playing with the sounds
that we were working on
so this when i say work I mean people
think that I’m you know driving this
bird like a little like a little slave driver
and things but
he would have fun playing with the sounds
he’d sit there going
nail chail banail gail and and he would
play with these sounds trying to
get what we were doing one time we had a film
crew in for example and
he was
we had not decided to do this but he’d
gotten into whatever it was that he wanted to
learn the color brown
so he would look at this
cube or something and say what color
and I’d go brown it’s a brown cube
a brown block and i’d put a piece of wool
there it’s a brown wool
and he’d go what color
and so the film crew thougt this was cute
and they filmed it for a few you know and then
he kept doing it and they said well you know this is stupid
you know he’s just
you know babbling I said no no no
he has to hear me say this many many
times because he has to shape his entire
vocal tract
to come up with this new labeling brr
imagine br
without lips
this is difficult
so he keeps asking me so he keeps
hearing it
he’s driving this I’m not
training this he was driving this
for whatever
reason he found this of interest
wow
it’s just amazing
tell us about your final exchange with
alex
oh yes sorry yes
well you know we didn’t know first
let me say we didn’t know it was our final
exchange with alex he was
thirty one years old
he had just had his vet check
and everything was fine so we had no
reason to
think that that night was any different
from any other night
we had a good night routine
for every night we had this good night
routine and we set it up initially
because we wanted to separate leaving at
the end of the day which was a normal
experience
from a timeout
when he was being difficult and we
wanted to
you know break the session and i would
you know leave him as a sort of a
punishment for
you know a minute or two
but you know putting him in a cage at night
that shouldn’t be a punishment that’s just
part of the day
so we set up a good night routine i’m
going to go eat dinner i’ll see you
tomorrow
you know you be good and he started picking
up parts of this so we then
had this little duet every night
and it changed
every night so people said what were his exact
last words well
you know every night it was a little bit
different but the basic thing was you
know one or both of us would say you
know
you be good
yes i’ll try I love you i love you too
i’ll see you tomorrow will you be in tomorrow
yes I’ll be in tomorrow
so we would
we had this little routine and it was a
variation on that
and we walked out the door thinking
well we just we will be in tomorrow and we’ll
see each other tomorrow just like every other tomorrow
but
this time
it was not to be
was not meant to be what impact did alex have on the world
it completely
took me by surprise
I mean alex had been
popular we had done lots of television
things every time he did something
exciting like the none
you know we actually did that
scientifically we did a whole paper on it
showing that it was repeatable it wasn’t
this this one anecdotal thing
so yeah the newspapers got onto it and
they were
you know interviews all over but you
know would last a day or two and then it
would fall apart
and so after he died
i was in complete shock
it was on a we found out about it on a
friday morning
it just
it was a nightmare
over the weekend friends came from
washington they drove up to be with me
to help me
local friends were making sure
people were bringing food to make sure
I would eat
they you know my friends would trundle me
off to bed not that i could sleep
but they would
you know make sure I would
get some rest and over the weekend the
my board of directors from the alex foundation
put together this obituary
and again i
i was totally
comatose i mean not functioning but
monday morning i call up the folks at at
at brandeis
who’d been working with me up here
for years and i say well you know alex
died and we have an obituary
and they say well you know
this is a bird it’s it’s not going to
get a whole lot of traction i said just
release it
whatever
we’re getting phone calls rumors are
coming through
you know we need to make an official
statement
so this is nine a_m_
it takes forty minutes to drive from my house
to brandeis
and by that time i get to lab my phone
my cell phone’s ringing off the hook
the lab phone’s ringing off the hook
my lab manager’s cell phone is ringing
off the hook
i people are calling for all over the
world
for interviews about this
and i’m again going into interview mode
you hold the phone up
you you know close your eyes focus on the
question answer it as best you can
I mean I’m used to doing that so i could
snap into this interview mode
it was something i could hold onto
but i didn’t think about the
ramifications i just
coped
and the emails were pouring in three
thousand to my private account
boxes and boxes of mail coming
people telling me
alex’s impact on their lives
there were three articles in the new
york times I mean new york times
his obituary was in the economist
I mean that’s you know that back page it’s
reserved for world leaders maybe
pavorotti folks like that
a parott
it was just manchester guardian i
you know all these
it was just overwhelming and
the letters from people
were completely overwhelming
people telling me I mean there was one woman
she’d been contributing ten dollars a
month
for quite awhile and I’d
write her little thank-you notes her nickname
was wren which we thought was cute
so I’d write her a little note saying thank you so
much for assisting
and i do that when people contribute
i mean I have to say maybe once in a while it
falls through the cracks but i really
try religiously whether it’s
ten dollars or ten thousand
I mean for the person who is giving me ten
dollars
could be more percentage of their
right income you never know
so I write little thank you notes
and but I’d never known backstory
and now she sends me a letter
about her backstory
a number of years ago she’d been
diagnosed with one of these really nasty
diseases that don’t take you out but
make your life really miserable
and she was suicidal she just didn’t
want to
cope with this and
she’s sitting there thinking about how
she’s going to end it all and
the television’s on and it turns out a
little story about alex and she looks at
this little bird
doing all this interesting
stuff and somehow that gave her
a new lease on life and she actually
started thinking about this and got
a bird and connected to this
you know amazing but
that you think that alex somehow prevented
somebody from
pretty remarkable isn’t it
we get letters from
from a grade school
okay the
week before the teacher had done a
project on animal intelligence
so she brought her grey
into
the classroom
and talked about intelligence conservation and
stuff when the children heard that
alex had died
they all wrote me
notes sympathy notes so this is a
grade school children drawing
little pictures of alex
and then opening it up and writing these lovely
little notes
it was just overwhelming
and that’s um
and so that’s why i ended up writing the
book because i realize that people
didn’t know my backstory they were all
sharing theirs
when i when i go give was giving
talks it was always science
you know I’d be invited to international
congress you give the science you go to a
colloquium
you give the science even at bird clubs
I mean I just gave the science and then
at the end i would often say why we need
some funds to
keep this going and we literally passed the hat but
i never shared with people the struggles
that we had gone through
and i realize that they were sharing
their struggles
i needed to share mine
so glad that you did
how are your other birds they’re doing okay
arthur is not much of a talker
we got him when i was at the media lab
to do
basically mechanical type stuff so
inter pet explorer
and web browser for parrots you know
computer based or mechanical stuff so
we’re trying to develop some more
mechanical things for him to do griffin
is a talker
he has only had about a quarter
of the training alex had at his age
’cause when we first got him we wanted to
test out our training technique to
see if other the training techniques would be
as useful
so those didn’t work so we only had a
certain amount of quote unquote good
training
and then when we moved to massachusetts
instead of his having his own little lab
space where we could do the training
now all the birds are in one room
and alex started interrupting all of the sessions
so we’d be sitting there going griffin
what color and alex would say no you tell me
what shape
and so griffin would shrug his little birdie shoulders
looking like
mmm
so it was definitely hard and now he’s
still sometimes looks towards alex’s
cage as if to say um
you know where are the answers you used to tell me all the answers
so it’s been an interesting interesting
journey
did alex mimic
or did alex think oh he definitely
thought and everything that we did
was to to prove that
in closing in your book you quote gandhi
and you say in essence
be the change
that you wish to see in the world which
is what gandhi one of his many
brilliant statements are that people
reflect upon so what i want to say is
you’ve done that you were a leader
and we appreciate and applaud all of your
efforts irene and we wish you the very
best of things thank you so much thank you
for coming today
banana right good boy
right what’s it
called
?
?
in her book Irene writes
parrots and other pets are not little humans
they are their own beings do they deserve to be treated with care
and kindness
of course so let’s listen to Karen Windsor from foster parrots
who at animal rights day
discusses some of the laws designed to protect these beautiful creatures
one of the very few pieces of
legislation was the wild bird conservation
act of nineteen ninety-two and it
impacted the
the trade in parrots by prohibiting the
importation of the vast majority of wild
caught parrots
into this country
the intended benefit
one of the intended benefits of
that legislation was to preserve birds
in the wild
now here
we have some
beautiful birds living in the wild
the way they were meant to live
these first two photos that you’ve seen
are photographs we took in guyana
we operate a wild
parrot conservation project in the south
american country of guyana
um
wild scarlet macaw
also amazon parrots in guyana
this is a hyacinth macaw
located in brazil
this is the way we want to see parrots
this is a photograph actually these are
naturalized ring necked
parrots in the netherlands
they’re
considered an invasive species
this is one of the problems that the
wild bird conservation act hoped to
curtail
you know this is exportation of
parrots
these are dozens of macaws crammed into
crates and this is generally
has been the fate of parrots in the wild
the wild bird conservation act
um
took
the united states off the market for
parrots but that’s still left all of
europe
and asia open to parrot importations
and it’s you know it’s been a lucrative
business around the world
these are parrots in guyana
guyana is one of two countries in south
america that still legally exports its
wildlife which is why it is the
place that we chose to work
because
the trapping of parrots is still
going on there
okay one of the um… unintended
consequences of the wild bird conservation
act was that
was a sudden acceleration of domestic
breeding
of so-called cage or companion birds
in this country and much to the
detriment of captive birds there was no
federal regulation in place to govern
domestic breeding practices
and um… this is this industry remains
largely unregulated on the federal and
state level to this day there are very
few
laws in place to protect parrots
and um
the avian industry is really highly
motivated to keep it that way and they
will fight
tooth and nail to make sure that no
legislation to protect parrots in the
trade
is ever passed
this is a picture of un
a breeding facility
and
i’m sure there are breeding facilities
around the country i don’t want to make
a blanket statement they’re not all
horrible
but the vast majority of them look like
this
when you read ads for
from breeders
lots of times they’re slinging
they’re producing twenty or thirty
different kinds of parrots
what do you think the conditions are
like
um all these pictures that i’m showing you
are from
well known
breeding facilities
that pump um…
thousands hundreds of thousands of
parrots into the pet trade every year
um
parrot they’re parrot mills
much on the same lines as puppy mills
and these are perfectly acceptable
this is a place its beaches down
in a north carolina
and uh…
these are the conditions these birds
you know at least they get sunshine but they have
very little else they don’t have very much
room
to spread their wings they certainly
don’t have any enrichments
these are dirty bowls once again really
hard to see but um it’s mud
water the conditions are horrible they’re
bare-bones
and this is uh prevelant all over the
united states
because there are no laws to govern this
is as a matter of fact
is long most places if you can show
that there’s some kind of shelter some
kind of evidence
of a bird having had food and water
in the last eight that’s about
all they need
and a there’s nothing that the law can
do
to come into a place like this I mean
look at this poor guy he’s only got one
eye
i had to throw a few in because this is
a pretty pathetic situation but this is
what’s happening to birds all over the
country
and this is what
we are motivated to deal with
but it’s hard because once once
again there are no laws
there’s nothing that any agency can come
in to do to to help this bird
these are birds that were put up for
public auction recently
these are the birds that are
producing the babies that you see in pet
stores
so it looks like a happy situation
in the pet stores
but um…
it’s hell behind-the-scenes
and i think that one of our biggest
frustrations as a parrot rescue organization
is the fact that when babies are um…
bred under these kinds of
conditions
and um… then are removed from there
parents you’ve got
parental deprivation
you’ve got um
another species raising a species you
have
gavage feeding where there’s
no nurturing
no care
forced weaning um all of these things
impact the psychology of a parrot
so what you end up with is a product
um you know that’s basically a
psychologically damaged animal
that doesn’t even stand a chance of
being a good pet
parrots are highly intelligent just like
dolphins or primates or humans
intelligent species
do require a prolonged nurturing period in
order to be
well adjusted adults
the one piece of legislation
on the federal level that should be in
place to protect parrots would be the animal
welfare act
um unfortunately um
you know this is this is
legislation that was enacted to govern
the treatment of animals used in um
experiments in exhibition and as
pets it mandates standards of humane
care in regards to environmental
conditions light food water exercise
um
parrots apparently
are exempt
from protection
under the animal welfare act
and so are many other kinds of animals
cold-blooded reptiles
amphibians are excluded
in her book Dr pepperberg writes
alex taught us that we
are a part of nature
not apart from nature the separateness notion was a dangerous
illusion
that gave us permission to exploit
every aspect of the natural world
animals plants minerals
all without consequences
we are now facing
those consequences

The first author ever interviewed on Books of Our Time, Joseph Ellis, returns to the program to discuss  his book First Family  with Dean Lawrence R. Velvel.  Velvel and Ellis discuss the enormous impact of the Adams family on the creation of the United States, why we will never see their type of leadership again,  the marriage and letters of John and Abigail Adams, the accomplishments of John Quincy Adams, how Adams differed from Washington and Jefferson, as well as Adams’  work in the Continental Congress as well as in the Presidency.

Mr. Ellis is a Professor of History at Mount Holyoke College and the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for History in 2001.

The following is a rough transcript of the above video, courtesy of YouTube captions.

welcome to books of our time
brought to you by the massachusetts
school of law
today we shall discuss first family by
professor joseph ellis
professor ellis who previously has
written books on george washington
thomas jefferson
john adams and the events of the
revolutionary era and the early years of
the republic
is one of america’s leading historians
and writers on that period
his prior work has won both a pulitzer
prize and a national book award
the book we shall discuss today first
family which has just come out in
paperback
the hardcover edition was published in
two thousand ten
is the story of a marital and political
partnership of john and abigail adams
it has won the best nonfiction by a
massachusetts writer award
in the fascinating pages of first family
will learn a trove about a marriage
views and actions there were instrumental in
creating our country
and about the historical and political
events of the founding period
professor ellis the author was the very
first author ever interviewed on
books of our time
nearly a decade ago
and is a trustee of the massachusetts
school of law and the american college
of history and legal studies
he is with me today to discuss his
latest work first family
and i am lawrence r velvel the dean of the
massachusetts school of law
joe thank you for being with us for the
third or fourth time its always
great to be back larry thank you
uh… on his tv shows which
gave me the idea for
this program brian lamb is always asking
i would say he’s forever asking very
gruffly what do you write
what time of day
where do you do it
i was on a program he asked me
that uh…
so why don’t you i’ve never
seen before something that you did in
the acknowledgment section in the
rear of your book
where you described your method so that was so
interesting to me
and so wonderfully and delightfully
old-fashioned yeah
will you tell
the audience where you do your writing
when and so on how so and so forth
i do my writing uh…
most of it in the morning
usually rewriting in the evening in my
study
surrounded by uh…
it started a
golden retriever and a jack russel
and now its
a labradoodle and a jack russell
and and very brave cat
um…
their is no technology in the room
apart from the lights
uh… i write uh…
longhand with a uh… roller ball
fine point
black ink
on the back
of xerox paper
previously used previously the front
side is used you just keep
it printouts from various things you
can save
huge stacks of that stuff
um…
and uh… eventually what i write is
rewritten and then
put on a disk
and you can play with it their who re-writes it
well i rewrite it and then i give it to
my assistant
whose name is linda fernandez and linda
uh…
types it into
the uh… onto the internet and um…
uh…
the basic
creativity for ellis
if there is such a thing
occurs
in the rhythm
between my brain motions and the
movement of my hand and my wrist
there is some connection there i believe
and you can
sometimes if you’re a really fast typer
you can type too fast you can
type faster than you can thin
that’s not good it produces these pause
yeah uh… yeah
anyway
obviously very old-fashioned and there are
some people who accuse me of writing
with a quill pen i don’t do that
it’s it works for me
maybe someday i’ll become
technologically literate but i’m trying
to keep that as far into the future as
possible given the results to date i
i would
push it far back
people have tried to persuade you to
change
and
you have
told them np
and i think that it’s fair to say that
for every
book they produce you produce
three four five
but what we why do they want what is their
alleged reason for wanting
you to change besides
technological conformity i guess
yeah i think that’s the main thing it’s
like
it’s a way of trying to make me do
something that i don’t want to do
uh… out of some
petulant academic reason i don’t
understand uh…
maybe it’s well well-intentioned in
many instances look joe this will make it
so much easier for you
and it’s because i’m weird
and singular in this regard and uh…
uh… and they
they would like everybody to be alike
uh… you know people have this
thought that uh… what’s newer is
always better
i think not
again
i don’t want to sound like i’m coming out
against technology of the automobile or
like that
yeah it’s i’m just you asked me how i
work and that’s how it is it’s
very old-fashioned
but so far it’s been successful and
another thing that i think is
hugely important
you read all this stuff yourself
yeah i don’t have any research
assistants
i have an assistant who takes care of it
translating this into it
into print uh… and
sometimes i have students to help me get book
but… i’ve never been able to manage
research assistants
primarily because
if i already know what to tell them to look
for
then i don’t need a and uh… you know
and
and I also think that my eyes have to see
it
because what i will see is not the
same thing that somebody else will see
in the way of an anecdote a particular
quotation
uh…
something that would fly by most
research assistants uh…
so it takes a little bit longer in the
research phase for me
though the research phase is not totally
separate from the writing phase
i found that i have to start writing
before i’m really ready
uh… in times
then i’ll know where i’m gonna head
in the next piece of research
it’s a back-and-forth kind of thing
though you have to get a certain
foundation of research done so that
pretty much know what to the story is
before you can really start writing
sometime then in the nineteen thirties
joe
when you and i were not around
no uh…
uh…louis brandeis
maybe it was the twenties said that that the
reason the supreme court was still
the most respected body in washington
is that it’s the last place in
washington when people do their own work
and that is no longer as true as it used to
be
what brandeis said and with you have just
said that is exactly the same
there is no substitute for the creative
mind
looking at something himself or herself
there is no substitute when people
have gotten into trouble for
for plagiarism
famous writers
it’s usually because of research assistants
they didn’t realize what the research
assistant was giving them
in the way of
direct quotation that wasn’t directly
quoted
and therefore they reproduce it in their
book but they’re responsible
yeah uh… and conversely the research
assistant does not know as you know what to
look for
and is not struck by things which you
have to have a tremendous background of
knowledge to be struck by
yeah i’ve been at this for forty two years yet
and uh… so
if somebody twenty three
years old
is supposedly looking at this stuff uh…
it’s not going to be the same
they say that young people do the best
work in math and science but that’s
not when it comes to the humanities
one other thing joe that’s not
directly relevant to what we’ve been
talking about but you mentioned
at lunch
that so many of your students
do not understand
you notations on the papers
that they hand into you because they
do not know how to read cursive
that’s a bit of recent phenomenon
you know how your correcting student
papers commenting on it
in the margins and then longer
uh… message at the end you write in this
long hand
and uh… uh… in recent years
i’ve had more and more students come up to me and
say
professor ellis i cant read this i can’t
read your writing
i say its perfectly good writing whats
what wrong then I said
why can’t you read it he said
oh i can’t read cursive
and so
and i i asked the students
do any of you send
letters that are hand written
if i get a hand-written letter i feel
honored
they feel
dishonored
they feel that uh… more
familiar kind of
correspondents or is in print form or
digital form
yeah and uh… for me
somebody’s taking the time to hand write
a letter that’s just great
you know uh… uh…
it occurred to me when you this joe
that the historian uh… the
professional historian
is in a a certain sense eating its young
by not demanding that
people who get degrees in history
read cursive because
how are those people going to read
the archives
it’s almost like they have to have to learn
another language
exactly
executed it will have to be taught us a
foreign language right
well this is astounding to me
but so be it we find this in the law school
too
okay now let’s let’s talk about
the book itself as opposed to the
methods that you use
this is this this book first family
is the uh… the story of a partnership
as seen extensively
through the letters written one partner
to the other
if you would elaborate on that a little
bit
explain the different
function of letters in those days and
today which i suppose to many people
will be self-evident
and uh… what the problem was
uh…
that created
distance in those days as opposed to now
when you pick up your cell phone and you
say hello afghanistan right
that is a multi-part question let me
do justice to it
if I can
this is a book about
two people
who meet eventually fall in love and
stay together for fifty nine years
during that time they happen to be
living their lives across the most
consequential landscape in american
history namely the coming
and winning of the war for independence
and then the
creation
and securing of the first enduring
american republic
that’s the longest standing republic in world
history
part of it is about the meaning of love
and how it changes over time
between a man in a woman
a political collaboration between
abigail and john
that is most
noticeable once he becomes president
but a partnership also in terms of
raising the children they really are a
partnership marriage
and they are the most fully revealed
couple in this era and maybe in
american history because of their
letters
theres about twelve hundred of them that
have survived
and it’s not just the quantity of the
letters it’s the quality of them
they talk to each other about very
important and intimate stuff
in fact at one point abigail says
i can write to you some things that i
cannot say to you so that
again to your question letter writing in
the eighteenth century was an art
uh…
the founders uh… contain among them
jefferson franklin adams
less so washington
master letter writers
uh…
and abigail though not
formally schooled she was what we would
call home schooled by her father and her
grandmother
was an extremely literate person
and uh… very well read in the british
classics favorite author was shakespeare
uh…
so you’ve got a couple
that are
intellectual equals
writing to each other in an extremely
intimate way about all kinds of personal
plans
at the moment that
america’s being created
this is what
enriches the correspondence and we’ll
never know as much about
barack and michelle obama right
because of
the internet and the cell
phone
distance
well first of all letter writing then was
not like writing an email is for
most
younger people today
it was a more deliberative
process
for example when john is down in
philadelphia at the continental congress
and she’s up in braintree which will
soon become quincy
uh… takes about two weeks for a letter
to go from one to the other
when a letter came to her
it was read aloud at the dinner table to
all the kids
and then she took it into her little
closet and she reread
again and thats when she tended to write
her responses she wrote in the
evening
john tend to to write four thirty five
thirty in the morning
because he was is on all these
committees and all these other things
and didn’t have a lot of time
her letters are longer
more literate more
that’s not the right word john’s very
literate too
more make more references to
literary
works literary allusions
sometimes you come across a phrase
and you say
like she wrote to jefferson once
faithful are the wounds of a friend
i was like that’s a great phrase
well it’s in proverbs uh… she
got that from someplace else uh…
but the psychological
difference then too
produced by distance
and the fact that instant communications
and interactive communications were
impossible
uh… especially when he’s in europe and
she’s back in in quincy
uh… so it’s six months before a message
can get from one end to the other
it really does
mean that when you sit down to write a
letter
it assumes much more dramatic significance
you are creating
a set of pictures for the receiver and a
persona
it’s an expression of a whole persona
it’s not just a jotted
stream of consciousness thing
and distance also meant that you didn’t
know what was happening to your partner
there’s a moment in the summer of
seventeen seventy seven in june
abigail is pregnant
with what will turn out to be the last
pregnancy
and he know’s she’s pregnant but he
doesn’t know
what’s happening how far along she is and
whether she’s delivered and he’s worried
about what general
howe is going to do and duh duh duh duh
he said i’m concerned about the
movements of the british army you be
concerned about the movements inside
your own body
well it turns out that
something happens to the kid she feels
it
she says i think something’s wrong
then she starts to have contractions
and she writes to him in between
contractions
and eventually
the kid is born and it’s
stillborn it’s dead
perfect but dead
and she writes to him well see it
takes two weeks for that letter to get there
and during that time he’s writing to her
all about the politics of what’s going
on in the continental congress
and then when that letter
gets to him he says oh my god
i feel so guilty that
i wasn’t there
and that i’ve been bothering her with all
this other irrelevant stuff
later on when he’s president and she
is sick
with uh…
with rheumatism and other
complications
he decides to stay with her
and not go down to philadelphia for like
a year
everybody’s really critical of him
he said I left her once when she
was in trouble and i’m not going to ever
leave her again and he was at a
time president yes
he said we can do everything for
everything by mail
uh… because i remember you you make the
point that the in Philadelphia
said yeah well he’s up in braintree worrying
about the british and the french and this and that
and actually he was worried about his crops and
and it was like
yeah yeah
i was very surprised to read joe
that uh…
although we have twelve hundred of the
letters
or something like that
uh… a lot of times letters
as soon as the british navy
appeared over horizon they’s all go
into the drink right during the war
yet uh… abigail said i’m probably sending
most of these letters to Neptune
and uh…because
they were carried onboard ship obviously
than didn’t have airplanes to fly it over
and um…
and as you aid if the british worship
appeared on the horizon they
threw all the mail overboard even
though
uh… that seems sort of crazy but
they believed that the intelligence that
would be have been made available to the
british
uh… justified it
one of the ironic things is they
kept
not consistently
abigail and john
periodically
copied their letters so that when
she would write a letter and send it to
him when he was in paris she had a copy
that means we have the letter at the
mass historical society okay
in many instances it never got
to john
so we got to read it before he
di and uh…
uh…
so that’s weird and you’re not quite
sure which ones are which
you say that uh… that
john
he was nuts about eternal fame
from the beginning
from the beginning of his diary as a young kid
he is practicing
in front of a mirror
the mannerisms of cicero
the body posture
um… he
has no
respect
for somebody who’s highest aspiration
is to make money
or to get wealthy
there’s a higher form of
significance
which is
to serve the public
and to be remembered
that’s the key
to be remembered as as a public figure
who’s whose
behavior
significantly affected uh…
policy
in this case the winning of the american
revolution
uh… so when
imperial crisis begins really is
seventeen sixty four sixty five with
british legislation chiefly to stamp act
adams is looking for it
he is working for a cause
to lash himself to
larger than himself
his father had wanted him to be a
minister
he went to harvard at that time
most people became ministers though
they were staring now to become lawyers
a dangerous trend I should say
and uh… has gone beyond all the no
and uh…
his calling to public service
was like the calling of a
minister to a cause
that is also
other worldly and uh…but he
harbored this
obsession about
the letters and about
fame
in part because he really wasn’t sure
there was
a spiritual life after death in the
traditional christian sense of the term
he and jefferson and a few other people
exchanged letters on this and
adams ultimate position is agnostic
well
i don’t know but if there isn’t one
i’ll never know it
uh…
he has a funny line that i think i have
in the book that because it can be never be
shown
conclusively that there is no life after death
my advice to every man woman and
child on the planet is to take opium
which is a great line
only a person who does
significant
public service
is worthy of being in the history books
and history books keep alive your
memory
as well as the letters that you will
also read
so he wants us to remember him
and in some ways the fact that we’re
sitting here in massachusetts on this
day
uh… in two thousand eleven confirms
his fondest hope
namely that he will live on
you say at one point that we are the
audience
for whom he was striving in a sense
yeah
like we are in some sense complicit in his
in his greatness because he’s
performing for us he’s on his best
behavior
uh… because he knows we’re we’re
looking
but you also said it took two hundred
years why did it take two hundred years
because uh… and there still isn’t an
adams monument in the middle of the mall
or anything like there is for Jefferson
like there is for
uh… washington
which would surprise that generation
they wouldn’t be surprised
washington was there but that
jefferson was there an adams wasn’t
they would have reversed that
when adams was when the first public
election after
the constitution was essentially a
referendum on the founders
who was the greatest washington was
first adams was second
partly
adams is tough
to make into an icon
because he tells you too much about
himself
one of the reasons the supreme court
stays above it all and one of the reasons
that washington stays above it all
because we don’t really know what
they’re talking about their meetings
are secret
until recently they didn’t allow cameras
right
i don’t know whether you still can get a
camera in there there’s somebody petitioning for it
for the case uh…
of the uh…
c_ span is yeah the uh…
medical
healthcare case adams
is imperfect
he’s vain
he’s ambitious
uh… has a temper
uh…
he’s also
extremely lovable extremely honest
uh…
he’s got he’s a he’s a human being of
considerable interesting parts but
to the extent that we want our founders
perfect
he’s never going to make it on mount
rushmore
right now of course none of them is
perfect right
and i think the resurgence of interest
in adams is a sign that we’re finally
matured and recognize that
you can’t be expecting perfection from
our historical eras
and just because they’re capitalized and
mythologized asfounding fathers
we’ve got to see them as imperfect
creatures great in many instances but
imperfect
well adams is the breakthrough guy he is
the most the greatest and the most
imperfect of them all and uh…
uh… and i think in the h_b_o_ series
that uh…
that was put together a few years ago
miniseries
uh… the depiction of him is very very
accurate
i mean the characterization of him by
geamatti actor
is uh… is well done
uh…
and um…
he’s a hero for our time
at last
you say that uh…
the uh… adams are the uh…
most important couple in american
history
are they more important and in what ways
and theylike or different from
the roosevelt’s
i think that
what i was trying to say is they’re the
most prominent couple in american
history
that have told us so much about
their relathionship
and allowed us to recover so much of
that
the relationship between franklin and
eleanor is is
is a different kettle of fish
uh…
i think he gave her
uh… a lot of independence
the civil rights act
the u_n_
those were her own bailiwicks
but of course we now know he was
having an affair with his secretary and
she was having probably an affair with a
woman
um…
though we don’t know
the whole story
uh…
uh… i’d be interested if anybody can
come up with the real couple
to match abigail job in terms of the
volume of letters and what we
know about the inner lives of these
people
and the significance of what they
they achieved
okay why why did she save the letters he
he was
a nut on eternal fame
why did she save the letters because he told her to
and
she would say i saved them for our family
for my grandchild
she wouldn’t say i saved it for
posterity
she would say these are documents for
the grandchildren the great grandchildren
a form of posterity
they succeeded
in siring
three further generations
at which you could call great people
american
probably the greatest family in
american history james is a pretty
pretty powerful and
and i guess if people want to argue the bushes
can
clan this but
the bushes
well there is a
there is the first father son president
john and john quincy and then
george and george w
uh…
she was the
she was the conscious founder of the
dynasty
and they invested so much in john quincy
from the time he was
out of the womb they were expecting him
to be come the first magistrate of the
republic they didn’t have the presidency
yet so they couldn’t think that way
uh… every kid in america
now women as well as girls as well as
boys
or told
they could be president
john quincy was told if you don’t your a
failure
uh…
complete
and uh…
probably the best educated best
read person ever to enter the presidency
which he was a total failure at
and um…
but you’re right
each generation of the adamses
first in
headed abigail john’s kids and then
their
kids the
grandkids there’s one person
who excels an often quite
quite
impressive
and the rest of them end up failures
some cases but uh… alcoholics drug
addicts
they’ve had miserable lives married the
wrong person
in abigail and john’s case maggie the oldest and
the only daughter ends up marrying this
guy
whosa of former
officer in the continental army
on washington staff graduate at
princeton
dashingly handsome perfect choice
right
it only shows you never know
cuss this guy ends up being a bum
and um… couldn’t hold down a job
loses all his money charles is the
charmer
and it’s difficult when you’re reading
the
letters
encountering the young kids and what
people are saying about charles
everybody loves charlie
charlie’s even dogs just follow him
wherever he goes
and uh…
you know what’s going to happen to charlie
charlie is going to die at thirty years of
age an alcoholic and a drug addict and
living in whore houses in new york city
despite the fact he has a wife and two
kids
the other kid tommy he’s almost
invisible in the correspondence thomas
the youngest
he looks good he goes to harvard he
works for john quincy as hi assistant in
uh… prussia
but it never works out for him
and he becomes an alcoholic
and he moves back to live near his
his parents
he meets a local girl and they have like
eleven kids
uh… that seems to be the only thing
he’s able to do
and um…
he’s a failure
after that generation
there was that uh… generation of
charles francis adams
becomes american ambassador to england
during the civil war
and he keeps
he keeps england off the side of the
south
rights is a huge achievement right
and his son rights about that
in the education of
henry adams that’s the third
generation
and henry adams or course
he was a
a great uh… great friend of theodore
roosevelt theodore roosevelt and uh…
uh… who is the secretary of state a
hay john hay
and they also with lodge and
and that that whole crowd um.
they got us into the
spanish-american war right though he
didn’t like that i mean henry adams was
not in favor of that
yeah but roosevelt got us in
it’s like a miracle the way that happened you know
roosevelt the assistant secretary of the navy
the assistant secretary of the navy is playing golf
and while he’s playing golf
roosevelt starts a war in the phillipines
it’s like he does it all himself i
know it’s unbelievable proceed
immediately here right to manila bay
unbelievable
so he he was in it and
of course he wrote that book
the education of henry adams
so that generation
and henry adams brother charles francis
adams junior i think was president of
the union pacific railroad was he not
and thats kind where it ende
four generations yeah
that’s pretty good yeah not bad
did though so we’re talking at lunch
about
all these people claim to be descendants
of adams but none of them
yeah seems to be
there’s a man whose a corporate president who
probably is a direct descendant
but it petered out yeah petered out and
and henry adams never held office
never ran for office and the
education of henry adams is about
failure
its about being displaced by time in history
you know its an
eloquent ironic
tragic story about his life
and you know he marries this woman
whom
commits suicide
and uh… she’s buried in
rock creek park there’s a big statue
yeah and uh…
by the way did you know
gore vidal purchased the plot right
next to that for himself
he’s not there yet no he’s not
i wonder about something you say that its
tragic and about failure
you point out in the book that
john and john quincy had
a tragic
one could say flaw
uh… one could say
a wonderful
characteristic which almost nobody else
has which
has been summed up by somebody or other with a
the phrase i’d rather be right than
president right that was in a play about
franklin roosevelt
george m cohan played him
but um…
john adams and john quincy will be the
same type of
president too
but remember he’s the guy john who
defended the british troops in
the boston massacre in seventeen seventy
this is the first
clear evidence of the kind of contrarian
and streak in him
and adams almost takes it to the point
of perversity
he thinks most majorities are usually
wrong
and they are
and they are
and the
popular mood swings are usually
excessive
and misguided
therefore if
you do something that’s unpopular it’s
probably the right thing to do
and uh…
thus defending the british troops or
his big decision his trademark decision
as president was to avoid war with
france
and which was very much almost going
it was called a quasi war
and to negotiate an end to that a peace
treaty with uh… with france that
avoided war
very unpopular
i like to say you’ll like this larry
that adams is the anti-bush
bush
got elected for a second term by going
to an unnecessary war
adams
assured that he would be defeated
by not
having an unnecessary war
yeah ok he always said its the
proudest
jewel in my crown if they wish to call
me a monarchist
uh… and he thought as you as you say
that if we went to war with either
france or england
it was the and
of the american experiment
that he did washington thought the same thing i
mean you had to avoid war until
this is this new kind of political
experiments settled
that it would break up into a series of
confederacies
and england and or france would come in
in a predator fashion and take over the
rest of the
the country outside the alleghenies
all kinds of
scenarios but the
the phrase we the people of the united
states the first words of the
constitution
was an expression of a hope
rather than a reality at that stage
their were
people did not identify with
the nation
they identified with their region or at most
their state
or their town
and it needed time i think that
sometime after the war of eighteen
twelve you can begin to see say there is
some kind of national existence
but if you’d had a war before then we would have
split up
i think it was shelby foote who said
somebody who said
that uh… after the civil before the
civil war
the phrase was the united states are and after the
united states is
he did and it took
that long
for the spirit of
one country unty nationalism call
it
what you will
uh… to build up yeah
and a war
six and thirty two thousand casualties
over the issue of whether or not you
wish the central government to have power over
the state’s right
uh… right
talk if you would joe tell us a
little bit about the many things
that john quincy or as we wouldwould stay here
john quincy adams oh…
jqa they called him jqa
he did from the time he went
abroad with his father
through his ambassadorship he’s
he’s got an and incredible life
uh… I thought about trying to
to write a biography of him but its
i’d die before i ever finished it because
the documentation is
is larger than for almost a figure in
american history because he kept a
diary
for the time he was eight years old
and almost every day and i mean
everyday
until he died at eighty one
he made an entry
sometimes they were cryptic and just
talked about the weather but a lot of
times you know
i was swimming in the potomac nude in the
potomac today and its september and the
waters still fine duh duh duh he did swim nude
in the potomac too he
used to take walks between
the white house and the capital to to
see how fast he could do it
he’s a precocious child
reading latin at five
uh…
groomed by his father and mother very
tough task masters
i don’t want to judge them too harshly but
when he goes john quincy with his father
over and there’s difficulties on the
voyage and to she’s worried about the
chip going down because
reports are that the seas are tough out
there and then finally she finds that
he’d been made it ok
but she says
that to the extent that you grow up to be
something others a virtuous young man
i would prefer that you had died and
gone into the ocean right now
it’s like woah you know
you been handled handed many
opportunities
if you do not take full advantage of
them
it will be your fault
so he got all that pressure
on him he accompanies his father to paris
and then
the second time andlearned french much
better than his father did he did he
learned french quickly
he would take his father to plays
and translate for him
very good with languages
and uh… and young people in general can pic em
up faster than us old guys anyway
uh… one little anecdote he got to know
later of course jefferson got to know john
quincy and became kind of this mentor when
he was a young kid
and uh…
uh…
and when he was president he had john quincy
for dinner and the
president was talking abut how he’d
learned spanish by reading
don quixote onboard the ship going over
and john quincy said
mister jefferson tells lovely but tall
stories jefferson never learned spanish
and
jefferson never even learned french to be
fluent in it and his correspondence
he had to have somebody else do it for him
anyway john quincy goes on to harvard
doesn’t do very well as a young lawyer
is immediately recognized by washington
as an up-and-coming guy and may i stop you
for just one second
i was
thunderstruck
by the fact that
the old man had to bail him out
because he could not make a living as a
lawyer how could that have happened
he was you know he was living in a
market that was saturated with lawyers
oh yeah you never heard of that one before yeah never heard of
and uh… and uh…
he wasn’t a
a salesman he had difficulty selling
himself
yes okay
uh…
whereas charlie
as alawyer in new york
and he’s he’s being mentored by
alexander hamilton
his firm
he has all kinds of clients
but john quincy not
john quincy is emotionally immature
too and he’s like
doesn’t know how to behave around people
sometimes and uh…
anyway does through that
at the ago of i think twenty six he is
nominated to become american
ambassador to the netherlands
and um…
and adams is concerned about this
because the vote for approval is in the
senate and he’s vice president
who is
overseeing the senate
there would be charges of
nepotism here
washington says it’s not because he’s
the son of john he’s the most
qualified guy
one guy gets up
in the debate in the senate and says
is there anybody else fluent in latin
greek french
dutch
and russian
hearing none
um…
he was approved
by acclamation
he goes on to other posts in prussia
and in saint petersburg he marries a
delicate orchid of a woman whose half
english called luisa
luisa uh… is uh…
is with him rest of his life
she has like eleven or twelve
pregnancies and like
eight or nine
miscarriages
um…
he becomes a u_s_ senator
he becomes a professor of rhetoric at
harvard
uh… he becomes then eventually
after his ambassadorship
to st. petersburg
secretary of state
under monroe
probably the greatest secretary of state
in american history he’s responsible for
what’s called the transcontinental
treaty
where we get
florida
and then this is jagged line everything
west of the
uh… north and west of the uh…
west of the rockies and and north of
what is now california
so instead of calling it the monroe
doctrine they should call it the adams
doctrine adams is responsible for that
even though monroe as president gets it named
after him but the
the relationship with
britain and with the the notion that
this hemisphere should not be open to
european colonization
was it he who said the something to the
effect
that uh… america goes not abroad in
search of dragons to slay
exactly right america goes abroad
goes abroad
goes not abroad in search of dragons to
its not slay but something like that
that’s a phrase that uh…
george kennan always used to liked to
use
and uh…
it’s from a
a speech that john quincy gave in
eighteen twenty one on the fourth of
july he was asked to give a fourth
of july speech
great speech it ought to be rescued from
semi oblivion
especially at this moment in our history
we are trying to think about what our
foreign entanglements ought to be
but john quincy thought that the best
way to project america’s
values abroad was by example
and once you militarized that process
you fundamentally changed it
which has as you’re indicating
proven to be correct
in any event he was one of the uh…
outstanding men of american history
that stand out he is like
he is the missing link between
the founding generation and the
revolution
and lincoln
as a little kid his mother takes him by
the hand i think he’s seven to see to watch
from afar the battle of bunker hill
he sees his own doctor get killed
joseph warren
the end of his life
as he’s
giving a speech in
in the house representatives he has a
stroke
and he falls
one of the people that gathers around
him and helps carry his body out
is abraham lincoln
they only-time lincoln’s the only term
lincoln served in the house
and so he’s the missing link
in american history that was if i
remember correctly joe
that was either the congressional
term forty six seven and eight or forty
nine and fifty its in forty eight
forty-eight
i have never heard or seen of
a daguerreotype of john quincy adams
their is one there is none
yes there is
a couple of em
there are uh huh
now there’s a real link with the founding generation
and t there’s a couple of them he really
looks like that meanest son of a
bitch you ever want to see
like uh… emerson says like he
used arsenic in his tea
and uh… he says he’s like one of those
cardinals you know that totters on his cane
and then when he’s named pope he throws the canes
away and goes sprinting out of the building
uh…
henry adams in the education tells a
great story when he’s
misbehaving as
as a young child and won’t go to school
john quincy just shows up at the door
doesn’t say a thing just takes him by the hand
and walks him to school you know
and uh…
his last
years are really his greatest because he’s
a major advocate for ending
slavery or for
denying the right of slavery to expand
he’s opposed to the mexican war for
that very reason
defends the
the uh… captured africans in the
amistad case and
and opposes and successfully overturns
the gag rule
which makes it
illegal to talk about slavery in the
house
in some sense
he’s much better as a congressman than he
is as president in the united states
to go back for a moment to
the
question of the drive for fame
would you compare
american presidents
you can see famous
you could say infamous
you can see notorious
there’s a lot of words that could be
used
uh… in their drive for fame
and i wonder if you could
you might guess
even if fleetingly
compared john adams drive for fame with
certain other people notably lincoln who
had t the same thing
and then you know you get the f_d_r_ and
uh…clinton and
name you know so on and so forth
there’s more direct evidence in adams
case that he was self-conscious about the
public service was the only form of
achievement that would
permit posterity
permit fame and posterity
you’ve you could have a fortune
or you could have both but usually
wouldn’t get both and fame was in
some sense a higher former currency as
for as he’s concerned
i think as the political process in
twentieth century america at the
national level especially has become
more
expensive more exhaustive more media
driven
uh… that certainly i think become true
over the last fifty years
none of the people in the
eighteenth century would have run for office
in those conditions
they would regard anybody who does that
as crazy
and i’m some sense they are
and i mean you gotta be crazy to do this
yeah and uh…
and
so that we’ve had
created a
political culture in which a certain
only a certain kind of mentality
is going to succeed
uh…
and it’s not quite there kind of
mentality at all
and of level of desperation about
winning
uh… at all costs no matter how many
times you have to reverse your position
uh… and how much money you have to
spend and what the toll it takes on your
family
uh…
uh… that’s not quite the same goal
that adams had
it’s it’s a bit irrational and uh…
and it seems to me it’s not as
attractive
you’re being kind
uh… i i i don’t uh… couple of weeks
ago i read finally at long last
somebody wrote something that i’ve been
saying for maybe thirty years
the uh…
the fact that you were elected is proof
positive that you shouldn’t be
there’s some truth i mean adams felt
that uh…
almost a groucho marx line
any club that want mess I
don’t wanna belong to
uh…
political parties were
something he didn’t want
to join at all
i think in some sense
one of the reasons that
there is this
very real popular interest these days in
the founders
and not just the tea party angle on it
which is somewhat miss misguided i think
it’s all political
but you know the fact that
these people were buying books about
jefferson and washington you know
mcculloch’s miniseries and that kind of
thing
we see in them
this sort of
gold standard for the
current
base political currency of our time
what’s really different is they were
interested in serving in
interest of the
public
which is not the same thing is the
interest of the people
interest of the people is a more
fleeting and temporary thing now driven
by money
uh…
the public is the long term interest of
the people which it any given time
the majority of the people might not
understand right
do the right thing for the long term
interest of the people
reguardless of its political
consequences
and that’s what is so attractive
to people now because they know nobody
does that now
you know i think you and i both
realize
that’s very elitist and if so so be it
thats right its pre democrat
so be it
that’s that’s the reason it worked
yeah uh…
and elitist is not a bad word
you know it’s like
what was a bad word was democracy
democracy was an epithet
democracy meant mob rule
right democracy meant conceding
the issue to people who don’t understand
it
and so
and and what this is a natural
aristocracy that we create then
what we would call a meritocracy
uh… none of them would have made it
into the british aristocracy right
uh… i mean
hamilton was a bastard literally
uh… jefferson you know
would have been a minor countrymen
country farmer
washington would’ve made major
yeah washington as i remember
from your book very angry that he
could not kill you they wouldn’t accept
yeah they wouldn’t accept his appeal for a
uh… commission in the british army
yeah and uh…
boy did they regret that
i’ve heard the bullets whizzing around
me and believe me there is something
charming in the sound that’s
exactly right at the battle of the
Monongahela which he survived quite
miraculously but uh…
but my point earlier is that simply that
i think that generation embodied a form of
political uh… behavior that is
it’s like a lost generation you’re never
going to see it again and yet
its very existence
is alluring because
once upon a time
there was uh… a possible kind of political
leadership that functioned in this fashion
was it you who said somebody said it
was the greatest leadership since uh…
some period of rome
yeah somebody was i think it was
um…
it was quoted in perry miller
i was a british
a british leader was uh…
heard to say that
this was uh… the
leadership in the united states
under the founding was the greatest
political leadership act of political
leadership in world history with the
possible exception of
rome under caesar augustus
not bad not bad
john
adams
was the first to understand apparently
that british interests
the first understand
what britain really was trying to
accomplish
and he was subsequently the first
to understand
the real differences between what the
french wanted and what the united
colonies or the united states wanted
now how is it in bodies
full of people who are regarded as
brilliant
he was the first
in fact i guess for a long time the only
one to understand
what was in the minds of the
opponents the first example
your talking about is the pre revolutionary
period he’s the first person to realize
that this
imperial this tightening of the empire
that’s begins in seventeen sixty
five or so
is going to lead to a
secession from the british empire
and that the we’ve created two different
cultures
in america especially new england and
and england
we can’t stay together and
and he read this as a conspiracy on
the part of the brits
uh… to impose these
new constraints and to move from us from
being
fellow members in the british empire to
colonists
whose rights
don’t really exist
and um… he’s very well read one of the
readings very well read in english law in
constitutional history
he’s well-read in european history
he’s thought a lot about these
constitutional issues and as i indicated
earlier
he’s looking for it
he’s looking for
a cause that will eventually
will eventual call them independence
to latch himself to and become a leader
and so he’s self-conscious about
posing for these roles like you
know
so he wants to be appointed to the
continental congress
even though that’s risky at that time
but he’s betting the farm
okay he’s betting hte farm his whole career
his life and fortune and sacred honor
as jefferson put it
that this is going to be
a revolution that’s going to succeed
even though we’re going to be fighting
the greatest military force
combined army navy in the world
they don’t have a chance
and we didn’t fully
i think understand why he was right
about that
until vietnam
vietnam made us aware the british
never had a chance
uh…
it so it’s a reverse and he understood
that
okay and he was the equivalent of secretary
of defense
during the whole during the war up to
seventeen seventy eight in the continental
congress is head of the board of the
war did he understand about
the so-called fabian strategy
yes he read about that
he said no person has read more military
history in the last three years in the world
than i have
uh… and he
he associated with
sometimes with fabians but also with
the thebians
in the peleponnesian war the thebians
essentially decided not to fight and
too back off to never have a serious
engagement with the spartan or the
athenians i guess it was
and that’s so after
washington nearly lost the army
in manhattan he said
the thebian strategy is right for you now
meaning don’t fight don’t you know don’t ever put
the army in a situation where it could be
annihilated
he’s so
you know like people sometimes say
jospeh ellis is a
presidential historian I’m not a presidential
historian i write about
people who happen to be president
but in his case Adams’s case and this
will be true of washington and jefferson
as well
the presidency was not the capstone of
their
of their career
Adams thought the greatest thing he ever did
he did in the continental congress in the
seventeen seventies that was his
big big moment big contribution
washington would have said it was winning the war the
presidency is a epilogue
let me go back for just one moment to the
continental congress cuz that’s a major
thing
but you’ve explained why he understood
that england couldn’t that we were going to
break with england
how did he come to
understand that the
french view of the united of what they
wanted in america was way
different from the uh…
from the time he first went to
france and he went once in seventy eight
and came back to write the massachusetts
constitution which is not
in the film by the way uh… and then he
goes back again
he’s at odds with franklin
in terms of the the delegations
posture towards the french government
as embodied in the french foreign
minister Vergennes
and vergennes hate adams
he thinks he’s a a bull in a china shop
which to some extent he is
and uh…
so he’s always
saying
for example
we had if the french the french
come over to sign the
the franco-american treaty is signed in seventeen
seventy eight committing the french to
the american cause that means a lot of money but
also means troops
he has it in the treaty
insists on it
the french have to leave as soon as the
war is over
and if they don’t
something like war will start up between
because he’s terrified that the french
want to recover a portion of their north
american empire
don’t let them into canada once they get
up there baby there never going to leave yeah
okay
the french have a military agenda
diplomatic agenda that’s much larger
than the united states
and the end of the war with england allows them
to get back some of their colonies
in the west indies
so there’s a real tangle of european
interest there that adams wants to keep
the united states
clear of
and he is right to do that and franklin
resists it
franklin whose one of the wisest men
of the age to be sure but he has been in
france so long and he is so close to Vergennes
can’t quite see it clearly eventually
jay and adams persuade him
and he says he’s the one that breaks
the word to vergennes
by the way
we’re gonna sell you out and
and so doing would you give us
another fifty million livre
he has the gall to be asking
for money like this quite a character
but
adams sees things adams sees big
things
they have huge strategic implications
and consequences really clearly
he has a feeling for the future in his bones
well thank you very much
it’s been a pleasure coming here again
uh… i enjoyed the questions
they allowed us to free associate in the
way we can do that
and your program is one of the best in
on on television in my view in terms of
being informed about what the author has
written
and then allowing the conversation to
follow its natural course so
larry thank you so much thank you
thank you
and since you’ve told us a little bit about
your next book
i demand
uh… that you come here to be
interviewed
shortly after it publication it will be
on the calendar i promise you okay thank you
and to the audience
thank you for being with us and
be with us again next time

Bruce Cumings, Chairman of the Department of History at the University of Chicago and author of The Korean War: A History, joins Dean Lawrence R. Velvel in part two of this episode of Books of Our Time.

Cumings and Velvel discuss the historical origins of the Korean war, from the early disputes between North and South Korea and then on thru to the more recent history of North Korea, from General MacArthur’s massive underestimation of the North Korean army, to the north’s involvement with China, all the way to the great famine, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the advent of modern democracy in South Korea.

This is part 2 of the interview. Click Here to be taken to Part 1.

The following is a rough transcript of the above video courtesy of YouTube captions:

welcome to books of our time brought to
you by the massachusetts school of law
and seen nationwide
today we shall discuss a book entitled
the korean war
the book discusses the historical
origins of that war which to this day
are unknown to most americans
joining me today is its author bruce
cumings the chairman of the department
of history at the university of chicago
and i am lawrence r velvel the dean of
the massachusetts school of law
thank you for coming up thank you for
having me
delighted i wish to say that having heard
you uh… at lunch
i feel that a lot of the questions i
intended to ask are not necessarily
geared
to some of the things you said so
i hope you will just use my questions
not just as something to answer but also as
springboards to other things that you
might wish to talk about
we have a pretty literate and educated
faculty and i think the uh the
amount of things the number of things
you were talking about that were unknown
even to a
pretty accomplished group
illustrates the need
or the desirability
of saying them on television if we if you
remember to say them
now i want to avoid misconceptions
because
i’ve read that you know reviews and so
forth
and
to avoid misconceptions
why don’t you tell us you know
briefly or at length whichever you wish
with as much detail as you wish
what’s your concession your view
all over the country
when there were these guerrilla wars
and so forth
before it got divided at the
thirty eighth parallel and and even
afterwards
massacres were the order of the day
of hundreds of people of thousands of
people at a time i think you
mentioned digging pits
it’s like you see in the movies from eastern
europe with the germans lining the people
up to shooting
well it’s uh
most of what i put into this book is
based on research that i did
twenty years ago or more ’cause I did a
two volume study of the origins of the
korean war
based on mainly american and north
korean
archives
the north korean archive came courtesy
of douglas macarthur which by the way i should
tell the audience that two volume study
is mentioned in all reviews and it’s
regarded as
you know the font of most knowledge
about the whole thing these days but go
ahead
well thanks very much for that it taught
me not to write long books
uh… because people don’t read them and so I say things in
here that i said in those two books and
people treat it as revelation
but i i was also able to drop a lot
of south korean research that has come
out since they
democratized in the nineteen nineties
and in particular the truth and
reconciliation commission in seoul
that has done very painstaking
research on
massacres of civilians
and the results are horrific
uh… first of all
our side the south koreans
are running six to one ahead of the
north koreans in terms of killing
civilians
most americans would think north koreans would
just kill a civilian to look at
him
the
the numbers are
astonishing in toto
somewhere between a hundred and two
hundred thousand were killed in the
early months of the war
in political violence
that adds up to about another hundred
thousand that were killed in political
violence
from nineteen forty five to nineteen
fifty
and so
i mentioned in the book that they
had been studying in spain scholars
had been studying franco’s
political massacres
and the figures in about seventy five
percent of the
provinces or counties where they’ve
been able to do this research
come up to around
two hundred thousand
so we’re talking franco spain or korea
franco franco spain willoughby didn’t write about
that I presume no uh…
korea’s worse in other words and it
happened
in in often in full view of americans
now the worst incident no
review that i’ve seen as
wanted to get into this
but i called it
our srbrenitza
because somewhere between
as many as seven thousand
political prisoners were murdered in a
period of days they were put into pits
with our c_i_a_ people watching
our military people watching
the south korean police did this
and
then it was covered up
blamed on the communists even our
official history of the war by roy appleeman
blames all
this entire taejon massacre it happened
at
small city taejon
blames it on the communists
and then the joint chiefs of staff
classify the photographs of it ’cause
the photographs make it clear who’s doing
it
and they don’t let the photographs out
till nineteen ninety nine when a korean
finally got them declassified
so in other words
they knew what our
south korean army and police were doing
but how can you take a massacre of
seven thousand people
turn around and blame it on the communists
rather than stopping it when it was going
on
and then the pentagon did a
video
uh… a little movie called
crime of korea
that’s where you see the best shots of
the pits they go on through like a
football field
pit after pit of
dead people
and then humphrey bogart is in a is
in a voice-over saying someday
the communists will pay for this
someday we’ll get the full totals and
believe me we’ll get the exact accurate
totals of the people murdered here
and we will make these war
criminals pay
and everywhere lay the murdered dead the
scenery of destruction is monotonous
atrocity stories keep repeating
themselves what can i tell you
what can i show you of the ten
thousand human beings slaughtered in
seoul
perhaps it isn’t exactly ten thousand
perhaps the total figure right now is
approximate
if that makes any difference
in time we’ll get a careful tabulation
we’ll learn the exact number of the
slaughtered
down to the last corpse
now this is a complete reversal of black and white
done as a matter of policy
and i was astonished when i didn’t know
about it I didn’t know it reminds one
frankly of the katyn forest yeah
in reverse where the communists blamed the nazis
and everybody believed them until we found out it
was really the communists yeah i mean
it
it is a
an aspect of a very deep american
responsibility for
the regime that we promoted more really
more than any other in east asia it was
our creation in the late forties
why do you think
that things seemed the
media in particular
seemed to have been so different
almost from the beginning
of the vietnam war
well i think korea had a
an impact it certainly did on president
johnson and many of the generals
they had developed this
line after the korean war ended that we
don’t ever want to fight another land
war in asia
then lo and behold a few years later
they get into another land war
and for johnson he wanted to make sure
the chinese weren’t gonna come into the war
and destroy his administration the way
they had destroyed truman’s that
was
that’s very clear you know right at
the top of his head
in a
deliberations from the oval office during
johnson’s years
but i think it it uh…
had a lot to do with a TV
with the ability to photograph the
battle scenes either
as movies you know with uh…
hand-held camera that would then be
uh… shown in theaters in
documentaries uh…
i remember in nineteen sixty-five seeing
a documentary on the war that was
very shocking to me
and then of course it it spilled out
into a living room war
as more and more television cameraman
came to cover it
and i i think if there had been
television
in in korea that
the war would be much better remembered
for one thing and it would be much
more
contested
i want to say for your viewers that
they can go look at gallup polls
in nineteen fifty two and fifty three
and see that the korean war had become
just as unpopular as the vietnam war
did by nineteen sixty nine or
seventy
and truman’s popularity rating was down
around
twenty five twenty six percent
even george w_ bush didn’t hit that low
until right at the end of his presidency
and those are the two lowest ever
so it wasn’t a popular war but it was an
unknown war
because there was no lens to open up on
it
like vietnam
and second by the early sixties
mccarthyism head
waned
very considerably
and you know when the house uh… un american
activities committee would would
try to get a vietnam war protester
like
like uh…
what’s his name rubin
what’s his first name jerry rubin jerry rubin
blanked on that
get jerry rubin up to testify he comes
in in a revolutionary war uniform
generally makes a
you know bedlam and a big joke out of the
whole thing
but mccarthyism was very real and very
uh…
oppressive in the early fifties
uh… even the new york times would
write articles condemning protests
against uh… the korean war
paul robeson got a protest going in
harlem
in august in nineteen fifty
and the times condemned it in no uncertain terms
so that i mean the korean war
began just after the rosenbergs were
indicted and it ended just after they
were executed
and people are
thinking my god you you could go up the
river to sing sing and get executed for
your political beliefs
now this they were said to be spies and all
of that but i mean people don’t make
those distinctions yeah
you know isn’t it kinda
interesting
it never occurred to me uh… before a
few days ago
but MASH was one of the most popular maybe
the most popular t_v_ programs ever
and they had various points to make
about war and was supposed to be about
vietnam though it was set in korea
and the idiocy of it
but i don’t
i don’t claim to have watched every
episode of MASH at some point or another
but i don’t ever remember anything about
some of these what i’ll call the bad
stuff
us participating in slaughters of civilians
I don’t remember anything about that no i don’t
think they did
i mean i think when you look at the
vietnam war that most americans
think that lieutenant calley and a bunch
of other
bad hats carried out the my lai
massacre
and that’s about the only one that
happened in vietnam
when in fact there were my lais all
over vietnam uh… well you know another
thing americans just put out of their minds
don’t know
this didn’t start in korea it started in the
philippines
actually started with the indians
but it was big time in the philippines
and everybody at the time knew it
it was the subject of articles in
newspapers and
not denials but apologias
in in the newspapers
so this has been a constant in
american history
well it reminds me that
two statements by roosevelt and
achison
teddy roosevelt
teddy roosevelt
when people were complaining about the
philippines war
he said everything you can say for aquinaldo
you could have said for sitting bull
and then i i found in atchison’s papers
at yale
in a letter to a professor who had
complained about the vietnam war and that ho chi minh
was a real patriot
atchison said everything you say about
ho chi minh could have been said about
kim il-sung
you know that was true wasn’t it
uh… and uh…
we knew nothing about the
history
we knew nothing about the nationalism
we knew nothing about who had been
helping
our enemies and who had been helping our
friends
we just uh… reflect anti communism joe
stalin
fight a war against them
well there’s a new book on george bundy
that has an astonishing passage in it i mean
i
not much astonishes me having you know
written these books and taught
courses on the korean and vietnam war
my whole career
but bundy is going on about why we
lost the war is this goldstein’s book yeah
we had him here go ahead
well he gets out of bundy
that i was never interested in the vietnamese
he says it i was never interested in them
and he goes on to indicate that he never
inquired much about them either
he didn’t know his enemy
and he didn’t care to know his enemy
now he’s a boston brahmin and all of
that and he probably thinks the same
thing about you and me if he were still
alive you know not interested in
people like that
but for a guy to be prosecuting a war
and he was one of the biggest
warriors in terms of expanding the war
he wanted to invade north vietnam it was a global
chess game to these people yeah
he tells reporters
that he found political and religious
factions in vietnam
united in their beliefs that the
vietcong is their common enemy
we had an opportunity to talk
frankly and freely uh… with them
they again emphasized
the overriding importance in south
vietnam of the contest against the
communists
they emphasized the political leaders
had done the importance in their own
dedication too
the importance of and their
dedication to the task of
forming a stable and effective political
society under a stable and effective
government in that country
a view which of course uh… we share
you talk about having no interest in
people
like the vietnamese or people
like you and me
and you have said
at lunch and i think you might have once
mentioned here
that um…
the c_i_a_ has its ideas
and when you come they ask you to
talk or you’re at conferences and
you interrelate with them they say
cuming’s again they turn around
you know bacevich who’s been here three
times
andrew bacevich
has uh he’s written a book which i
read and I’m in the middle of rereading
it to write about it
called washington rules
yeah i want to that’s exactly what he’s
talking about they don’t care about what
people like you and bacevich
say
uh… i you put this in a context of
washington at lunch you might expound
about this
it is the narrowest minded
geographical area you have ever
been exposed to
you might expound about that a little bit if you
don’t mind
well i i uh…
i want to make clear to your viewers
that i uh… i’ll talk to anybody
if the north koreans invite me to
give a lecture i will
and i i do lecture to c_i_a_ folks and
state department people and i go to
conferences but I never
do anything that requires a security
clearance
and the reason is that if i ever get a
security clearance I’m going to be part of the
same mindset that they’re part of
what makes you think you could get a security
clearance
uh‚Ķthat’s another thing
but uh…
I
did start going to washington frequently
after the north korean nuclear
crisis broke open around nineteen ninety
two
and there are
uh… i i mean there are a range of
think tanks there i had some very
interesting conferences at the carnegie
endowment
on north korea nuclear
proliferation all of that but the guy
that organized them is selig harrison
who is one of the most independent
investigative journalists
i’ve ever known he worked for the
washington post his whole career he’s
retired now
still very active
so it is possible to get some light
under the
tent there in washington
but what you get with with north korea
starting in nineteen ninety two
is beltway speak
that north korea is going to collapse
tomorrow morning
and it becomes the c_i_a_’s mantra
when they go before congress
it’s not a question of when
north korea will collapse whether it’ll collapse
only when
and i see this stuff and i think what do they
know that i don’t at first
and then i realized it’s just
they talk to each other
they’re trying to get ahead in
washington or get a job in an
administration and if hilary clinton is
running around saying north korea has a
power struggle and might collapse who am I to
say
no she’s full of it
you are a failure and that’s who should say it
she came into office
picked up the bush administration’s line
on north korea
and just kept
ongoing
meanwhile here we are two years later
north korea hasn’t collapsed
the succession seems to have gone
smoothly to the younger son
which is what i would have predicted
so i mean there is
maybe i should write a book
like bacevich’s where I try to
figure out
it’s it’s shocking to me
it’s just shocking to me to see
perfectly intelligent people often with
degrees from the very best universities
who uh…
are going around not just in public but
in private saying things
that are manifestly
can’t happen
you know if i were to put it all in a word
it’s careerism
a lot of it is careerism
but it’s a bipartisan careerism so you
have
certain guys who take a line that that
will get them a job in the republican party
certain guys who take a line that will
give them a job in the democratic
party but there’s really not much
distance between them even though their
career
tracks yeah
i think what you said at lunch amounted to you
saying there’s about an inch between them
that’s about it
well the the fellow that we have as our
undersecretary of state for east asia
kurt campbell
uh… i’ve been to conferences with him
including back in the nineties
uh… i don’t know why he’s a democrat
but somehow he hooked on with
uh…
the clinton administration so he
probably got on the democratic
trajectory
his views are indistinguishable from
a lot of right wing conservatives
he’s a bully
and I don’t particularly like him as
you can tell
but he is the last person to bring fresh
thinking
into our policies toward china
if you don’t want to
deal with something like north korea how
about china which is becoming a bigger
and bigger problem
and that’s a
obama administration is supposed to really
do something new
and it hillary clinton’s
turned around to the same old people
that were
any other democratic president would have
hired
well that’s why
much of the country is so ultra cynical
about anything anything a politician says
you know the old joke how do you know
when a politician’s lying
his lips move
ok
you know one thing that’s interesting
about halberstam ’cause you said that
if i remember correctly you said that in
his book the coldest winter which i read
cover to cover fascinating book I thought
uh…
there’s not
there’s almost
nothing expressed about the history
beyond
june twenty-fifth nineteen fifty
and at the same time this is the guy who
was one of the major media figures in
blowing the whistle on what was going on
in vietnam and why
don’t you find that a kind of a strange
paradox
well i wrote a few pages about
that book and about david in in my
new book
he uh… called me up
asked to
talk about the war with me
could i come to new york or see him next
time I’m in new york
i was amazed at when i called him back to
you know he’s listed in the manhattan
phone book and he picks up which
i always liked david a lot I thought he
had a terrific career going
back-and-forth between you know serious
political subjects and sports and
was terribly eh… sad when he died
going to interview YA Tittle
but i could tell after an hour or so that we
didn’t see eye to eye to eye about
the korean war
and that what the korean war meant for
david
was that he had lived through it as a
young man probably a teenager or college
student
and it was something he wanted to avoid
it was something that contrasted with
the halcyon fifties when
so many other things were going right
and that he hadn’t paid a lot of
attention to it
but one thing was going to happen
in his book
truman and atcheson were going to be the
heroes no matter what any historian says
from washington general of the army eisenhower sets out on
a mission unprecedented in history
to organize and command an international army to defend
western europe against communist aggression
mr president
i devoutly pray the commission on which i’m
leaving this morning
will result in nothing but peace security
and tranquility for our various nations
secretaries marshall atcheson are present as he leaves
to visit each of the twelve
nations which through a treaty called the
atlantic pact
have banded together for mutual
defense
for david
i mean he’s got douglas macarthur
sending us into north korea even though
we have about three books now that show
that wasn’t true
that it was uh…
truman and atchison in washington who
made that basic decision
to go to go to the yalu
march in and try to knock
knock over the north korean regime as
part of the roll back communism idea
exactly uh… and this is
slightly off of the point of
halberstam and this is another
point that’s not widely known right
people think it was macarthur off on a
frolic and detour
and and essentially uh…
that’s what halberstam
says he he actually allows atcheson
to be quoted saying
we sat in the rooms just like little
babies while he just took the war
and did what he wanted with it
and that that’s a complete
complete yeah he says that everybody in washington
was in such fear of
the august god
douglas macarthur that nobody dared to
say a word one against his moving
north
yeah so i mean i think that both his book and
philip roth’s novel
that i also discuss its not set in the
korean war but he’s going to uh…
college
and gets kicked out of the college and
then gets sent to korea and dies there
uh… that novel
i’m blanking on the name of it was
something like interrogation or
something like that
he has a similar attitude toward the
korean war that that it was
something he didn’t really understand it
kinda blindsided him when he got sent
there
uh… it blindsided
the fifties
it blindsided his generation
but you know uh… ten years later
a guy like david halberstam was trying to cut
his spurs at the new york times
and
thinking that there was
you know some problem
uh… with what he was hearing in
south vietnam and he becomes a big
critic of the of the war
and does excellent work
but in the in his uh… book on the
korean war i mean i gave him both of
my big tomes and uh…
a list of other good books on the war
he doesn’t mention them
he doesn’t mention the bombing of the
north
he mentions the three-year u_s_
occupation of south korea in one
sentence without
giving it any significance
and mentions a total of two
south koreans in a seven hundred page
book syngman rhee
and his old general paik sun yup who
everybody all the western journalists
are taken to paik sun yup so he
can
tell them how things really happened
now to bring this back to our earlier
discussion
pain sun yup was born in pyongyang
he was about ten years younger he he’s
younger than kim il-sung
he was a lieutenant in the japanese army
he fled to the south with his brother
and they both became
central people
in the command of the south korean army
when the war broke out
so kim il-sung grew up just outside of pyongyang
here’s two two other guys took opposite
sides during the colonial period
and they’re facing each other off
on the thirtieth parallel on june
twenty-fifth nineteen fifty
uh… so
it’s uh…
astonishing that
anybody
in in washington that knew anything
about korea could have
been surprised by this war
stay with us we’ll be right back
president truman arrives at flushing meadow
five years to the day after his
historic proclamations which announced
the beginning of work by the united
nations
mr. truman dramatically calls on the world
assembly of nations
to bring about real disarmament
through control of atomic and all other
weapons
then the president says
vast sums now being spent on rearmament
could be used for world betterment
in the reception that follows the
president greets the delegates of the
sixty united nations among them are
russia’s andrei bashinski and soviet
security council delicate jacob malik
america’s warren austin and eleanor
roosevelt
the un anniversary is hailed around
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the topic i will be discussing today is
whether a person or a couple
should make a will
the short answer is yes
before i discuss specific situations let
me state a few things in the hope of
clearing up some misconceptions
first
the law of wills is state-specific
that is each state has its own set of laws
governing who can make a will
and the formalities one must comply with
in order to make a valid will
one that a court will enforce
second generally a person who wants to
make a will needs to be eighteen years
old and of sound mind
which means that the person has to
know that they are making a will
that they know the nature and extent of
the assets they own
and that they know the natural objects
of their bounty
in other words you have to know what you
were doing and why
a written and signed document is
required in almost all but a few special
cases
and most states require that two other
people also sign the will as witnesses
some states do not require witnesses as
long as the document is signed by the
person making the will known as the testator
and the material portions of the will are
in the testator’s handwriting
the main reason to make a will is to
make sure that upon your death your
property goes to those persons you want
your property to go to
a will can accomplish that objective and
do so in a legally accepted manner
if you do not have a will then you die
intestate
and the law of the state you live in
will step in and make the decision for
you about how your property will be
distributed
and to whom
again each state has its own rules and
each person’s family situation is
different
in another presentation i discussed
the general rules of been intestacy
so i will leave that issue for now
there are other reasons to make a will
and they are as varied as each families
dynamics
providing for children especially for minor children
providing for partners
providing for aged parents
minimizing taxes
selecting fiduciaries to handle your affairs
selecting guardians to raise your minor
children
and making sure that there is an orderly
process to reach a distribution goals
are but a few of the many other reasons
let me give you three typical scenarios
first a young unmarried person
just starting out in his or her career
second a recently divorced parent of two
young children
and finally
an older couple with grown children
who have started their own families
first the young unmarried person
just starting out in your career you
might feel that you do not have enough
assets to bother with making a will
that may be true but even if it is
things could change quickly
you could inherit money from a parent or
a grandparent
you could get injured
and receive money either in a lawsuit or
as a settlement
regardless
you have your own ideas about how
your property whatever the value
should be distributed upon your death
everything to partner if you have one
some to your parents
some to your brothers or sisters or a favorite
niece and nephew
how about to a favorite charity
and if you have pets who will take over
their care
without a will your preferred
beneficiaries may or may not receive
your property when you die
and with a will
you choose an executor or executrix
someone you trust to make sure your
testamentary plan is carried
out
let’s consider another example
the recently divorced parent of two
young children
in this situation
your primary goal will probably be
insuring that your children are taken
care of if you pass away
for you there are two major concerns
first who will be the guardian of your
children
that is who would you want to raise your
children if you pass away
and your ex spouse is either passed
away is unfit to raise the children
or simply does not desire to do so
an elderly parent
a sister in a faraway state
a successful sibling who is married and has
children of his own or her own
in a will you choose who will be the
guardian of your children
while your choice is not absolutely binding
on the probate court
it will be given great deference
and it would be a good idea to select
an alternate guardian
in case your first choice of guardian is
unable to take on the role of guardian
second how will your property be distributed
this situation also requires careful
thought and planning
and may involve providing money to the
guardian to help pay for the cost of
raising your children
and even setting up trusts for things
like their college education
and finally
the older couple with grown children
who have children of their own
will there be enough money to ensure
that the surviving spouse can live
comfortably
what happens to the estate
when the second spouse dies to whom
should the property go the wealthy and
successful daughter
the son struggling to raise a family
with a spouse
siblings in need of financial support
or specific grandchildren
what about grandchildren yet to be born
and what about planning for medicaid
eligibility and long-term care
finally what about estate taxes
for those fortunate to have had
financial success
the list of issues to be addressed goes
on and on
whatever your current situation
it is probably a very good idea to
consider making a will
at a minimum
making a will gives you some peace of
mind
knowing that if anything should happen
to you
your wishes upon your death will be
honored
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united nations troops once again hit the road
towards korea’s capital city of seoul
on the way american infantrymen fight through
towns like the rail center of an yang
south of seoul
this time the advance is different from
previous allied attacks
led by tanks diving deep into the
chinese communist lines searching out
the reds in the rice paddies
the goal of the united nations command
this time is not to capture towns
but to track down the enemy and destroy him
is this war of maneuver gains ground
so much the better
and gain ground we do u_n_ units hurling
back chinese counterattacks
reach the blasted bridges along the
vital han river across from seoul
for the fourth time since the war’s start
the city of seoul comes under attack
the offensive is was backed up from bases in
japan where flying boxcars of the combat
cargo command
take to the air to drop supplies
just as though they were coming off a
factory assembly line
uh…
welcome back why did mao
mao
come across to help the
the north koreans
well i think it’s
true that he was defending his own
border
and the industry’s uh… japanese had
also put a lot of industries into
manchuria
but not china didn’t have much industry sort
of an imperial fringe you know of
shanghai along the coast that other the
british and others had built factories
and there was a distinct
possibility that the u_s_ would
would uh… bomb those factories
that the u_s_ would
put an american army on the yalu river
which i think the chinese still
would resist if korea were unified
but I developed a lot of evidence
mainly in chinese and koreans sources
that
it was also a matter of reciprocity for
what koreans had done for them and that
for a new revolutionary regime to let
the north koreans hang out to dry
when many of his officers had fought
with uh… kim il-sung and other
guys in the north korean military
would be
most unfortunate
and then the third reason
yeah I mean it took me forever to get any handle
on what
koreans had done in china
with that revolution
but it goes all the way back to
nineteen twenty one or two
when the defense minister
of the north korean army in nineteen
fifty had been at the
whampoa
military academy that’s where
chiang kai shek went
many of mao’s allies it’s most famous
military training facility all the way
back to the early twenties
there were koreans on the long march including
one of the biggest generals in the north
korean army in nineteen fifty may I ask a question why
well because
i mean it’s it’s it’s partly
that when westerners look at east asia
they think well i better learn something
about china better learn something about
japan but i don’t really need to learn
much about korea
I’m joking a little bit but i’ve seen that
many times
it’s also the
schisms that came into
the postwar communist world where
the chinese felt the koreans didn’t give them
enough credit
koreans felt the chinese didn’t give them
enough credit you know things like
that so that these stories
get
distorted but why did so many koreans
fight with mao
you know in the long march and in the
fighting chiang kai-shek and all that
i think that uh…
japanese colonialism was so oppressive
to young men in particular
there’s a great book called song of ariran
ariran is a famous korean song
written by kim san
who was uh… korean revolutionary who
died
in uh… the late thirties
edgar snow’s wife took his biography
but he said
and he said specifically about syngman rhee in
nineteen nineteen
he went to versailles to try and get
the
powers to give korea independence
and this this kim san said how how can syngman
rhee think that because he can speak
english
he’s going to go to versailles and somehow
those great powers are going to
force japan to give up korea
it’s just naivete on an
unbelievable scale says words to that
effect
but then he says why he joins the chinese
revolution is because somebody’s finally
fighting the japanese
cause i mean the borders between
korea and china almost didn’t exist
the the japanese were
in
uh… all of northeast asia by
nineteen o five
at one point or another and then they
controlled
the northeast provinces of china for
fifteen years so
it was natural i think that you get a
generation of revolutionaries who
think the only thing the japanese
understand
is bullets
well now we’ve got about fifteen
minutes left and
i’d like to
discuss perhaps three or four major topics
number one we discuss the japanese
here a lot
and i think you feel that uh…
I don’t think I’ve ever heard anybody take a
different position
that the japanese and the north koreans
have never reconciled
and very interestingly and I had not heard
this because i think of my own ignorance
frankly
that you feel that the people who have
been high in the japanese government
and who to this day are high in the japanese
government
are related by blood to the people who
were the fascists in the japanese
nation in the nineteen late nineteen
twenties and thirties and who brought on
world war two
and that the north koreans are well
aware of this
i don’t think there’s any question of
that
one of the people
who was in manchuria
kishi nobusuke who became postwar prime
minister in japan
great favorite of the americans even though
he was really a right winger
kishi was running the munitions
operation in
manchuria in the mid-nineteen thirties as
a young man
i go into
these various lineages in
my book uh…
but uh… two uh… of the most recent prime
ministers are direct descendants
of people
that go back to that period
but the other thing I mean two things
japan has the most hereditary democratic
parliamentary system on the face of the
earth
they have kept districts where
the son the grandson and
you know the great-grandson are going to
hold that seat
in the diet or the parliament
that’s more true of the liberal
democratic party which is temporarily out
of power
but was in power through most of the
post-war period
they have very deep roots in the
countryside
they have very deep hereditary roots
it’s
not to say it isn’t a democracy
but it uh… it would be like
taking the kennedys and several of our
you know rockefeller’s and other families I was going to say
the kennedys and just blast you know plastering
them all over the country
and then the other thing is
koreans
were always known hundred and fifty
years ago they were known for keeping
genealogies
and that had to do with
if you had an aristocrat in the last
four generations
of your genealogy
of your family history you could sit for
the civil service exams which was a way to
get upward and onward
and if you didn’t you couldn’t
so hereditary systems are very strong in
korea including slavery
but if you could trace
you know your your family back
to some distinguished person you u
you could do much better in korean
society
so koreans are just
widely known they’re great students of
genealogy most families have extensive
family trees
and so the first thing the north koreans
do
since they think the japanese are
unreconstructed
and every
wipstitch some l_d_p_ politicians shows
that they’re unreconstructed by saying
you know we really developed korea we
didn’t hurt korea stuff happens all the
time
they all look at the guys genealogy
you know there have been some famous
episodes recently
that indicate this although
we americans don’t know the background
that you just presented
uh
you know the claim
there was no such thing as comfort women
and you know when the when the
chinese government says to them
you really should apologize for thus and such
like uh…
the rape of nanking
oh no no we had nothing to do
with that you know
well i uh… i think it’s a very
serious problem because
they’re wonderful japanese
historians that have pointed all this
stuff out three hundred thousand people
died at nanking
comfort women were hundred and fifty
thousand so you know there are very
good historians people that i consider
very good friends who have total
contempt for their own government
but the politicians are constantly
saying things that are
that seem to be purposely
designed to
put salt into the wounds
and what amazed me though is that the head of
the air force in japan a year and a half
ago got up
and he gave a speech
where basically he said
japan’s been right in every
international conflict it’s gotten themselves
into since eighteen ninety-five when
they
scuttered the chinese
and blamed uh…
world war two on pearl harbor and
roosevelt listening to too many
communists i mean it was just a really
wackey
thing but in the middle of it
he says there was a great korean officer
named kim suk won
oh he killed so many chinese you know
he was terrific we really liked him
well that was the guy in the nineteen
thirties who headed the unit
to track down and kill
kim il-sung
and kim suk won was the commander of
the thirty eighth parallel all through
the summer of nineteen forty nine
when the south was making these
skirmishes and attacks
and i mean you didn’t need anybody else
there to provoke a war
i mean this guy is a quizling traitor
a benedict arnold
and you know we’re standing there next to
him with our
officers
while he he he he literally said
when i attack the north I’ll have
breakfast in
pyongyang and uh…
lunch in some
place and dinner on the border chin
wi she he said this to
people all the time
but i think your average american
you get
instead of an expert with forty years of
experience you get forty guys with one
year
of experience
and then they’re going off to their next post
they don’t know anything about this
guy’s background
yeah yeah there are some real questions for a
different day but
there are some real questions about the
way in which our state department and for
that matter one might even say
the military operates in the ability
a year or two years
there are certain real benefits
to that but there certain downsides that
don’t
often get discussed
uh why don’t you talk about
tell us about the one
thing probably most known to
americans
whether we understand the whole story i
don’t know but that’s the print those
are the prisoner of war issues when
when the war was finally the armistice
was finally signed
well uh… the uh…
there a lot of things to say about the
p_o_w_ issue
it held up the signing of the armistice
primarily because we wanted some
mechanism
whereby
anticommunist soldiers would not be sent
back to north korea or china
they would be rewarded as it were
well
if they were anticommunist they should go to south
korea or taiwan but not go back to a
communist country
but that was based on the treatment that
the russians gave to germans
who had surrendered to them and so it
was a perfectly
reasonable position
but it ignored what was going on in the
p_o_w_ camps which was a virtual
political war sometimes open war
warfare
where the communists
on the north korean side would
would get everybody together and organize
their camp
and then fight with the anti communists on the south
korean side except the north koreans are
much better organized
south koreans tended to have youth group
leaders
the south koreans were the anti
communist p_o_w_s
they were the ones who wouldn’t join
with the communists even though they had
been communist
or they have been in the north korean army
they had been captured
in the north korean army or as guerrillas
yeah okay or they got into the
camps and figured the u_s_ was going to
win this war sooner or later and they would
go to south korea
and there was a lot of anticommunist
indoctrination among those north and
south koreans a lot of south koreans were
captured fighting on the north korean
side
and and so
syngman rhee also in addition to
these fights that were going on
he decided to sabotage the armistice
couple months before it was signed by
letting twenty five thousand prisoners
go free
these were anticommunist ones or probably
anybody that realized they were going to
go free on
tuesday morning if uh… syngman rhee
let them
and that infuriated
the uh…
american command
which was running everything
i mean the u_n_ had almost no role in
korea
and so uh…
that managed to delay the
armistice for several months
but to me
what most americans remember i think is
the americans in north korean and
chinese p_o_w_ camps
because of the uh…
the shocking things that came out when
they came home
the most shocking being that twenty-one of the
p_o_w_s stayed behind
and i’ve actually met
two of them
they all eventually made their way back
to the united states
they went from north korea to china some of
them stayed there decades
others came back fairly quickly
but they were just confused young men
in one case a black guy who said he had
no future in the united states and the
chinese promised him a job in in
education
which is entirely plausible
he’s now
runs a chop suey restaurant in memphis he’s a very
funny guy
and he got his education his wife and his job in
china
but he told us in an interview that he
wanted to come back to the united states
because there’s no ceiling on your
ambition
where as there is in china
it was just a fascinating
interview
very uh… interesting person
so twenty one stayed behind and they were
supposed to have been brainwashed
when in fact the political
indoctrination was fairly
light compared to what most people
believe
uh… i’ve read a book by a black guy
who was
a p_o_w_ and he said they would
come to him and talk to him about imperialism
and he’d say it’s a bunch of hogwash and
they’d come back and try and do it and
the worst thing ever did was make
him stand on the ice in his bare feet
for an hour or so
teach him a lesson
so i i i a lot of it was
overdrawn but it fed into this idea
we couldn’t win the korean war
we were stalemated
what happened to the world war two
generation
when men were men
and you see then in the mid fifties all
of this talk about the decline of
american manhood and
rebel without a cause james dean’s most
well-known movie
you know
his father’s going around in an
apron
he tells his father why don’t you slug mom
in the mouth for christ’s sake instead of letting her push
you around
i mean it you see it in hollywood
you see it in stories and scenes on t_v_
and so the uh…
that particular p_o_w_ episode
and it went beyond that because
a lot of americans died in captivity
and one thought
well it’s the brutality of the north
koreans and the chinese
but there were a lot of british p_o_w_’s
hardly any of them died
and so when studies came out and there
there are some excellent studies by
sociologists on this
including a book called mass battle and
behavior in captivity that i think is the
best book
it turned out that the british knew how
to keep their morale up much better than
the americans and these guys would just give up
commit suicide or just die like bridge on the river
kwai in a way isn’t yeah it is
and i don’t think it has
anything to do with american manhood it
has to do with young people
who don’t know where korea is
that get six weeks of infantry training you know
one of the things maybe this
american manhood thing is a
perpetually cycling idea because as
you will remember
this was something that tremendously
bothered theodore roosevelt and other
people who were the sons of the civil
war generation
and who had never proven themselves you
know in his famous comment i want a war
any war
but we need a war right
yeah actually one of the fascinating
things about korea is how well officered
the american military was
almost all the officers who fought in
world war two fought in korea
ridgeway macarthur clark
you
you can’t uh…
hardly name anybody who didn’t
fight there and that
and that made be losing that war or not
winning it
all the harder to take
a couple of last questions that seem
to be related i think
talk if you would about the
growth of democracy in korea after
in south korea
after this vile dictatorship until
about nineteen sixty
under syngman rhee whom we brought back
there
and the fact that today the south
koreans seem to understand far better
than we do
that the korean war was fundamentally a
civil war among koreans
the same thing that is said about the
vietnamese later on
well syngman rhee had
a dictatorship masquerading as a
parliamentary democracy
for twelve years from nineteen forty eight
to nineteen sixty when he was
overthrown in a popular rebellion
uh… and at that time
people in the countryside in particular
settled scores with
policemen and
military people who had killed their
family members in political violence
during and before the war
and for about a year you had a
situation moving toward a a
genuine democracy
and then
in may nineteen sixty one park chung
he mounted a coupe
and uh…
took over the country
and uh… kennedy
didn’t like it
made him run for election in nineteen
sixty three
but all during the park period for the
next uh…
twenty years
koreans would tell me
if he ever lost an election he’d just put
the tanks in the street again
so most of the elections were for show
but in nineteen seventy one uh
he ran against kim dae jung who was
uh… a much younger politician and
very charismatic
and somehow kim got forty six percent of
the vote
and
nearly got killed for that
and so park declared himself president
for life put in a new constitution a
year later
a kind of pressure cooker was built up
in korea in the seventies and eighties
where the civil society and the educational
level of the people and all that was
way beyond
living in a military dictatorship
modeled on what the japanese had done
in the thirties
so when park was assassinated in
nineteen seventy nine you had another
year when it looked like
uh…a democracy would develop
and then one of his proteges took over
chun doo hwan in nineteen eighty
and prolonged the dictatorship until
a major rebellion throughout
kind of like what’s going on in tunisia
today every major city had
tens of thousands of people in the
streets
overthrew chun doo hwan
and you had the first direct election of
a president
and then in in the nineteen nineties i
think korea really fully democratized
and in many ways it’s a more democratic
country than our own i think in that
it’s is it’s as stable a democracy as we
have
but its spectrum is much wider
the political spectrum
they have a left-wing newspaper that’s
one of the most popular newspapers and
I don’t mean left-wing like the new york
times but it it it’s uh…
yeah
it’s not a liberal spoken like a true
right winger well sarah palin might
think it’s a left-wing newspaper but
and a full spectrum of debate and a very
lively civil society
and in that context all kinds of
questions that
people had been
tormented about
but couldn’t talk about for decades
started to come out
like the no gun village massacre
which was an american massacre of
women and children and that got
made a lot of news here
but of course koreans are more
interested in the massacres
that their people did and so
pretty soon you had the truth and
reconciliation commission
uh… and and a number of other
similar projects
so that and then this went along with uh…
as you said a different evaluation of
the nature of the war
for a young person in nineteen eighty to hear
that kim il sung was actually a gorilla
fighting the japanese rather than a
stooge of the russians which is
what had always been put out
and that
the top officers in the south korean
army were all
at the time of the war were all
people who served in the japanese army in world war
two
this is like
somebody telling us i don’t know
what i mean that
john kennedy was a secret communist or
something like that that it’s just had a
shattering effect
on young people
in particular and so the whole
postwar consensus that the conservatives
have tried to
curdle up over
the decades collapsed
and they’d like to put it back together
again but they can’t they’re too old
uh…
anybody who fought in the korean war now is
going to be about eighty
and
so the to me as a historian it’s one of the
best examples of what democracy can do
for you
because when people are actually
allowed to inquire into those things
that move them deeply
they do very good work
well I must be a real democrat because for the
last ten years i have come to think
that robert taft was a great man and you
know back in the nineteen fifties
people thought he was the incarnation of
right wing ogrism
and he was so right about what was
happening in the executive branch of the
united states government
well I uh
grew up among a bunch of ohio cousins
who thought robert taft walked on water
and i still remember
one of my cousins pounding his fists into
the sand we have
I used to my parents owned a cottage
with a bunch of other cousins
who had their own cottages coming down
from a nineteenth-century farm that my
great grandfather owned
i went through every summer for twenty
one years
and i remember
one of my cousins pounding his fists into the
sand
listening to the radio
so angry and i said
to my father I said what’s wrong he says
eisenhower’s getting the nomination not
taft
well you know taft maybe some maybe he was
sort of right wingish on domestic
policies but boy when it came to foreign
affairs and
the ability of the executive to do
whatever it wants and congress being a
mere cypher oh my god was he right on
took a lot of years to realize he was
uh
my cousins were at that time mostly
small businessmen
or salesmen for
some buick dealer or whatever
and he was a champion of small business
low taxes
but he was principaled
low military budgets too
uh… and i wrote about him not in this
book but in another book
of mine that came out a year
uh… or so ago
where he says
what truman is embarking on
with this military budget and these basis
is just a disaster
sooner or later it’s going to get us
into wars
and it’s going to bankrupt us
and it’s been doing that now for sixty
years
yeah
and now we we really have to wrap this up
but i will add that now there is talk
in congress and elsewhere
that what is happening on the
international fund front militarily
does threaten the country with
bankruptcy
you’re you’re exactly right i mean you see it
coming slowly in
in the morning paper
more and more congressmen more and more
pundits talking it and conservative that’s the
thing that interests me so much yeah
conservatives who are
hard-line
hard line when it comes to the military and when it
comes to our role in the world and they are
say
it’s going to bankrupt us I very much
have
grown to like secretary of defense gates
because he’s the first secretary of
defense since eisenhower left
you know the presidency to talk about
reducing the military budget in serious
ways
well sir thank you thank you very much
it’s been a good discussion
boy i think i think that uh… you were
terrific so thank you very much thank you
thanks for the good questions and you’re welcome
and to the audience be with
us again next time
or the next issue the next uh…
episode
installment I guess that would be the best
word
of books of our time thank you

In this episode of The Massachusetts School of Law’s Educational Forum, Assistant Dean Diane Sullivan speaks with former Boston Bruins Derek Sanderson and Ken Hodge Jr., Richard Johnson, curator of The Sports Museum of New England, author Russ Conway, former player Mike Milbury and attorney Ken Lakin about the game of hockey including how the league has changed since the original six, the violence of the game, player salaries and the league’s future.

The following is a rough transcript of the above video, courtesy of YouTube captions…

welcome to the massachusetts school
of law
educational forum thank you for joining us
this program is brought to you by the
massachusetts school of law
and is shown nationwide
the topic for today’s show is the n_h_l_
for hockey fans hockey isn’t a game it’s
a way of life
there’ve been great players like gordie
howe bobby orr and wayne gretzky
hockey has given its fans great moments
one of the most memorable is when a
group of college students from the
u_s_a_ defeated the mighty russian
olympic team also known as the miracle
on ice
the n_h_l_ has produced great teams such
as the big bad bruins
for which derek sanderson mike milbury and
ken hodge played
and who could forget the high-flying
edmonton oilers of the nineteen
eighties
plus hockey has one of the most
successful franchises in sports history
the montreal canadiens
in an effort to get as many perspectives
as possible
we thought it would be a great idea to
get the thoughts of a man who knows
the game from a players view as well as
from managements view
we visited with michael milbury in new
york
mike was a top defenseman with the
boston bruins
after retiring he progressed through the
bruins organization
from player to head coach of the bruins
affiliate the mariners where his team
captured the division title and he was
named coach of the year
mike then became head coach and assistant
general manager of the bruins leading
the team to division titles mike then
became the general manager of the new
york islanders
mike tell us a little bit about the
game of hockey how’s it changed over the
course of your career first as a player
well it’s changed in a whole lot of
different ways from the
just from the size of the players who
are so much bigger so much stronger so
much faster than they’ve ever been
and uh… and that makes for
a whole different set of uh… rules for
coaches to live by and they coaches
have adapted incredibly to the game and
now we’re much more they’re much more
sophisticated in terms of
positioning and technical play
uh… makes for a real challenge for an
opposing coach when you
come into a new building and they’ve
seen everything that you’re gonna do
and from the business perspective it’s
uh… incredibly different it’s uh…
there’s all sorts of things that go on
in an arena during the course of the game
advertising even here in this little
rink that you’re seeing everything that you can
possibly imagine on the side boards
uh… and of course the money
is uh… hugely different do you think
in any way it’s becoming a game or it’s
going to become a game of speed and and
of size and strength as opposed to
technical skill
you know we’re we’re facing a time now
where teams have become so
uh
detail oriented and they play the trap
which is a
real tight defensive system
i don’t know how we’re going to get
around that it’s there’s still a lot of
excitement to the game there’s a lot of
transition off this defense
but a lot of us are concerned about
what it’s doing to the flow of the game so
it’s something that we’re looking at and
especially with the new CBA around the
corner
we’re looking at it very intently in the
next year or so
so we’ll have to stay tuned see what happens yeah
i think so but i but every year there’s
probably three or four general managers
meetings
most of the managers are ex-players but
all of them are dramatically interested
in the welfare of the game
and we’re always looking for a way to
make it better and we get input from the
players as well so I I think the game
should be flow excitement and
that’s its roots it’s uh…
its essence was on rivers and ponds and
where there was just an explosion of
energy and speed and and the more we can
keep that essence of the game the
better it is for all of us do you
believe that the fighting or the
violence is an essential part of the
games is that what viewers want to see
well that’s two different questions uh… i
don’t believe that that fighting is an
essential part of the game
i believe that we’ve allowed it to
become a part of the marketing
aspect of the game
uh…
no other major sport allows it to occur
in its uh…
in it’s field and i don’t think we
need it
uh…
other people will argue that this is a way
to
to that people police themselves on the ice
uh…
i frankly think that’s
uh… sales pitch and i think we could
easily do without it
and make the game
uh… better because of it but uh…
you know I’m in the minority on that one and i’m
not that i mean i fought
plenty of times when I was a player it’s not that
i’m uh…
a pacifist in any way shape or form no way
but i uh… i think we can it’s time to move
on
that’s right
let me ask you a somewhat related
question hockey players are rarely in
trouble with the law or are in trouble far
less than other athletes why do you
think that’s so
you know we’ve had the we’ve been lucky
to
to uh… in many ways unlucky i guess the
salaries have been low they haven’t been
introduced into the fast lane
there are a lot of us that are very concerned
about that we had a recent episode
with uh…
a tragic episode where
where one of our players in
atlanta passed away and it was a fairly
innocent occurrence you know somebody
driving a little too fast
but it’s it’s when you introduce
the opportunity and all the money that
comes with it it’s something that
concerns me but up until now it’s been
sort of a down to earth group and and i
guess maybe that
maybe most of the time people are coming
from canada forty percent of our players
are still from canada
but it’s a kind of uh… an earthy game
and the guys are generally well
grounded and uh… i hope we never lose
that entirely
i wonder if you might comment on the
diversity now in the league you said
still forty percent of the players are
coming down from canada but where’s
everyone else coming from
well there’s uh…
they’re coming from everywhere and we
have people from long island now that
are playing in the league
we have people from the midwest of course
and all across a europe uh… the
russian
the russian system which seemed to be in
incredible disarray
ten years ago with a
the political changes has now somehow
rebounded
as as they become economically more
viable a lot of these
businessmen have poured money into the
hockey system so we’re getting
a real rebirth in russia
finland has always been there and i
think can produce more sweden has always
been a great source of talent in the last
ten years the czech republic
and slovakia is an up-and-coming uh…
hockey power uh… they won the world
championship a couple years ago so it’s
uh…
it’s nice to see that hockey is
flourishing across
some of these places and one day
hopefully we’ll have a
an artificial ice surface that will
introduce it easily to to warmer
climates that’s uh… that’s something
they flirted with but haven’t really
quite
been able to uh… perfect
let’s talk a little bit about the
popularity of the sport why is hockey
nationally less popular than other
major league sports
uh… huh
my opinion the reason is that
people don’t play it yes
I mean in south florida
or alabama
it’s very expensive
uh… there are no natural surfaces on
which to play it people
ball hockey is a tremendously popular game
right now
but it’s not ice hockey and
to get a sheet of ice like this is this
is a
you know multimillion dollar facility
so therein really lies the biggest rub
that that people just don’t have access
to the
to the ice surfaces
and the expensive
the expensive nature of the equipment
also is
prohibitive so
that is going to keep us somewhat
unfortunately
contract what advice would you have for
kids that really wanna make it in the
n_h_l_ is it a realistic goal
every kid uh… should have a dream and
if it happens to be in
athletics i think they should be able to
dream that I think
that the first thing that you need to do
is learn how to skate
uh… my advice really doesn’t go to the
to the kids it goes to the parents where
i think we’ve made a mockery of what we
should be doing
in uh… athletics as far
as hockey is concerned anyway
we’ve got kids that are six and seven and
eight that are on travel teams
traveling around two and three hours to
play a fifteen minute game
I know there’s some socialization that occurs
there but
that could happen uh… a lot closer to
home and for a lot less
expense and
i think if we could
we could get more training into our
early
uh… hockey programs
more training less travel less game playing
and then of course less nonsense among
parents in the stands
that i think we’re much better off and
and some of the european countries we’ve
always known that they’ve been much
better technically
it’s because they’re trained more more
thoroughly and properly
they don’t play as many games there’s not as
much emphasis on the games
so consequently as they get older and do
play more games
they’re better prepared and i think
that’s something that we should all look
at
and my advice to the kids in general is
learn to skate learn the learn the
skills
and then you’ll get your game sense as time
goes on a kid though that wants to
make it in the n_h_l_ all they can do
today is play hockey they can’t diversify themselves and
do other sports it’s a it’s a
sad comment really for me but uh…
specialization is here to stay it looks
like
i think we just have to be careful you
can still
as a kid play other sports uh…
but the way things have been structured
there’s if you’re part of a program it
starts in september it doesn’t end until
april
there’s offseason
conditioning programs that they want
summer hockey schools that they want you to be a
part of
it’s tough i still think there’s a
little room for it
but like anything else if you put your
mind to it if you have a gifted with
some
some natural ability you’ve got a chance
but it’s not something
professional sports is not something
anybody can count on this is
this is a your chances are remote that
you’ll make it but
it’s uh…
not a
unfair or unwise to dream
and yeah like you say it’s good to have a
dream
different question unlike other sports
hockey is much more reliant in my
opinion on what i call ticket or gate
income what does that mean to the game
the reason why is simple we we have
uh…
never been able to expand to a regional
or national audience on on a great scale
the game is difficult to broadcast
there’s a very small object of
everybody’s attention the puck is not
very big
it’s tough to see it as
as you will note or most people note but
once you go to a game
you can get
you can get
hooked on the thing oh sure the problem is
that we have uh… we have enough issues
in sort of selling it to the public i guess
somewhat related question do you think
that hockey players now are going to
start to look for the big salaries like
other major league sports it’s already it’s already
there
as a business
i think it’s safe to say that the
case will be made by ownership
that they can’t afford it we’re
we’re paying more money in many cases
to players than
than football and and baseball and
basketball for the marquee players it’s
it’s a
it’s not big money will come it’s
big money is here right
and hockey
has a unique problem as i see it any
way that you have a lot of teams out
there that are losing money and you have
expansion of the n_h_l_ and how does
that all play into it i think what
happened here is that that uh… in the
days of the sixties fifties sixties and
and seventies really
uh… i think ownership took advantage
of players
i think there was a real
uh…
one way street and that was uh…it was
not going the players way
as the union changed
as the uh… as times changed
the union became much more powerful much
more in tune
and the pendulum swung the other way
uh… now it’s the players that are
in control consequently there’s a lack
of trust between the two parties
and we’ll say something and they’ll smear
they’ll say something and we’ll say
can you believe they don’t understand it
until we get to some sort of
understanding of each other’s
difficulties
and the fact that this is a business
that requires
obviously players and obviously the
capital and the input of ownership and that
we’re a partnership
we’re in for a rocky road right
so get on the same page
that’s the answer there’s
obviously people want to come to the
game
we play to mostly full houses
uh… as we mentioned earlier it is that’s
where we get our revenue
uh… so we’ve got something that people
want to see people wanna watch on
on t_v_ when they’re familiar with the
game
but we need to
we need to know that we’re we need each
other in this whole business oh yeah
you look at boston you look here in new york
i mean we love hockey but that’s
not true everywhere
no it isn’t true everywhere because they
haven’t been introduced to it and for the
other reasons not
the lack of kid participation but
once you see it once you’re part of the
action once you actually get people to
a game
you can really hook them and uh…
it would be a shame if we couldn’t find
a way as players and owners
to to and manages to come to some
commonality without having a work
stoppage for a length of time yeah i mean i wonder
whether the n_h_l_ would survive
long-term some type of a lockout
well the
no matter how we try to screw it up
the game keeps bouncing back yes it does
and it’s great
let’s talk a little bit about you
what was your experience what has
hockey meant to you it’s been your
whole life as i can see it
I had a dream like all other kids but it was at a
time when you played football and
you played hockey and you played
baseball and basketball and soccer and
everything else you could get your hands
on
so I you know as I headed off to
college
i guess it was the dream was still there
but i was being a little more realistic
about
you know options as a professional
athlete but when i got out of college
i got the opportunity to try out for the
old boston braves
uh… and showed them enough to get me
back to training camp in the fall
and then that I got lucky enough to to
stick with the bruins organization
uh… a lot of it’s luck a lot of it’s
timing lot of it’s hard work
I had a good fortune of having uh…
don cherry who was a
big supporter of mine and harry sinden
who was a
great friend and mentor
and who uh has always meant the world to
me in terms of
personal and professional life uh… he
gave me an opportunity to get my career
started not only as a player
but then when it was over as a coach and
manager in in portland
uh… so
it it’s just sort of
popped up it was there and and i’ve been
able to take advantage of it and
it’s been a great life for my for
my kids and my family and uh… been fun
everybody sort of rallies around
you know whether the bruins or now
the islanders it’s a it’s a way of sort
of
you know everybody getting on the same
bandwagon even as a family that’s hard
to do so
it’s been a great ride for me i’ve been
privileged
uh… to be part of the professional
scene you’ve done everything
what have been some of your favorite
experiences from a hockey standpoint it’s
been uh… it’s
been wonderful to get the chance play
with a group of guys
I mean even in the minor leagues which is a
different time in the early seventies
when i played i played with guys like a
you won’t recognize harry
shaw rick pagnutti who
played from september until
april and then went home and they were
truck drivers or mailmen or
whatever the case may be but when they
came to the rink they gave it everything
they gave me a lot of experience a lot
of their time
and we had a ball i mean
and uh…
the american hockey league was a great place to
get started and then of course playing in a
city like boston
when i came in we went to the stanley
cup finals my first two years and
stanley cup semifinals my third year too
many men on the ice against montreal in
seventy nine was a
was a incredible experience despite
the fact that it ended
somewhat bitterly but to be
playing in front of the hometown
fans for the bruins
of harry and bobby orr
esposito jerry cheever
was a thrill in and of itself uh…
the things that we did the games that
we played
there’s too many to enumerate but i i i’ll
never forget
being in that old barn
even just standing there for the
national anthem and getting
goosebumps every time we came out on the
ice it was a
the whole thing still was a little
surreal for me
and uh… I never ever
forget how lucky I’ve been
to be part of the boston sports scene
joining me now is the n_h_l_ rookie of
the year for the nineteen sixty seven
nineteen sixty eight season
derek turk sanderson
derek is well remembered as one of the
finest four checkers to play the game and
for setting up bobby orr’s cup winner
on may tenth nineteen seventy
with his pass behind the saint louis goal
he played on one of the finest defensive
lines in the game
derek was also the first athlete from
any sport to sign a contract in excess
of one million dollars
derek tell me how the game of hockey has changed
since you’ve been a player with the boston bruins
see I didn’t read these questions but that’s a good one
uh… the game is I mean vastly different
and if i can say but it’s really the same
uh… you know why i played in the original
six teams
uh… for boston
and they were everybody was good
two-way positional
response time you had no time to think
out there
as expansion came in it started to get
watered down to the point
defensively
not offensively
the skills have always been there
the goal tender’s equipment has gotten a
little bit bigger and so the numbers
have kinda stayed the same
and then the
patrick while flop style goal tending shut
lower
uh… that started to creep in
goal tenders have
become very very good
and there’s been an explosion in that area
of talent
uh… offensively the europeans have come i
the americans have
tremendous contributions
stevenses
these guys that can play
there’s just tremendous
talent
uh… so extension was something that
had to take place
and uh… i think somewhere along the
lines
they forgot
about the defensive aspect of the game about both ends
of the building
that’s all they have the players are bigger
stronger better shape
uh…
but they’re not faster
just just the game is played at a certain
speed
and uh…
i think it’s a great game my sons love it
and i’ve always loved hockey and
whether it changes it but it’s kinda
stayed the same there’s still
there’s still only a few things you can do to get out of
your own end
little bit of a different question
has the n_h_l_ expanded too far
have we diluted the talent pool too much
what the when you bring in the when
you bring in the uh… europeans
they’re very skilled offensive set of
players
they are used to playing
a schedule that is not nearly as long
so they have
dreadful slumps sometimes uh… and then
when it’s moved up a couple of notches in the stanley
cup
they haven’t made that acclamation yet
the canadians the north american players and
the canadian american players have but the
european has to get there yet
and once that takes place it will be terrific
do you believe that the violence or the
fighting is essential to the game is that
what the viewers want
absolutely
hockey is not for everyone uh… wish
the national hockey league would learn how
to market the game
I agree it is not for everybody diane it’s
a game
that is a physical
it’s a violent game played by violent people
and you’re gonna get hit you know you’re
going to get hit and you’re going to get hit hard
you’re going to bleed
you’re going to lose teeth things are going to happen to you
uh and you accept that when you sign your contract
fighting is a
essential part you have a club in your
hands
frustration gets to such a level when
a guy’s hookin’ ya and grabbing’ ya slowing you
down impeding your progress
one you’re not allowed to touch a player
without the puck
and if they would just call the rules it
would be terrific but they don’t
so now a player gets frustrated he starts to slash
and spear and using the stick as a weapon
you’re far better off dropping the gloves and having at it with
fisticuffs it’s over it’s very aerobic
it’s usually over in forty five fifty
seconds
you’re balanced on a sixteenth inch of
steel off of frozen water I mean
how strong can you be
so you’re ripping guys it’s a lot of
wrestling
but i think it it gets out
frustration that keeps the level of
violence down
hockey players are great athletes though
and i think we lose sight of just how
talented a hockey player is
i do i do firmly believe that
when you look at uh… at the n_f_l_and
football as good as they are the
quarterback the running backs and
and the defensive backs
those are the skill positions most of it is
just in the trenches hitting hard
movin’
uh… and they don’t go very far
uh… hockey is a game that is played by
uh… offense can hit defense
uh… there’s no out of bounds there’s no
set rules
i don’t have possession like a
basketball I give you the ball
except for the jump ball
it’s uh‚Ķa I haven’t got posesion hockey it’s dropped
it’s anybody’s puck
uh… so there’s no set plays it’s a
game of ad lib it’s an entirely different game
uh… when the puck changes hands
uh… and you don’t have it and the puck
changes hands your job changes
and you have to be able to read that if you can’t
read that i can’t coach that
you have to have the sense for the game
if you don’t then you can go up and down the
wall mind your own business
probably have an
okay career if you’re really talented
the art of it is in understanding the game
why isn’t hockey as popular as other
sports is it that it is hard to follow on
t_v_ that you really have to be at the
rink to really enjoy the game
well there’s two very good points
the puck is too small even for t_v_
uh… so when you they come up with that
silly laser puck remember that one
okay and it was in the stands sometimes
people going
uh… but
when you look at hockey and the puck
being so small it’s actually game that you have to be there
to feel the energy
uh… i’ve watched it I think they do a far
better game today
with they make it exciting today on television
ESPN has done a marvelous job as uh…
and all the stations have
uh… you did a marvelous job when we
played when we playedi i
remember when i watch the highlights
of bobby orr I was showing it to my sons one day
and my wife
sitting their
and I said whoa
we look slow were we that slow
and she said yeah it does look kinda slow
and i went to the game that night and i
spoke with fred cusick
who was probably the greatest broadcaster ever
came down the pike
and i said fred is it really we we were
that slow
he said no
when you played derek in that era it was
one camera game
it was at center ice thirty feet off the ice and it
panned and that’s all it did
and so the downtime through center ice has now
changed
they have forty eight cameras now
they take a guys hands feet bang this player
breaking that player breaking no puck
you don’t see the puck half the time
and they take you through the coming under
your own end through center ice till
you’re around the net
then they pan out and see some action
so it’s actually the producer the
director how they pick the camera the
shots and
they make it very excited
and they make it look faster but it really isn’t
so how do we increase the popularity
i think you market to people that that
that love it and the people that like it
boston fans
yeah you just really pay attention to
your fan base
uh… let the bruins go and reach
the community
columbus atlanta
reach the community
go out and street hockey
uh… i mean you got wonderful equipment for kids
franklin manufacturing has a
whole line
of street equipment
so you get the kids into street hockey
then you get them onto the ice and you get them
feeling better about it
but the teams have got to go to the community
and take all the suburbs and sure and
those hotbeds thirty thirty
one cities i mean that’s all you need
and market out
from the building
and then start to develop a fan base
the national hockey league excludes its fan
base
they go to general
they go to some ads say watch hockey
it’s the coolest game in the world
well if I’m sitting in
peoria illinois
you go to if you get familiarity get
the players out to the community and start to
market it
is hockey though accessible to most kids
no to expensive yeah it is it’s an extremely
expensive game
the goal pads are up to a thousand twelve hundred dollars
the gloves are state of the art now wonderful
equipment kids are better protected
than they ever were
maybe more so
not enough fluidity
not enough movement not enough ability to
get out of the way
because you’re so encumbered with equipment
uh… so
it’s it’s a different game
with the equipment and that aspect of it
what advice would you have for kids in
the audience that think you know one day
i’m gonna play in the n_h_l_
well I that was a dream that i had
the
the boston bruins bought me when I was ten
years old
and uh… it was professional rights for a hundred
dollars and that’s what they did in
the old days
follow your dream if you’re a young kid and
you wanna play you’ve gotta think it all
the time though
it isn’t something you can do part time no not anymore
you’re not going to make the red sox part-time
you’re not going to make the patriots
part-time celtics’ part time
you gotta think about it all the time
your diet
your decision making your building
your body getting your rest
uh… what you know it’s just
all-encompassing now athletes today
are in tremendous shape yes they are
while we’re talking about players
something that i’m personally intrigued
about you think of hockey
as being an aggressive sport as a
violent sport but yet we rarely if
ever hear about hockey players being in
trouble not like other athletes why do
you think that’s so… i have always had
kind of a personal opinion
i think it’s
hockey
in all the campuses in the united states
and all the junior teams in canada
and all the europeans
hockey is a
game of humility
hockey I tell ya
to play it you’re humbled
time after time shift after shift by other
people’s talents or jobs or just whatever
there’s no
uh… social set like on campus
big man on campus in high school
there’s no cheerleaders
there’s no uh…
you’re special
but football and basketball in america
is treated special
the athlete starts to believe that
he starts to walk around like he just owns everything
let’s talk about derek today
uh first of all the farthest thing from
my mind was ever to be in the investment business
but when i was playing and i was fortunate
we spoke earlier about
free agency and
the WHA and making all that money I went
to
my lawyer and he took me to uh…
an investment firm and
he got power of attorney and
i was taking advantage yes
I did a lot of foolish things on my own
but i didn’t spend all the money
so it’s gone
and i did not want to have that happen
to any other player you know
and uh… I did the tucker anthony
golf classic
and john goldsmith was the chairman of tucker anthony
and clyde fizioli
brought me on board and then john goldsmith
encouraged me to go back to get my series
seven understand the industry I did
and then i realized that it’s basically an industry
of all the money management
the brokers everybody’s pretty talented
what do you pay me
what do you charge me
and what do you give me what dod you do for that
as basically what i wanted
a fee based
sports group
i wanted to protect the athlete number one
from himself number two
take him out of the hands of
the philistines take him away from the people that would
take advantage of him and over power him
so the athlete spent so much time on his
game that he doesn’t he or she does not spent
a lot of time on their financial life right
and i figured if i could be an agent
supportive
a financial arm
uh… and responsibly prudently manage
money and wealth
it would be an added service
and it was uh…I started it about ten years
ago it’s been extremely successful
I moved
from a couple of firms for services
and i started in the business with J. henderson
who is the president here
uh… of the investments side
uh… so senior vice president
and jay and i known each other for
eleven years and I said to him
talked about my athletes being here because
this is a wonderful firm to have your money managed
it’s simple high service
high touch high technology
but always a warm body
and that’s what the players needed education
compassion understanding
where they’re not embarrassed to ask a question
they don’t feel foolish about
uh…you know mailing or forgetting stuff
you know how your bank they get mad at ya
it’s my money they get mad at me
I say whoa
I made a mistake
joining me now is a hall of fame hockey
writer
the long-time lawrence eagle tribune’s
sports editor russ conway
russ was a nominee for a pulitzer
prize in recognition of his outstanding
investigative journalism and he was
the nineteen ninety nine recipient of
the elmer ferguson memorial award as
selected by the professional hockey
writers association
he is the author of game misconduct
alan eagleson and the corruption of
hockey russ welcome to the show my pleasure
delighted to have you here russ you’ve
been covering hockey a number of years
tell us how the game has changed over
the course of time
the gaming hasn’t changed
its what’s gone on around it the business
end is entirely different
uh…the players are bigger stronger faster
not necessarily as skilled yeah
but the business part
of hockey as in all of professional sports
is basically the uh… engine that runs
the
locomotive
why haven’t hockey salaries escalated
like other sports salaries oh they have
they’re getting there but still less than
other other sports’ athletes are receiving they’ve gone up
they really have caught
up
you must remember
uh… there are thirty teams there are
roughly seven hundred players
that are on rosters
uh… and each team also
fields at least one
minor league team
the overall
salaries
which are the big bite
uh…
for a
the price of a ticket
uh…
are the single number one reason why tickets have
absolutely shot through the roof
people think right or wrong that hockey
players are aggressive they’re fighters
but you never hear or rarely do you hear I should say
about hockey players getting in trouble
why is that i think there is
a real good reason for that
most hockey players
their upbringing
is
either in a low class uh…
low middle-class income bracket
very few hockey players are well to do
when they first break into high school
or college now but
by the same
token it’s a very
expensive sport to play
and these kids
really have a work ethic
i think originally that is
probably in the uh… stems from
the canadian upbringing
I mean for years in canada I mean people were brought
up
to appreciate things
they they remember their roots that’s
one thing i like about hockey players
today and always
if there’s a tradition off the ice
they’ve been some of the most
generous
when it comes to charities and
community involvement
popularity of the sport why is it that
hockey is not as popular as some of the
other sports is it because it’s low
scoring
hard to follow on t_v_
uh… a little bit of that
they’ve really made great strides
in their telecast they they went
to
canada and basically ah…
took the uh… work ethic and and the
type of
production that they did in canada
finally brought it to the states and
they’ve done a much better job with it in the
last few years
but you must remember
by its own definition there isn’t a lot
of ice
in south eastern or south western united states
now the n_h_l_
to gary bettman’s credit
has slowly worked its way
into
different regions that had never seen
hockey before that’s right yeah
I mean the florida panthers uh… you know when
they
made it to the stanley cup
finals
south florida went absolutely crazy
for them
and uh… they built a brand new rink
whoever thought you’d see an NHL rink in ft. lauderdale
a sunrise florida
another one in tampa
brand-new rink just come in phoenix
you know that has brought more
people
to the game
there are more hockey fans today than ever
but has the league expanded too far
that’s a great questions uh…
sometimes i think it has
and yet
in order to in order
to find your level
you’ve got to be able to see how
far you can go we tend to think of
hockey as a violent
or as an aggressive sport so i have a couple of
questions
first question is is the violence and
the fighting essential to the game do
the fans really wanna see it
I uh… cringe every time people say
it’s violent
the n_b_a_ they have these
bench clearing brawls all the time
end even in the NFL
and if you watch a major league baseball
season
how many are there uh… i mean you know
twenty twenty-five a season
uh… i don’t find it violent
when it is a contact sport
and whenever you have
two people going twenty five to thirty
mile an hour
and they crash into each other is that how fast
they go russ sometimes twenty twenty eight miles an
hour on skates you can reach
and you have a little disc a rubber disc
that your winging ninety five
miles an hour some players
can wing it up to a hundred
miles an hour
i mean people some people are gonna get
hurt it’s not
for the uh…
the sissies that’s for sure are hockey players
in your opinion becoming too greedy at
the expense of the league are they in it
just for themselves and not
considering the longevity of the league
I don’t think all players are like that
by the same token all owners aren’t like that either
you must remember
player is offered
x_ amount of dollars and I’ll use bill geren
as an example that played here in boston
the owner of the dallas stars offered him
five-year contract
for forty five million dollars now what
would you do
he’d be a fool not to sign that
so take it that was a
guaranteed contract
he took care of his family
his grandkids his own kids his grandkids
and what whatever generations there are to
come
the owners in
some areas
have been their own worst enemies
what about revenue-sharing
what can we do to have a better equity they
have a slight revenue
uh… sharing program but you’ve got to
lose x amount of dollars for the
canadian teams and that was because of
the dollar the u_s_ dollar
uh… versus the canadian dollar the
exchange rates were just out of sight
for a long while
all NHL players are played paid
in u_s_ dollars
well it’s pretty difficult
for the calgary flames or the vancouver
canucks or toronto uh… montreal
etc. to
complete when they’re paying their payroll in
u_s_ dollars but they’re income
is derived in canadian dollars sure
uh… it’s amazing some of them held on
ottawa was in big trouble for a while
if they really want to look at it
positively for the sport
for the fan
for the player for the owner
the owners are entitled to make a profit
i mean they have an investment that’s
why they’re in the business
the players are entitled the good ones
are entitled to be paid
good professional sports money
but in order
to bring those two together you’ve got a
look and say
are we going to be partners
because you must remember they do not
have the television contract
that the other three major league sports have
yes that’s exactly what i wanted to ask you
they don’t have the t_v_ the
merchandising the other
you know the other sponsorship
revenue that all the other sports have
TV is the big issue t_v_ for example
in the n_f_l_
basically pays the payroll
the player’s salary payroll
if you look at nascar i mean nascar
gets two point eight
billion dollars for its
television commitment
for uh… the course of five years
that pays the purses that those drivers
go at each different track basically
takes care of the whole purse
in the n_h_l_
the t_v_ revenue in canada and in the united
states
doesn’t come close local
local t_v_ pays separately
right to clubs but the t_v_ revenue doesn’t
come close
now their merchandising and marketing
has been really well done
it’s a billion dollar business
uh… the n_h_l_ and their teams
have done a great job they’ve they’ve
come up with revenue sources that
they never had before
but they had to
sure they did to exist
uh…
i think at the end of the day
they’ve gotta say
what is the value of a franchise
the value of the hockey rink
if the boston bruins didn’t play there
sure
the answer is
no and you’ve got to
go further than just the hockey rink
to see
what the hockey team is responsible for in
terms of revenue
right the answer no longer can be to raise ticket
prices because i mean i think we’re at it’s tapped
out yeah exactly
pretty much tapped out other than maybe cost of
living or whatever
boston uh… uh… takes a bad nock for
that harry sinden has done a pretty good job
putting a cap on
tickets the best they can
it used to be
not long ago
that ticket revenue paid the salaries of
the players
and pretty much every dollar that’s spent by
a fan ends up going back into salary
you’re about tapped out you can’t keep
jackin’ the ticket prices
last question tell us about your book
tell us about your investigative work
well the eagle tribune
and it’s publisher at the time
irving rogers junior
and editors
were totally supportive
i had a number of players come to me
with various suspicions various
complaints both current and past players
of where their international hockey
money was going about their pensions
they had questions they couldn’t get answers
and basically eagleson wouldn’t
service them
uh… he’d shut you out browbeat you and
we went after it
uh… had total support we did eight
different series in the eagle tribune I had
a number of
publishing companies come to me ask to do a
book
we conducted that investigation the f_b_i_
got involved justice department the
mounties
and it became an international event
so to speak that
certainly took a lot of patience
and uh… a lot of support
uh… it was no one person but it
was quite a
uh… an experience to go through
i
said during the
during the saga and finally he went to
jail went to prison I said you know i
hope there’s some life left after this
thing’s over
and uh…
justice was served
uh… thirteen hundred forty three
players got pension money back
eagleson was fined he was exposed
he was kicked out of the hockey
hall of fame so to speak he resigned
because he had to under pressure
uh… he was kicked out of the order of
canada
and uh…
people in canada certainly around the
sport know
that he was a fraud and he was a crook
and we were able to uh… uncover it
wow you know terrific job you’ve heard
that a million times i know but as i
prepare for the show and i’m talking
with various people
everybody is so grateful to you
I appreciate that okay
joining me now is former boston college and NHL
player ken hodge
ken was drafted by the minnesota north stars
in the nineteen eighty four draft
ken played with the north stars as
well as the boston bruins before
retiring with tampa bay
welcome to the show ken thank you so
much for coming thanks for having me diane
ken is joined by his attorney kenneth larkin
he has represented a number of
professional athletes over the years ken
great to see you again diane
always a pleasure to see you welcome to the
show
ken let’s start with you how has the game of
hockey changed in the past two decades
has it become a game of speed and strength
as opposed to skill
uh… well the easiest answer to that one would
be the money i think is the biggest change
changed to a game of money you go
back to the era of the seventies when my
dad played
uh… they only made maybe twenty five to fifty
thousand dollars per season which was
big money back then
uh… and then i went in in the nineties
guys were making a million dollars which was
probably
you know the top end guy and then after
that it’s been
if you don’t make more than a million
dollars as a low end guy there’s something seriously wrong
but wow you can also look at
the the size of some of these guys
there some six four guys as the average size
size strength and speed
is a big attribute for that hockey for
playing hockey now big part of the game
today absolutely is
uh… and that’s if you don’t have that
size and speed
your not going to play
wow ken is it the lawyer
is it the agent is it the
representative of the player that’s
responsible for this escalating salary
problem uh… I’m often asked that question
both not only in the NHL but in the NFL
representing
NFL players over the years
you know there’s a lot of factors involved
with it
uh… commissioner bettman has done a great job of
bringing uh… the league out in licensing and
advertise in the league
at different levels the problems been what
number of teams have spent money stupidly
unecessarily that’s created a quagmire
obviously the t_v_ revenues as opposed
to the other
sports is a significant issue that the
NHL has to face
but players and the agents and the
lawyers who represent them are out to get
them what they can get them
and if a team is going to pay them money for that
in their services today it’s a free market
system they’re entitled to get that
that’s the foundation of the
whole country is a capitalist system but does it
become a situation of personal greed over
really the security of the
league
no i wouldn’t classify it as greed
there’s revenues that are there and each
team’s
different you you take teams like
ottawa and buffalo and atlanta that have had
significant the first two were in bankruptcy
significant issues but the other teams like
the rangers and other big market teams
have done very very well it’s up to the
individual owner and their management team
and the player and the agent involved
to get their value for that player and if
the player is going to draw in people in that
particular
uh… location that particular team then that person
should be rightly compensated for it it’s not
the role of the player or the agent
or the lawyer
to be into into the management game
for different for different cities and
different teams that’s their responsibility is
the violence
and the aggressiveness an essential part
well i think it’s because uh…
you have to have some some kind of
fear factor in hockey in hockey and you hate to
use those words but
uh… when you’re not intimidating somebody maybe
that’s a better better
terminology than
you’re gonna have they’re gonna have
the upper hand on you and that’s kind
of what hockey is it’s an intimidation game uh…
uh‚ĶI’ve seen recently
I hate to keep going back to the early seventies
and sixties but
they had bench clearing brawls
on a night in night out basis uh… now i
think you could count on the number on one finger
the number of times in the last
ten years there’s been a bench clearing brawl they’ve tried
to cut that out of the game which i
think is a good thing
uh… but yet
there’s still the intimidation factor
there’s still these uh… again six
four guys you
go in to lay a body check on a six-foot guy
it’s gonna be intimidating and
then all of a sudden you have to drop the
gloves and now all of a sudden here you go and now
you have to fight these guys
and uh… you have to have some
some type of intimidation to be able to play this game
the viewers love the fights though
well they do and i i i think uh… you
some of the bigger players like
mario lemieux and and wayne gretzky when
they were prominent in the league
were trying to cut it out
because they I think the league went through a
period of
uh… where a team would win games one
nothing
two to one and the fans
weren’t as into the hockey game as
a as they are now when they see some more goals
so the big guys the bigger named guys like
lemieux and gretzky and an even brett
hull to an extent
uh… advocated to get
fighting out of the game and that’s
exactly what happened for a little while but
it’s slowly creeping its way back in
why isn’t in your opinion hockey as
popular as other major league sports i
mean i read reports that say well
the viewers find it hard to follow on
t_v_ or the fact that it is low scoring
is problematic for people’s interests i
think there’s two factors I think one is
it the speed of the game on t_v_ it
doesn’t come across as if you were actually
at a game you see how fast these guys are
actually skating
and i think also to the second thing was
when they came in with helmets
you don’t get to see the guy’s face as
much
now the guys wear face shields some
guys wear
uh… you know full face cages when
they’re injured obviously
so you don’t really get to see
the player and identify with that player
and
and when that player’s in one city he might
not be there for more than a year
and all of a sudden he’s playing somebody somewhere else
so that’s another part of the the name and
face recognition that you don’t have any
more as much as you had back in the early seventies
i think another issue along
those lines also is hockey unlike
some of the other main sports
is kind of a regional sport
the northeast and the midwest in particular
to the west and the southwest and the south
is not nearly as popular but isn’t
it interesting the teams are outstanding
now i mean you played in tampa bay
right uh…they were trying to
get into a different market I think hockey was
trying to
grab some different places and trying to get some
different
uh…
establish some roots when I was i
tamps bay we had uh… fifteen
thousand seat building we were at
and it was the first year of the team
they maybe had five thousand fans
were cheering for us and a thousand ten
thousand fans were cheering for the other
team that was coming in you know if you think about it
you got a lot of canadians a lot of northern people go down
to canada or down to tampa rather
and spend their their winters down there sure
they’re not rooting for the lightning they could care less about the lightning
yeah they can’t get tickets up north so
they’re going to see their favorite teams
well you see what happens with the red sox the red sox and the yankees play
down there and the same
thing happens
not trying to diss tampa bay my brother john lives down in tampa bay
I’d never try to diss his
area
but basically what’s happened is the
larger market teams not only in the NHL
but a lot of
uh… other sports as well is these
large markets are subsidizing these
teams should not have a pro team
maybe they should have a triple A team
or a minor league team not a pro team ’cause that cuts
into the overall revenue issues that we
addressed earlier when you’re supporting a
nashville you know a tampa bay’s these areas
columbus that
are you know arguably not major
market areas that should have major
pro teams and
it’s to some extent indirectly syphoning
some of the revenues of the overall
overall NHL coffers and i
think that’s an issue i really do
I wonder in light of
what ken just said unless you’re
really at the game you don’t appreciate
all of the skill and and the beauty of
the game unless you’re there ’cause it’s
lost on t_v_
but how does one go when tickets are
seventy ninety dollars how do
you take your two
kids into see the boston bruins gotta have
good friends that have a lot of tickets
well you know it’s funny my firm had season tickets for a number of years
we couldn’t give them away to
clients
so we don’t have tickets season tickets anymore
because if i need to send a client to a particular game
i could just go buy two tickets
and sent them to the game i think the issue
that’s a that’s a quagmire
the increase in NHL tickets has
been eighty one percent in the last ten
years they’ve optimized
their growth level at this point
the ticket is seventy five dollars but
that’s that just gets you into your seat yeah
right you’re looking at you gotta pay twenty dollars
or twenty five dollars to park your car
down at the fleet center now
and that’s not even that’s in the lower
garage where you might not even get a spot down there
first off
and then we you get into the building now you gotta
pay five dollars for a hot dog
five dollars for a soda by the average
family of four by the time they get to the hockey
games it’s five hundred bucks to get home i mean an
and they can’t do that they can’t especially with the economics
the way they are nowadays uh… you just can’t
afford to take
a family on a consistent basis on a
an eighty two game season
there’s forty one home dates
you can barely go once or twice a season go
to a game spend a thousand dollars
right
and hockey unlike
major league baseball unlike football
unlike most of the other sports
heavily dependent from the numbers
i’ve looked at
at that gate or that ticket income to pay
their biggest expense which is in fact
player salaries so what’s the hockey league
going to do to attract more sponsorship
or more t_v_ contracts or do something to
bring down the
the ticket price
I think there’s a couple issues there
the when you look at uh…
how hockey has to draw
I personally think they have to
downsize the league I think it’s just too big of a league
a couple of large markets
and strong geographical areas and then
try to therefore than cut down on
some of the ticket prices across the board
I think they did to do a much more
better job in marketing
doing merchandising licensing rights
and things of that nature
like the NFL
if you look at the NFL players association they’ve done
a tremendous job on that the
n_f_l_ in general has done a tremendous job
of attracting a new market of people maybe
going overseas
into the european markets and the asian
markets and doing things like that in order
to attract more money to bring it into the league
but i think the way that the league is structured
now
and given that the t_v_ contract is is
laughable I happened to be playing at the time when
gary bettman became the commissioner
he came in
from the n_b_a_
and the n_b_a_ was just at its height of its
popularity bird and magic and all those guys
were coming into the height of
their popularity well he said let’s do the
same thing let’s try to take that model of
the n_b_a_ and let’s bring it over to the n_h_l_
doesn’t work because as you mentioned
before they got the helmets and they don’t have the name
recognition and guys are just constantly moving
back and forth
that that’s
hockey’s got a kind of do its own thing and
not worry about
the n_b_a_ the n_f_l_ or
major league baseball they gotta start worrying about themselves
joining me now from the sports museum
here in boston massachusetts is richard
johnson he’s fondly known as the soul
man of boston sports dick welcome to
the show thank you very much
dick did you have a
favorite hockey team or favorite
hockey player when you were a kid growing up
well the bruins of the bobby orr phil esposito
era were as charismatic
a group
uh… that have ever played any sport in any
league uh… they were
just you know the team and they worry that that was the
team of my youth and uh… and the
team that made me a big hockey fan
great let’s look at the evolution of the
game tell us a little bit about how it began
as the original six and take us up to
current
well it was interesting that hockey had had
deep roots in the new england area
long before the start of the national
hockey league
you had hockey being played at saint
paul’s school in concord new hampshire
in the eighteen nineties
the collegiate uh… hockey league
started uh… pretty soon after that so
i believe uh… harvard’s program
started also in the eighteen nineties
so the sport
really uh… is uh i think the one
closest to our hearts here because there
have been more
professionals that have come from the
new england area in hockey than in any
other sport
and then certainly uh… the great
number of uh…
olympic players
the great high school tradition here
this is also the home of the first
interscholastic hockey league in the
country
dating back to the nineteen teens
and uh… the boston arena now known as
matthews
arena
is the oldest indoor ice arena in the
world wow did not know that and that’s still here
that’s where the bruins started back in nineteen
twenty-four
so the origins uh… of hockey in this
area go back to the origins of the sport
itself
it helps get us through these new
england winters i think that’s why we
love it so much yes
dick different question is the violence
or the fights of the game essential to
people being attracted to watching
hockey
no i don’t think so because in
collegiate hockey
fighting is punished with a game
suspension so
anyone that’s watched top-level
collegiate hockey knows that it’s as
good as it gets and you don’t need the
fighting it’s a distraction
but that being said certain teams had as
part of their identity
a fighting mode to them uh… certainly
the bruins had that for a number of
years
you know they were a tough team they were a
team to be contended with a at all times
and the fighting was almost a part of
the script
the flyers of the early seventies sort
of took a page out of the bruins book
and tried to intimidate opponents as well
as out play them
but that being said
i think anyone that’s watched enough hockey
knows
that when it’s played well
it’s a beautiful sport
and the fighting tends to delay it it
tends to be a distraction
and in this day and age uh… they’re not many
teams that can really intimidate you
anymore
the game has changed a bit it’s a more
flowing sport
and uh… skating skill and overall talent
really are what you pay to see you don’t
pay to see a couple of goons out there
slugging it out
hockey players are great athletes yes
why haven’t hockey salaries escalated like
other sports salaries well uh… hockey
professional hockey the national hockey
league in particular
just does not receive the television
income
that the other major sports you know
they really we really think of there being
four
major sports in north america
the national football league has the
biggest t_v_ contract
they also have the most players to pay
but you know they’re paid on an average
higher than the national hockey league
players the n_b_a_
has a larger t_v_ contract major
league baseball
uh… they’re certain individual clubs
in MLB that that paid an
enormous amount teams such as the
yankees so
the national hockey league has always been the
fourth
of the four major sports in terms of
pay just because the money’s not there
the money has to derive from ticket
income
and you can only charge so much
and is it accurate to say that
much of the
the gate income as i call it the ticket
income is paid out in fact for salaries
that’s where they spend the bulk of the
money
well they claim that nearly seventy four
seventy five percent of
uh… player’s salary comes from ticket
income and i believe it and the fact
is is that certain teams
charge an extraordinary amount i was at
a game in toronto uh… two years ago
and the price for individual tickets in
the loge good seats but not great seats
was one hundred and sixty two dollars
and fifty cents apiece now that’s
canadian but still that would be about a
hundred and ten dollars uh… american
currency
for one hockey game and this was against
the nashville predators not exactly a
classic contest
so
that’s what they’re up against
and uh… the league is really at the
point now where
uh… i can’t imagine them possibly
increasing prices anymore than they have
let me ask a different question why do
you think hockey is not as popular
throughout the nation as other sports
is it that it’s low scoring or hard to
follow on television or is there some
other reason
well i think the popularity of of
any sport is based on whether or not
kids have played it
so that in most of the country
kids have just never put the skates on and
gone out and played hockey it’s as
simple as that the other factor that
really has an impact on the game not being
as popular as the other sports
it’s so expensive yeah
just to outfit uh… a squirt player you’re
spending upwards of four or five hundred
dollars
dick thank you so much
for joining us here today thank you