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[Assistant] Uhm, that's to say, you have to have experienced life before you can really, as it were, respond to life. Now, that, that, that sounds rather vague, but let, let's contextualize it in terms of, of Conrad's novel, Lord Jim, where that, that phrase about the destructive element originates.


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[Assistant] In Lord Jim, as you may recall, the hero is an officer on board a passenger vessel in the Indian Ocean.


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[Assistant] Now it seems that this ship's plates below the water line are about to burst and the ship, the Patna, will sink into the ocean like a stone.


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[Assistant] Now most of the passengers, their religious pilgrim- pilgrims, are doomed.


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[Assistant] It's a titanic situation. Now Jim, who's an officer,


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[Assistant] On the ship. Finds himself on deck. A lifeboat is below him. If he jumps, he will live. He, Jim, will live. But it's his duty to get the passengers off first or go down with his ship. That's what, that's what officers...


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[Assistant] Do on, on, on sinking vessels. He jumps. He doesn't know why, but he jumps. Now miraculously, and very surprisingly, this ship, the Patna, does not sink.


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[Assistant] Jim is disgraced and stripped of his master certificate by the tribunal of inquiry. And he spends the remainder of his life atoning for that one leap.


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[Assistant] He's always been a good man, nor is he by nature a coward, but until he's plunged into the destructive element, the test or the ordeal, he does not realize how hard it is to do the right thing, to live one's life properly.


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[Assistant] Now, Conrad's most enduring work over the last hundred years, as we saw in a


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[Assistant] A lecture on that work is the heart of darkness.


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[Assistant] It, it's told, the story is told with, with Jamesian subtlety as, as a story within a story. It narrates how the young Marlow, a seaman, narrator hero, who features in a number of Conrad's narratives, he's a carryover figure.


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[Assistant] Marlow is sent upriver through the Congo, which is then a Belgian colonial possession, to make contact and bring back Kurtz, the employee of a company, which is systematically looting the Congo of ivory, rubber, and whatever raw materials it can extract by whatever brutality is required.


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[Assistant] Marlow tracks down and looks into the blackness at the center of the heart-shaped African continent and thereby sees the darkness of the human condition. Kurtz transpires as wholly mad.


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[Assistant] But in the madness which is European colonialism, that in fact is, he's centrally in that lunatic asylum which we call colonialism, imperialism, the empire.


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[Assistant] And the only response which is possible if you're in that asylum is to be mad yourself.


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[Assistant] I quoted this before, but I want to quote it again because it seems to me that it leads forward to a peculiar thing which only the novel can do. That is to say, quotes.


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[Assistant] If, if one put him in front of a tribunal, as Lord Jim has put in front of a tribunal, would be a criminal. I mean, worse than that, he'd spend the rest of his life in prison if there was any justice in the world. But then, for some reason,


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[Assistant] Or not for some reason, because in fact, this is a novel, it's not, not in fact a legal process.


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[Assistant] After all, this was the expression of some sort of belief. It had candor. It had conviction. These are moral positives. It had a vibrating note of revolt in its whisper. It had the appalling face of a glimpsed truth. The strange commingling of desire and hate. What's he talking about? He's talking about


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[Assistant] Marlow says, I have remained loyal to Kurtz to the last and even beyond when a long time after I heard once more not his own voice but the echo of his magnificent eloquence thrown to me from a soul as translucently pure as a cliff of crystal. Very mysterious ending there.


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[Assistant] But what is being said here is, is something I think that can only be said in the novel. That is to say, if a historian looks at European colonialism


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[Assistant] The historian comes up with historical judgments. If the, if the moralist looks at, at that event, the moralist comes up with moral judgments. If the novelist looks at it, the novelist comes up with complexity. Kurt, the villain, is not a villain. Why not? Well, read the novel.


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[Assistant] Conrad's first tongue was not English. Neither...


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[Assistant] As it happens with English, his second tongue, that place was probably occupied by French. And his prose always seems to me to have a beautiful quality of translation. As if he's, as it were, thinking in one language and, as it were, moving it with all sorts of elegance and beauty to another language.


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[Assistant] Now, the reason that I've re-stressed Heart of Darkness


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[Assistant] Is because it's central to the evolution of what is nowadays called post-colonial fiction. Something which I think is very important and I'll be talking about in a bit.


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[Assistant] It's also been attacked of course, uh, that in fact Heart of Darkness has been attacked by virtue of its being seen as itself a racist text. We went over this with Chinua Achebe's attack on Heart of Darkness. But, it's important and


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[Assistant] To know that, to know that novels in fact change as, as history changes.


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[Assistant] Achebe himself is a Nobel Prize winner and the author of an extraordinary rewrite of Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge. Achebe's novel is called Things Fall Apart, quotation from W.B. Yeats.


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[Assistant] Uhm, and what's interesting is the way in which everything is coming together. Yeats, Hardy, Achebe, and a certain resistance, it has to be said, to Conrad.


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[Assistant] Novels, one of the difficulties, I think one of the worst things about educational systems is they tend to slice literature up as if it was salami into single text. But in fact novels are always in conversation with other novels. Poetry is always in conversation with


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[Assistant] With, with, with other poetry. Sometimes that conversation is controversy, sometimes it's influence, sometimes it's even taking a novel further.


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[Assistant] Modernism, to go back to big movements, despite the pioneer achievements of James Joyce and Virginia Woolf whom we looked at,


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[Assistant] It has its representative writers right the way through the 20th and 21st century, but it's never taken deep root in the United Kingdom as, for example, it has taken root in France or in the United States. Nor has postmodernism.


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[Assistant] The English tradition, so to call it, is that enunciated by Dr. Johnson. I rejoice to concur with a common reader. And also,


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[Assistant] A reverence for what F.R. Leavis calls the moral tradition. Now, the common reader, Dr. Johnson's...


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[Assistant] Common reader, generally what's common writing, what's writing which is comprehensible.


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[Assistant] And this moral realistic tradition has been, I think, the main thoroughfare through which English fiction has moved, English quality fiction has moved and evolved over the last century.


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[Assistant] Now one interesting compartment, once back into mansions in the great house of fiction, one interesting compartment in that tradition is the Catholic novel. Now, one has to modify that statement.


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[Assistant] There are, said George Orwell, no good Catholic novels. There are only good novels by Catholics. Now this is a very important distinction. Because in fact,


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[Assistant] What the Catholic novelist does is to bring a system of values which is very often in conflict with the, as it were, the general established system of values. The Catholic novelist is generally speaking at variance and sometimes in direct opposition to the society, the host society in which she or he finds himself.


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[Assistant] Thinking of Catholic fiction, the novelists whom one would put at the top of that particular division are Graham Greene and Evelyn Wall.


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[Assistant] And the intricate way in which Green weaves religious dilemma into his fiction is evident, for example, in a, a novel like The Heart of the Matter. It came out in the post, uh, World War II era. Uhm, when, when,


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[Assistant] Green was, I think, probably, uhm, at his most creative. Now, the echo in that, the heart of the matter,


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[Assistant] It echoes Conrad. And that again is significant. This is a novel which again is in that conversational relationship I was talking about with other fiction.


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[Assistant] Green is an avowed disciple of Conrad's, and this novel, Green's novel, Heart of the Matter, is also set in the dark continent in Sierra Leone, then a colonial possession known informally as the White Man's Grave.


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[Assistant] The heart of the matter is set in wartime, World War II. The hero Scoby is a district commissioner. It's his responsibility to uphold and administer justice. Echoes here of passage to India.


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[Assistant] He's scrupulous and a Catholic. He falls in love with a young woman who has survived a shipwreck. He's unhappily, but given his faith, indissolubly married. He can't divorce.


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[Assistant] Because he's a catholic. His personal life becomes more and more tangled and compromised.


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[Assistant] Scoby calculates that the only way he can do the right thing is to kill himself and make it seem like a natural death. And the insurance will thereby solve everyone's problems.


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[Assistant] But suicide, he knows, is the one unforgivable sin in terms of his faith. He will be doing the right thing for those he leaves behind, but damning his soul for eternity. He nonetheless kills himself.


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[Assistant] Now the narrative leaves the reader profoundly unsettled.


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[Assistant] That unsettled response is not entirely dispelled by Green's telling us a number of years later that he intended Scoby to be seen as arrogant. Just as one has to see through James' governance to the hysteric within, so we should see through the depiction of Scoby to the prig within.


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[Assistant] I'm not entirely convinced about that because in fact novelists are very reluctant usually to give you, you know, the key as in Alice in Wonderland which will open their doors. You have to find your way through if you can.


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[Assistant] Even more was as convinced and considerably more devout, I think, Catholic than, than Green. But he's also more of a satirist.


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[Assistant] As with Green, war's fictional universe is irredeemably fallen. It's hell. The world we live in is in fact hell. As Mephistopheles would say, a favorite quotation of Green's, why this is hell, nor am I out of it.


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[Assistant] But how can one, war's fiction, ask us act honorably in this world, this hellish world, this fallen world? And this is the theme of his great post-war trilogy, the Sword of Honor trilogy as it's called, which is closely autobiographical. It, it, it picks up a lot of war's own wartime experiences.


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[Assistant] It follows the career of an army officer in World War II.


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[Assistant] Red Cross, you know, pricking across the plain, realizes that all he can do is save a handful of refugees. And who knows, that may be enough in this world.


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[Assistant] In the 20th century, there are no dragons to slay, there are no great causes, only personal acts, which may perhaps make things better.


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[Assistant] Or may it enable us to hold on to what little worthwhiles has survived from the past. It's significant that one of War's pre-war novels, one of his bitterest novels, A Handful of Dust, takes its title from T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland. Because War's modern England is as bleak as that portrayed by Eliot in his poems.


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[Assistant] Brideshead, the great country house at the center of his best known work, thanks to John Mortimer's TV adaptation, is a ruin at the end of the novel.


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[Assistant] Occupied as it is by Philistines who have no idea of the grand cultural idealisms that went into Brideshead's making, its raising.


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[Assistant] The light of the chapel still burns in Brian's head, a faint glimmer of hope. Or perhaps it's merely an ironic will of the wisp that the novel leaves us wondering. Now, the wasteland is of course as dreadful


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[Assistant] The modern wasteland is as dreadful, if different in kind, in George Orwell's futuristic dystopia, 1984. A magnificently jaundiced depiction of 1948. Just transpose those two digits. In 1948, Orwell was dying of tuberculosis when he wrote this novel.


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[Assistant] Or what had seen the future and it was, it was more totalitarian than Nazi Germany or the USSR.


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[Assistant] Now, it turns out that he was wrong. Novels don't have to be historically prophetic to be powerful novels.


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[Assistant] All well identified, certain tyrannic features in the new technologies of oppression, which I think are genuinely prophetic.


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[Assistant] Notably the TV set that watches you. CCTV, we would call it. Surveillance.


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[Assistant] Imagine the future, O'Brien, the interrogator tells Winston Smith, the last man in Europe as Orwell calls him and O'Brien's victim. Imagine the future, O'Brien says.


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[Assistant] She's re-educating Winston, and picture a boot stamping on a human face forever. Now, it's very dark.


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[Assistant] There are a lot of dark sort of pictures in, in, in 20th century quality fiction.


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[Assistant] As Dark A Picture is painted by William Golding, who won his Nobel Prize.


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[Assistant] In the Lord of the Flies, which turns on its head.


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[Assistant] Ballantine's optimistic fable of 19th century colonialism, Coral Island, which school boys and school girls read for generations through the 19th and early 20th century. In Golding's novel, as in


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[Assistant] And Valentine's original novel, a party of school boys, uhm, find themselves on an idyllic island in the Indian Ocean. There's a nuclear war and their plane has gone down. There are no adults here, just them.


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[Assistant] In a few months, it's the heart of darkness all over again. Uhm, Golding also alludes to that terrible vision of human nature that Conrad gives us.


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[Assistant] What you picture in that novel is a savage's naked foot stamping on a human face forever. The children revert to savagery of the worst kind. That in fact is Golding's bleak vision.


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[Assistant] Now, the same bleak tendency is found in Anthony Burgess' vision of a youth gang dominated welfare state, got clockwork orange. Burgess, interestingly enough, is another Catholic, uhm, and in the English version of the novel, but not the American version,


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[Assistant] Uh, or Stanley Kubrick's film, the young gangster in A Clockwork Orange, Alex, is redeemed and grows up to survive the destructive element of his youthful criminality. It's a very Catholic notion of how you progress through sin to virtue. As dark but quirkier as J.G. Ballard's crash,


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[Assistant] Uh, came out in the early seventies, a fable of automobile apocalypse. The human race is crashing itself to extinction.


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[Assistant] You want to know what catastrophe is? Look at the freeways.


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[Assistant] If, as we like to say, Dickens had a late life, dark period, so has the English novel in the 20th century. As William Golding saw it, World War II secreted evil as bees secrete honey, and it would never, or not for generations, be churned out of British life.


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[Assistant] One doesn't have to agree with these novelists or with any other versions of England presented in their novels, but one cannot, I think, not be impressed.


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[Assistant] Now of course there are other, there are other moods. Comic novelists such as Kingsley Amis have been a strong counterbalancing presence. There are also as many women voices as male.


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[Assistant] The conversation novels of Ivy Compton Burnett, the dazzling intellectual designs of Iris Murdoch, the high romance of Daphne du Maurier, the high comedy of Muriel Spark, the cleverly elusive and


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[Assistant] Intertextually aware works of A.S. Byatt and the more moralistic narratives of Byatt's sister, Margaret Gravel. Any of these could supply matter for a whole lecture.


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[Assistant] But I want to finish with the writer whom I personally regard as the greatest living novelist. Is he though British? It's hard to say.


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[Assistant] Salman Rushdie was born in India, brought up in Pakistan, educated in England, rugby and Cambridge University. He now lives largely in the United States and was made a Knight of the Realm. The English Realm by Queen Elizabeth II in 2007. Rushdie is nomadic, post-colonial literature incarnate.


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[Assistant] More importantly, whatever one says about him, and a lot, much but extremely unflattering, has been said, one thing is undeniable, Salman Rushdie has made the novel matter, made it important.


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[Assistant] Rushdie made his name in 1981 with Midnight's Children. The children of that title were all born at the exact moment in 1947 when India became independent. The novel fantasizes a telepathic link which connects them.


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[Assistant] The fable evolves into a complicated and highly satirical chronicle of India's post-colonial history. The genre he's writing in is called magic realism. It borrows science fiction but has a very realistic surface. It's a mixture which works very powerfully.


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[Assistant] Now Midnight's Children is a ma-magnificent novel and fully deserves the Booker of Booker Prize that was later awarded as the finest novel of the last 25 years of the 20th century.


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[Assistant] It is another novel however, Satanic Verses, which has provoked an even more dramatic reaction.


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[Assistant] In February 1989, the Ayatollah Khomeini, in the new Islamic revolutionary state of Iran, issued a fatwa against Rushdie.


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[Assistant] What will become once written the Quran, which is described as being dictated by the prophet who had it from Allah to Salman the Persian, who for his own amusement starts making mischievous alterations to the holy text.


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[Assistant] Mahun, that's the prophet, did not notice the alterations. So there I was, there's a psalm on the Persian, actually writing the book, or rewriting anyway, polluting the word of God with my own profane language. But, good heavens, if my poor words could not be distinguished from the revelation by God's own messenger,


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[Assistant] What it said, of course, is that it is poetry, not revelation. Or put another way,


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[Assistant] With, for the devout calculator blasphemy, the holy writ is actually the work of some creative salmon.


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[Assistant] Of the same kind that will write a certain novel 1300 years later called Satanic Verses. What I would like to believe


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[Assistant] Is that Rushdie is not saying the Quran or the Bible or the Talmud are fictions. But as Lawrence put it, fiction can aspire in the hands of great novelists to be the one bright book of life. Or to repeat the assertion, fiction matters.


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[Assistant] And that he has made fiction matter so importantly, it seems to me, is Salman Rushdie's great achievement and


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[Assistant] Not just his great achievement, because he's working within a tradition, within a form, which has evolved through the century. And it seems to me that he is not just a master of English fiction, he is the best thing that English fiction has produced in the last hundred years.


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[Assistant] Nonetheless, he doesn't, it's not competitive. He in fact is part of a movement, and if he's the crest of the wave, it is a very large, powerful, and wonderful wave.


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[Assistant] Supporters of the Shinra Resistance Committee. My name is Glenn Lodbrok, a representative of Wutai's interim government.


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[Assistant] The hour is upon us, when we must rise up to confront tyranny.


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[Assistant] We recently learned that he had sanctioned the development of living weapons.


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[Assistant] Grown within the Mako reactors that provide power to your homes.


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[Assistant] And in accordance with the Seat Fire Treaty, our government sent officials to investigate. Shinra promised their full cooperation.


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[Assistant] The footage you are about to see was taken from inside one of the reactors.


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[Assistant] Friends, we do not have our enemy's military might. Nevertheless, a righteous fury burns in each of our hearts.


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[Assistant] Just listening. You've got a great voice.


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[Assistant] No idea. Haven't seen her since the fire five years ago.


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[Assistant] Well, to be fair, I wasn't the one who named her.


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[Assistant] Hey, do you remember that red bandana Fluffy always had around her neck?


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[Assistant] If we asked her nicely, I bet that head chef would take care of the kittens. I mean, can't say no to both of us right?


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[Assistant] Huh. Guess even she can tell this place is nothing like it used to be.


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[Assistant] Talk about a backhanded compliment, but I'll take it. Thanks.


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[Assistant] Playing that piano again brought back a lot of memories.


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[Assistant] I think you mean Blanca. But yeah, I hope she and the kittens are happy here.


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[Assistant] Thanks to Brilliant for supporting this episode of SciShow. Go to Brilliant.org slash SciShow to learn how you can take your STEM skills to the next level this year.


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[Assistant] We're not going to sit here and pretend that platypuses aren't weird. They're mammals, but they have a duck face, and they lay eggs, and they also have venom. Of all the weird animals that exist in the world, they're up there with the weirdest. And, by the way…


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[Assistant] They're also fluorescent. That thick, waterproof fur that reassures us that platypuses are, in fact, mammals also glows in the dark. Before you dismiss all of platypus' kind as just trying to mess with our understanding of reality, though,


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[Assistant] The fact is, this ability isn't all that weird, and might be way more common than we realize. Fluorescence refers to the ability of a material to absorb light and then re-emit it in another color. This is different from bioluminescence, which is when an animal can produce light through a chemical reaction.


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[Assistant] Lots of animals are fluorescent. Scorpions have fluorescent bodies, for example, and puffins have fluorescent markings on their beaks. But up until recently, there weren't too many mammals known to fluoresce, mostly just possums and their close marsupial relatives. Then, New World flying squirrels, which are placental mammals, were found to have a similar talent.


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[Assistant] They fluoresce pink. And in a 2020 study, researchers shown a UV flashlight at a couple of preserved platypus specimens in a museum


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[Assistant] And found them to glow a lovely shade of cyan. Scientists aren't sure why any animals, including mammals, would want to fluoresce. So far, all the fluorescent mammals we've discovered are either nocturnal or crepuscular.


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[Assistant] Meaning, active during sunrise and sunset. The diurnal, or daytime active, species we've examined don't fluoresce, meaning we day dwellers lost out on looking awesome at raves. Crepuscular animals, like the flying squirrels, are active when UV light is more intense, but visibility is otherwise poor.


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[Assistant] For platypuses, we think fluorescents might help them hide. Some of their predators use UV light to see, and fur that absorbs UV light might be harder to spot. But here's the thing.


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[Assistant] We can all agree that platypuses are mammalian oddballs, but fluorescence might not really be that weird. It's actually even possible it's common. Most of us don't go around shining blacklights at raccoons or coyotes or whatever, so there could be a bunch of fluorescent mammals right under our noses. And we've got reason to think fluorescence could be widespread.


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[Assistant] Flying squirrels are placental mammals, opossums are marsupials, and platypuses are monotremes. That's all three major groups of mammals.


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[Assistant] In evolutionary biology, when all the members of a group have a trait, we usually infer they inherited it from their common ancestor. That means mammalian fluorescence could be an ancestral trait.


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[Assistant] These animals could have evolved it separately as an example of convergent evolution. More research is needed, but we should be able to figure this out by looking at whatever genetic mechanism


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[Assistant] Makes these mammals glow. If it's the same in all mammals, that hints at it being ancestral. Convergent evolution tends to co-opt different genes to do similar jobs. But it might make sense for all mammals to have been fluorescent back in the day. You see, early mammals were nocturnal by necessity.


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[Assistant] It's pretty weird. Fluorescence is just one place where biology meets physics. And if you want to know more about how these platypuses came by their bizarre glow, you might enjoy Brilliant's course, Waves and Light. It'll teach what waves are and how they travel, from glowing critters to earthquakes. And if you want to learn even more,


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[Assistant] You're in luck, because Brilliant has loads of courses designed by leading educators and lifelong learners to help you understand the world around you. The first 200 people to sign up at Brilliant.org slash SciShow will get 20% off an annual premium subscription to Brilliant.


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[Assistant] If you'd like to start off your year right, head on over to see if Brilliant is right for you.


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[Assistant] I'm preparing myself to get something really massive.


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[Assistant] Snappers are good white fish. They taste very well. So for my kind of cooking, I love snappers.


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[Assistant] For my dessert, I'm looking at hero wings, some citrus fruit. So I'm getting some navel orange, mandarin orange, grapefruit.


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[Assistant] As soon as Chloe and I get back from toast, we see Gary, who is running the kitchen with us.


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[Assistant] Today I'm making Tumeric Snapper with Beetroot Relish.


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[Assistant] For the dessert, I'm making goat skirt with grapefruit sorbet.


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[Assistant] I'm going to start with all my dessert prep first as they need a lot of time.


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[Assistant] Giving myself about an hour for my dessert prep, so I have enough time to finish up my main and my filleting of the dishes.


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[Assistant] The first element I'm making is my biscuit crumbs. They need to go into the freezer to be set before I can pour my goat's curd in them.


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[Assistant] My biscuit base is ready in the freezer. I'm starting out with my grapefruit sorbet.


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[Assistant] And it goes into the churner for at least 45 minutes.


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[Assistant] After I use my orange, I add some sugar and bring that juice into a nice syrup. I add some orange balsam water.


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[Assistant] I add them into my goat's curd, cream and yogurt, fold it in to incorporate all the flavors together.


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[Assistant] The longer I take to finish my dessert, the less time I have for my main. And I have a lot of things to do for my main too.


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[Assistant] By myself, I'm cooking for 30 people. One main, one dessert.


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[Assistant] And I only got two and a half hours to come up with two dishes. This is massive. I'm running out of time.


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[Assistant] I heat up some orange juice and I'm adding agar to it to let it set. Uh, no pot. I pour them into a flat tray and it goes into the fridge.


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[Assistant] I am moving on with my last element. The sorbet is done. The gold skirt is done. The biscuit base is done. My jelly is setting now. So what I'm doing is my orange skirt.


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[Assistant] For my orange curd, I'm using egg yolks, sugar, orange zest and orange juice.


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[Assistant] Then I slowly cook it down to a nice thick paste.


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[Assistant] I've gone over 30 minutes of my time, which I've allocated for my dessert.


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[Assistant] I got no time to relax. I need to push myself. I need to go quickly. I need to rush. I'm starting my main element now. I got a lot of things to do. I need to quickly catch up with everything.


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[Assistant] After wasting so much of time working on my dessert, I'm starting my main.


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[Assistant] I need to fillet the fish, I need to marinate them, I need to cook them


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[Assistant] The clock is ticking away and I'm rushing as I'm feeling I'm worried the scales might go into the fish.


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[Assistant] I'm cutting away the belly section because that's where the bones are. So that I don't have to worry about deboning the fish. I'm feeling really very stressed. I need to make sure everything is ready.


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[Assistant] For my plating, I put in a nice dollop of beetroot relish with crunchy watercress.


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[Assistant] Fish over the top and dress it up with curry leaf oil and a sprinkle of curry leaf on top of the fish.


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[Assistant] Oh, I'm feeling so relieved. I was so worried that I will not be able to make it on time.


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[Assistant] I managed to finish all my elements and my food is going out now.


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[Assistant] I need to send out 30 nice looking desserts. I take out my gold skirt.


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[Assistant] I need to portion it up. So 3 cm each. Portioning up the gold skirt is slightly difficult.


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[Assistant] I need to use a ruler to make sure I'm getting equal amount of each piece.


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[Assistant] The goat skirt is not sitting nicely on the plate. Finding it hard, aren't you? Is it set or not?


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[Assistant] It doesn't look good on the plate. I'm getting really frustrated. Can't put up what I plan to put up. I don't have time for this. So I'm just doing away with the jelly.


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[Assistant] This dish is something that is typically Indian. It will remind you of India. But people think it's one of those dishes that you can make very easily. But it's, it's very, very complex. This version that I have, uh, the recipe exists everywhere online. But a lot of people still try to make it at home and they fail.


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[Assistant] So, the difference between a regular butter chicken and our take on butter chicken is it's about complex flavors, getting the blend and ratio of spices right.


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[Assistant] I took about 6 months myself to get this recipe where it is.


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[Assistant] That's a very traditional coriander and mint chutney. Yep. The texture is key here. Cannot be too watery, at the same time cannot be too thin.


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[Assistant] Good luck everybody. Your time starts now.


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[Assistant] You still have the chutney. Pickled.


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[Assistant] Ladies, I cannot wait to try that Goyla Parashikan, but that Rumali needs to go on the tawaar right now! Come on! Raise the...


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[Assistant] If I had to compare it to the one that Chloe had served, the color of the butter chicken looks slightly different.


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[Assistant] This reminds me of the texture of butter chicken that Chloe served. Looks slightly more creamier. The ratio of chicken to gravy also looks on point. The chutney looks...


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[Assistant] A little watery, I think. What about the bread? What do you think? I think it's the thinnest by far.


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[Assistant] It's been a pleasure, Gary, first of all, to set this pressure test up because we got a bit of India to Australia. And yeah, we took a very, very classic popular dish and made it more complex. And it was a delight to see all the three contestants cook it.


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[Assistant] There's a lot of chefs who, uh, who work for me and most of them don't get it right in the first go.


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[Assistant] They take a couple of weeks at least to go through the recipe and then nail it.


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[Assistant] Today, there is one person who has got it bang on target.


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[Assistant] I would actually jump the gun and say it's how exactly I would cook it. Wow. And that dish belongs to Chloe.


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[Assistant] Introduction. What goes through my mind when I hear the word no?


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[Assistant] This book is about a subject near and dear to my heart. Never giving up.


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[Assistant] Needless to say, I have a lot of experience in this area, so I feel I have some insight on the subject.


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[Assistant] I've written a number of books already, and I don't need the money, but it's a subject I feel strongly enough about to take the time to write about it.


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[Assistant] The first big no that hit me came when I was first starting out in Manhattan in the 1970s, and everyone, I mean EVERYONE, told me that it was a terrible time for real estate. Even people who were well established were saying that.


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[Assistant] What they were saying was true. The market had definitely cooled and there was no denying that fact.


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[Assistant] Even worse, there was serious talk about New York City going bankrupt.


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[Assistant] Then the federal government announced a moratorium on housing subsidies.


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[Assistant] The city had been receiving them in abundance, and suddenly, that was no more.


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[Assistant] If I'd only considered the facts, which weren't too rosy, there is no way I would have ventured into real estate. But I did. Why?


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[Assistant] Because when I hear the word no, it becomes a challenge to me.


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[Assistant] I believe the so-called impossible is actually very often possible if you're willing to work very hard and if you realize that problems can become opportunities.


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[Assistant] New York City was having problems, but maybe I could do something about those problems.


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[Assistant] That kind of attitude can give you the power to conquer obstacles and succeed in the face of long odds. I want this book to help you do just that.


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[Assistant] As I went along, I realized that every project came with its own set of major challenges and I began to learn to expect them. That was okay because I was prepared.


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[Assistant] That's another reason I'm writing Never Give Up. To let you know you should be prepared and to try to help you with the situations you might encounter.


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[Assistant] Our experiences will not be the same, but I've learned a great deal from reading about other people and history and by applying what I've learned to my own circumstances.


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[Assistant] My hope is that you will do the same, learn from my problems and experiences, and you'll do a better job of anticipating and solving your own.


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[Assistant] And remember, the way I see it, the bigger the problem, the bigger your chance for greatness.


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[Assistant] One thing I've learned is that discouragement should not be tolerated for very long. It's okay to get fed up a bit and maybe gripe for a minute or two. Personally, I like to go golfing when I'm stressed or just swing a club in my office.


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[Assistant] Of course, a lot of things are just irritating, so don't be surprised and don't overestimate them in your mind. Learn to put them in perspective. You'll see in this book how I learned to do that.


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[Assistant] Having confidence in yourself is key to being resilient and staring adversity in the face.


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[Assistant] This book is dedicated to giving you that foundation of confidence and the ability and desire to never give up. See you in the winners circle. Donald J. Trump.


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[Assistant] I had such an amazing reversal of fortune in the early 1990s that I am listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for the biggest financial turnaround in history.


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[Assistant] I don't recommend anyone aim for the same goal, but when you've been on the financial high wire, it gives you a certain perspective that might be helpful to other people.


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[Assistant] It's been said that what makes me accessible to people, aside from the apprentice showing how I operate in the business world, is that I've faced tremendous adversity. It's something just about anyone can relate to.


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[Assistant] The difference may be in the amount of zeros after the numbers, but the point is, people can relate to difficulties.


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[Assistant] I don't think anyone gets away with a challenge free life experience.


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[Assistant] As one writer described the journey of life, no one gets out of this alive.


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[Assistant] That's a bit existential, but when you're down a few billion dollars in the red, it can make you think in new dimensions.


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[Assistant] My situation in the early 1990s wasn't looking great.


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[Assistant] I had billions in loans I couldn't pay, and I had personally guaranteed 975 million of that debt. I could easily have gone bankrupt.


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[Assistant] This shouldn't surprise anyone because I'd always done things in a big way. And so it follows that my highs would be followed by a suitably low low. That was a tremendous low. The banks were after me. People avoided me.


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[Assistant] Both the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times ran front page stories on the same day, detailing my predicament and the total financial ruin that would happen any moment.


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[Assistant] The radio stations got the story and the loss of my empire was big news around the world. They were sure I was finished.


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[Assistant] It would have made a fantastic story, except that it was happening to me.


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[Assistant] That was the lowest moment I had yet encountered in my life.


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[Assistant] The phones in my office were even quiet, which had never happened before.


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[Assistant] In fact I suddenly had a lot of quiet time to think and I reviewed the situation objectively.


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[Assistant] It became clear to me that part of what got me into this situation was that I had lost my perspective and started to believe the news stories about me having the Midas touch when it came to business. In other words, I had become complacent. My momentum wasn't where it should have been.


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[Assistant] However, giving up is something that never entered my mind. Not for one second.


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[Assistant] And that's the reason I think I confounded my critics. They were trying to skewer me, but it had the opposite effect.


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[Assistant] It just made me want to make a comeback, and in a big way.


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[Assistant] I knew I could prove them wrong by being stubborn, being tenacious, and not giving in or giving up.


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[Assistant] I'm not advising you to ask for the same pressure, but know that if you're met with some setbacks, refusing to give up is probably your best strategy.


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[Assistant] What gave me this fortitude? Not sure. But being tossed aside as a has-been or a wash-up by the world press might have had something to do with it.


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[Assistant] I'd also already learned that problems are often opportunities in disguise. I began to see my situation, believe it or not, as a great opportunity.


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[Assistant] I had a big chance to show the press and my critics and enemies that I was a force to be reckoned with, not a flash in the pan success with no staying power. That's heady incentive, and that's looking at the situation positively.


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[Assistant] Then there was a turning point, and that turning point was my attitude.


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[Assistant] My accountants still remember the night they were in the conference room until all hours in the woe-is-us mode and I suddenly walked in to tell them about all the new projects I had lined up for us.


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[Assistant] There were a lot of projects and they were big deals. I was in an exuberant mood and my descriptions were colorful and optimistic.


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[Assistant] They thought I had cracked. That maybe I was beginning to hallucinate from the pressure. But I had reached a point where I knew it was time to move forward. It wasn't an act I put on. I was ready.


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[Assistant] All this financial pressure would be behind us in a short amount of time I told them. I believed it too. As it turns out that was indeed the turning point.


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[Assistant] All of us decided to focus on the solution and not the problem, right then. That's another important lesson. Focus on the solution, not the problem.


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[Assistant] It's odd, but in retrospect, I think having a near wipeout made me a better businessman, and certainly a better entrepreneur.


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[Assistant] I really had to think in out of the box ways to keep from being buried alive. I also relied on something I'd like to discuss here. Positive thinking. Believe me it works.


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[Assistant] It got me to where I am today, which is far richer and more successful than I was before the reversal started for me in the 1990s.


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[Assistant] Did I ever think I'd be in the Guinness Book of World Records? No, I am though, because of this reversal. It's a fact I'm proud of.


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[Assistant] Adversity works that way sometimes. Let it work to your advantage. Coach Trump. Make it happen in your life.


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[Assistant] A lot of success depends on how well you can handle pressure.


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[Assistant] It may seem like a hard fact of life, and it is, but there is something you can do about it.


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[Assistant] Envision yourself as victorious. Focus on that instead of your nagging doubts and fears. Focus on objective insights and solutions.


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[Assistant] Pressure can diminish and disappear when you clobber it with a positive attitude.


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[Assistant] Even if you don't feel indomitable, act that way for awhile. It helps.


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[Assistant] Chapter 2 Failure is not permanent. Wholeness and the art of the comeback.


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[Assistant] I feel strongly about the importance of wholeness.


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[Assistant] It's a combination of all the components of life that make us healthy, happy, and productive.


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[Assistant] To my mind, the opposite of wholeness is failure.


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[Assistant] If it happens, and sometimes it does, the best remedy is to move forward to realize that failure is not permanent and to immediately focus in the right direction. Ultimately, a solution will show up.


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[Assistant] Believing that a negative situation is temporary and wrong will give you the impetus to do something about it, to feel righteous and energetic about fixing it.


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[Assistant] Being unhappy and unproductive is simply not part of my game plan, and it shouldn't be part of yours either.


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[Assistant] See a situation as unacceptable as taking you away from wholeness and you will be motivated to get out of it as quickly as possible.


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[Assistant] When I had a financial setback in the early 1990s, I saw it more as an aberration from the norm than as a final sentence.


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[Assistant] I knew what it was like to be whole, and all I had to do was get back to that place.


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[Assistant] I felt that a comeback was what was expected of me, and I expected it of myself.


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[Assistant] All I had to do was take the next step and get my momentum going again, which is what I did. It didn't happen overnight, but eventually things started to sort themselves out.


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[Assistant] I've seen some people get completely swallowed up by failures. The worst thing you can do to yourself is to believe that bad luck is your do. It isn't. It's not just intelligence or luck that gets us places, it's tenacity in the face of adversity.


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[Assistant] Some people see problems as bad luck, but I don't.


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[Assistant] Problems are part of life and a big part of business. The bigger your business, the bigger your life, the bigger your problems are likely to be. Being prepared for that will save you a lot of emotional turmoil, unnecessary deliberating and even illness.


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[Assistant] I've known people who have come back not just from adversity, but from tragedy. There's adversity, and then there's tragedy.


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[Assistant] Thinking about both is a good way to get an objective view of what you may think your problems are.


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[Assistant] Your situation may be tough, but you can bet others have had far worse things to deal with.


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[Assistant] One way to pave your way for a comeback or for a first victory is to read about people who have been courageous against long odds.


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[Assistant] My guess is they felt they had an obligation to succeed, and in some cases, an obligation to survive.


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[Assistant] That's how I feel. I had the privilege of a great family and a great education and I am serious about honoring those privileges, which means expecting the best from myself.


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[Assistant] You can have the same attitude no matter what your situation or background. When failure comes your way, you must believe that you matter, that you can overcome it. And most importantly, that success is what is expected of you.


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[Assistant] You'd be surprised at what you can accomplish when that's your attitude.


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[Assistant] It's not just survival. It's not just success. It is your obligation.


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[Assistant] A sense of duty toward wholeness will go a long way toward your personal and professional success.


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[Assistant] What I learned at the time of my worst financial problems is that I was resilient, and that I had this indomitable sense of success that couldn't be taken from me no matter what the newspapers said. That brings me to another level of thought, which is faith. Faith is a bit like wisdom.


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[Assistant] People can help you along the way with it, but above all, you have to develop it yourself.


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[Assistant] Faith in yourself can prove to be a very powerful force. Work on it daily.


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[Assistant] Sometimes, when you're fighting a lonely battle, keeping yourself company with positive reinforcement and faith in yourself can be the invisible power that separates the winners from the losers. Losers give up.


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[Assistant] In summary, strive for wholeness, believe in yourself, keep your momentum at full throttle, and be strong and tough in your resilience.


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[Assistant] Don't expect anything less than that from yourself and I can assure you that success will become a permanent situation for you even when your external circumstances may not show it. Never give up.


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[Assistant] Chapter 3 The apprentice was supposed to be a big mistake.


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[Assistant] Get the best advice you can, then trust your gut.


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[Assistant] When reality shows hit the scene a few years back, I found the premise interesting but I definitely wasn't interested in doing one. Even when I had been approached multiple times to do a show, I found the ideas boring and stupid.


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[Assistant] To have cameras following me around to watch me brush my teeth, comb my hair, conduct meetings, and eat lunch at my desk seemed like an unnecessary interference. I turned them all down without a second thought.


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[Assistant] Then a couple of years later, I was asked by Les Moonves, the head of CBS Entertainment, for permission to film the live finale of Survivor at Wolman Rink in Central Park.


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[Assistant] After I renovated Wallman Rink, I took control through a long-term lease.


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[Assistant] I thought it sounded like an interesting idea, so I said yes.


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[Assistant] When I arrived to see the skating rink transformed into a jungle, I have to admit I was surprised.


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[Assistant] Then suddenly a young man appeared and introduced himself to me. It was Mark Burnett. And I told him I knew who he was so the introductions weren't necessary. Mark quickly went on to ask me for a meeting to discuss a new idea he had. I said fine.


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[Assistant] About a week later he came to my office, and after some preliminary chat, told me he had an idea for a new jungle reality show. Only, the jungle would be the canyons of New York City, and the world of big business.


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[Assistant] There would be a 13 week job interview and the winner would become my apprentice in real life. They would get a job at the Trump organization.


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[Assistant] There would also be an educational subtext which appealed to me immediately.


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[Assistant] A reality show with some substance could be a new concept for everyone. I told Mark I was interested.


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[Assistant] Then what we had to do was pitch the project to the top networks.


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[Assistant] Everyone wanted it, and they too loved the concept.


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[Assistant] We went with NBC, who also broadcasts my Miss Universe, Miss USA, and Miss Teen USA pageants. We already had a strong relationship, so that was a done deal. Now for some of the challenges.


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[Assistant] First, not one single person except Mark Burnett, an NBC, was enthusiastic about The Apprentice and my participation in it.


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[Assistant] All my advisors thought it was a risk, that it would bomb, that my credibility as a businessman would be jeopardized, that my focus would be lost, and that I was making a huge and ultimately very public mistake.


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[Assistant] When I look back, it's pretty amazing how dead set against it they were.


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[Assistant] The biggest mistake you'll ever make was a common phrase I heard. I didn't feel a lot of support.


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[Assistant] I reviewed their considerations and thought. I hope they're not right because I already told Mark Burnett I was going to do it.


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[Assistant] My gut instinct told me it was the right thing to do without consulting anybody.


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[Assistant] The next problem was that Mark Burnett told me that the most time they would need from me each week to film the show was three hours. Three hours for a primetime show. Amazingly, I believed him.


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[Assistant] When it turned into more like 30 hours, I had some concerns. Namely, I was running a huge organization, and already worked about 12 hours a day. How would I handle this?


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[Assistant] For once, I thought I'd probably overextended myself big time.


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[Assistant] What I decided to do was to take it week by week, realizing it would probably need more time initially and that I could live with that for a short time.


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[Assistant] What happened is that it gradually did become part of my daily routine, but my days were definitely longer.


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[Assistant] I adjusted, everyone adjusted, and it gave me a new form of energy as well.


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[Assistant] If you are faced with a situation that is demanding of your time, give it a chance to settle in.


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[Assistant] The week before The Apprentice aired for the first time in January 2004, I remember wondering if that would be the last week of my well-respected life.


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[Assistant] I couldn't help but think that, considering all the negative advice I'd been given, although the electric energy we seemed to capture during the shooting was strong. Was it just because it was something new for me? Was it really going to be good? What if it was a disaster? How long would it take to recover?


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[Assistant] There was a huge amount of media attention already. Having a showbomb in that environment wouldn't be easy to handle.


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[Assistant] These pre-debut thoughts were the low point for me because they were justified concerns, not just nerves or negativity.


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[Assistant] What got me through was remembering my gut instinct that said, this is a great idea, go for it.


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[Assistant] Fortunately, the show was a sensation. It became a number one show very quickly.


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[Assistant] Everyone was excited about it and so was I, but I was also relieved.


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[Assistant] It was a big chance to take. It's one thing if you're not well known and you show tanks, but if you're already famous, the sting is worse. If I hadn't decided to take the risk, go against my advisors, and do the show, none of this would have happened.


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[Assistant] One side effect is that my brand became far better known around the whole world, and there was an amazing media interest in everything I did. That's another form of free advertising.


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[Assistant] It worked to my benefit as a businessman as well.


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[Assistant] So, when I advise you to take risks, there's a reason for it.


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[Assistant] Coach Trump. Make it happen in your life.


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[Assistant] I often tell people that I listen to everyone, but the decision will ultimately be mine.


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[Assistant] That's a good way to be in life and in business. Listen to others, but never negate your own instincts.


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[Assistant] If I'd listened to everyone, The Apprentice never would have happened.


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[Assistant] We've had 6 great seasons and we're getting the tape the 7th now. It continues to be a tremendous experience for me and for everyone involved. Not bad for a big mistake.


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[Assistant] However, when you do take risks, since they won't always work out, you better make sure the upside is big.


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[Assistant] Be prepared for things that happen outside your game plan.


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[Assistant] What you might not know is that they had the best site in the city, right on the river at North Wabash, next to the landmark Wrigley building.


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[Assistant] I wanted it for my Trump International Hotel in Tower, Chicago, and I got it. It's a fantastic location, and if you visit Chicago and take the architectural boat tour of the city, you'll see what I mean.


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[Assistant] When the building comes into sight, it can take your breath away. And that's whether it's windy or not, even though it's only partially finished and won't be completed until 2009.


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[Assistant] Because of the fantastic asymmetrical shape, the building dominates the view from the Michigan Avenue Bridge and nearby West Wacker Drive.


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[Assistant] If you visit it, you'll see why we've spent so much time and effort on this building.


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[Assistant] My plan for the Chicago building began in 2000, and it was announced that it would be the world's tallest building.


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[Assistant] After the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, I had the plans scaled down.


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[Assistant] Much as I wanted to build the tallest building, I don't think making a building a potential target is a smart idea. So we changed the plan a bit. That was the beginning of a few changes in fact.


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[Assistant] We had Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill as the building's architect, and they built over 50 models before we decided on something we all liked.


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[Assistant] Then this design was further refined after comments from the Department of Planning, community groups, and architectural critics of Chicago who were a big consideration.


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[Assistant] The revisions were done in 2002 and it was approved.


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[Assistant] Later in 2004, we changed 10 floors from offices into hotel rooms and condominiums based on marketing considerations.


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[Assistant] We finally began construction on March 17, 2005, five years after I announced the project.


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[Assistant] You can see by the timeline that things don't happen overnight, even if your name is Donald Trump. This building will be a big beauty.


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[Assistant] It will be the tallest concrete structure and the second tallest building in North America after the Sears Tower.


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[Assistant] The hotel is slated to open in December 2007, with the entire building to be finished by the spring of 2009.


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[Assistant] We discovered that water had begun leaking into the building site from the Chicago River.


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[Assistant] Since the foundation was being laid below the level of the river, it was always a possibility that the old river bulkhead that was already in place wouldn't hold. However, that wasn't the problem.


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[Assistant] Water was coming in through a corner where the bulkhead and the Wabash Avenue bridge met.


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[Assistant] This could be a serious problem, so we dealt with it seriously, and it was taken care of.


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[Assistant] After a while, it is possible to take problems in stride if you have the right attitude and know what you are doing.


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[Assistant] Another element of the building that took an odd turn was the structural design.


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[Assistant] Very late in the design process as we were bidding the work, we found that there was a huge spike in the world commodity prices for steel due to industrial growth in China absorbing so much of the world's supply.


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[Assistant] We went back to the drawing board and redesigned the building as all concrete, saving several million dollars in the process and simplifying the construction logistics.


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[Assistant] About a fourth of the supports had to go down 110 feet into the limestone.


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[Assistant] So you can see that this alone was a tremendous project. We got it done and didn't make too many enemies in the process.


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[Assistant] Because each of the columns carries 14 million pounds, the support system has to be carefully and meticulously thought out and implemented.


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[Assistant] We had another problem much earlier in the game when we lost our partner, Conrad Black and the Chicago Sun-Times, to a corporate scandal and indictment. And I hope he hangs tough, he's been through a lot. We made a deal to buy out their interest in the project.


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[Assistant] More recently, we lost our architect at Skidmore, Owings and Merrill when he resigned from the company.


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[Assistant] These can be big losses, but you know what? We just dealt with them and kept moving forward. We are prepared for problems along the way, and like good soldiers, we just keep on going.


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[Assistant] As the general, I have to admit and take responsibility for the fact that things work out as they will no matter how prepared you are, but we still do our best to plan and focus, then have the resiliency to immediately regroup from setbacks.


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[Assistant] Our plans and our resolve were strong enough to continue our work without giving in to any interruptions.


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[Assistant] There are bright sides to things too. For example, we saved over a million dollars by reusing the old river bulkhead from the Sun Times building.


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[Assistant] We were pleasantly surprised to discover that we had less site cleanup because the newspaper had switched to soy-based ink from petroleum-based ink back in the 1970s.


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[Assistant] So there was much less ground pollution than we had expected.


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[Assistant] Sometimes when you start thinking about all the problems you've got, it's a good idea to focus a little on some of the positives in the situation. Coach Trump. Make it happen in your life.


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[Assistant] When things happen that might be outside the outline of your game plan, ask yourself, is this a blip? Or is it a catastrophe?


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[Assistant] We had some blips along the way with our Chicago building, and we'll probably have a couple more, but it's still been a fantastic development and experience.


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[Assistant] Will you have problems when you tackle something big? Yes. Will you let them derail you? You absolutely should not.


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[Assistant] Let your passion for your work carry you through all the setbacks they can throw at you. Be it wind, water, resignations, scandals, whatever, you can prevail. Your insurance for overcoming these perils is free. It's called never giving up.


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[Assistant] After a while, it is possible to take problems in stride if you have the right attitude and know what you are doing.


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[Assistant] Have the resilience to immediately regroup and change course if you need to after you hit a setback.


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[Assistant] Soho has been a chic neighborhood for some years now, and I waited a long time to enter it as a developer.


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[Assistant] I knew it'd be a fight to get anything going there because most of Soho is made up of low-rise buildings and is subject to strict zoning laws. I doubt if any of you would think of or refer to Soho as a manufacturing center, but for historical reasons, that's how much of it is zoned.


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[Assistant] So, building a residential structure in the locations I wanted is not permitted. However, you can build a hotel there.


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[Assistant] When I learned that, I decided to build a condominium hotel in Soho. A tall one.


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[Assistant] Soho is considered a mecca for art, film, and fashion buffs, with over 250 art galleries, 100 designer stores, and over 200 restaurants. In other words, it's a great area to visit, and an even greater area to stay.


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[Assistant] I believed Soho deserved, and was ready for, a first-rate 21st century hotel.


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[Assistant] The 45-story, 450 million dollar tower I hoped to build with my partners Bayrock Group and the Saper organization was of course met with a fury of opposition from local community activists and the politicians that represent them.


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[Assistant] I wouldn't let that stop us. I announced my intention on June 6, 2006 on The Apprentice.


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[Assistant] Despite everything that ensued on May 8th, 2007, I'm pleased to report we were approved by city officials to erect this condo hotel.


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[Assistant] Along the way, we had a few problems to deal with which was not a huge surprise. The biggest obstacle was the height of the building.


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[Assistant] Soho is a low-rise neighborhood, and this project would significantly alter the skyline.


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[Assistant] It's not that Soho isn't zoned for tall buildings. It is. But none have ever been built. We wanted to change that.


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[Assistant] There were air rights laws, the right to build higher, already in place that made it perfectly legal to build a high-rise. In fact, we added several floors to the hotel's design by buying the air rights from the neighboring properties.


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[Assistant] Although we had the right to build a hotel with the height we wanted, the fact that no one had done it before worked against us. The project was the first time New York City's department of buildings had to consider a condominium hotel in one of New York City's manufacturing districts which do not permit residential use.


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[Assistant] The city's antiquated zoning laws, and the local residents together, created formidable obstacles.


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[Assistant] New York City, unlike many other major US destination cities, had never before been confronted with a hotel comprised entirely of condominiums.


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[Assistant] The key zoning consideration for the city was that the units would not be residences for the owners but would be for transient occupancy.


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[Assistant] That meant we had to prove to the Department of Buildings that Trump Soho would not be a residential building, but a building for short-term stays. And I firmly believed we could convince the city officials of this.


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[Assistant] A condo hotel is not an apartment. It operates on the premise that the buyers have the right to use their condo units for only a certain number of days each year and when an owner is not occupying their condo hotel unit, the units get rented out as hotel rooms.


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[Assistant] It's a great setup because both the owner and the management company collect revenues.


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[Assistant] The units in Trump Soho are not designed for permanent residences, nor would an owner use his or her unit that way. The look, feel and design of a luxury hotel is far, far different than that of a residential building.


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[Assistant] We work tirelessly with the city to make our intentions clear.


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[Assistant] As expected, everyone and their cousin came after me for this. And the Greenwich Village Society for Historical Preservation called my plan a trojan horse way to sneak condos into manufacturing districts across the city. They said my motives were entirely covert.


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[Assistant] How a 45 story building can be considered a covert operation is beyond me, but you get the idea.


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[Assistant] There were demonstrations and neighborhood alliances that made it clear that I would not be receiving a warm welcome. So what else is new?


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[Assistant] Meanwhile, the silent majority of the neighborhood actually supported the project and saw it for what it is, a major attraction for tourism and business.


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[Assistant] Despite the very vocal minority, I wasn't about to be slowed down.


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[Assistant] We started excavation in 2006, even though we had not yet received approval to build above ground. Then another problem arose.


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[Assistant] In December, the excavating contractors came across some human remains that were later determined to be about a century old. We immediately and voluntarily halted work.


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[Assistant] The police arrived and the city ordered us to stop work on the lot altogether. This may not have been legal, but we agreed.


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[Assistant] We then hired a team of archaeologists to excavate and identify the remains.


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[Assistant] At this point, what we didn't need was more publicity while waiting for approval, but of course it made the news, and one director of a city preservation society quipped,


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[Assistant] In the end, and despite all of the hoopla in the press, by attacking the skeleton problem immediately and in force, we were able to get back to work within a week.


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[Assistant] Then the bloggers got going on the subject of the hotel and the discovery, and it was a big topic for a while.


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[Assistant] We were also getting many letters from citizens and societies opposing our constructing the building.


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[Assistant] There were demonstrations at the site, and the controversy went on for close to a year.


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[Assistant] Additionally, we were accused of building a 45-story target for a terrorist attack.


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[Assistant] And there was an online cartoon that had a skeleton with a comb over as an advertisement for the new building.


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[Assistant] One thing for certain is that all of New York and all New Yorkers knew I was building a new building.


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[Assistant] Someone once said I was a great promoter, but sometimes, I don't have to do a thing to get attention.


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[Assistant] The hits kept coming, and it felt like being in the eye of a hurricane, but it made us solid and stronger in our mission.


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[Assistant] At one point, someone got hold of some of our early drafts of marketing materials mentioning that the units would be a great residential opportunity, which created a political and activist firestorm.


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[Assistant] However, we stayed focused on what we wanted, to get approval.


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[Assistant] We knew we couldn't change the zoning, nor could we build under the existing zoning if the building was characterized as residential.


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[Assistant] So we were very focused on proving to the city that the building was not residential and that we could proceed within the existing zoning laws.


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[Assistant] We showed the city that we had specific constraints regarding occupancy that were very clear. My team ended up negotiating with the city for months over a six page restrictive declaration, which included many hour long sessions where the city officials would analyze and critique every comma in that document, literally.


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[Assistant] We were airtight and transparent in what was being offered.


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[Assistant] Our condo plan published everything in black and white. Nothing was hidden.


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[Assistant] As a result, we finally got approval. Our proposed building was absolutely within the zoning laws of Soho and no one could argue otherwise.


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[Assistant] My father had always said, know everything you can about what you're doing. And that's the advice I followed. Every adversity served as fuel in what had become a fight of city sized proportions.


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[Assistant] As of today, the Trump Soho project is going along beautifully. Both Don Jr. and Ivanka are working on it with me and my partners, as did Sean Yazbek, the Apprentice Season 5 winner, and Julia Schwartz of Bayrock.


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[Assistant] It's going to be a wonderful, elegant, and tasteful addition to the Soho neighborhood.


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[Assistant] There will be 25,000 square feet of commercial space that will include a top notch restaurant, a 7,500 square foot spa and a 12,000 square foot conference center. And there will be 360 degree views from the 12th floor up.


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[Assistant] It will enhance their property value for one thing, because it's going to be a beauty.


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[Assistant] Be sure to visit the famous manufacturing district of SoHo when you come to New York and take a look.


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[Assistant] Soho caused perhaps a few more problems than expected, but it was all in a year's work to us. That's big city business, and we are big enough to handle it. Be sure you have the same attitude. It will save you a lot of unnecessary anxiety. Coach Trump. Make it happen in your life. Adversity is a fact of life.


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[Assistant] Chances are that you will never wake up to an adversity-free day.


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[Assistant] Be bigger than the problems. Be ready to fight for your rights. And all will be well.


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[Assistant] The America We Deserve, which was published in 2000. But that doesn't mean I wasn't affected by what happened that day.


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[Assistant] It was an act of depravity and spiritual destitution.


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[Assistant] After the attacks, some people and companies left New York City, but I never considered moving. I'm a New Yorker and this is my home.


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[Assistant] I knew that New Yorkers are resilient, and that New York City would not only survive, but thrive, which has happened.


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[Assistant] Since then, the Trump Organization has always had an annual memorial of some sort on September 11th.


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[Assistant] The first year, we forfeited our annual Trump Organization Christmas party in order to give the funds that would normally be used for that event to charity. All of us felt it was the right thing to do, and it was.


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[Assistant] Since then, we have had a memorial in the lobby and atrium of Trump Tower each year, and I attend as do other members of the Trump Organization.


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[Assistant] In 2006 and 2007, we had the September concert perform at Trump Tower on 9-11, and it was open to the public.


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[Assistant] The September concert was founded in 2002 on the first anniversary of 9-11 with the message of peace through music. Haruko Smith, the founder.


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[Assistant] And Veronica Kelly, the vice chairman, have done an amazing job. My son Eric introduces the concert, and all of us attend.


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[Assistant] It's a meaningful celebration and a positive response to a day that shouldn't be forgotten.


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[Assistant] It takes time for us to help coordinate this event and to make the space available in our very busy building, but it is worth every minute of it.


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[Assistant] That's just one example of why it pays to never give up. You'll eventually be in a position to give back.


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[Assistant] I host many charity events at my golf courses and have the annual Red Cross ball at my Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach.


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[Assistant] These events don't just happen, they require a lot of planning, and that means time and effort, not to mention money.


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[Assistant] Owning properties is a lot more than just ownership. It's about making them useful.


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[Assistant] If you plan to go into real estate just to make money or to feel powerful, that's not enough. If you can see your gains as a way to share,


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[Assistant] You will find your work will be much more rewarding and probably more profitable in the long run.


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[Assistant] Every year we host The Salvation Army in our lobby to kick off the holiday season. This has become a tradition. A band plays, the media is there, I give a brief speech, and The Salvation Army gets some of the recognition it deserves for the great job they've been doing for so many years.


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[Assistant] This too takes a lot of time to arrange, but we do it every year.


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[Assistant] Sometimes, being a giver will open you up to new talents.


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[Assistant] Each year I donate an autographed doodle to the Doodle for Hunger auction at Tavern on the Green.


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[Assistant] It takes me a few minutes to draw something. In my case, it's usually a building or a cityscape of skyscrapers and then sign my name, but it raises thousands of dollars to help the hungry in New York through the Capuchin Food Pantries Ministry.


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[Assistant] The auction was an innovative idea that has helped many people, and I don't mind spending a little time for a very good cause. Art may not be my strong point, but the end result is help for people who need it.


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[Assistant] Believe me, those are powerful words with an equally powerful feeling to go along with them. Imagine saying that to someone yourself, because I can.


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[Assistant] It's a great feeling and it makes all the work that went into acquiring and developing those beautiful properties and buildings worth it.


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[Assistant] We've all seen bad situations that we'd like to be able to help.


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[Assistant] Being successful allows you to help in a big way. That's another reason to keep at it. Knowing you're going to be able to give back more if you succeed is a wonderful incentive to keep going. If you never give up, you'll be able to give back. And that's something to remember.


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[Assistant] Chapter 7. Expect problems, and you'll be ready when they come. Getting Trump Tower off the ground.


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[Assistant] Trump Tower was my first huge success and I will always love this building. It makes me feel great that it's now the number three tourist destination in New York City.


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[Assistant] Trump Tower has been famous for so long that most people think it's just always been here or that it just appeared one day on the midtown skyline of New York City.


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[Assistant] I can tell you that is not the case. In fact, people are always surprised to hear that I almost named it Tiffany Tower and there are many other background incidents that made the construction of this landmark building particularly challenging.


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[Assistant] If you think putting up this tower was a magical occurrence, even for a developer like me, you've got some interesting listening ahead of you, especially if you enjoy labyrinth stories.


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[Assistant] Robert Moses, a great figure in the history of New York City said something that stayed with me the entire time I was attempting to get Trump Tower started and finished. You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs.


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[Assistant] Sometimes I felt like changing it to say, you can't build a skyscraper without breaking a few heads. Nothing was easy from day one.


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[Assistant] To begin the saga, it took me almost three years to even get a response from the man who controlled the land I wanted to buy. I made calls and wrote letter after letter. I learned a lot about persistence, but I also learned that if you are passionate about something, receiving zero encouragement still won't discourage you. I just plain wouldn't give up.


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[Assistant] When the site eventually became available, I realized that my letters had helped.


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[Assistant] The site where I wanted to build Trump Tower was adjacent to Tiffany's.


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[Assistant] Further down the line, I needed to convince Tiffany's to let me buy their air rights. Their right to build a tall skyscraper on top of their store for 5 million.


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[Assistant] That would prevent anyone from being able to rip down the Tiffany's building and put up a tower that would block my views.


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[Assistant] I would be able to build a tower with soaring picture windows versus tiny ones, an aesthetic consideration that was of utmost importance.


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[Assistant] In order to get the zoning variance I needed from the city of New York, I had to know whether I'd have the air rights.


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[Assistant] The man in charge of this told me he liked my idea and my price, but that he was going on vacation for a month and would get back to me.


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[Assistant] In a month's time, I would have done a lot of zoning work as well as architectural work. And if I wasn't sure of getting the air rights, I would be wasting a lot of time and work.


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[Assistant] Fortunately for me, I was dealing with a real gentleman, Walter Hoving, and he told me that his word was good, period.


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[Assistant] In fact, he seemed insulted that I would question his decision and his word.


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[Assistant] Once in a while, but not often, you run into someone as honorable as that.


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[Assistant] Now that I had Tiffany's air rights, I needed one more parcel, which was a tiny site along 57th Street adjacent to Tiffany's.


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[Assistant] This was required by another New York City zoning regulation. You have to have a minimum of 30 feet of open space, like a rear yard behind any building.


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[Assistant] Without this piece of property, I would have had to cut the rear yard out of the building we'd already designed. It turned out that this piece of property was owned by Leonard Candell, who was as honorable as Walter Hoving.


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[Assistant] However, he didn't want to part with his land. He wasn't a seller and he wouldn't budge.


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[Assistant] Until one day I found a bonus in the paperwork for my Tiffany deal.


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[Assistant] It included a clause that gave Tiffany an option to buy the Candel property within a certain timeframe because it was adjacent to Tiffany.


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[Assistant] Maybe something could be worked out with Candel after all.


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[Assistant] By now, I realized what I was trying to do was never going to be easy.


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[Assistant] Every door required a lot of work just to get it cracked open to begin with.


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[Assistant] Robert Moses's quote would surface again in my mind, and I would just keep going.


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[Assistant] It helps to expect problems because then, in a sense, you're ready for them, and not thrown off balance. It's good to remind yourself of that, daily, if necessary.


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[Assistant] So then, I had to go back to Walter Hoving and ask him if I could buy his option on Leonard Candel's property as part of my deal with Tiffany's.


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[Assistant] However, Leonard said the option belonged to Tiffany and was not transferable. He might have been right.


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[Assistant] It was also possible that if I sued over this question I might win the right to exercise the option.


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[Assistant] So, I explained the possibility of litigation to Leonard, and in less than half an hour, we managed to make a deal that was good for both of us.


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[Assistant] I would withdraw my exercise of the option and Leonard would agree to extend my lease on his site from 20 years to 100 years which was enough time to make it financeable.


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[Assistant] Leonard and I remained friends, and I was allowed to continue on my quest to build Trump Tower.


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[Assistant] I still didn't have a final contract with Genesco, the company that owned Bondwood Teller, the store that was sitting on the property where I wanted to build Trump Tower.


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[Assistant] We'd managed to keep the whole deal completely secret and were expecting to sign contracts in a couple of months.


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[Assistant] Word began to leak out, and suddenly, Genesco was inundated with interested buyers, among them Arab investors with oil money.


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[Assistant] Not surprisingly, Genesco began to try to get out of the deal.


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[Assistant] However, I had fortunately gotten a one-page letter of intent from Jack Hannigan, who had been brought in by Genesco to save them when they were having difficulties. He had been receiving those letters I'd been writing for three years.


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[Assistant] I let Genesco know that I would litigate and hold up the sale of the Bondwood property for years if they didn't honor our deal.


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[Assistant] I wasn't even sure if the letter would be legally binding, but I could prove to be a nuisance to them if they reneged.


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[Assistant] Shortly after this, I got a call from the New York Times, who had heard that I was about to make a deal with Genesco to buy the Bonwit building.


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[Assistant] We had kept this quiet, but I realized I should take a risk, especially considering that Genesco was faltering on their side of the deal. So I told the reporter that we'd reached an agreement and I was planning on building a new tower on the Bonwits site. Therefore the store would be closed most likely in a few months.


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[Assistant] The article appeared the next morning, and I was hoping it would put some pressure on Genesco.


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[Assistant] What happened is something I hadn't counted on. As soon as the article appeared, all of Bonwit's employees went over to Bergdorf Goodman, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Bloomingdale's to hunt for new jobs. And as a result, Bonwit was having trouble running their store.


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[Assistant] Five days later, I had the contract signed with Genesco. We hadn't even gotten close to construction yet.


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[Assistant] This is a good example of the perseverance you need and some of the obstacles that can arise when you're trying to do something great.


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[Assistant] Sometimes it's hard even when you're trying to do something far smaller than a skyscraper.


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[Assistant] For those of you who think I have the Midas touch and everything comes easily,


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[Assistant] Just remember some of these episodes when you confront your own problems along the way to success. Because believe me, you will have problems. It doesn't matter if your name is Trump or not. We all experience these things. Expect it.


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[Assistant] When I look back, it was a wonderful, exhilarating experience, and every difficult moment was worth it.


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[Assistant] Chapter 8 Frequently Asked Questions


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[Assistant] I get a ton of fan mail these days, and a large percentage of it is from people asking for advice. Sometimes entire classrooms will send me their questions.


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[Assistant] I've decided to include a few of these questions with my responses.


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[Assistant] It helps if everyone has it but if a leader doesn't, he or she won't be one for very long.


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[Assistant] What are the most important steps for someone who intends to be successful?


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[Assistant] Do your homework. In other words, learn everything you can about what you want, know what you are up against, and research every aspect of your endeavor.


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[Assistant] What will distinguish the leaders of tomorrow in the real estate industry?


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[Assistant] Abraham Lincoln is one, because he was president at the most difficult time in our country's history. He was also self educated.


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[Assistant] And endured many years of adversity prior to becoming president.


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[Assistant] Another would be Winston Churchill, a leader at a pivotal time in world history, World War II. He was a great orator who inspired thousands of people with his speeches, and he won the Nobel Prize in Literature for his historical writing. 6. What is your favorite dessert? Ice cream. 7. What do you like about your job?


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[Assistant] Very rarely. I don't like breaking up my work day. It interferes with my momentum. I prefer to have something to eat at my desk, which takes maybe 5 or 10 minutes.


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[Assistant] 9. What advice do you have for someone who wants to start his own business?


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[Assistant] What if things don't work out the way we want, even if we work really hard?


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[Assistant] First of all, know that you've got a lot of company. I've waited 30 years to see some things happen. Some people have waited longer.


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[Assistant] Always consider that it's possible you might be doing the wrong thing, so that no matter how hard you work, it's just not going to happen.