Transcripts For CSPAN2 Sonia Shah The Next Great Migration 20240712

Purchase sonias book, the next great migration and thats a way to support our author and pollic and prose. Now with that another of the way, it is my delight to welcome sonia shah, science journalist and prize winning author, he writing on science, politics and human rights appeared in the new york times, the wall street journal and Foreign Affairs among many others. Also been featured on radio ad, and ted. Com with he talk, three reasons why we still havent gotten rid of malaria and the off ore sever books including the fever and pandemic. Tonight she will be talk about will you new book, the next gravity migration, an overview of the migration and the often necktive responses. Many figures complaint the migration is destructive. She argues migration is an ancient and lifesaving response to environmental change. The back makes the case for future in which migration is nat source of fear but of hope. So, without any further adieu he is sonia. Hi, everyone. Thank you for joining us tonight. I wish i could see you in person but im glad we can do this at least. Ill tell you about the bound how i came to write this book. My last book was calledpack. Tracking containologies from cholera to he ebola and beyond and i had written other books of malaria and other aspects of global health, focusing on contagions. Of in after lace mrs. Book that came out in 2015 this is around the time of the quote up quo migrant crisis in the mediterranean when there was just all these people leaving syria and afghanistan and trying to get running away from bomb examination behavent examination strife and poverty and they were trying to get up into europe, and many of them were getting stuck in mediterranean, drown examination people were getting stuck in refugee camps and Detention Centers and European Countries are closing borders, wanted a one at a time domino effect. Having written a about how populations on the move can cause disease and microbes and animal and people moving around can be quite disrun tonight public health, i went to greece to report on the i thought whats migrant crisis, becausei thought there might be a risk of disease outbreaks, and these are people who are fleeing places where there there are different disease environments and different kinded of populations and different immune stat tuesday and i thought thought all the Mass Movement of people is surely going to trigger disease outbreaks. So i went to greece to do reporting on that, thanks to the pull pull lit pulitzer cries center which has support it me work and doing a an interview with a physician and i said something along the lives what are the worst effect on the migrant crisis in your opinion, Something Like that. And he stopped and he said, there is no migrant crisis. And i was quite puzzled and i said theres all this tumult and people are dying and drowning dg and getting stuck in refugee camps and arch is upset. What is happening if its not a migrant crisis, what is it . He said its not a crisis of migration. Because there are plenty of jobs for these people if they wanted to take them. Theres plenty of room. Theyre got a house them. Accommodations. Its probably better for them if they move. It might be might contribute to resilience of to the societies they left behind that they moved. They might contribute to our societies if they move. So, the crisis is not of migration. The crisis is of welcome, of reception. And i realized then that i hadnt really asked any of those questions that he was talking about. I had reflectively decided that if theres migration it must be some kind of crisis, and in fact what i learned about the disease status is that there were no disease joust break outbrecks except foe ones caused by the conditions the people were being kept in detained in unsanitary camps, and makeshift squats that abandoned schools and stadiums and just by virtue of those conditions there were some outbreaks of things like scabies, chickenpox, but hadnt been any other outbreaks that spread, and what i learned is that a lot of migrants actually are healthier than the host populations they enter and that is a welldocumentedphone called the healthy migrant effect. And this started me thinking but migration in a new way. I wanted to understand why did i immediately conflate migration with crisis. That was very reflexive for me. And i thing this really is a very personal issue for me, too. Im not a xenophobe. Im a duke of immigranted misfamily lived in australia for few year, my parents are immigrants from indiana who settled here in the United States before i was born. I had very much internalized the idea of migration as disruptive, and that kind of came out in my work as a journalist, as a science journalist and writing people and animals on me move in at the forms of contagion and for myself, like my identity, i have internalized the idea of my own body in place, my own body on the north american continent. The proctof this active Long Distance migration my parents undertook was somehow problematic, weird exceptional anomaly, and i thing that expressed nit the with a i would never really consider i was a full american if was born in new york city clifford ear all my life except for the few years in australia, so, i never called myself an american , just a straight american. Always some kind of american, a south asia american, asian american, permutation of an american. I think throughout my childhood id been told by people around me i didnt quite belong and this is a commoner and phones for people of color in this country that were asked, where are you from . And i would say, im from new york. Thats where i was born and i grew up there when i was little and they said no, where you really from. Because you cant really be from new york. Youre obviously an outsider. A foreigner of some kind because you dont look right, and i got the same response when i was in india with my when i visited india to see my relatives and things and they similarly would make it very clear i didnt talk right, didnt wear the clothes right, didnt eat the food right, that i was alien in some way. So i had internalized this idea i didnt belong and traced it back to that act of international Long Distance migration my parents undertook and i think that really colored how i looked at migration. So, i wanted to interrogate that idea and what is what was that was the spark that became the process that results in this book. And i traysedded back to this idea of things belonging in certain places. This idea that certain people belong in certain places. Thats where theyre from. Thats where the belong. Theyve evolved there theyve adapted to those places. And we think of that in terms of people butanals terms of animals. But also in terms of animals we have animal maps we give to kids where the camel is the middle east, and the kangaroo is australia, and the bear is north america because the underlying idea there is, those animals belong no those places. To such an extent that theyre actually almost one in the same. So, these arent specific ideas about migration but they very much embrace the history of migration because to say if the camel is from the middle east its never moved, always been there and never will move. In fact what we now know is that none of that is true. So i traced this idea of everything belonging in a certain place back to the 18th e swedish naturalist and thats historical moment, the anchor this book around and he was a very interesting character. Like a lot of naturalists at the time he was very religious, and so he saw nature as an expression of gods perfection. And so what he took this is a time in 18th century in europe where europeans were traveling as never before. They were discovering the new world, discovering polynesia, africa, the whole world was kind of opening up to europeans through transoceanic travel for the first time. There was a wealth of ofbiodivertsty that was confounding to European Society and there was a big effort to figure out what are always these things, all these different species and animals and people that look different. Where do they come from and where do the belong. Holiday did they get to these places . And lineas was tried to answer that question. The way he aned the question is to say, well, wherever we found them thats where they belong because for him of course under a is an expression of gods perfection. Everything is in it place, where god put it; so, just by the logic of that it was impossible that anything would go extinct or has moved in the past or that anything was moved in the would move in the future. He pictureed nature and a narl world and an order in nature that was very stable and very still. And he created a transportation he namedded thousands of species and came up with a system of classifying and naming creatures that we have retaped to this day. So its the basis for all of our modern incursion into nature and biology but the essentials are the same. He also categorized humans. This is a big open question in 18th century European Society. How did africans become so dark . They were very certain that people from asia and agriculture themers were savages and not fully human, not as human and evolved also they were. But that was very problematic intellectually because they were coming out of christian tradition and automatic humans in bible descended from adam and eve in the garden of eden. It that was true how did they become what were so strange looking, such strange practices they considered very up civilized and savage. So lineas didnt tackle that question head on. But he did in part. What he said is, well, he is not going to go gunpoint go into where they came from, how they got there. But he says they very clearly and came up with a very clearly that those other people are not the same as us. They are biologically distinct and he came up with a system of classifying human stanford four subspecies, subspews o humanned that were europeans and then there was a separate subspecies of yellow people who were asians, of red people who are americans, and of black people, who are africans. And he gave these long latin names. For each of these what he called subspecies and he actually said that africans were maybe not even as human also the others species. He speculated in some of his private papers that africans might be a cross between this monsterrous kind of humanoid that he called them troglodytes. Theres this whole other category of human like species that were albinos, people who genetic conditions, that he categorized he those all at one category of monsters, human monsters he called toking diets and the thought the african subspeaks was a cross between troglodytes and real humans. It was interesting back into ago into the basis of this and he actually was not somebody who traveled very much. He hardly left sweden. He didnt like to hear any other languages other than swedish and would frown if somebody spoke to him in french or wrote in french or any other language. He hated it and didnt like to travel. Didnt like to go anywhere so what he would do this is wasnt uncommon. A lot of early biological investigations were really based on specimens and dead things and collections. So he would get collections and examine them and there was at that time the common thing that european explorers would go to different places and capture people and bring them back to europe to put them on display as specimens of these other subspecies so they would have African Women on display in museums and traveling exhibits and scientists would go to exhibits and poke and prod these women as if they were not human. Like themselves. And the venus is one of most famous example is discuss in the book. This idea of people being separated, being belonging to different places to such a degree that were actually biological alien from each other really erased any motion that we any notion we could have migranted the more differentiated we are the less possible it becomes to imagine a history of migration in which we all started . One place and moved around and mixed and all of that. And so linen tax yeonmi set the station and that was passed down into our future inquiries into various questions and biodiversity and human diversity. In the 192s. Scientists were wracking their brains to figure out how exactly the human subspecies were different. Theres a lot of activity, a lot of scientific inquiry into what exactly makes africans so different from us . What are the biological criteria so we can define us different from them and it was very difficult because of course were not different. Of course we are all the same, were all of one human family but they put themselves into not trying to organize out if you measure the skull, the circumference of the skull and divide by the height from the top the skull to your back when youre sitting, they had all these different measurements they would do of your bodily dimensions and try to pin point, this is the way theyre different; and number of it really worked. But that was a very active area of inquiry at that time. And there was huge worries among the leading scientific figures in the early 20th century, the found ore bronx zoo, the American Museum of natural history, they organized huge conferences, i International Conferences where they would get scientists from all over the world together to try to figure out how exactly are all these racial groups different. And what would be the impact if we were to allow them to migrant and mix around together and they were very, very worried when the era of mass migration started in the out, when people started coming over from eastern europe, Southern Europe and all these different parts of the worked started coming into the americas, in the 19th century and a lot of scientist thought that was biologically dangerous. President Calvin Coolidge said there was biological laws that prevented people who were born in different continents from making or melding with each other. The director of the the president of the American Public Health Association in the 192s says if the United States was to allow immigrants in who came from these other racial groups, these other subspecies, that would bring absolute ruin to society. There was a big conference in new york identity race science and eugenics and immigration would we dangerous and ebiologial hard of immigration and after that conference organized by mad sis down grant and Henry Fairfield as been as worship to the put the exhibited together and shipped them off to congress and exhibited in the halls of congress for every member of congress to look at. The leading describeties who created that conference, including madison grant, created a committee and they drafted a policy that was based on the cutting e. Science of the traced the heritage back to lineas how different people belonged on different continents and were biological alien from each other and if they mixed it would be catastrophic, a biology include hazardous for the nation. And they drafted laws and that is actually what became those brought into congress, and passed and that was our 1920s immigration laws based on racial quotas and had very strict racial quotas, basically said no information can come, no one from africa can come and they were in place until the 1960s so really shaped the face of the nation. There was all this fears out immigration and underestimation but what migration is, and so the scale of it. One story i tell in the book is but the kon tiki raft. This is about polynesia and how in the early days of european exploration, james cook, captain james cook, made is way to the island in the pacific of polynesia, and it took a lot of navigational prowess to get there for him. You had big ships and had these fancy compasses and all the latest sort of devices and no how to try to navigate to very Distant Island inside the middle of the oceans, very difficult to get there. He figured out out and got there and then he was amazed to find theres people there already. Tons of people, all the islanded were already populated with polynesian people and huh couldnt understand it. He said the only have stone age technology. Hough could they have possibly gotten here, and couldnt fathom the idea that people had actually migranted to these very remote islands. And the people there of course were like, well, no, we have paddled on couldnt news, from asia and they got here and that is why were here. And cook and all of the european explorers who followed him to the polynesia said they did not buy it. That cannot be true. These people have stonage technology. Those canoes could never do it. If you travel from asia to polynesia youll be going against the prevailing winds, against the prevailing current. So theres no way they could have migranted here on their own. So there was this huge conundrum. Hough did they get sneer this is like a huge mystery, scientific midfor many decades. In 1940s a norwegian explorer end enup in polynesia and came up with a novel explanation how polynesia must have been saidded and his idea was he figured out theirs an ocean current from the coast of peru into polynesia and he imagined that perhaps if theres some people fishing or Something Like that off the coast of peru, and they got swept up a storm, and then just by accident they drifted on this current all the way to poll near should, and maybe that is what happened, and he called them this accidental migration of white gods, thats what called them. That these white gods maybe accidentally drifted over polynesia and slowly populated the island depend explain why the people of poll near should had long with sticky Asian Companies and all had similar languages. Theres a lot of things this their river did not explain. Nevertheless, it became hugely popular in part because he actually decided to try this out himself and he built a balsawood raft in peru and got a crew of three or four other young norwegian scientists and they set up from the coast of peru and drift for i think two or three weeks, i think there were sharks coming up around them and they whaled would look at them and had this had all these crazy at adventures delivering and they finally did land on some outer island in polynesia and thought we proved it. Thats what happened. That must have been what happened. And he wrote a book about it. He did a film about it. A documentary that won the academy award. The name of his raft was kon tiki and this captured the worlds attention. For many years. So only later, in recent years we uncovered the true story how to archaeological evidence, genetic evidence, et cetera, that, yes, the poll near hand sanitizers did come over from asia and in ancient times and probably used canoes. What we know is that ancient polynesians and poll nearby schappes today practice a traditional form of navigation called wayfining and allows them to navigate with as much accuracy if not more accuracy than modern western Navigational Technology and a way of understanding how to plot a course by taking thousands of observations a day phlegm the behavior of fish, behavior of birds, the stars, cloud patterns, theres sometimes when they would lie down on their backs on the floor of their canoes to feel the ocean swells and from the feeling of the ocean swells they could detect where hidden land masses were, out in the distance and couldnt see them. This is an amazing, amazing way of learning that took a lifetime to figure it out. Had to learn from your parents it it was passed down generation to generation and semi religious. Kind of a sacred practice. The polynesians never told the europeans about it and the europeans were like you dont off all that hes greet things we do and they did but they couldnt tell these outsiders because this was sacred knowledge for their own cultures. Another example is a story which i tell in the book is about bird migration and you think today that we would understand that birds are migranting all the time. We see them but in fact, during world war ii, this is when the british first started using radar installations and they had radar installations up a up and down the coast to detect enemy planes and they would find these signals would occur at night, theyd see little blips and then looked like enemy planes were coming and theyd go on red alert and send out fighter jets over the sea and look for oncoming enemy planes and nothing would be there. And theyd come back and the radar analysts would say those echos there are and then they just sort of disperserred into a circle and then another circle and then they just disappeared. Made no sense. And these were like echos of objected that were flying against the wind, at night, over the ocean, over the sea. And ornithologists said those might be birds migranting, and the military officials were just like, no, that cant mo bird could do that. Birds cant fly at night. That was the conventional idea. Biers would crash if they flew at night. The british werent the only ones with this problem itself was a foal phenomenon. German had the issue, too. And they copd figure it out and they came up with this idea that these must be echos of dead soldiers from beyond the grave. Sending a Little Signal and they called. The radar angels. And that was the explanation for many years until ornithologists followed some radar angels and saw that traced them back to a tree covered in starlings and then as they were watching they saw the starlings all lift up at once as one, as in one phenomenon together and then land on another circle of trees and in concentric circle just like the radar angels. So they finally approved it was proved it was birds migrating on the wind. Theres two side this. We minimized the amount of migration around and is we have also emphasized the negative aspect and you can see the legacy of that today where, for example in this recent pandemic where we had this outbreak of virus in would wuhan, chinese ae First Response of many policymakers, well, close down the borders, dont let those people in and then well be five. This will keep it out and that was such a huge underestimates of the vast amount of human mobility there is. Because by the time even before wuhan shut down 7 Million People had left the city and dispersed, thousands of people were already carrying the virus and made it to europe and they were pouring into all parts of the United States. Were saying lets close the border because we can repel this thing from china. And it was just a huge underestimation of the amount of mobility that we have. We have animals moving around all the time and be underestimate that, too and overemphasize the negative impact. Even in our policies. So we know today that about 10 of all wild species that are introduced into the new area actually can establish themselves in those new places. Of those, only 10 cause problems that we dont like, whether its Economic Impacts or ecological impacts or maybe impacts to human health. Were talking one percent of the species moving around into new places actually cause negative impacts of any kind at all. And yet at the highest levels of our policymaking, we in the u. N. Convention on biological diversity the stricture is we should repel all species on me move before they establish themselves and before they can cause any problems because of course its easier to do that but were basically saying for that one percent, lets throw out all the other 99 before they even before anything even happens, before we know. So comps back to the same idea of this reflexive sense if theyre moving around we need to stop it, repel it, its going to be disruptive. And its that reflexive conflation. And the other part of bike is how science has completely undermine that story. We have this idea of human migration as a tree, that we walked out of africa and then then we populated the continent stayed still in our separate little branches for millenia until the modern era of migration when planes and trains and fast ships made traveling around much easier. Scientists understand how to uncover the past history of migration by looking at ancient dna which they were never able to capture before because they would only find it when remains were incase ice or a cave but you can get ancient dna inside the bone, the hard eest boundary in your body around the ear and theres a lot more ancient dna being recovered now and theyre analyzing it and its telling us a new story and that story is one of not rare and intermittent migrations that happened once a long time ago and then a long period of stillness until the modern eara. Its telling us a story of continuous migration so people walk out of africa and win into themers and didnt just the americas, some of them went back into europe and asia and africa. People went into the most for are for forbidding parts of the planet in ancient times in ancient days so multiple with as of migration into tibet and theres not even enough oxygen to breath. Multiple waves of migration into polynesia, got into canoes and paddled out thousands of kilometers into open ocean to find tiny spendings of land they couldnt have seen for weeks. And they didnt just do it once by mistake. They did over and over again. So our history is one of continuous migration, in fact we have hardly ever been still and when we have been still its been for a short time and then we mix and move again. Were seeing the same recovery of migrations capacity among our wild species, too. Where we have seen because of gps and solar Tech Technology that scientists can track animals movements over the course of their lifetime not matter where they go which is something very new and what theyre finding is that so many of these creatures, they dont stay within the boundaries of the little habitats we decide they should stay in. The camel in the mideast, the kangaroo all of that. Theyre not there. They are moving way farther and more complex ways than ever before imagined. So records are being broken all the time. So why is this happening . I try to step back in the book and look at this Bigger Picture. Look at migration and all of its fullness, and we see how myopic our view of migration has been, then you have to wonder, we know that there are true disruptive effects of migration for sure, were very familiar with them. Of course there are. Change is hard, its disruptive. But there has to be huge benefits that have outweighed those risks over the course of our history, over the course of our evolution. Not just for us but so many other species that moving around has been what has allowed to us survive because we have evolved to do it. Didnt again and again and again. And so as were entering into this period of massive change, were entering this Climate Crisis and the habitability of the plant is being reconfigured, people have to move again, animals have to move more. Already seeing 80 of wild species are on the move right now. They are shifting their range, theyre coming up into the polls, high ore into the mountains, sync with the changing climate and the same thing we humans. More People Living in countries outside the countries of their birth than ever before. Theres more people who have been displaced from their holm at any time since the second world war. And i think our impulse is to see this as a crisis and we see that in our policymaking. As soon as migration became sort of con pick conspicuous we had 0 whole state of right wing leader who said im going to top this build a wall, pull up weapons, not allow asylum. All of these efforts to repel migration as if its something we can stop. Very much look at it as a crisis and going to solve the crisis by closing the doors 0 migration. When you look at the Bigger Picture migration is a reality. It is part of our history. And as much as we want to think of migration as a crisis, it actually could be seen in a totally different light, where migration is not the catastrophe we think it is. Sometimes its a result of crises but migration itself is the resilient response that, the adaptive response to those changes. So migration in that sense is not the crisis at all. Its the solution. Its the exact opposite of where i started from, thinking in the when i first start writing the book. Its been a wonderful time actually writing this book and putting it together. Also for me personally to understand migration in a new light has helped me understand myself in a new way, and not think of myself as sort of marginal but in fact a migrant like everybody else. Well all connect to the story of migration in some way. Part of our resilience and heritage and the human condition as we live on this dynamic plant together. So thats sort of where i kind of tried to bring the book to, to is to try to express those ideas and to tell it as a story as much as i could. So, that ill end there and i hope you have some questions and we have some time for q a. Please ask questions in the q a area on your screens we have one question that is in from bob if asks, was counts motion of americans an outgrowth of he 18inch century science you have been describing. Asks this, bowphone was a french naturalist and they had a very intense rivalry between them, and buoufons idea was it to live different. His idea was there is so much diversetive in the world because theres a gladation that hes are all gradation, these are continueus changes, there arent hard borders between us but a dynamic, continuing greg of one species into the other which he saw this is in the times when if there were any differences at all it had to be in the hierarchy. Wasnt really a concept of different categories of things that could be kind of equivalent, morally equivalent. If there was any differences at all you could see they had to be in a hierarchy and his idea was that, well, all people originated in garden of eden and probably in europe, thats what he decided. And so thats why europeaned didnt have to move very much. Just stayed around europe and thats why theyre so perfect. Other people had to move farther and also they did they encountered foreign climates that werent very well suited to them because theyre from the garden of eden and what happens is the go the cold climates or too hot climates, all the climates that were not france, singhly, he thought were negative. And so his idea of north america was that everyone had degenerated there and thats why they didnt have any good animals and they didnt have any good poetry and he had this whole theory and Thomas Jefferson was like that cant be true, and he wrote a wheel chapper in one of his books about boufons tier rye. But the their rid consider much more. Accepting of the idea of change and dynamism than lineas, lineas won the day. He won the argue. And he became the father of modern taxonmy rather than boufon. We have some molded for that the up u. N. Has a global contact that was passed a few years ago, a way to make migration safe, orderly, dignified, humane, so the idea is instead of saying, okay, i live in this country and here are my borders and im going to decide who i let in and who i dont want to let in, and if i dont want any of you people no, you cannot come. This migration is a faucet. I can turn it off and0. Thats our policy now. But what the u. N. Global contact says migration is a reality. Migration is happening whether we want it to or not. Its not something we can control. Its something that is happening. And if its that and we know that there are so many benefits to migration, as well as costs, what we should do instead of saying, well, we dont want any migrant, we only want this part or that part, pinking and choosing with should say lets manage migration. Lets manage it so that it can be safer, we can minimize the disruptive impacts and the costs of migration while maximizing the benefits, and that is going to look different in different places. Sometimes its going to mean managing the pace of migration because in a lot of places, the main issue is not that people are coming and going are but if theyre coming all at once, or really quickly, or into certain places and not other places. These are all things we can mam. Decide this where is theres capacity 0 are where theres more not enough capacity so let not lets send ore migrants to other places or we want to say, lets make the places where migrants are leaving more rye sellent to whenever changes theyre responding to and the paste can slow down. Makees ear years for migrants to have patients and documentation so we dont have this crisis where some people have documents and some dont and it spells the difference between whether you are mobile or immobile and many cases life or death. We dont have to do it that way. Theres a lot of good molteds models out there. Theres one country or marsh who that have actually adopted the Global Compact into their national laws. So, a similar question, she says, how can a welcoming migration country look like and cherish the advantage of being a place of migrants and diversity, are there positive examples. Theres probable live positive examples today and also moments in time. I think in the United States, the history has been, we have been very ambivalent but immigration. We have been excepting and some period we have innovate been and i think were still even when were doing that were looking at migration in a utilitarian way so were looking at migration of, like, too we want migrants because we need this kind of worker and so, yes, we need nose worked and let them. But were still not looking aft migration as investment we all have to make. Part of our common and shared reality that we all have to manage together. I dont think were really doing that yet. I think the whole idea of sort of National Sovereignty is its tricky. Its not to say you cant have borders and cant have sovereignty. Of course you can. People move around all the time. The other part of this issue is that we dont track migration very well. So, we only track certain kinds flows we find are problematic or wont excuse nice more refugees, Asylum Seekers and theres other mobility we dont look at. How many people are leaving our boredded, how much peeve moving within the bordered, moving from one poor country to another poor country. So, i think other a lot of migration happens peaneath be beneath our notice and its not leading to societal collapse. Its like the blood in our veins, just happening all the time and were unaware of it but it is making societies function for wild species migration is what allows ecosystems to flourish and theres whole ecosystemmed that would collapse if you didnt have wild creatures moving around, people moving around and carrying seeds around, et cetera, creating those kind of botanical scaffolding around the planet. The models out there but we have a was to go to get to a place we can have a good faith conversation about migration and a good faith effort at policymaking around it. I have a question for you. How do you account for Invasive Species and things like that . Is that something were overreacting to and should be more accepting of. I have a chapter about this and trails the history how we came to think but certain species as inviters and tied to world war ii and scientific ideas around the onslaught and invasion of europe by the germans and stuff like that. Anyway, what we know i think i mentioned earlier is that Invasive Species is certainly an issue. There are certain species that can come into a new place and can cause problems. Absolutely. And whether thats a problem that we have created because we want to grow a crop here, want to grow this agricultural plant here and this other species is coming in is a problem for us. Thats not an ecological problem but its a problem and he collapse all of the problems these species can cause together. Sometimes the problems are economic problems that, well, this novel species is coming in is going to harm our honeybees we need honeybee pollinate. Honeybees are not native. But thats fine with dont have to be moralistic and say we dont like those creatures because theyre alien, because theyre foreign. We dont like them because theyre interfering with something were trying to do and thats perfectly fair. And those disruptive impacts exist. But what im saying is that its not because of where theyre from. Only one percent only ten percent of species that above a new place establish themselves s and only ten percent of those cause problem. And thats one percent of all species on the move. 99 of them are innovate causing those problems. So, their only a small part of the overall picture. He whole way their think but species on the move if its native its good and if its alien i bad is very joust dated and even the scientist talk to in invasion biology say that. Now we have species moving into new places and do we want to call them all aliens and repel them when a wild creature is trying to survive Climate Change and moves farther north . You want to say thats an alien . No, we want to preserve biodiversity and the resilience. So we need to think about this in a whole different way. Not about where youre from. Its about what is your function is in ecosystem. How can you contribute . And i think in that part of scientific inquiry, that ideas are really changing pretty quickly. Thank you. Thats really interesting. Just had a new question come in. Since you mention thread may be less to virtually no data on migrant how do we have data points at all on other type odd migration . Individual researchers in Different Countries and doing modeling to get a better idea of the larger picture . I think thats partially it. We have better mobility data now days because of big data and you can look at cellphones and things like and that see how Much Movement there is. We are getting really exciting new data but wildlife moms and theres a website called move bank and i think its on youtube, but this is a repository that scientist have come up with where they thousands and thousand of animals theyre tracking around the globe, many of them are wearing satellite tags so you can see where theyre moving all the time, and its all being uploaded into this one data center move bank and beautiful visualizations and you can see the tracks animals that moving all around the globe. I ive visualizations of refugees and Asylum Seekers. Its very beautiful. And realy hypnotic but were piecing it together. This is challenge of writing this book. Where do you report on migration . In the end i learned migration is happening everywhere so theres not one place to go. Migrationer is everywhere. We havent wrapped our head around the total scale of migration, but its just like the human experience, were moving around all the time. Its different time scales. So putting it together is i definitely a challenge. We have one final question and it is a bit off topic, but im going to ask it anyway because it applies to your earlier books. The origin of the covid virus their person wants to know any credibility it could have come from outer space in a capsule that came back. Its very closely related to the virus the earlier sars virus so, no, i dont think theres i havent heard of any credible scientists who have theorizing it is anything other than something related to the earlier sars virus. We know where the earlier sars requires came from it came from bats and then cats and then entered humans and this is broadly happening because humans are destroying so much bat habitat. So when youve cut up down the tries that bats live in they dont just disappear and live in your backyards and farmeds and that creates swift diactions whether its trade in bats or hundreding of bats or wet markets where bats are or just casual contact with bats and so threw those new through news new way odd interacting with batted were getting bat virus spilling over into humansnot just the first sars and this one right now but al ebola and a butch of other a bunch of other viruses, rabies is the most famous one but theres a whole load of them. Great. If theres no other questions, i just want to thank you for theirs fascinating presentation. We all learned a lot tonight and a lot of think but and i encourage everybody to purchase inin the next gravity migratio and thank you so much. This is really excellent. Thank you. Thank you everyone for coming out. Nice talking to you. Good night, everyone, take care. Good night. Heres a look at some books about published this week. A look back at the light of their late grandparents, george h. W. Bush and barbara bush in everything beautiful in time. And in killing crazy horse, former fox news host bill oriley describes the conflicts between native american tribes and the United States government. And Johns Hopkins University History professor mar that martha generals clear ands the black women fight fog win their right to vote. These recently on our weekly Author Interview pam after words thoughts on what call the new face of socialism. I identify and try to diagnosis the news type over socialism, identity socialism, marriage of classic socialism and identity politics. Think of classic zone southernism has a strategy of marxian division between the rich and the boar, loosely the poor, class divide. No at the federal american socialist left the divided society is that and also a race divide, black against white, its a gender divide, male against female, its a Sexual Orientation divide, straight getting again and also an immigration divide, legal against illegal. So, one may say that while marc was trying to carve up society into two group this left is trying to slices American Society into many different across many different lines. Why . Because they think that if we divide society in these eight different ways, we can assemble a Majority Coalition of aggrieved Victim Groups that come can come together and then sort of take on everybody else. Theyre trying to get the 51 in the firm belief that democracy itself will then legitimize them looting and oppressing the other 49 . This is what they call democratic socialism. To me its a form of gangsterism. The new book is the United States of socialism. Visit our website, booktv. Org and click on the after words tab to view this and other episodes of after words. Its left labor day weekend. The discussion of the 2020 election and were live tomorrow at noon eastern with author and faith and Freedom Coalition founder ralph reed who join us on our monthly callin program in depth to discuss the influence of christians in american politics and answer your questions. Wall street journal reporters melissa corn and jennifer lev spritz many others. Find more Schedule Information at booktv. Org or check your program guide. Steve olson is a seattlebased writer and author of several books, eruption, won the Washington State book award and was named one of the