Welcome, I'm Mark Uptegrove, President and CEO of the LBJ Foundation. The First Lady is a public servant elected by one person, Lady Bird Johnson once said, her husband. Tonight, along with our partners, the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, we will look at the singular legacy of Lady Bird Johnson, with Kate Bennett and Julia Swag. Kate Bennett is a White House correspondent for CNN, an author of Free Melania, the Unauthorized Biography, a behind-the-scenes look at the life of the most enigmatic First Lady in U.S. history. Julia Swag is an award-winning author whose latest book, Lady Bird Johnson Hiding in Plain Site, will be published in March. The book shows Lady Bird Johnson as a political actor in her own right, whose influence on the Johnson presidency and on the president as an advisor and a strategist has yet to be thoroughly appreciated, until now. Also in March, Julia will be releasing a podcast based on her book called In Plain Site, Lady Bird Johnson. This evening's conversation is moderated by LBJ Presidential Library Director, Dr. Mark Lawrence. Now, please join me in welcoming Kate Bennett, Julia Swag, and Mark Lawrence. Julia Swag and Kate Bennett, thank you so much for being here. I'm really looking forward to talking with you about First Ladies in American History and especially about Lady Bird Johnson. Julia Swag, let me ask you a question to get us started. Your background is in Latin American history, diplomatic history. What led you to write a book about Lady Bird Johnson? Thank you very much, Mark, for having me. I'm very happy to be here with you and with Kate Bennett. It's a great question and one that I get a lot. And the short answer is that I spent 15, 20 years working in Washington DC in politics and policy, focusing on Latin America, writing about history and policy. And I simply got to the point where I had observed the gender dynamic in Washington DC enough to feel that I wanted to get into the subject more directly of women and power. I had also observed the gender dynamic in Latin America and come to know some women heads of state in Latin America. And it was just stewing in me to want to leave the region behind a bit or to the side and look at American politics and history through the lens of women and power. Of course, that has to do with certain frustrations about the limitations that women experience and experienced. But really also, I wanted to teach myself something new. It was sort of just that simple. And the Lady Bird Johnson story for a historian and a historian that's used to working in archives is incredible because, one, it's obviously a story about a very significant woman in a relationship, a marriage, and a political partnership with a very powerful man, Lyndon Baines Johnson. And it's also one that is intensely documented. So the primary source material made it possible for me to really take a deep dive. And there you have it. How does your book change how we might think about Lady Bird Johnson? Well, that's a very vast, a short question that could invoke a very long answer, but I'll try to be succinct. I think the book puts her at the center of the Johnson presidency in a way that that story has really never been told before. We see in the images and we see in the sort of Johnson mythology that he's married to a woman named Lady Bird, who is present throughout his political career, but in several key areas that the Johnson presidency is most known for, whether it's Vietnam or civil rights or great society, or even the very arc, the timing, the beginning, middle, and especially the end of the Johnson presidency, Lady Bird plays a key and really obscured role. So what my book does is, and actually what her tapes do most importantly, you know, she kept an audio diary that started eight days after the Kennedy assassination and it went straight through to January 31st, 1969. And that's just an incredible treasure and gift.  I mean, she was trained as a journalist and trained as a historian at UT. So her ability to be concise and to narrate in real time what her experience is in the White House is just mind boggling. It's 1,750,000 pages of transcript. So it is Lady Bird herself who, with her consciousness about legacy and about telling her own story, left these breadcrumbs. Hey, Bennett, you have covered the First Lady. You've written a book about Melania Trump. Where would you place Lady Bird Johnson in the longer history of First Ladies in the United States? You know, I have to say, I think people don't understand the breadth and scope of what she did and how important she was and a lot of modern First Ladies behind the scenes are oftentimes their husband's backbone, their confidant, they're the person giving the opinion. I love Lady Bird used to grade LBJ, literally give him a letter grade on his appearances. No one else could do that. And I think her legacy is one of compassion and she had to, first of all, she came into the role in such a violent way and came into the, there was a quote, people were looking at the living, but they were seeing the dead. That's how the White House staff was observing them when they came in. And that's a very difficult and unprecedented way for them to take over the administration. So I mean, I think she rose to that occasion. I think she had a husband who could be volatile and she had to work her way through that. But certainly I think she's less the flowery kind of Texas woman and more a firm and important First Lady, as Julia was just saying, in terms of the things she accomplished. And back then the First Lady's role was behind the scenes, forward facing, they were the doting wife and they were very traditional, but behind the scenes, and this goes, you know, Eleanor Roosevelt all back through the behind the scenes, they are impactful. And I wouldn't even say this about Melania Trump. People think she's, you know, trapped in the White House somewhere, SOS thing to get out on the window, but she's not. And in fact is in constant contact with the president for most of the day and is one of his most trusted advisors. Lady Bird Johnson, do you think change the institution of the First Lady or what Americans might expect of the woman who has occupied that role ever since? I see Lady Bird as the bridge in terms of how she used and occupied the platform in the office of the First Lady as the bridge from Eleanor, the really unrecognized bridge from Eleanor to Hillary Clinton. Lady Bird is the first modern letter that is post World War II First Lady to have a full professional staff in the White House. And she also was somebody, again, really rather unrecognized, who had like Eleanor did and like Hillary did a significant policy agenda. It was wrapped up in something called beautification, but it was environmentalism. And it was a building public consciousness around the environment. She had this line when she was in her 80s. I'll never forgive Lyndon's boys for making me use that word beautification. She hated it, she thought it was prissy, but it was a euphemism. And so in terms of the transformation of the First Lady's office, again, she had a policy staff, she had a press staff, she had a speech writing staff. Sometimes they were all doing everything, but they too were professional women who were juggling, who had little kids and who had husbands with careers. And they were handling all of the tensions of trying to be professional women in a very dominated, West Wing dominant space, the Lyndon Johnson White House. And I think they broke barriers in that sense as well. That's fascinating that that term beautification was pushed on her. Was that because it was simply expected that a woman would be interested in an issue like beautification but not the technical details of environmental legislation? Well, I think no. I think that environmentalism was not something that was at the center. It wasn't very mainstream. Conservationism was something that was sort of the province of more wealthy people or people that could pay for access to nature. But environmentalism as a social movement was really sort of just beginning. And it wasn't nearly as accepted. So beautification was a purpose, I mean, of course it suited. It's kind of ironic because she was such a tomboy growing up and she really didn't care about the clothing. And she wound up and we can talk about it having to get into it. But she was not into self-beautifying. She was not a person who was seen as nearly as feminine as a Jackie, for example. But the beautification word also has an environmental history to it. Because there's a city beautiful movement that goes back to the beginning of the 20th century. And even Launt Font, who designed Washington DC, used the term beautify. But beautify by the 1960s becomes feminized. She didn't like any of that. But more it was about how do we broaden the public's awareness and acceptance of environmental consciousness. And that word coming out of First Lady's mouth is a soft-pedal patina kind of dressing at the beginning. As her presidency, as her presidency, as her tenure in the White House went on, she instructed her staff to tell the press to stop using it. And she in speech after speech began to say, this is not what I mean. Let me tell you what I mean. Kate Bennett, how did Lady Bird's achievements in this area of beautification for environmentalism change, do you think? See, it's a tough nut. Tough nut to crack. Change the expectations that Americans came to hold of First Ladies in later years. Well, I mean, I think each First Lady has taken on the idea of a platform or an initiative in a different way. First Ladies in general have sort of an unfair hand dealt to them. There's no real job description. There's no salary. There's no handbook really about how to do it. So, you know, and I think it becomes a job that is as important as they make it. I think we've seen First Ladies utilize the platform as to as far an extent as they possibly can. Lady Bird being one of them likely to really make her mark and take this job and make the most of it and push through policy to push through change. We've also seen other First Ladies really not do much with it. I would cite the current First Lady as sort of, and again, it's not necessarily a good or a bad. It's just how they use the role. And I think, you know, they've had a number of present day First Ladies or the most recent ones have had a number of really important role models to look up to, one of them being Lady Bird. And I can't stress enough that the job is what they make it. It's very challenging in this current White House that has an East Wing staff of less than a dozen people. Michelle Obama had about 25, 26 staff members. Laura Bush, similar up to 30.  And if they choose not to step forward with that role or initiative, then that's where we are.  You know, for Lady Bird, I think a lot of times the First Lady can foresee the legacy of their husband in a way they can't themselves. And for her, you know, looking at the Civil Rights Act, looking at, you know, Vietnam, looking ahead. And the recordings were all things that those are very First Lady tendencies to think about while their husbands are in the thick of it. So, you know, from a platform or initiative perspective, she was really, I think, using everything she could to make a name for herself and that lasting legacy that she was aware of. And you know, actually, can I just jump in there because this gets to the issue of the marriages behind the partnerships or the relationship between the partnerships and the marriages and how they're so interrelated. Lyndon Johnson sort of spotted Lady Bird, you know, asked her to marry him on their first date, that story. But he has, we know, an incredible eye for talent and chose Lady Bird. I'm not saying he didn't love her quite the contrary. We can talk about that later. But, you know, she had his support to take that platform and run with it. And I think that's another really interesting way of looking at these first couples and these partnerships is not just, you know, what does the First Lady make out of her undefined tabula rasa kind of moment that she inherits by virtue of being married to this guy. But how does the marriage itself and the partnership itself boost or limit what the First Lady does or doesn't choose to do? Yeah, that's so true. I mean, there are so many cases of that really. And we can, I think we could probably pinpoint the one that we're thinking of. Yeah. So let's stick with this theme for a minute. It seems to me that despite the policy contributions that several First Ladies have made, there is this strong tendency for better or for worse for people to focus attention on the nature of the relationship, the marriage. And of course the question of infidelity has often been part of this story. What do we learn of value by looking at the intimate details of the relationships between First Lady and President, but also perhaps between First Lady and their children? What do we learn by looking at that family unit? Well, I mean, would you like me to? I mean, I think each one is different. I think a common thread for most modern First Ladies is that there is infidelity in their marriages and that it becomes a hot topic to talk about. I don't think it's necessarily fair. I think the First Ladies face this weird, bizarro land where they're supposed to be, they're sort of damned if they do, damned if they don't, if they're independent and they work separately from their husband and don't sort of act as his accessory, then it's what's wrong with their marriage. But if they do, it's like, oh, she's so old fashioned, why can't she work more? It's a lose, lose a large majority of the time. You know, I will speak just having covered it of the Trump's marriage when the scandals were about coming up about the alleged infidelities. Melania Trump was mad and she did things that we don't often see from a First Lady. She did not stand next to him and sort of look while he made some mea culpa or, you know, she did not do a interview tour and, you know, Ola Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton. What she did was cancel a trip to Davos with him. She rode separately in a separate motorcade to state of the union, something a first couple has not done before. And she wouldn't walk with him across the North Lawn to get on the helicopter to go on their planned vacation. She was mad. And I think the humiliation for such a private person was far more egregious than the act of the infidelity itself. So again, it sort of depends. People can see that as, oh, wait a minute. This First Lady is very private and doesn't talk a lot. She might have something in there from a feelings perspective. Julia, how do you handle the relationship between Lyndon and Lady Bird, the nature of the marriage? Look, you know, I'm always worried about this question because I think focusing on infidelities of very powerful men diminishes the women that they're married to. And we saw with Hillary Clinton that she, as Kate said, she was really damned as she did, damned as she didn't.  That kind of question, how could you stay with him? And the way I handle it is that this woman was so much more than the element of her marriage that had to do with her husband's infidelities that I try to place it in perspective. And also my book is about the White House years. By then Lyndon was enormously dependent on her.  When she cut off the relationship, what she wrote was, you'll never understand Lyndon without understanding how totally intertwined the two of us are. And what you, and I kind of took my cue from that, which is, and reading and listening to all of those tapes, what you hear, and I've been married also for almost 30 years. And so I have some idea, and I'm not saying anything about my own marriage in this sense. I'm simply saying that these are complex, long-lived, multi-layered relationships. And she was, she's much more interesting to me as the person who documented his presidency got the library launched, laid out in May of 1964, the strategy memo that he followed, explaining exactly when he could plausibly step down, not in August of 64, but in March of 68, which is when he did step down, as the women who recruited a hippie architect, landscape architect from San Francisco to help her transform Washington, D.C. as the person who, I don't have the exact number, but who beat the pavement with speech after speech on women, on the environment, on civil rights, on great society. That's the person that interests me.  So I think power in that relationship in some ways reverted to her for many, many reasons, but I suspect in part because she was able to pocket the hurt that she experienced and help deliver to him the White House. That's how I deal with it. So, Julia, I'm fascinated by the subtitle of your book, Hiding in Plain Sight. It seems to me that a number of biographers have made a similar point about Lady Bird Johnson. She was elusive, a little bit mysterious, hard to read.  Well, fortunately, the deep dive that I took into her own material really helped. The diaries are long and extensive, and some of them don't give us direct insight into her, but she's very open in the diaries about what the presidency and what they, the Johnsons, and what Lyndon Johnson was going through. And when you track sort of her experience, as Kate mentioned, starting with the assassination and then the transition through the adjustment from going to second lady to first lady under such horrific circumstances, listening to her tapes because she's describing in real time what she's experiencing. You can hear very much the person, very much the emotion, very much the disciplined reporter who can put one thing aside and move on to something else. She talks about her daughters. She talks about raising them. She talks about their boy problems. She talks about the experience of having everybody, and this reminded me so much of the Obamas, everybody finally under one roof. Now, Linda was coming and going, but for the most part having everyone there together and having the family time.  And when she went into the White House, she was the same age as I was when I started writing this book. She had two teenagers in the White House as I had two teenagers at home. We lived three miles from one another. Her geography, especially when we get to talking, when I got to looking at her work in Washington, D.C., is very much my geography. And that humanized her very much so also. I think she was very deliberate about, on the one hand, having a public persona that she created actively. And did this with images and did this with interviews and did this with her speech making, even the substantive speech making, did this by really being with Lyndon on the campaign trail and at events. I mean, they were really together a lot. So she created that persona for the public at that time. I think she was aware that extending herself too far was, she pushed the boundaries, but she never walked past them. Lyndon was the principal. And she was the CEO in a way behind the scenes. But in the material that's in her tapes, in the material that's in all of the secondary coverage and the interviews that I did, in the material that's at the LBJ library, the human being really comes through. So I just did the deep dive and immersed myself to try to do the best I could. I mean, hopefully I got some of it right. Kate, talk a little bit about the same theme and connection with the First Ladies that you've covered. How do you get behind the persona and uncover that three-dimensional human being? Well, there couldn't be more difference between Lady Bird and Melania Trump. Lady Bird was the first First Lady to hit the campaign trail by herself, but she did the whistle-stop tour that was not advised by Secret Service and challenged her, people in her face. She was unafraid to do that and really instrumental. Melania Trump, this campaign cycle made, because I was there for several of them, approximately four campaign appearances. She hadn't done a solo campaign appearance in more than four years, four years ago. So certainly in the scope of the disparity of First Ladies, there's lots of middle ground, but I mean, some First Ladies reveal themselves right away, at least in that public persona way that Julie was mentioning. I mean, we felt almost immediately like we knew Michelle Obama.  And privately, she's really struggling with being, as she said now in her memoir, with being the first African-American First Lady and what she was up against and the blatant racism that she faced moving her girls to a new city, protecting them. Nancy Reagan, for example, was this sort of tightly wound, frigid, upper-class woman, and she carried that into the White House. Some are easier to read than others. Melania Trump is incredibly difficult to read, not only because she doesn't really do interviews. She also doesn't talk a lot. And what I learned to do in covering her, and I've been covering her since day one, for a lot of it I had to look at what she wore, which I know is not a popular thing with First Ladies, but sometimes it reveals for her more. I think being a partner of Donald Trump for as many years and standing quietly on a red carpet or next to him next to something, she's learned to express herself with what she's wearing or what she's looking like. And that's just how she is. She's a former model. So there was a lot of that. I mean, for writing my book, I went to Slovenia and spent time there. I talked to people who knew her as a child. She doesn't have an extensive girl group of friends. She's not a very social person even when she's not in the White House. She's a very hands-on mother. I think a lot of people don't know that about her. She's very close with her parents who also live in the White House when they're in Washington. So everything about her screams private. I don't want you to know anything about me. I don't want you to know about my marriage. I don't want you to know about my kid.  People are always surprised now when she'll say something that aligns with Donald Trump. Again, I think she's wearing a white suit signaling the resistance. Quite frankly, she's just not. She's much more aligned with him than politically and otherwise, some people assume. So, I mean, I just had to really observe. It's been a challenge as a journalist because First Ladies, it's sort of this, you need me, I need you, like I'm trying to, you know, there's usually this feed off of one another that works for both the media and the First Ladies office. It hasn't been the case with Lania Trump for sure. You have to dig at what's real and what's not real, what's forward-facing, what's going on behind the scenes. You know, and that can definitely be a challenge. One of the points I'm taking from this conversation is that there are many different ways to embody this role and really many different ways to be successful in this role. Are there any sort of general lessons we might pull from this history of American First Ladies about what it is that makes a First Lady successful or is that a hopeless task because different individuals have gone about the role in such different ways? I can take a stab at that if you don't mind. I mean, it is a really, one of the things that drives me sort of bonkers about Lania Trump is that I very much respect her independence and that if she doesn't want to do something, I mean, she's not pretending that she was a lawyer or a political spouse or anything besides a model and a homemaker and a really wealthy woman. So for her to all of a sudden, you know, take up the mantle of some big policy or healthcare like Hillary Clinton is just, would be weird, right? So she's given the okay to not do what's expected of her from the West Wing. The East Wing does not communicate with this West Wing. They're two separate entities. That's also a new thing. And in a way that's sort of great because now Dr. Biden can come in and she's saying she wants to work and continue her job and who knows what her East Wing is going to look like if she's going to have offices there. So, you know, I think it's what each one makes them and to me understanding the history of their predecessors is probably sound simplistic, but it's probably the most important and really biggest North Star for them in their own tenure. Again, you know, they're photographed more than anyone in the world that people listen to them. They're that sort of quasi celebrity slash political spouse. You know, it's a very mixed up role, but harnessed correctly. It's incredibly powerful. So I don't know. I think the goal now is to make it what you want to make it, modernize it and have a thick skin.  You know, if I could just add one little footnote to that because as you were talking, you know, when I read Michelle Obama's memoir, I was sort of scratching my head at this one line in it when she said that she had only ever been in the Oval Office during working hours once, and it was on the day of the Sandy Hook Massacre in Connecticut when President Obama was so distraught, he asked her to come in. And I'm thinking about sort of marriages and partnerships and whether they're in the White House or elsewhere, but especially in the White House, thinking about how much we know how, yes, she was hesitant about Barack Obama getting into politics running for president, but we also know how formidable Michelle Obama is and was during their White House period. So I think it's just like, there's some aspect of this was just also just ultimately unknowable, right? Lady Bird Johnson was in the Oval Office all the time. Same with Nancy. All the time, right? I mean, you could see it in the images of Okamoto and the others, you can see just how involved in the presidency she was and where the political relationship starts and the personal relationship ends, forget it, impossible to disentangle. But I just want to just say that at a certain point, Mark, and Kate, some of this is unknowable. Do we really think that Michelle Obama only once went into the White House, into the Oval Office? I mean, isn't that really plausible given everything else we know about those two people? And that's my main question is that there's a certain amount of this is unknowable because of the mystery that you really can never totally know anybody else's marriage, the public is. Right. Yeah, that's such a good point because the things we learned in hindsight even about first couples had scratchers. I mean, the difficult thing is there should be this bunker mentality and there typically is between a First Lady and a President because they're the only ones who really get what it's like to be in this weird bubble of you can't open a window and you can't walk. I mean, Michelle Obama used to walk the dogs and didn't realize that when she did it, the Secret Service would have to clear pedestrians from the entire perimeter of the White House and she stopped walking the dogs. The White House groundskeeper started walking the dogs because she didn't want to put people off.  So, I mean, for good or for good or for bad. Yeah. Julia, let me shift gears here for a minute. We collected some questions in advance from our audience and a question that came up more than once is I think an excellent one. What surprised you most about Lady Bird Johnson as you uncovered her story? So many things, actually almost everything. I think what surprised me most about her is her discipline and her tenacity and her seriousness. Precisely because of that two-dimensional figure that I grew up having so many assumptions, incorrect assumptions about that persona that she created was so hard to penetrate. So then once you peel back the curtains and dig into the material, you see how important a strategist she is for Linda and Johnson, how much he relies on her, how incredible, how impossible it is for her to become exhausted. I mean, she was the hardest working woman in show business, her ability to juggle and the seriousness of her reporting, her commitment to legacy and to telling their story and also I think her clarity about what was going to hurt them. The two big issues in Lyndon Johnson's presidency that kind of unfolded in tandem, the civil rights story and the Vietnam story. I think she had very much, a lot of clarity about how Vietnam could derail them by Lyndon Johnson's blinders about it. Likewise with civil rights, they were both total New Deal Democrats and when she went on the whistle stop tour, what I see with New Deal Democrats is that her commitment to government helping elevate Americans, the substance behind that belief was very, very serious for her. So I'm talking about things that I discovered, but it all surprised me because even, you know, she's not, I should say in terms of the historiography, other people, what they've written about her. There's a bunch of hagiographies that were written about her in the 1960s. Then she shows up in some of the large histories of the Johnson presidency, kind of as practically as Lyndon Johnson's doormat but really sort of having a secondary role or a derided role, derided by the authors, sort of taking at face value some of the banter between Lyndon and Lady Bird, assuming that behind the banter, there was just, you know, nothing. And then the other sort of larger biographies that have been written about her also sort of didn't take this deep dive into the material. So I'm surprised at just what a formidable person she really was to sum it up. We are about to enter into unprecedented territory with a man, Kamala Harris's husband, embodying a role that historically has obviously been played only by women. Could you talk a little bit about the challenges that confront him or perhaps the American society more generally in adapting to this remarkable new moment? I mean, I think America's more than ready for it. Women certainly are. You know, Doug, he's taken, he will be the first second gentleman as the official title. Whether or not he chooses to go by that is up to him. But I mean, he's taking a leave of absence from his law practice. He's doing what a lot of female spouses do, politicians just put his career on hold for his wife, which is great to see. I mean, you know, I think the expectation is, you know, here's the thing, the second lady now, I know what she does because I get a press release whenever she, you know, the military base or goes to open a national park or what have you, but like, not a lot of people do. Dr. Biden worked in tandem with Michelle Obama, the first lady, and they had that partnership really going and grooving military families and they had a lot of the same agenda issues, but still second lady takes a big backseat to first lady. But I think more eyes are going to be on the first second gentleman, and I'm covering that as well for the next four years, his role. So, you know, again, I think it's only a matter of time before we just get used to it as we've gotten used to other things with political spouses.  Yeah, I recently watched a Hillary Clinton documentary and she almost was like too over, like water from a fire hose kind of for in many ways. And I think it didn't sit well, she was just mercilessly attacked for all sorts of things that she had just grown up doing and were part of herself. So I think this is, we're sort of in a good place now. I mean, someone had to barge through that door. Someone had to sort of get there. And Lady Bird, of course, was one of those trailblazers, as you said, between Eleanor and Hillary. And now we're moving into a new phase. I mean, I think it's going to be fascinating to watch. I know he wants his wife to shine. I know that on the campaign trail, he always, you know, his objective wasn't for himself. It was for her. So we'll see how it goes. But I think we're ready. It's about time. Julie, any comparisons to be drawn between Jill Biden and Lady Bird Johnson? You know, I think it's, it might be too soon to say. She's not in office yet. I think, you know, clearly they're both spouses who have been married to men that were in the Senate for a very long time. And then we're in the vice presidency for a very long time. Jill Biden is, you know, similarly very hip to the ways of Washington, D.C. and politics in the campaign trail and sort of the ecosystem as they say that she's entering. She knows it very, very well. And so since she's also shared Joe Biden's political rise and career, I'm guessing that she'll have all of the savvy and awareness of her surroundings, literally. And, you know, in terms of the system she's entering that Lady Bird had when she entered. I mean, fortunately for Jill Biden, she's not coming in on the heels of such a tragedy.  But I do want to say one other thing, not about Jill Biden, but that goes back to your previous question about hiding in plain sight. And that is that the other thing that's so, so we have Lady Bird Johnson sort of there in front of us, but we haven't really, we didn't really stop to sort of ask the major questions who is she and what made her tick and what was her role and influence on the Johnson presidency. But also it's the source material hiding in plain sight that the LBJ library is one of the most incredible institutions and LBJ himself, his presidency is so amply documented that the president himself and the material has obscured, has hidden this other story. And the source material has been sitting at the LBJ library, I mean, very importantly transcribed and released in full in the last few years. So I was able to take advantage of that. But the diary, a lot of the diary was sitting around for a long time and kind of sneezed at a lot of her material, a lot of her speeches, a lot of the substance behind her environmentalism, especially the work that she did in Washington DC, sitting there in the archives, but not woven into the story of the Johnson presidency sort of taken as kind of a side thing. I mean, no offense to this discussion, but kind of as like first lady history, as opposed to sort of how does this, what does this tell us about the Johnson presidency? And I think that's another reason we chose hiding in plain sight because it tries to suggest that there's a larger story to be told. I think it's a wonderful title. And I know I speak for lots and lots of people and saying, I can't wait to see your book in March. Thank you. Ladybird Johnson hiding in plain sight. Julia Swig, thank you so much for being with us today. Thank you as well to Kate Bennett, who is author of Free Melania, the Unauthorized Biography. I've really enjoyed this conversation and I really appreciate all of the insight. Thanks so much. Thank you very much. Real pleasure to be with you both. On behalf of our partner, Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center, thanks for joining us. And thanks to our sponsors, St. David's Healthcare and the Moody Foundation. For signed copies of Julia's book, Ladybird Johnson Hiding in Plain Sight, go to lbjstore.com. Please join us for our next program, Continued Conversations, with Lyndon and Ladybird Johnson's granddaughters Nicole Covert and Catherine Robb on December 8th at 11.30 a.m. Registration is available online. These programs are made possible by contributions from our members. If you aren't already a member of the Friends of the LBJ Library, please join us at lbjfriends.org. I'm Mark up to Grove. See you next time.


Hi everyone, this is Alice Gao. In this video, I'm going to introduce the policy iteration algorithm. Policy iteration is one of the two main approaches of solving a Markov decision process, together with the value iteration algorithm. Now knowing policy iteration is not only useful for solving a Markov decision process, it's also useful for understanding reinforcement learning algorithms. In particular, one key idea from the policy iteration algorithm is called policy evaluation. And we'll see this idea appearing again and again in the reinforcement learning algorithms that I'm going to talk about in the next few videos. To describe the high-level ideas of policy iteration, let's first recall how value iteration works. The main idea of value iteration is that we will iteratively estimate the V values, which are the expected utility of the optimal policy starting from a particular state. And once we have derived accurate estimates of these expected utilities, then we will derive the optimal policy based on this. Now sometimes when we're executing the value iteration algorithm, you may observe the following. Although the utility values haven't converged, the optimal policy already stopped changing. So what does this observation tell us? This tells us that sometimes deriving the optimal policy does not necessarily require us to have accurate estimates of the utility values. When the utility estimates are reasonably good, we can already derive the optimal policy. This idea inspired the idea of the policy iteration algorithm. The main idea of the policy iteration algorithm is that we are going to alternate between improving the utility values and improving the policy. So in particular, this is what's going to happen. We are going to start with an arbitrary initial policy. And based on the policy, we will perform a step called policy evaluation to calculate the updated utility values. This is the utility of each state if the policy, the current policy were to be executed. And then next, now that we have the updated utility values will perform a step called policy improvement, where we take the updated utility values and calculate a new policy based on that. So the new policy will say that given the updated utility values, what is the best thing we should do given these utility values? If I were to illustrate the idea using a picture, you can see the description above. So we'll start with some arbitrary initial policy and perform policy evaluation to get the updated utility values. Based on the updated utility values, we will derive a new policy. And based on the new policy, we will again evaluate that policy to get updated utility values. And we'll keep repeating this until we get to a point where the policy does not change anymore. This suggests to us that the improvement in the utility values doesn't matter anymore, because as long as we're using the same policy, then we're good. So this is reflected in the final step where at some point, we already reached the optimal policy. So based on the optimal policy, the utility value, the updated utility value will still lead us to the same optimal policy. So you can see policy iteration has a slightly different focus from value iteration. The focus of value iteration was to, first of all, derive the most accurate estimates of the utility values, and then derive a policy based on that. Whereas policy iteration says that we will iteratively update both the policy and the utility values until the policy emerges. Let's now take a look at how we can perform the two steps, policy evaluation and policy improvement. Turns out policy improvement is the easier step of the two. So for policy improvement, we're going from the utility values to an updated policy. In fact, we already know how to do this from the value iteration algorithm, because at the end of the value iteration algorithm, once the utility values have converged, this is exactly what we do. We will take the converged utility values and calculate the Q values, which are our expected utility of taking a particular action in a particular state. Having calculated the Q values, the only thing we need to do is figure out the best action in each state based on the Q values. So this is why we're going to take the maximum and find the action that achieves the maximum expected utility. So this is exactly the same step we did in the value iteration algorithm to derive the best policy given a set of estimates for the utility values. Now for the policy evaluation step, this step we are going from a policy to updated estimates for the utility values. To do this, we can solve a system of equations as I'm showing you here. And this system of equation looks very similar to the Bellman equations, but actually they're a little different. They are in fact a simplified version of the Bellman equations. So why is this sufficient to solve the system of equations? Well, look at these equations. We already know the reward function, we already know the transition probabilities, and because we know the policy already, so the policy pie will determine the action we are going to take in each particular state. Given this, we don't need the maximum in front anymore because we already know which action we're taking. So the transition probability is just telling us what are the probabilities of getting to each target state based on this action that we're taking. So this system of equations, the only unknowns are the utility values. So we can write down the system of equations and then solve for the utility values. Let me stop here for this video. In the next video, I will talk about how we can solve this system of equations to get the updated estimates for the utility values. Turns out, performing the policy evaluation step is much simpler than performing the similar step in the value iteration algorithm. Thank you very much for watching. I will see you in the next video. Bye for now.


All right. So we are going to discuss GMOs and I have to admit this is a talk that's a little out of character for me. I normally talk more about gardening and about ornamental plant material, but I feel like there is a real need for information on GMOs or genetically modified organisms. So we have individuals that are making decisions based on emotion rather than than the facts. So I'm hoping today to provide you with some scientific information that will help you understand GMOs and will help you make your own decisions, whether you will be consuming GMOs or not. Just to share with you, I'm Esther McGuinness, and I find that when I give a talk on a topic that may be a little on the controversial side, it helps for people to know who I am and what my biases are. So we can all just be very transparent and unequal footing. So I do have a master's and PhD in applied plant sciences from the University of Minnesota, and my emphasis was horticulture, but I also have a law degree. So this gives me a little bit of a unique perspective on GMOs, and I have published in this area. Now currently I am the NDSU Extension Horticulturist and Director of the Master Gardener Program. So a lot of people want to know, well, if I'm talking about GMOs, do I have ties to big agriculture or do I have ties to the organic industry? And the answer is neither. I don't really have ties to big agriculture. All of my funding comes through the North Dakota Department of the A through their specialty crop block grant program. So I really don't do much of agronomy, which means that I'm not necessarily, I'm not beholden to any corporations. And on the other hand, I don't receive any funding for organic production. So this leaves me to be free and independent and report the science the best that I can.  So I am careful about what I feed my family and I want to make sure that they're getting the best quality of food and making sure that there are no health risks associated with that food. For a lot of people, you know, they hear the term GMO and they don't really know what it is. GMO stands for genetically modified organism. And this is a term that I'm not very fond of because I don't think it tells us very much. Everything is genetically modified. If you had children, your children would be genetically modified organisms because their genetics would not be the same as either parrot. It would be a brand new combination. However, that's the term that we commonly use. So I'll be referring to GMOs, but I will also be referring to genetic engineering as a synonym. And we've got a couple definitions on the screen. The first is through the Cartagena protocol on biosafety. GMO is any living organism that possesses a novel combination of genetic material obtained through the use of modern biotechnology. Well, you may be questioning, well, what is a novel combination? Well, the next definition helps a little bit. This is the definition that is put forth by the USDA. The USDA does not use the term GMO. Instead, it uses the term genetic engineering. And it defines it as the genetic modification of organisms by recombinant DNA techniques. So what we've learned so far is that we've got a novel combination of genetic material and that there's recombinant DNA techniques. Well, I can make this a little bit clearer with an example. This is Liberty Link Corn. So Liberty Link Corn is a little special because it has a gene that makes it resistant to an herbicide called glufosinate. So glufosinate is the active ingredient and it's a broad spectrum herbicide. One of the trade names for it is Liberty. So this means when we grow Liberty Link Corn, we can spray glufosinate at recommended rates in the field and not kill the corn, but we will instead kill the weeds. So this is a beneficial trait. But the interesting thing is where did we get the gene for that herbicide tolerance? The gene for that herbicide tolerance came from a couple species of bacteria. So this is what we mean by having a novel combination and obtaining genes through recombinant DNA technology. So we're able to take genes from completely different species and incorporate it into the genome of corn. Now at this point, there are some people that have a negative reaction once they learn what a GMO is. And in fact, one of the nicknames is franken food. And that's because we are able to take genes and take them from an entirely different kingdom. We can go outside the plant kingdom. We can take genes from animals, viruses, fungi, bacteria, and then incorporate that into our crop. And this creates a lot of anxiety in people. And frankly, I don't blame them. If I didn't have a scientific background, I might be a little more nervous than I am about such a thing. I do have one interesting slide here which talks about how we perceive risk and really the sorts of risks that drive our anxiety. And this is derived from research from Paul Slavik, which was published in the mid-1980s. And it was all about how we perceive risk. You know, what risks or what events do we perceive as causing more dread for us? What are some other risks that are more familiar and really don't get us worked up? If you look at this chart, you'll see that as we slide, if you can see my pointer, as we slide down the x-axis to the left side, we have risks that are more controllable. So these are things we rate as being under our control. On this side, we really don't get as upset about these risks. As we move down the x-axis to the right side, these are risks that are more uncontrollable and may create more anxiety for us. Whether that's justified is up for debate. I know that, you know, we've got plane crashes down here and then car accidents are much further to the left on the spectrum. I know that every time I get on a plane, I experience a little twinge of anxiety before we take off. And I impute that to the feeling of a lack of control. So I feel more nervous on the plane because I'm not flying it, which is probably a good thing. But I feel more anxiety on the plane compared to being in my car just because of that control element. But we all know that you stand more of a risk of being in a car accident than in a plane crash. But that still doesn't necessarily take away from my anxiety. So looking at the y-axis, we have risks that tend to be more familiar towards the bottom. As we go towards the top, we're increasing in novelty. As we go up the y-axis to the top, these are risks that are unknown and less familiar. Now, would you be surprised if I told you that people perceive the risks in the lower left-hand quadrant as producing less anxiety for them? So we've got smoking, alcohol addiction, motorcycle accidents, accidents on bicycles. So this quadrant is perceived as producing less anxiety and this quadrant produces more of a feeling of dread. And that's because these risks seem to be beyond our control and we know less about them. So even way back in 1987 DNA technology was producing more anxiety in the people that were pulled as opposed to dying from smoking or lung cancer or any of these other risks. So that's kind of an interesting finding. Now today, I want to help you. I want to make you feel more familiar with the science behind genetics and genetic engineering. So I'm going to give you a little bit of a primer here. I'm not an instructor in genetics. So this will probably be more at an eighth grade level, which is probably good because we've got a very general audience today. So I'll be talking more in lay person's terms. So everybody's familiar with DNA and really this is our genetic blueprint. So it's like having a set of architectural blueprints in each and every cell and it's in the nucleus of the cell. Now our DNA composes the chromosomes we have. Now if you scale down and just look at a small sequence of DNA, that's what we call a gene. And then each gene provides the code for producing proteins and RNA. So really the proteins do a lot of the work at the cellular level. Now DNA is really interesting because it's like a universal code. This is what allows us to take a gene from a bacteria or from an animal and put it into another unrelated organism. It's because this code is the same. So I liken it a little bit to a computer code. So computer code is binary. Everything is coded as a zero or as a one. And that's what the computer reads. Well DNA is a little more complex because it has four, four letters, A, T, C, and G. So that's what makes up the DNA. Now as you look at the DNA on the right hand side, it looks like a ladder. So we have two of these, what I call nucleotides that form the rung or the step of each ladder. And then we have sugar molecules that form the edges here. So you'll see that our four nucleotides are adenine, thymine, guanine, and cytosine. And they have strict pairing rules. Adenine, if it occurs on this side, will always match up with thymine. If thymine is on this side, it will always match up with adenine. And the same holds true for guanine and cytosine. They always pair up. So this, this is what DNA looks like in humans, in chimpanzees, in viruses, and in plants. It's all going to look very similar because we all use the same base code. So we have, we have our ladder here. And then when we get three letters in a row that codes for an amino acid, and then there are 20 combinations possible. There's some redundancy. So there are 20 amino acids that we can make in ourselves. The amino acids are like pearls on a string or on a necklace. We string them together and make proteins. But what to keep in mind here is that DNA is this universal code that goes beyond the organism. Now if we look at the genome, and the genome would be the entire complement of DNA, and we've got a lot of different rungs on the ladder. So E. coli would have 4.6 million base pairs. So remember that's that pairing of those two nucleotides. Going all the way up to 16.8 billion in wheat. If we look at the number of genes, we'll see that a fruit fly has 14,000 genes. Humans are a little more complex. We've got 21,000. And then corn and wheat surprisingly are more complex than humans. They have 33 and 95,000 genes. The wheat genome is just very, very interesting and very complex. So that's a little primer on genetics and just understanding what's going on. So this will help you understand genetic engineering or genetic modification. So in genetic engineering, we look for a beneficial gene. That gene can be in almost any species as long as it's beneficial. So we can look for a crop gene like insect resistance. Now that helps us because then we don't have to spray as much insecticide or herbicide tolerance. Or in apples, we can look for the gene that will slow down browning in an apple. Now as I mentioned that gene can be from a different species. But once we know where that gene is, we can use an enzyme. So every time I mentioned the word enzyme in this presentation, think scissors, think cutting. An enzyme can be used to cut the DNA segment out of the gene. We then copy it. We have to insert some DNA material at the beginning of the gene and at the end of the gene. The material at the beginning of the gene helps turn on the gene. The material at the end terminates it. We then put on a marker so that we can eventually find where the gene was incorporated into a plant cell. We have two options for incorporating a gene of interest into a plant cell. The first is using a bacteria. This is a very commonly found soil bacteria called agribacterium tumorfations. This actually causes crown gall in apple trees, grape vines, and in roses. But it has a very unique mechanism. It has the ability to insert its DNA into the plant and essentially instruct the plant to do certain things. So we are using the soil-borne bacterium, but we have taken the disease-causing components out of it.  We take an enzyme. We make a cut in the TDNA. We insert a gene of interest there. We seal it up. We put it back in the bacteria. Then we use the bacteria to take the gene and insert it into a plant cell. We then grow those plants in tissue culture under very sterile conditions, and eventually we're able to regenerate that plant cell into an entire plant. So that's how we do genetic engineering using bacteria. We have another method called the gene gun. The gene gun takes little particles, usually tungsten, and coats it with the DNA material. And then we shoot it into the plant cell. Now this may be a little less accurate than the bacterial method, because sometimes we end up with multiple copies of the gene in a cell. However, the gene gun is more likely regulated than the soil-borne bacteria. And we'll come back to that. Now at this point you may be, whoa, are we playing God here? Well, yes we are. But we've been doing that for 10,000 years. We have been manipulating plant genetics as far as we can document. And the first example would be corn. So corn is really interesting. Corn is not what you think it is. Corn started out as Tia Sinte. So this is Tia Sinte here. It actually looked more like a grass 10,000 years ago. So this is native to southern Mexico. So we had some prehistoric farmers that started the process of changing the genetics. So they would grow Tia Sinte and they would select for certain characteristics. So they would save the seed from plants that had certain mutations. Now with the Tia Sinte you've got a single row of kernels and then a very hard seed coat. Furthermore, Tia Sinte shatters, meaning that the seeds fall off, that rachis, and then are lost. But over time we started building something that looked more like a corn cob. So the middle picture right here, we're starting to see multiple rows. We're still seeing a little bit of that hard seed coat. But over time, somewhere between 6,000 and 10,000 years, we were able to produce corn as we know it today. Now I'll provide you with another horticultural example. This is Brassica oleraceae. This is wild cabbage. This is the pregenitor of broccoli, cabbage, coles, I'm sorry, col-robi, and some of these other species. So this is the ancestor. This is found in Europe, in the northern part of Europe, all the way down into some of the Mediterranean countries. So we have been changing wild cabbage for thousands of years. Probably the first crop that came from wild cabbage was kale. So we were able to choose plants that looked like it had very nice, tender leaves and leaves that were a little bit curlier. And in fact, we were able to find references to kale and Greek and Roman literature, so we know it's been around a long time. Cabbage. Cabbage also came from wild cabbage, but we were selecting for something different. Here humans were selecting for more of a head type of trait, so we would have leaves that would fold in on each other in that tight head. We're not entirely sure where cabbage came from. It could have Celtic origins or it could have Greek origins. We do know it was mentioned thousands of years ago. Likewise, we have Kohl-robi. So Kohl-robi has been around at least since the mid-1500s and Brussels sprouts. Now what humans selected for in Kohl-robi is that nice, fleshy stem. With our Brussels sprouts, they were looking for that for a little tiny, or they were looking for an enlarged bud that occurred right above the leaf. With our broccoli and our cypress, now they've been around for many centuries. Broccoli comes from an inflorescence, I should say, from immature flower primordia, as does cauliflower. So really we just selected and we shaped this plant. And they're all extremely closely related. In fact, they're all the same species. But we were not done with brassicas. We, in fact, bred a new crop in the early 1990s called broccolini. So this was a cross between two subspecies within that species. So broccoli was a parent and then Gailan, which is called Chinese broccoli, was the other parent. And here we have a new product, which really isn't that old. So we have been changing plant material throughout history and we continue to do so. So strawberries. Strawberries are kind of interesting because the strawberries that you eat are really on the product of chance. What happened is we had a Frenchman who had a garden, now the French loved, and they still love strawberries. He happened to have germplasm from two different continents. He was able to get germplasm from the city of, the country of Chile, and Chile was known for having a species that had big, beautiful berries. In this same garden, the gardener had obtained friguria virginiana, which is a North American wild strawberry.  Well, he had both of these in his garden. And then there must have been a pollinator that carried pollen from one species to the other. And we ended up with a hybrid that became the parent of the modern strawberry. Our methods now have become a little bit more precise in how we breed and modify plants. Now the most common way is crossbreeding, where we cross two sexually compatible species to produce progeny or offspring that have beneficial traits from both parents. But I have to admit this is much less precise than genetic engineering. So we take parent one. So parent one has a suite of traits that are, that are considered to be excellent, but parent one may be missing something important, like a disease resistance trait. So we then cross parent one that has the desired trait. We do this, you know, by the application of pollen. And this is all done conventionally. What happens is that we're probably not done at this stage, that one crossing is not going to be enough because we have carried all this genetic material from parent two. And as a result, we've had kind of this, it's really all up to chance as to what was inherited in this process. So then we need to try and clean it up, get back to that package of traits that was in parent one, but making sure we have disease resistance. We do this by repeated back crossing to parent one. Now we have other methods of conventional breeding that we use to introduce new traits mutation breeding we've been using since the 1930s, and there've been thousands of varieties produced this way. Now the whole object of mutation breeding is to induce mutations. So we use radiation or chemicals to do this. We expose the seed to radiation or chemical. So we then grow out needs and hopefully find a phenotype or trait that's desirable. This is what we have done in semi dwarf rice. So 50% of the rice grown in California is the product mutation breeding. If you eat a ruby red grapefruit that ruby red color came from this came from this process. I want to reassure you, you're not eating anything that's been irradiated. It was just the original seed. So there's really no risk involved here. But barley, wheat, pears, peas, cotton, peppermint, sunflowers, peanuts, bananas and other crops have all been improved through this type of process. We have polyploidy. We use this to produce seedless watermelon. Now this is done through a chemical. We have, if I could have somebody mute the microphone, please, I'm getting a lot of a lot of sounds coming through. So if you can mute your microphone, please, that would be helpful. Thank you. So with polyploidy, watermelon normally is what we consider 2M. This means it has two sets of chromosomes. We can treat it with a chemical called colchicine to double the ploidy. And we commonly do this with ornamental plants too, using colchicine. Now with watermelon, so we had a plant with two sets of chromosomes and another one with four sets of chromosomes. We were able to breed those two together to end up with a triploid plant, which was sterile and seedless. So that's how we were able to get seedless watermelon. Now another method that's being used probably more by China than by the United States now is protoplast fusion. Now this can be used to fuse together the contents of cells from two species that normally cannot be crossed. We digest the cell walls of both cells and then we combine the DNA and are able to come up with a hybrid. So my whole point here is that we do a lot of different crop modification techniques. This is really just scratching the surface. There are a lot of new breeding techniques out there that we're using. But I'm curious, how many of these techniques do you think are regulated? So if you can answer in the chat box, I'd love to hear what your guesses are. So we've talked about crossbreeding, mutation breeding, talked about polyploidy protoplast fusion, and then transgenesis is another name for genetic engineering or genetic modification. For now, just ignore the genome editing. Anybody want to guess which one or several of these techniques are in fact regulated? Okay, so we've got none, and then Kathy Christiansen says two. Well, if we averaged zero and two, oh, we got Annie saying all. Really the only technique that is currently being regulated by the United States government is genetic engineering. So transgenesis or I should say genetic engineering or genetic modification is the only technique that is regulated. So how in fact is this regulated? Well, we have a coordinated framework that was developed in the 19 or the late 1980s and largely has not changed very much. So we have three governmental entities that regulate GM crops. The first is the USDA with Animal Plant and Health Inspection Service, and they regulate the growing of crops. So they oversee field testing, making sure everything is monitored, making sure that we don't have gene flow, and then overseeing whether that crop can be deregulated and sold on the market. The EPA regulates plant incorporated protectants. Well, you know the government, they've got to make up a term for it, but they're essentially regulating a subset of plants that produce insecticides like BT corn or BT cotton would be an example. That would fall under EPA regulation. And then the FDA Food and Drug Administration regulates food and feed safety. Now, in all in all, it's a very costly process to go through deregulation. It generally costs 100 to $130 million. As a result of the heavy costs, only the largest corporations can in fact employ genetic engineering or genetic modification. And we'll talk about the ramifications of that as we go through the rest of the presentation. Now this is part of the Field to Fork series, so I wanted to talk about whether you're eating GMOs and what the safety ramifications are.  I would say probably most of you do. That's because 90% of the US crop acreage in corn, soybean, cotton, canola and sugar beet is genetically engineered. So we have corn syrup. Every time you drink a pot, that's genetically engineered. Cornmeal, soybeans, so anytime you have soy protein in a product or you're consuming soybean oil. Now we have cotton seed and canola oils also on the market. And then a large portion of our sugar, I would say well over 90% of sugar beets in North Dakota and Minnesota are genetically engineered. So those are ready sugar beets. So those are processed foods. Well what about when you're in the produce aisle? Can you buy a whole food? Can you buy a piece of fruit or a vegetable that's genetically engineered? Well there's a small quantity of squash or green zucchini that's on the market that is genetically engineered. And the trait that it expresses is resistance to cucumber mosaic virus, which is a very lethal disease to the plants. So that is available, but I would say it's just a very small portion of what's in the produce aisle. And then we're starting to see more roundup ready sweet corn. I think that's more likely to be found at farmers markets, but I don't necessarily know the supply chain with respect to sweet corn. Now regarding fruit, I have to tell you papaya is my all time favorite fruit. I cannot get enough of papaya. So every time I traveled to Hawaii, I just eat gobs and gobs of this. And I'm happy to eat the genetically engineered versions because that's what has kept papaya alive in Hawaii. Papaya back in the 1990s was suffering from a very bad virus called papaya ring spot virus and it almost killed the native papaya industry. Now there were a couple of scientists that were able to take the seed coat protein from the virus and make papaya resistant to that devastating disease. And in some senses, maybe it's a little like vaccination. So papaya is still around because of genetic engineering, and we may find the same to be true with our citrus industry. Our citrus industry is dying because of the combination of an insect and a disease. So we've got a vector, an insect vector that spreads a very devastating disease to oranges and other citrus. And right now they're working on genetic engineering of oranges so we can continue to still grow oranges in North America. We've got a two new crops that have recently been deregulated by the USDA. There's innate potato. This potato has four different traits to it. Two of them benefit the grower and two of them benefit consumers. So that's a little bit different. So the two traits that benefit consumers, it's less likely to bruise. And then secondly, it's less likely to produce acrylamide. Now in the past, there were some concerns that if you fried a potato, it would produce acrylamide and that acrylamide could cause cancer. So there was, there really was an incentive to create a potato that produced less acrylamide. This potato also has another characteristic in that it is resistant to late blight. So less fungicide needs to be applied to this crop. Now I don't know how much markets share or whether this is really is really being grown much in North America. It's too new for us to really know. So I have definitely not seen this one at the grocery store, but we may in the future. Arctic, there's the Arctic series of apples that have been deregulated in particular golden apple. So this is really interesting. This uses something called gene silencing to make an apple that doesn't brown. So anytime you cut a normal apple, it's exposed to oxygen that goes through a process called oxidation and turns brown. We now have an apple that will not brown. So theoretically the processing industry could cut up apples and put them in a bag and sell them in the refrigerated section. So I believe you're going to start seeing this relatively soon. We don't know if it's going to be accepted by consumers. This is this is definitely the apple that you would use if you were making a fruit salad. So everybody always asks about the health risks of GMOs. Have they been studied? Well, they have been studied. This is GMOs are probably some of the most heavily studied crops anywhere. And this is reflected by a letter written by 129 Nobel Prize winners in 2016. This is a letter they sent to Greenpeace and other environmental organizations. So the Nobel Prize winners wrote scientific and regulatory agencies around the world have repeatedly and consistently found crops and foods improved through biotechnology to be as safe as if not safer than those derived from any other method of production. There has never been a single confirmed case of a negative health outcome for humans or animals from their consumption. Their environmental impacts have been shown repeatedly to be less damaging to the environment and a boon to global biodiversity. Now, some of you may have found, you know, a couple studies online that try and document a negative health come health outcome. But what has happened in those cases is that those were not peer reviewed journal articles. So we're looking at the hard science in order, in order for there to be a confirmed case, it would have to then been accepted for publication by, by, by a reputable journal, and that really has not happened. And we have not had any truly documented cases of human or animal, animal harm, and, and billions of animals have consumed, you know, round up ready soybeans round up ready alfalfa, and there has been no health risks shown. Our US National Academy of Sciences did a big meta study in 2016. They looked at over a thousand studies of GMOs, this include their environmental effects as well as health risks. And the committee could not find persuasive evidence of adverse health effects directly attributable to consumption of GE foods. Kevin Fulta is from the University of Florida, the University of Florida, and he's a popular writer on the subject, and he wrote this is what I call the frank and food paradox. Transgenic or genetic modification in the lab is the least invasive. It is the most well understood, yet it is the one most shunned by those that oppose biotech. Now if we unpack that statement, you would find that genetic modification is much more precise, we're only taking one to three genes and incorporating it. So we're actually messing with the genome less than with those other modification techniques that I talked about. So crossbreeding can involve tens of thousands of genes, and there could be there could be risks associated with conventional breeding. And that leads us to Linnape potato. This is a potato. This is not genetically engineered. It was conventionally bred for the potato chip industry. Now if you're familiar with potato chips, you know that you want that beautiful golden color, you don't want a potato chip that looks like it's starting to burn. In order to get that even golden color, you need to have the right proportion of starch and sugars. And Linnape potato, it was perfect. It browned absolutely beautifully. However, when the researchers went to eat the Linnape potato, they were overcome with nausea because they had consumed high amounts of solanine. Solanine is a toxin that can occur in potatoes. And in fact, you've probably seen this, if you have had potatoes that were near the surface of the soil and that were exposed to sun, the potatoes then turn green. So that's why we tell people don't eat a green potato because it has toxins in it. Well, with the Linnape potato, it didn't matter how deep, how much soil there was piled on top of that potato, it still had way too much solanine. So it never then came to market. But the point here is that there's risks everywhere. There can be risks from GM products, but similarly there can be risks from conventionally bred potatoes. However, GM crops have been thoroughly vetted and that should give us a little bit of reassurance. GMOs are also analyzed as to whether they contain allergens. Now, scientists were not always so smart with this, way, way back in the beginning of GMOs. We had scientists that took a gene of interest from a Brazil nut, and then they were going to use it, I think in soybean or corn. I can't remember the crop. Now the crop was only going to be fed to cattle, but they were afraid that maybe a human could consume this. So this product never made it to market. And now we're a lot more careful. So the Food and Drug Administration makes sure that any genetically modified food is tested for allergens and toxicity. In general, scientists make sure that they're not taking a gene from a known allergen. So we're not taking a gene from peanuts or tree nuts or shrimp or anything that can cause an allergy or food allergy in humans. Well, where are we headed with this? I would say that the heavy regulation of genetically modified crops is really causing a revolution. So keep in mind that it costs 100 to $130 million to regulate GM crops. This means that only the richest corporations can afford to use genetic engineering. So what has happened is that university researchers, small corporations have been effectively excluded from using this technology. So started looking for loopholes in regulation. One of those is illustrated by our Roundup Ready Kentucky bluegrass. What they have done there is what we call cisgenesis, not transgenesis, but cisgenesis. They have taken all of the DNA from plants. They're no longer taking sequences from viruses and bacteria. And if they use a gene gun, they can then escape regulation. So I have to admit on this Roundup Ready Kentucky bluegrass, I am not a fan of it. I think we have enough herbicide tolerant crops on the market. I'm very hesitant to, I would be very hesitant to have more of them because I do worry about weed resistance. So this product exists, but it has not been marketed and I'm very glad it hasn't because I would hate to see more Roundup being used in the environment because this could then lead to more Roundup resistant weeds. And I think is a very good herbicide, I would hate to see that we lose it by overuse. So this is an example of where we've used a loophole to not to escape regulation. Another thing that's happened is that universities have said, you know what, I'm going to create my own technology, one that's less invasive and less likely to be regulated. So this is what we have with CRISPR or Cas9. So university researchers found what we call a genome editing system. And they found it in bacteria. So they noticed that bacteria when exposed to a virus would cut little short pieces of DNA from the virus for the purposes of being able to recognize that virus. So if they ever came in contact with that virus again or were attacked by the virus, they'd be able to recognize the DNA from the virus, and then utilize an enzyme to cut the viruses DNA and deactivate it. So researchers have then taken the enzyme.  So they use a guide sequence that directs the enzyme to where it needs to cut the DNA. We can delete, we can delete some rungs on that DNA ladder, or we can do something called hacking to turn a gene on or off. But the interesting thing is that this can be done very quickly and done very cheaply. So you're going to start seeing a lot of products being released that were the product of CRISPR-Cas9. And for the time being, this technology is not regulated because we're not taking a foreign gene anymore. We're not taking a gene from bacteria or virus and inserting it. Instead, we're just making a couple of snips in the DNA and then manipulating the gene to turn it on or off. So this is the future. I know that GMOs have created a lot of anxiety and a lot of controversy, but CRISPR in the future may very likely replace genetic engineering. Now the question is whether CRISPR at some point may be regulated. That I don't know, but this is an active conversation that we're going to have to have as a society. So that's my talk on GMOs. And I would invite any questions that you have. So remember we're all among friends. Go ahead and feel free to ask your questions and I'll look in the chat box here. All right, so what happens to the GMO and hybrid traits if you plant the seed from the GMO hybrid plant? Well, that GMO can persist. So it does persist in the cells of that plant. For example, in fact, that's what we want to have. If we plant Liberty Link corn, that gene is in the plant and that's what enables it to have herbicide tolerance. So it does stay in that plant. So I hope that answers your question, Dick. Is there anybody else that has questions or comments? And you're welcome to turn on your microphones. All right, good. So we're starting to get some questions in from Angie. Would the Arctic Golden Apple have to have a sticker that said it was genetically modified? And how do you think the general public would feel about that? At this time, the Arctic Golden Apple would not have to have any sort of label. We have not passed federal labeling requirements for GMOs. I think the argument to date has been that there really is no concern about safety, so in fact, they don't have to carry that sticker. Now, how do I think the general public would feel about that? Well, this will be an interesting test case. We don't necessarily know how the public is going to react. Some people may be accepting, others may not, but this is really one of the very first products that is consumer-based. All the other GMO traits have been geared towards the producer to help them with crop production, like herbicide tolerance, insecticide tolerance, et cetera. But Golden Apple is the first one that has traits that are beneficial to consumers. So it's really going to be a test case and it'll be interesting to see if it's accepted. I really don't know what's going to happen because based on surveys that have been done by Pew, they found that a lot of people are very skeptical about GMOs. So we don't know if the Arctic Golden Apple will in fact achieve a significant market share. From LM Monsky, are GM varieties found in foods that claim to be organic? No. By definition, organic foods cannot be genetically modified that is prohibited. So I would say that they are not commonly found in organic. Can there be some gene flow from crop to crop? Maybe a little, but I don't think very much happens. Now when we have seed production, I know they institute several miles between breeding plots. So they try and make sure that there's no gene flow from genetic modified crops to organic seeds. So by definition, organic crops are not supposed to contain GMOs. Oops. All right. So I think I lost. All right. So I'm scrolling through the questions. I think someone should create a movie like the new seed, the untold movie. It must really explain GMOs for everyone. It should be artistic, easy to understand like this talk. Well, thank you very much for that compliment. There is a new documentary out and I have not had a chance to see it. It's narrated by, oh, I can't remember his name. But it's called Food Evolution and I've not had a chance to see that yet, but I would like to. So there really is a good documentary out there. So if you get a chance, you know, it's good to see that. So Annie, I think GMOs getting a bad rap. Esther, you have helped me to understand this has been going on for a long time and that GMO foods we eat every day. Thank you. Tara. Well, thank you, Tara. I'm glad that that you have enjoyed this. Oh, I see Julie Garden Robinson is on. We must have internet restored to NDSU campus. So I'm glad we were able to do this webinar. Sorry for all of the the interruptions and I want to thank True North Steel for their technical support. I ran over to where my husband works at True North Steel so that we could have this field to fork presentation because we did not have internet on the NDSU campus. So the people worried about GMOs killing our butterflies just do not understand the process. Well, Marlene, that gets us into some of the environmental effects of like BT corn. In the beginning there was some concern that monarch butterflies would then be exposed to the BT produced by BT corn. So there's still a little bit of concern there but we are, I should say, scientists are actively remedying that we have something called refuge in a bag. In fact, they have to produce, they have to produce a refuge next to a field of BT corn to in fact help the butterflies. So there are ways of dealing with that. And I have to admit that it's been a learning process and a learning process for some of the scientists that produced GMOs in the beginning. It was kind of a rocky, rocky start and but we're now understanding things a lot more. Thank you for your call for questions. I see we are at three o'clock. Well, thank you everybody for your patience and then thank you again to True North Steel for hosting me here. And thank you to my husband for allowing me to take over his office for an hour.