On Becoming Fearless in Love, Work, and Life | Arianna Huffington | Talks at Google

This is a Women at Google and Authors at Google event and please join me in welcoming Arianna Huffington. So some people, particularly in our community, need no introduction, but I will introduce anyway. So Arianna, as I think everyone here certainly knows, is the co founder and editor of the Huffington Post, which is become in the world of blogs and the Internet world, we live one of the most important media brands and media voices that people all over link to pay attention to and glean their news from. She's also a nationally syndicated columnist and the spokesperson and the co host of Left Right and Center on Public Radio. She's a very active political voice, ran for governor during the recall election and has looked too widely for her political insights and because she wasn't busy enough. She's the author of 11 books. 11 books. So a great person for us to welcome at Authors at Google. But she's written on everything from Greek mythology to politics and culture to finding meaning in the world we live in. Her latest book, which we've given out to the audience, is on Becoming Fearless, written for her daughters and I think for women and probably men all over the world to inspire them to overcome their fears. Originally from Greece, has lived in Greece, the UK and US and I think probably all over the world. And in 2006, Ariana was named to the time 100 times. I want to get this Right magazine's list of the world's 100 most influential people. We are thrilled to have her here as both an author and a woman at Google. So welcome again. So these events are a chance for Googlers to get to know you, and I think people are excited to do that. We can start with a little bit of your background. When you think about your background, you were born in Greece, you studied in the uk, you now live in Los Angeles. How do you feel that that kind of varied cultural experience has impacted your life and your work?

Well, first of all, I'm so happy to be here and I'm particularly happy that Cheryl, at her advanced stage of pregnancy, is here for double mic'd. She had to be double mic'd. One for her, one for the baby, because I so admire what you've done and what you've all done at Google. So I feel that being Greek is an essential part of my identity and who I am. And it's not just because of my accent, which I tried many times to overcome the handicap of. But then finally I gave up. I joked recently that I was really born in Fresno, California and had cultivated this accent to give myself an air of Being an ethnic minority. And believe it or not, I got 35 letters from people asking me, how exactly did you go about changing your accent? Two of them were from Fresno. So, you know, there's a certain gullibility in the American electorate, which probably explains the current occupant in the White House. But I feel that having been born in Greece, I left Greece when I was 18 to go to Cambridge where I studied economics. And the foundation of this book about overcoming our fears was that experience. Because I saw a magazine article about Cambridge while I lived in Athens in a one room apartment with my mother, who was divorced from my father and had no money, no formal education. And I looked at that picture and I said, I want to go to Cambridge. And everybody said, you're insane. And my mother said, let's see how we can do it. And that was the mother that I had. And so she was just this extraordinary human being who believed that you should never let your fears stop you from attempting to fulfill your dreams. And that if you failed, it didn't matter. So I always felt that if I failed along the way, she wouldn't love me any less. And it was that kind of unconditional loving that I feel even more than being born in Greece and traveling around the world is the foundation of my life.

So you then became an active writer on many topics and in the 1990s, nominated for an Emmy for your work with Politically Incorrect. And at the time, you were a reasonably outspoken Republican or conservative voice. And obviously that's evolved over the years. So one of the questions I think Googlers wanted me to ask you was how have your political views evolved? And what do you. How do you explain your own evolution in thinking?

Yes, 1996 was when Al Franken and I did political commentary from bed. I don't know if any of you saw it during the Republican and Democratic conventions in San Diego and Chicago. And that was like the last year of my being a Republican. And Al claims that I converted because of the great sex, because apparently Democrats have better sex. We'll take a poll afterwards. Right. Ready to applaud on that. The truth is that I was always on social issues. Like I was always pro choice, pro gay rights, and pro gun control. So when I was a Republican, I had a different view of government. That was where my views differed from the Democrats. And I really believed that the private sector could step up to the plate and address a lot of the social problems we're facing, whether it was health care, education. And then I saw firsthand that this wasn't going to happen that in fact, private charity was more likely to go to prestigious educational institutions like Harvard, or to museums or to teaching hospitals, and not really to homeless shelters. You know, rich people don't like their names on homeless shelters. And so the naming opportunities are not as great when it comes to dealing with poverty or the health care crisis. And it was really the recognition that you needed an activist government to address those issues that made me leave the Republican Party.

And then you ran for governor, and even though you withdrew from the race, you still came in fifth, which is really impressive. So obviously some of your messages and a lot of your messages were resonating with the people with California. What do you think was most important at the time of that election? And how do you feel about California politics?

Well, let me tell you what was most important for me. And I use this as an example of failures being stepping stones. You know, obviously I failed at becoming governor. You may have noticed.

She looks a.

Lot like Arnold now, the accent, you know, But I really learned so much about the power of what was happening online from running for governor because we didn't have any money except what we raised online. We raised a million dollars online. And we had this one little ad that was an animated ad that was called the Hybrid versus the Hummer, because I was driving a hybrid. And of course, very, very notoriously, Arnold was driving a Hummer. And it became like a sort of symbol, a metaphor for our campaigns. And that little ad, which cost us almost nothing, became one of those viral phenomena that you're all familiar with. And I remember one morning waking up and seeing a 3/4 of a page story in the LA Times about that ad. And I thought myself, this is a new world and I want to be part of it. And it was really the beginning of the dream of the Huffington Post, which was always about how to use that space to really have a conversation about everything that matters in real time as things are happening.

So the Huffington Post has obviously become one of the most successful media outlets and blogs out there. And we at Google, I'm sure others have this experience as much as I have. People ask us all the time, how does my blog, how does my space get to be this important, what I'm doing online? How would you explain the success of the Huffington Post? What do you think you did that's made a difference?

The first thing we did is that we brought together news in real time, aggregated news as it was happening 247 and opinion. So it was a combination of news and we now have over 1000 bloggers who have their own password and who can blog at any time of the day or night on any subject. And what I wanted to do is to bring to that space voices that may have been without a computer even. I'll tell you a story to illustrate what I'm saying, but I thought were really important voices to bring online. So some of the voices were always online, and some of the voices had never been online. Like, the first person I invited to blog was historian Arthur Schlesinger, who died very recently. And I remember calling him and asking him if he would blog. And he said to me, what is a blog? And I explained to him, and he said, I don't really use a computer. And I said, how do you. I said, you can fax it to me. He said, okay, I'll fax it to you. And I remember he took me to an old fashioned club in New York, the Century Club. And I was there explaining to Arthur Schlesinger what blogging was. And he would fax me his blogs. But there. And I remember at the time there were people who were, you know, purists who said, if it's not a movable type, it's not a blog. And my attitude was, I don't care if they send it to me by carrier pigeon. If it's an important, interesting message that they're sending, I want it on the site. And that's really my attitude. You know, I have people who call me from the golf course, like Ari Emanuel, the agent in Los Angeles, who when Mel Gibson. Do you remember the Mel Gibson story when he was arrested and TMZ wrote about his anti Semitic remarks and the story was about to die. You know, Hollywood was not saying anything. And Ari called me on a Sunday and said, I want to speak about that. This is not what we should be doing. Who should take a stand here? And he literally dictated to me a blog. So I take dictation any time of the day or night. And we posted it and it began to change the conversation. And you had others in Hollywood join in. And there was a real turning point in the way the Mel Gibson story was handled. So that's part of what I love. Or when Jack Mertha came out at the end of 05, against the war. And there was this, you know, this Democratic hawk, this old fashioned politico who had been very much for the war coming out against it. And again I called him and I asked him to blog. And again he said to me, what is a blog? You know, that's a conversation I have with a lot of people. And then he started blogging and it became like the place where whenever he had something important to say about the war, he would say it in his blogs and what happens. And you know that because a lot of you here blog, that you become addicted to it, right? Because you become addicted to the response, to the comments, to the reaction. And you see because our site is bookmarked by many in the media, that you get response from a lot of the mainstream media, too. And that's what validates what you're doing and wants you to do more.

So what's next for the Huffington Post? How do I hope, do you still have people ask you what a blog is, or are we past that?

You know, I haven't really been asked that recently. So that's some kind of a success.

We're all relieved, thank God. What do you think's next? What's next for the Huffington Post? Where do you think this trend continues and where do you see the evolution heading?

Well, we just expanded to five new sections for those of you who may have seen it recently. A section on the media, a section on business, a section on entertainment, and a section on living. And in fact, I'm delighted that will obey who is our editor of all here. You'll meet her in a little while. Our editor of the living section and who is helping us really navigate that whole expansion beyond politics is here. And the reasoning behind the expansion was that even the people who are most obsessed with politics have another part of their lives. So we wanted to actually cater to that too. And we had a lot of people who used to write about politics who now finding themselves writing about politics, but also writing about their obsession with Diane Warwick, for example, or the latest great flat shoes or whatever, you know, things that may not be as incredibly important as they were in Iraq, but were also part of our life or relationships. So we did a whole campaign, a mother daughter campaign about what is it that we want to pass on to the next generation? So that was the idea behind the expansion. And the other thing that I loved is that one day we had Ryan Reynolds blog and Perez Hilton, you know, Perez Hilton linked to it. So suddenly there were thousands of people coming to the site who I'm sure had never heard of the Huffington Post. And they were coming from Perez Hilton. And then, you know, how you can tell exactly who is coming from where. And then they would about 15% of them went into the politics section. So I love the idea also of people who otherwise might not have been exposed to what we are doing in the politics section, being exposed to it. Not to mention the fact that my teenage daughters who are 16 and 18, were really impressed that Perez Hilton had linked to the Huffington Post. The Huffington Post finally arrived for them when that happened. I really think that the three most important issues facing us are Iraq, Iraq and Iraq. There is really nothing much that will be accomplished until we get the troops out of Iraq. I feel very strongly that this war that I had opposed from the beginning, but even if you had supported at the beginning, everybody I think can come to the conclusion now that we are caught in the middle of a civil war and we are actually, I believe, and more important, many military experts believe our presence is actually aggravating the situation because we are seen as an occupying force and therefore we are making it harder for these age old hostilities to be resolved. I'm not saying that when we leave things are going to calm down. The point that I'm making is that our presence there is not helping the resolution of these age old difficulties. So we are caught in the middle of the civil war. We are wasting precious American lives and we are wasting billions of dollars that should be spent protecting the homeland, smartly fighting terrorism, and also addressing the major crisis we are facing in health care, in education. So I believe that this is really the great issue of our time. And it's hard to look at the presidential campaign without clearly looking at where the candidates stand on this.

So what are your views now that you bring it up? On the presidential campaign, do you have a favorite on the Democratic side or the Republican side? Do you have a view about how Iraq will impact this election?

Well, on the Republican side, the last two debates have been kind of fascinating. It was really a collection of Neanderthals. You know, when you ask the question, raise your hand if you don't believe in evolution. And three presidential candidates raise their hands. You know, you wonder what's next? You know, would there be a question about how many of you don't believe in gravity? And five presidential candidates will raise their hand. I mean, shouldn't this be a kind of disqualifier for running for president? And on the Democratic side, you know, I'm kind of yearning for authenticity. That's kind of my litmus test. I think the country is really so tired of prefabricated speech, of triangulating, of calculating everything that we are longing for a breath of fresh air, people who speak from the heart and connect with the electorate. And I think that's going to be the key. So it was interesting to hear that Michael Bloomberg has become an independent.

Yes. Right after Google.

Right after Google. I actually think that's something you all did.

If anyone is responsible, just let me know.

I think Cheryl was responsible for that in the history books, because it's quite likely that he will run for president. He doesn't have to do anything until February, March of 08, because he won't be participating in any primary. So it will all be dated from his speech, his conversation at Google.

So since you're here as part of the women's series, I want to ask you one question about women. And I have a quote you've said in the past. The most important thing is not to internalize the attacks on us and to realize that at any time we speak out against injustice or against the status quo, we're going to have a tax level to us. Our culture still isn't comfortable with outspoken women. I don't know exactly when you wrote that, but do you think this is still true? Is part of writing this book your effort to change that? And how has been an outspoke? How has being an outspoken woman impacted your career?

I think it is unfortunately still the case that being an outspoken woman is harder than being an outspoken man. You know, Marlo Thomas said that if you're a man, to be called ruthless, you have to be John McCarthy. If you're a woman, you just have to put somebody on hold. So, you know, there are different standards. You know, the word ambitious is used as a compliment for men, but not always as a compliment for women. And so there are many instances like that. But more important than all of that for me is what we women are doing with all that. That's why in that quote, I talk about what are we internalizing? And in the book, I talk about our greatest obstacle really being what I call the obnoxious roommate living in our head. You know, the inner critic, the inner doubter, the voice that we all have, although some of us have worked with it, I've worked with it for many years, you know, but from the moment we get up and we look in the mirror, the voice starts, mmm, another wrinkle here. And then you go on to put in a pair of jeans. And the voice goes, what happened? Did you throw this in the dryer? You know, my particular obnoxious roommate is incredibly sarcastic. And if I. I was recently on Colbert's show and I told him that my obnoxious roommate sounded just like him, and he said that he had to find a place to Crash. So learning to sort of lower the volume of the obnoxious roommate is particularly hard for us women. I'm not saying that you guys don't have an obnoxious roommate, but you're much better at shutting that voice off and just going to watch a football game and forgetting about it than we are. We have to kind of wrestle it into the ground. But the more we work with that voice, the more we kind of bring a sense of humor and a sense of observing it rather than identifying with it, the more we realize we are not that voice and we don't have to let our fears get in the way of what we want to do. So I want to make it very clear when I talk about fearlessness, I don't mean the absence of fear. I mean the mastery of fear, meaning doing what we want to do and saying what we want to say even while we are afraid.

So it is a great honor. We actually have a second guest here that Arianna just started to introduce, who we easily could have had a women's event on her own, but she showed up with Ariana by surprise. We're going to bring Willow Bay up here and I'm going to introduce her. Willow Bay is now the editor at large in the Huffington Post, running the lifestyle section. And we can talk a little bit about that. She was previously the anchor of CNN Moneyline NewsHour, the co host of many other fans. I know she looks familiar to all of you. She's an author as well. She wrote a book called Talking to Kids in Tough Times and just finished a documentary, Spotlight 25, on who is today's 25 year old, some of whom work at Google. Many. But please, Google welcome for Willow Bay. I'll ask you one question if that's okay. By the way, this is one of.

The perks of getting to travel with Ariana.

People applaud for it. So I'll ask you one question and then let Arianna open up the discussion. And then we'll leave lots of time for questions from the audience as well as some that were submitted by some of the other offices at Google that are watching us live. So you've made this transition. We were just talking about it before as Ariana was teaching Sergey Greek upstairs. He claims he knows more words than I think he does.

Every word I've ever heard. Very good accent, a food word, impeccable accent. And the way he says spanakopita, you wouldn't know he was in Greek.

So, Willie, you made a transition from what is we don't use this term, but old media, cnn, right?

Or an old chick.

From old media to doing your new job, which is very much in the blogosphere and the world of Internet. How have you seen that evolution impacting what people do and how they get their views?

Well, first of all, there's no question that the rise of the Internet is changing, changing the way we live our lives completely. And I see that most profoundly in the lives of my children. I have children who are four and eight and their primary language is high speed Internet based language. They watch very little tv. They don't. I mean what's a record? Forget about you guys don't even know. But they don't, they don't listen to the stereo anymore. Everything they do at 4 and 8 is in terms of they're not quite at the information stage but will be soon. Entertainment comes from that screen and that keyboard. And there's no more, I don't think, more profound example of the revolution, technological communications revolution that we're living through than this. For me it is, I mean I've been with you for what, a month? It is a sizable challenge to learn the different rhythms, to learn the different pace to, you know, not just call up a production team that you know, produces guests to talk to and some video feed somewhere. So even the nuts and bolts of what I do each day are very different and very, I mean it's an exciting change.

That's great. So should we open it up for questions? The Google rules, by the way, are we get to ask about anything?

Yes, in any order. Absolutely.

We're rarely a shy crowd, so don't get shy today.

So I have a political question. The Republicans have mastered the technical edge issue against Democratic Democrats and national campaigns. I'm curious what you think the wedge issues might be in the 2008 presidential race and if those wedge issues, one or two wedge issues would be different. If it's Hillary versus Barack Obama.

You'Re absolutely right that the Republicans have mastered the wedge issues and they're often the social wedge issues like gay marriage and or guns. And what is really a great opportunity in 08 is for Democrats to say, you know, enough is enough. As in a way Obama did in the last debate when they brought up English as a first language. And he said, you know, this is a really important moment now and let's not be divided again by wedge issues like should English be the first and only official language? And so I think if Democrats refuse to put up with that, they have a great opportunity to introduce important issues beyond the war in Iraq, which really affect people's daily lives, like the minimum wage or universal health care, and really resonate with the American people. So I think it's a function not just of what Republicans do, but how Democrats respond. Because so often it's when you allow the attack to penetrate and when it throws you and you don't really stick to what you believe, despite the attack, that creates the problems that we saw in 02 and 04. Right and left, because it is truly obsolete. You know, you cannot understand or explain American politics. If you look at it from. From that prison, left has now become just a term of abuse. You know, you have people saying, Hillary Clinton is succumbing to the pressures from the left on the war in Iraq. This is a completely false statement if you ever hear anybody saying it. Because the truth is that, as you said, the war in Iraq and wanting to bring the troops home is a 70% issue. It's not a marginal issue. But the minute you identify it as something on the left, then you identify something else as something on the right. And the solution is supposed to be in the middle. And as Bloomberg actually said in the speech he gave in Los Angeles the night after he was here with you, he said that bridging the divide, the partisan divide, does not mean splitting the difference. Splitting the difference is not the way to lead. There are issues that are unequivocally right. When Abraham Lincoln took the lead on slavery, he wasn't arguing that on the one hand, there are those of us who oppose slavery, and on the other hand, there are those who are in favor of slavery. And let's split the difference in the same way you had people on global warming, right? On the one hand, there are those who believe in global warming, and on the other hand, there are those who don't believe in global warming. Let's split the difference. That's not how progress happens. Well, first of all, you raise the question positions which are unequivocally right. And so our effort as leaders in any sphere should be to create a consensus. Stop looking at that direction, right and left, some kind of false belief you cannot understand. So that's a very important philosophical attitude in the way left does not become the term of use. You know, you have people saying Hillary Clinton is succumbing to the pressure from the left on the war in Iraq. This is a completely false statement if you ever hear anybody saying it. Because the truth is that, as you said, the war in Iraq and wanting to bring the troops home is a 70% issue. It's not a marginal issue. But the minute you identify it as something on the left, then you identify something else as something on the right. And the solution is supposed to be in the middle. And as Bloomberg actually said in the speech he gave in Los Angeles the night after he was here with you, he said that bridging the divide, the partisan divide, does not mean splitting the difference. You know, splitting the difference is not the way to lead. You know, there are issues that are unequivocally right. When Abraham Lincoln took the lead on slavery, he wasn't arguing that on the one hand there are those of us who oppose slavery, and on the other hand there are those who are in favor of slavery. And let's split the difference. You know, in the same way you had people on global warming, right? On the one hand there are those who believe in global warming, and on the other hand there are those who don't believe in global warming. Let's split the difference. That's not how progress happens. There are positions which are unequivocally right. And so our effort as leaders in any sphere should be to create a consensus to move the country in that direction, rather than some kind of false bipartisanship of splitting the difference. So that's a very important kind of philosophical attitude in the way we approach our coverage of politics in the Huffington Post.

Willow, do you have anything to add on that because you covered so many issues over your time?

Well, more than it's not the way we run, it's not the mark of a true leader isn't one that splits the difference. And I think part of what we crave right now in our politicians is true leadership. And unlike Arianna, I tend to be politically much more quiet.

But what is great is while we're answering the other two questions here, I'd love Willard to ask you a question that you can be thinking about, especially the women here that we can actually also bring up before we end. So would you? Well, what we hope to get the.

Chance to do is hear a little bit from you about the ways in which Zarion mentioned to you the Huffington Post has expanded into these other content areas. And I'm spending a lot of my time working on lifestyles coverage in what's called our Living now vertical. And I'm really curious to hear from all of you how you use the Internet not just for news but for other information. What stuff you go to the web for, what sites you love visiting, what conversations are you having, web based conversations around what issues. And if anybody's seen the site specific references would be great. So I would love to talk to you. I don't want to interfere with these questions, but I would love to hear that from all of you.

And one suggestion, if people can ruminate on that, if people, I think men or women have thoughts on this, we'll probably break in about 10 minutes when we're done with questions and Arianna is going to sign books and maybe people are interested in we can form a virtual focus group for you right here. We'd like a couple people to volunteer to spend some time answering the question.

Great. And also that would be perfect. And also if some of you think about it later after we are gone, we'd love to hear from you. My email address is very easy. It's arianahaffingtonpost.com and that's Willow at Haffinton post.

Are we not? We're not recruiting bloggers while we're here.

Oh yes, we're definitely recruiting bloggers too. If anybody here wants to blog on the Huffington Post or you have your own blog and you want to cross post things, we have about 70% original content in terms of our blog and 30% cross posting, which we really love. So please let us know. Or if you want to be on our blog Raw, let us know. We absolutely would love that.

Hello. Thank you for being here today. I have a question from Ian and Ian would like to know, regardless of which party wins the White House in 2008, do you think any elements of the Roe Bush political style will be present or continue?

Any elements of the Bush political style? Political style as opposed to political team. Right. Political style. I mean, I think the way to define George Bush's political style for me is I suppose the kind of John Wayne Wild west with me or you're with me or you're my enemy, staying the course even if you're going over the cliff. Fanatical style. I wrote a book before I wrote this book on fearlessness that I called fanatics and fools and fanatics were the Bush Republicans who basically ignored the evidence. I think that is for me what is so stunning, especially with people like you here who deal with data and evidence. There is evidence that cannot be ignored and yet it has been consistently ignored on many issues, especially of course the war in Iraq. So I would say that's their style. And I sincerely hope that whoever wins the White House, that style does not survive. But then the fools that I wrote about in that book were the Democrats who allowed the fanatics to prevail because throughout history, fanaticism prevails when fools enable it. After all, we went to war when Congress was controlled by Democrats. So we can now, we can never forget the fact that it wouldn't have happened if Democrats had not enabled it. Often out of fear. Again, fear is the most dangerous emotion in politics. Fear of losing, fear of being marginalized. That stopped our political leaders from really seeing and speaking the truth. Thank you.

So my question is about Paul, who's a candidate for Republicans, and I guess he knows a libertarian background. He ran for president in 1998, another libertarian today. But my question is about the disparity between his apparent popularity on the Internet versus his popularity offline. And especially. I was wondering if you had opinions or thoughts about this varying and political flex. What's the source of it?

Well, actually, you're raising a very important point about the nature of the coverage of campaigns. Campaigns are covered like a horse race. And so it's all about who is up, who is down, who is tracking well, who is not. And as a result, candidates who are not in the first year not as well covered, but also major issues that other candidates represent are not covered. And that's why, in fact, yesterday we announced the name of a new project we are launching at the Huffington Post that we are calling offthebus.net because the political reporters who are covering campaigns are on the bus, both literally and metaphorically. They are. They are sort of trading axes. You know, it's all about who are they talking to? And very often they're talking to each other. You know, I was in New Hampshire covering the debates for CNN and the Huffington Post at the beginning of this month, and it was fascinating. You know, at the end of each debate, we would all go to the Radisson Hotel and stay at the bar until 2 in the morning talking to each other. So, you know, by the end of it, we're all kind of saying the same thing. This is kind of what reinforces the conventional wisdom. And so that's why we are asking, and again, we'd love you to participate in this project. We are asking citizen journalists to cover campaigns. We want hundreds of people to get off the bus and send us reporting on any of the campaigns they're interested in. And it will be very transparent. Like each citizen journalist's bio and interest will be on the site so that if you are an Obama supporter, a Hillary supporter, and you are covering a campaign, that will be obvious. So you don't have to be pretending that you are objective. You know, the pretense of objectivity. And that way we hope to be getting some really interesting coverage different than what we are getting from the mainstream media. We are starting in the middle of July. Again, if you are Interested, go to offthebus.net which is at the moment really a placeholder for the site. But you can go there and sign up and tell us which campaign you are interested in covering. And we want to again provide fresh eyes and fresh perspectives on how campaigns are covered.

I believe you may get the honor of the last question.

My question binds the image of women children bear with me as it kind.

Of just pulls together.

I have two children, both under 10, a boy and a girl and they're very much a boy and a girl from the stereotype perspective. And my question is kind of about how from my perspective of as a parent that I see the Internet as kind of like I think of as balkanizing images or ideas in that if you are very into one style or trend or very into one political point of view, it's very easy to just focus in and get involved only with blogs or websites specific to that. And as I see my daughter kind of maturing now. And so for example, she really loves Barbie.com and we'll spend all of our time on that. And I am being a very hands off parent in terms of trying not to steer her towards one preconception of herself for the world versus another. But curious especially Willow given it sounds like you have two children in a similar kind of period in their lives and with similar influences as to how you see the Internet shaping specifically a young woman's view of the themselves and then the world. And you know how.

I was asking Willow if she wanted to talk about her experience of having boys and I have two girls as I mentioned, and I noticed that, you know, you're right, they obsess with certain sites and then they kind of abandon them and they move on to something else. And so it's part of the explanation exploration that probably would have happened even before the Internet had been invented, but which now is much more. It's faster and it's more addictive maybe, but then you move on. I don't think that a lot of these at that level of I don't know how old your kids are, but seven. Okay.

I mean it's actually interesting watching my littler one boy who would happily go who is learning how to do math on espn.com Mommy is 53 beating are the Lakers beating the Cavs is 53 bigger than 46. I mean truly, that's what's going on. What's also interesting to see is it is a common language for boys and girls at that young age, as it is for my 8 year old. So at these particular stages, I actually see them finding more common ground when they can't. When one's not going to play Barbies and the other's not going to play trucks. They can play club, go on to Club Penguin together. But one of the things when I was researching my book that I discovered was a man named David Walsh of the Media Family Studies center, and he has this concept of a managed media diet that you actually manage your children's media diet, whether it's screen time really of all sorts, in the same way you would have a healthy diet of food, you don't sort of criminalize certain foods, but you really aim for setting appropriate limits and helping teaching them, number one, how to persist their curiosity, which is what you were speaking to, which is so great about the web. They can follow that curiosity as far as it takes them until the parental controls kick in. Had those issues very early on in our computer life as well. But again, it both allows for curiosity but also sets some real limits and encourages, frankly, a breath of other activities, which I think as a parent is also a significant concern.

So please join me in thanking our guests for being here. Thanks to all of you for your.