Scott Pelley is given exclusive access to Google’s AI lab in London and their Mountain View, California, headquarters as society moves closer to embracing the rapid advancements in artificial intelligence. How quickly machines can learn and teach themselves in the real world, the future of the artificial intelligence revolution, and other questions are discussed during Pelley’s interview with Google CEO Sundar Pichai and other senior executives in charge of these systems. The Wager tells the true story of an open-water adventure in the 18th century that turns into a saga of shipwreck, anarchy, betrayal, and murder. Bestselling author and darling of Hollywood developers David Grann sits down with 60 Minutes before the release of his new book.
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Did a joint go to rackets, rackets, dot, com now or download the rackets, rackets inapt? Today, that's are a k. You t in high lindsey grand the host of wonders, podcast america
scandal, our new, a serious look at the kids for cash scandal, a story about to judges who stood accused of me
millions of dollars in a brazen scheme that shattered the lives of countless children. Listen to me
and scandal on amazon, music or wherever you get your casts,
There is a revolution happening right now in the war
of artificial intelligence confounding. Are we ready for it? I am rarely speechless. I dont know
to make up this with rare,
access. We will show you what google is developing and
sharon's they're asking themselves, I may bring it as they begin to
unveil computing power that will change every part of our world forever, but they want you and I for decades now and I've always
leave that it's gonna be the most important invention that humanity will ever make.
Please don't judge me: do you like books about adventurers and heroism through stories with level? How comes then,
David grin. Is your man today
one of the world's top selling writers in part because of his hands,
years, long, research, the breeze life back into his fearless character, the grandest
to admit. I am not an explorer, I mean I would
the first to die on the island. Let's be perfectly honest, were to play this out. What's the what's the cause of death, oh my cause of death terror.
I'm leslie star, I'm bill whittaker, I'm anderson cooper. I am sharing. I fancy, I'm John worth. I I'm
billy those stories and more tonight on sixty minutes.
Hi I'm lindsey, graham the host of wonders, podcast american scandal. We bring to life some
the biggest controversies in. U S, history, presidential lies environmental disasters, corporate fraud. In our new, a serious we look at the kids for cash scandal
a story about corruption inside america's system of juvenile justice. In northeastern pennsylvania residents,
begun, noticing and alarming trend. Children were being sent
waiter jail in high numbers and often for
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fourchan carrying out a brazen criminal scheme, one that would
after the lives of countless children and force a heated debate about punishment and america's criminal justice system,
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the amazon, music or wonder yap we made
look on our time. As the moment
civilization was transformed, as it was by fire. Agriculture and electricity
when he twenty three, we learned that a machine taught itself how to speak to humans like appear, which is to say with creativity, truth error and lies the technology known as a chat, but is only one of the recent breakthroughs in artificial intelligence machines that can teach themselves super human skills. We explored what
coming next at google, a leader in this new world, ceo sundar, pichai, told us ai will be as good or as evil as human nature allows. The revolution he says is coming faster than you know:
if you think, society is prepared for what's coming, you know there are two ways I think about it on one hand, I feel no, because you know the pace at which we can think and adapt as societal institutions compared to the pace at which the technology's evolving there seems to be a mismatch. On the other hand,
I bet, any other technology. I've seen more people worried about it earlier in it's life cycle, so I feel optimistic. The number of people you know who have started worrying about the implications and hence the current
stations are starting in a serious way as well. I guess our conversations with fifty year old, sundar pichai started at Google's new
hampers in mountain view, California, it runs on forty.
Since solar power and collects more water than it uses. High tech. That picture I couldn't have imagined
growing up in india, with no telephone at home,
we were on a waiting list to get a rotary phone and for about five years, and it finally came home. I can still recall it vividly. It changed our lives to me. It was the first moment I understood the power of thought. Getting access to technology meant that
hopefully lead me to be doing what I'm doing today. What he's doing since twenty nineteen is leading both
google and it's parent company alphabet valued at one point: three trillion dollars worldwide. Google runs ninety per cent of internet searches and seventy percent of smartphones. We're really excited, but it's dominance was attacked this past february, when microsoft lync
its search engine to chat, but in a race for a I dominance, Google just released its chat, bought name barred. It's really here to help you brainstorm ideas to generate content like a speech or a blog post or an email we were introduced to barred by Google vice pro.
Didn't sissy shall and senior vice president james manuka, here's barred and
First thing we learned was that board does not look for answers on the internet like google search does so. I wanted to get inspiration from some of the best speeches in the world's poor
replies come from a self contained, a programme that was mostly self taught. Our experience was unsettling confounding, absolutely confounding barred appeared
possess the sum of human knowledge with microchips more than one hundred thousand time
faster than the human brain summarised than we asked for
to summarize the new testament yet did in five seconds and seventeen words in latin. We asked for it in latin that took another four seconds. Then we played with a famous six words short story,
often attributed to him in way for sale, baby shoes never wore loud. The only prompt we gave was finish this story in five seconds holy cow. The shoes were a gift from my wife, but we never had a baby. They were from the six word prompt barred created a deeply here
when tail with characters, it invented, including a man whose wife could not conceive and a stranger grieve,
after a miscarriage and longing for closure.
I am rarely speechless. I dont know what to make of this. Give me:
we asked for the story inverse in five seconds? There was a poem
written by a machine with breathtaking insight into the mystery of faith, barred wrote she knew her. Baby soul would always be alive. The humanity at superhuman speed was a shock.
How is this possible size? James menu go told us that over several months, barred read most everything on the internet
and created a model of what language looks like rather than search its answers come from this language model. So, for example, if I said to you scott peanut butter and
jelly right, so it tries and learns to predict ok, so peanut butter usually followed by jelly. It tries to predict the most probable next words based on everything its land.
Assets are going out to find stuff. This is predicting the next word, but it doesn't feel like that. We ask board why it helps people, and it replied quote because it makes me happy barred to my eye appears to be thinking appears
to be making judgments. That's not what's happening. These machines are not sentient. They are not aware of themselves their nonsense
in other words themselves, they can exhibit behaviors tat. Look like that because keep in mind they've learned from us, we sentient beings. We have being set of feelings, emotions, ideas, thoughts, perspectives,
with the fact in all that in books and novels infection, so when they learned from that, they built patents from that. So it's no surprise to me that the exhibited behind
here sometimes looks like maybe there's somebody behind it. There's nobody there. These are not sentient beings. They're, not zimbabwe, born oxford, educated, James man. You gotta hold your new position.
His job is to think about how I and humanity will best coexist. Has the potential to change? Many ways in which we ve thought about society about what were able to do think the problems we can solve buddy
itself will pose its own problems. Could Hemingway right a better short story? Maybe but barred can write a million before Hemingway could finish one. Imagine that level of automation across the economy
A lot of people can be replaced by this technology. Yes, they're, awesome, job occupations that will start to decline over time. There are also new job categories that will grow over time, but the biggest change will be the jobs that will be changed. Something like more than two thirds will have their definitions, change,
go away but change, because in our being assisted by the fbi and by automation? So this is a profound change which has implications for skills. How do we assist people build news
It was learned to work alongside machines and how do these compliment what people do today? This is going to impact every product across every company in and so that's why. I think it's a very, very profound technology, and so we are just in the early days every product and every company. That's right. Ai will impact everything so for exams
You could be a radiologist if I, if I, if you think about five to ten years from now, you're going to have an ai collaborator with you, it matriarch you come in the morning, you let's say you have a hundred things to go through
it may say, these are the most serious cases you need to look at first or when you're looking at something. It me
What say, you may have missed something important. Why one tree? You know why? Don't we take advantage of superpower assistance to help the across everything you do? You may be assured and trying to learn.
At our history and you will have something helping you there. We ask for try what jobs would be disrupted. He said: knowledge, workers, people like writers, accountants, architects and, ironically software engineers, ay. I rights compete
or go to how many today, some darpa Jai walks a narrow line. A few employees have quit some believing that
goals. A I roll out is too slow. Others too fast. There are
I'm serious flaws, does return of inflation, jane
monica ass board about inflation. It wrote an instant s.
and economics and recommended five books. But days later we checked, none of the books is real barred fabricated. The titles this very human trait air,
With confidence is called in the industry hallucination, are you getting
lot of hallucinations. Yes, you know which is expected. No one in the in the field as yet saw the hallucination problems. All models do have. This is an issue. Is a solvable problem. It's a matter of intense
debate. I think we'll make progress to help cure hallucinations barred features, a google it button that leads to old fashioned search. Google has also built safety filters and barred to screen for things like hate speech and bias. How great a risk is the spread of disinformation ere? I will chat. I sat in a deeper we. The scale of this problem is going to be much bigger
the problems he says with fake news and fake images. It will be possible with apply to create a video easily where it could be scarred, saying something or me saying something, and we never said that it could look accurate, but in order societal scale can cause a lot of harm. Is
save for society, the baby of launching today, as an expert
meant in a limited way. I think so, but we all have to be responsible in each step along the way for joy, told us he's being responsible by holding back for more testing advice
sk versions, are barred that he says, can reason plan and connect to internet search,
you are letting this out slowly, so that society can get used to it. That's one part of it. One part is also so let me get they use a feedback and we
develop more robust safety layers before we, both before we deploy more capable, more
In of the aid issues we talked about, the most mysterious is called emergent properties
some a I systems, are teaching themselves skills that they weren't expected to have how this
and is not well understood, for example, one
google ay I programme adapted on its own after it was prompted in the language of bangladesh, which it was not trained to know who discovered that with very few amounts are prompting and bengali.
can now translate all of bengali. So now, all of a sudden, we not have a research effort where we are now trying to get to one thousand languages. There is an aspect of this which we call all of us in the field. Call it as a black box. You don't fully understand, and you can't quite tell why it said this or why it got wrong. We have some ideas and our ability to understand this gets
over time, but that's where the state of the art is: u dont fully understand how it works, and yet you
turned loose on society. Put it this way. I dont, namely
Understand how a human mind works either. Was it from that black box? We wondered that board drew which
or a story that seem so disarmingly human, but talked about the pain that humans feel. It talked about redemption
how did it do all of those things if it's just trying to figure out what the next right word is. May I have had these experiences talking with Barbara as well. There are two views of this. There are a set of people who view this as look these are just
algorithms. They just repeating what did seen online. Then there is the view where
these are,
showing emergent properties, to be creative, to reason to plan and saw right, and I am personally, I think we need to be. We need to approach this with humility, part of the reason. I think it's good, that some of these technologies are getting out this sort of society. People like you and others can process what's happening, and we begin this conversation and debate, and I think it's important to do that when we come back we'll take you inside Google's artificial intelligence labs where robots
our learning the revolution in artificial intelligence is the center of a debate ranging
from those who hope it will save humanity to those who predict doom, google
lies somewhere in the optimistic middle introduced.
a high in steps, so silly
safe can get used to it. We saw
What's coming next and machine learning at Google
say I lab in london, a company called deep mind where the future looks something like this look at that. Oh my
I've got a pretty good. Click on them can still came. The soccer match deep. Mind
like fun and games, but here's the thing humans did not pay
graham these robots to play. They learn,
a game by themselves, is coming up with this,
trusting different strategies, different ways to walk different ways to block and they're doing their shoring over and over again, sir about here, riah heads or vice versa,
into research and robotics showed us
engineers used motion capture technology to teach the aid
program how to move like a human, but on the soccer pitch the robots were told only that the
object was to score the self learning.
Program spend about two weeks. Testing different moves. It discarded, those that didn't work built on those that did and create
all stars there's another door and with practice they get better,
As for told us that independent from the robots, the a I programme plays thousands of games from which it learns,
and invents its own tactics here think that red players going to grab it, but instead it just stocks it hands, it back passes it back.
Then goes for the goal and the area I figured out how to do that on its that's right, that's right and it takes a while at first all the players just run after the ball together, like a gag oliver six year olds. The first time there there their play
ball over time. What we start to see is now what's the strategy you go after the ball, I'm coming around this way or we should pass or I should block while you get to the
so we see all of that coordination and emerging in the play. This is a lot of fun, but what are the practical implications of what we're
here. This is the type of research that can eventually led to robots that can come out of the factories and work and other types of human environments. You don't think about mining.
About dangerous construction work,
exploration or disaster recovery. These are,
I had solace among one thousand humans at deep mind. The company was cofounded just twelve years ago.
see you demos hassan solved, so if I think back to twenty ten, when we started nobody was doing I, there was nothing going on in its sri people used to I well when we
to them investors about doing a eyes. We couldn't. We could barely get two cents together and to start off with which isn't crazy. If you think about now the billions being
asked into I start ups and cambridge harboured mit. Has
This has degrees in computer science and neuroscience is phd
he is in human imagination and
Imagine this when he
twelve in his age group. He was the number
two chests champion in the world. It was through gay,
that he came to way. I I've been watching when I first for decades now-
and I have always believed that it's gonna be the most important invention that humanity will ever make. Will the pace of change, outstrip or a bill
I to adapt. I don't think so
that we in the west sort of
infinitely, adaptable species
today us using what about smart phones and other devices, and we efforts these sort of adapt to these new technologies
and this is gonna- be another one of those changes like that. Among the vigour.
Changes are deep. Mind was the discovery that self learning machines can be creative cynicism,
a sob of showed us a game playing program that learns it's cool.
Alpha zero and it dreamed up
winning chest strategy. No human had ever seen,
this is just a machine. How does it achieve creativity? They place against itself, ten ten,
millions of times, so it can explore parts of chester, maybe human chess player in an programmers who programme chest computers, haven't thought of
before it never gets tired. It never gets hungry. It just place chess all the time. Yes, it's it's kind of a nation
thing to see, because actually you set off our four zero in the morning and it starts playing randomly by lunchtime. You know it's able to beat me and beat most chest
as and then by the evening, it stronger than the world champion in domestic
I was so deep mind to google in twenty fourteen. One reason
to get his hands on this google has
the enormous computing power, that a needs. This compute
center arisen prior oklahoma, but Google has twenty three of these, putting it near the top
computing power in the world. This is one of two advances,
make a I ascendant. Now. First,
of all human knowledge is online and second, brute force computing
very loosely approximates the neural networks and talents of the brain things like memory, imagination, planning, reinforcement, learning. These are all things that are known about how the brain does
and we wanted to replicate some of that in our ai systems predict one of those those
the elements that lead to deep minds greatest achievements so far and solving and impossible
women biology involved in protein sore
building blocks of life, but only a tiny
action were understood, because three d mapping of just one could take years deep mine
created an ai programme for the protein problem and set it loose when it took us not for five years to to figure out?
the bill, the system? It is my programme most complex project we ve ever undertaken, but once we did that it can solve a protein structure in a matter of seconds and actually open
last year we did all the two hundred million proteins that are known to science. How long would it have taken using traditional methods, while the rule of thumb I was always told by my biologist friends- is that it takes a whole phd? Five years to do one protein structure, experimentally, so if you think two hundred million times five that's a billion years a phd time, it would have taken deep mind made its protein database public, a gift to humanity. Her saga called it
how has it been used is being used in an enormously board number ways actually from malaria vaccine
to developing new enzymes that can eat plastic waste. Too
A new antibiotics most a says,
today do one nor maybe two things. Well, the soccer robot.
for example, can't write up a grocery.
Store book, your travel or drive your car. The ultimate goal is what's called artificial
general intelligence,
learning machine that can score on a wide range of talents. Woods
at your machine be conscious of itself. So that's an order.
A question we, you know, philosophers haven't really settled on a definition of consciousness. Yet but if we mean vices,
self awareness and these kinds of things you know, I think there is a possibility eyes one day could be. I definitely don't think they are today,
But I think again, this is one of the fascinating scientific things we're gonna find out on this journey towards I even unconscious
if the ai is superhuman in narrow ways back and
Before noon, we saw Google engineers teaching skills that robots will practice continuously on their own pushed the blue geared to the blue triangle. They come
hand instructions pushed the yellow, hacks again to the yellow heart and look
to recognise objects. What would you like how bout an apple? How about
apple on my right will bring an apple to you, we're trying Vincent Van nook senior
after a robotics showed us how
robot one o six was trained on millions of images going
the apple and can-
ignite all the items on a crowded countertop, if we can give the robot,
diversity of expand, says a lot more different objects in different settings. The robot gets better at every one of them now that humans pool
in the fruit of artificial knowledge. We
start. The genesis of a new humanity
I can utilise all the information in the world. What no human could ever hold in their head
and I wonder if you
vanity is diminished by
enormous capability that were developing, I think the possibility of a I'd do not diminish
manage in any way. In fact, in some ways I think they actually raises two even deeper, more profound questions.
Google's james magnesia sees this moment as and inflection point, I think we are constantly
Adding these superpowers or capabilities to what humans can do in a way that expands possibilities as opposed to narrow them. I think so. I don't think of it is diminishing humans, but does raise some really profound questions
For us who are we what we value? What
the good at how do you relate with each other? Those become very, very important questions that are cost
gonna be, in one case, sense, exciting, but perhaps in settling too
It is an unsettling moment. Critics argue.
rushed away. I comes too fast, while competitive pressure
giants like google and start up you ve never heard of his propelling
manatee into the future, ready or not binding.
I take a ten year outlook
so clear to me. We will have some form of fairy capable intelligence that can do maisie things and we need to adapt
as a society for it. Google, ceo, ios andorra, page, told us society must quickly adapt with regulations
for a high in the economy, laws to punish abuse
and treaties among nations to me
a I save for the world ology here. These are the questions and we call this alignment one baby think about how do you develop a systems that are aligned to human values and including morality? This is why I think the development of this needs to include not just engineers, but social scientists at this is for
suffers and so on, and I think we have to be very thoughtful, and I think these are all things society needs to figure.
Bessie move along its not for a company to decide
lined with a note that has never appeared on sixty minutes, but one,
the eight I revolution you may be hearing. Often the proceeding was created with one hundred percent human content.
Son darpa tie explains the evolution of Google's founding dont, be evil motto so lot more of a nuanced view, but it underpins how we think about things
at sixty minutes overtime, dot, com, credibly, enabling some authors are perfect matches for their subject matter. John gresham was once a trial lawyer, John. The korea was once a spy by another name. Then there's David gran, who has emerged as one of the world's top selling writers and darling of hollywood developers by venturing into unknown worlds, abandoning his comfort zone, the unlikely adventures of David grant his latest book, the wager tells of british castaways from the seventeen forties. It's an open water quest. It becomes a saga of shipwreck, anarchy, betrayal in murder. Imagine mutiny on the bounty meets lord of the flies cept. Every word of it really happened, grand six
ass comes from yes, meticulous reporting and vivid writing, but also from how he puts the pieces together. You talk about structuring these stories as a puzzle. Yes, is there only one way to solve this puzzle? Well, I very weird about this. I do always think there is some kind of idea.
Like form of a story like some like perfect pristine lost city there.
trying to find and get to. We are going to structure the David grand story suggests. Where do we start? Oh gosh, in some archive looking semi blind at some document? That's where it always begins. We can work with that. We find our subject inside the national archives in the suburbs of london, unboxing dusty files, consulting documents so frail. They require a pillow for support. Grint spent two years playing detective gap
facts, source material for his latest book. We're gonna have to touch this really carefully. He took us tumbling back in time to the eighteenth century. You see that communing with logbooks muster books and diaries from the expedition of the h m s. Wager
the warship featured in his book and see the little initials next to their names here. You'll see, lieutenant you'll see a means able see
how are you d ciphering when I first looked at a lot of these books? It was like reading jubilee
I was like were either. What does is telling me, and so I would have to look
We can look at it again start to figure out the codes, the language they use, but once you do these documents speak volumes. All
These names and symbols told a larger story with their empires. At war, a british squadron of roughly two
thousand men set out to capture a spanish galleon filled with treasure off the philippines. That meant rounding cape horn negotiating some of the world's most treacherous waters and wins, but one of the ships and the squadron lost its way just off the coast of.
The gona grin showed us on his own math, where the wager got into trouble a place aptly named the gulf. A pain are battling into the gulf of pain as a coming around the desperately frantically trying to avoid this land. The wager careened into rocks, ripping apart a hundred and forty five castaways many
sick from scurvy swam to the nearest island. You think the name alone, the gulf of pain, would discourage visitors, especially one bespectacled, fifty six year old man who admits he hates campton. I spent the first two years doing research and away very suited to my physical attributes hell, which are then archives. Your indoors endorse what there came a point where I began to fear that I could never
fully understand what these hundred and fifty or so men had gone through on that island. Unless I went theirs
he's a moment where something nausea you something unknown, and so
we then that I decided to try to make this trip so when twenty nineteen green
I flew to chile and chartered a fifty two foot vessel, the boat looked good. I look pretty bang. I was as good as it's going to be. It's going to be like a
who still expedition we're gonna, be fine. We're gonna stay originally through these channels that are shelter in patagonia, africa, perfect, it's beautiful, its local, that's winter, but it's it's beautiful and then there's
Is there a point where the captain says to me? Alright, now we've got to go out into the open sea. If we're going to get the wager island- and that was my first glimpse of these terrifying seas- rough seas. It was truly terrifying and or at least for me,
who's that my captains in cool ran and his crew endured the booty waters over a candy journey. I had to sit on the floor hunkered down,
the drama me with pumping him. This is wager island name for the ship that washed up three hundred years ago, spit of inhospitable land hugging, the pacific coast scene it from a distance, but you wouldn't want to spend the night. The castaways did months in
I went and cold and whipping wit, you know it's bad. When celery is the big selling point, the only edible thing that grows on the island, though it does cure scurvy there were no animals, I kept thinking
gotta be something like something that can be a right, but we can find anything this death of detail it grants earmark he's created his own subjects of narrative, nonfiction, keeping readers
hanging with a page turning mix of history journalism in true crime, but it's also literary pointillism. You stepped back and glimpse a larger tabula one with broader themes. Fascinate you, oh,
yeah, we'll see I mean on this island. You see everything playing out. You see questions of leadership playing. You see, questions of loyalty, playing out questions of duty playing out. You see human nature being peeled back. All that is taking place in this little tempest in this was no one off for his first book, two thousand and nine.
the last city, Z, number, one best seller turned into a feature film, everyone out about grand track through the amazon to a place known as the green hell. Following the trail of a british explore percy fawcett that I hear right, you took out supple mental life into yes, I did I made.
Sure I got extra travel insurance. I had a little child at the time. There is something- and I think this is important- something I would like to talk about, but there is something selfish about these journeys and even
think about the people I write about because many of them die on these expeditions. Grim swashbuckling takes on an added degree of difficulty on account of a degenerative generative. I condition he's had since his twenties, what
The fact is that, on your work, I mean it's terrible when you're on an expedition like I can't see at night and you're stumbling getting lost or you're falling or got a boat, or something like that
but because I knew I had this weakness, I'm very acutely observing as much as I can and in some ways, maybe paying more observation than if I can just take it in so easily. Grin first put those powers of observation to work as a reporter on capitol hill, but tired of washington's
Then he wanted to write real stories in two thousand and three. He joined the new yorker magazine in one issue. He might write about an eccentric giant, squid hunter in new zealand in another, a botched death penalty, conviction in texas, all of it predicated on exhaustive research. Please don't judge me from his office itself in inhospitable island of sorts, while at his home in a suburb of new york, grin showed us a pile of research from his twenty seven
he book killers of the flower move the book centred on the mysterious death among members of the oil rich osage nation in nineteen twenties, oklahoma and boxed up in an archive where else grand found a smoking gun evidence of a systemic murder campaign by
ciphers. This was secret, grand jury testimony and it was unmarked. I mean it was a public record sounds like is supposed to be. Am I allowed to look at this? The book has sold nearly two million copies and it ignited a hollywood auction. The winning bid, five million dollars
The film directed by martin scorsese, starring, Leonardo dicaprio premieres a con next month, paramount parent company of CBS as a distributor. It's not lost on ground that stories birth in decidedly unglamorous archives, end up on red, carpets to the french riviera. The wager out this week has also been option for film. It would be grand six story to hit the big screen. You worry what hollywood's going to do your work? Yes, yeah! You always worry the truth. Is you don't have that much control when
in hollywood, developed you work. What is your role once one of your books gets put into development babies reactor want to know about the person there playing or the stars or call you and say tell me more yeah. What's an example of our respect, privacy, but the? But you know in case any some people will will reach out to you, but
You do not seem particularly comfortable talking by allowing when I go to the now. I don't live, asters changing yeah. Don't I get like it either because you know it's just a different world. You know just a different world is just portsmouth greenfield much more comfortable transporting himself three centuries back to this world. The wager set sail here in the british harbour town of portsmouth
the entire expedition may have faded from memory, but grim being gran. He saw references everywhere, anthems name,
remembered and on this path we visited the ship answer, a pub name for the squadrons leader Georgiana. Here men were rounded up by the british navy and pressed into service on the wagers. Do mission you can be drinking kill, have having a beer enjoying yourself the next morning. I know you're being put on a little boat. That was like a floating J
all they would take you out for the ship and it's what made creating unity and cohesion. The on this expedition, particularly challenging a few hundred yards from the pub we boarded the atrium as victory in eighteen century warship preserved in the harbor. Virtually the same model of ship is the wager a thousand tonnes of oak and road where the crew, eight
and slept next the cannons, and after was fire. You have this huge forest flying back and you better get out of the way having emerged himself in what he
all the wooden world grand got to the point. He could render a description like this at one point it was so windy and the gus were so strong. They couldn't fly their sales, so they captain orders the men to climb the mast and to use their bodies as threadbare sales, so they are on top
mass, some of them one hundred feet in the air in a typhoon. You have to understand that the mass are going like this. There are almost touching the water and these men are clinging like spiders wow as grand breathes fresh life into events from hundreds of years ago. You almost wonder if he had climbed the mast himself.
He's the first to admit yeah. That wouldn't be the case. I am not an explorer like. If you compare, I mean when I look at these people, I mean I would have been the first to die on the island. Let's be perfectly artist were to play this out. What's the what's the cause of death, oh my cause of death terror. I would have taken one look at those these and be like I'm adding this is nuts, and so you know I would never have endured anything that these people endure, but my own quest do sometimes get me in places and
things. I otherwise would never do my order, and I, like you, would never catch me going to wager island in a little boat about wager, island, marooned and
starving the castaway split into factions, including a group intent on overthrowing the captain in act of mutiny punishable by death. When two groups of castaways made it home, we won't spoil how they had conflicting accounts of what had happened. Imagine this they get back to england. They have survived scurvy, multiple typhoons, starvation, ship wreck and now, after all, that, there's some in the face a court martial and they could be hanged. It's just kind of believable, unbelievable and complicated, grant solve the puzzle of structuring the wager by telling this tale on the high seas from three different perspectives, allowing readers to decide for themselves where the truth resides and if he fixated on the perfect way to let the book on
old devoted to his own, classed as his characters are too there's. That's what makes it classic grand. What is your obsession with obsession? You know. I always thought for a long time that my fascination with obsess people was because they made the best story right
in the hands of the world is a reason why we till I have stories like over time
began to realize tat. I may have a little bit more in common with over these of sesar than I care to admit. You call your fascination with obsession to live their lives as your merely fascinating. I thought I liked it. They guess I'm just barely five, I'm the policeman dispatch in it, but you know the truth is that I
think you can really be a writer and arrest
nature and an investigator unless you are it's
level obsessed.
in the mail comments on last sunday broadcast the oars
of everything showed some of the stunning images captured by the web space telescope the resurrection of note, her chronicled, the reconstruction of paris's fire damage medieval cathedral. What was most striking was the enthusiasm, and
spiralling take shown by the web scientists, as well as the devoted people involved with restoring notre dame they exemplified the best of our human species,
but one viewers, inspiration is another viewers apostemes see how disgusting to see a sixty minutes segment on the big bang theory on easter? I'm Scott tell it we'll be back next week with another addition of sixteen at its prime members. You can listen to sixty minutes ad free on amazon, music, download the amazon music app today or you can listen ad free with wondering, plus an apple podcast. Before you go. Tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wondering, dot com, slash survey.
Transcript generated on 2023-06-02.