Transcripts For CSPAN2 Author Discussion On Science History

CSPAN2 Author Discussion On Science History July 14, 2024

Next from the 2019 Los Angeles Times festival of books a panel on science history, this is just over an hour. Oi we are going to get started here. Welcome everyone, this is the scientific look at the elements that create our world. Thank you everyone for coming especially at 430 when i know it is no nap time. I was one of the judges on Los Angeles Times science and Technology Book price. Its wonderful to get to read so many books and have a conversation with these folks here today. We will get started and its just a couple of reminders please silence your cell phones in a personal recording of sessions is not allowed. All of our lovely offers will be available for signing books over here in the other room through the doors. I will introduce the panelist and then have a conversation and then you guys can ask questions. I will start here with thomas hager, the awardwinning author on the history of science and medicine including the demons under the microscope, a courtesy professor of journalism and communication at the university of oregon. Next to him is marsha, her book mindfulness, she is a professor of geology and environmental studies at Lawrence University at appleton u wisconsin where se said it is still snowing. You guys are lucky. She is the author of the autobiography of the earth in a intruding writer for the technology log and usually writes the near time. Next to her is george, her book is nine times. Shes the author of the big necessity 90 of everything, her journalism has been published in the near time, scientific americans, the guardian among other publications and she lives in york shiremo england. She wins a prize for having come the farthest i think. [laughter] next to rosas vans advisor, his book is the world in a grain. All about fans, hes an Award Winning journalist. He gets the award for coming the shortest distance because he lives in los angeles. I just wanted toes get started y talking about all of these books are about and adamant objects. They function like characters in your book. I was wondering if you guys could talk about how you chose these characters because they have to be very flexible and had to be like orlando where they travel through time and i was also wondering if you considered characters. My book is called ten drugs, and involves ten drugs. [laughter] more or less. I had ten characters to choose from. And actually what to choose when you write books is always a difficult question for me. My editor came to me with this project, a very talented guy, he wanted to do a certain kind of book and i wanted to do a different book and we went back and forth. What he wanted at the beginning sounded more like a greatest hits list of the ten biggest drugs like the best known drugs, but i happen to know a lot of those already had books written about them. I wanted to dong something that was surprising on one hand and i wanted to do things that had not been done indepth. And i wanted to do something that involves good stories. Because they write nonfiction for a broad audience. When youre writing about science for a broad audience many may not know a lot of science you want good story to tell and bring readers through which could be tough material. I chos chose based on what i fod interesting personally and what i thought the entertainment value wouldlu be. With those things in mind the ten drugs also tell a larger story about the development of medicine and they did that way as well. It was a chess game, moving pieces around marsha, i spent a lot of time at the company. I didnt have many other choices. And to me they are characters. They have deep Amazing Stories to tell and i spent a lot s of my adult life trained to learn their strange and technically, located linguist. And i think a big part of her problem in society both environmentally, i would argue is not seen the Natural World is something that the agency in character. So to me, learning the names of things is the beginning of having a more intimate relationship with the Natural World and thats a start of a cultural shift. [inaudible] [inaudible] they are absolutely delighted that anybody shows any interest. [laughter] so it becomesn very easy and sanitation for example they also have to develop quite a good sense of humor and perfect for me. But blood was different because there were so many people who were watching and 70 medical, scientist and is very difficult to triage. [laughter] and again, like thomas said, a lot of it was personal interest and one of the secrets of writing books is no proposal looks nothing like your finishing book. Organically mi change along the way to readng a sentence and thn a journal article and for example one of my favorite characters is gina vaughn who they talk about and she was writing a very good book about blood and there is otto named after her. And mike really how did you get a bottle named after you. It is just accidental happenstance and lock really. Look comes intoea a. I second that. I actually had a lot of trouble with that. This is the first book ive written and ive been writing magazine stories for many years and like rose i am a writer, im a journalist i am not any kind of real scientist but wound up writing about science and especially in the magazine game, your editors are always leaning defined in narrative and human characters who are doing some exciting thing and you use that as an excuse to talk about the larger technological or opolitical issue. I wondered during this book which is in large part about the different ways that our civilization depends on sand. Concrete is made of sand, glass is made of sand, silken ships are made out of sand. All these things that are interesting in themselves but they are disconnected. And i spent a longg time trying to figure out, who will carry me through this, i have to find a story and find one person, a researcher, builder or something so i tell that dramatic story and have them pull it together. Nobody makes microchips and makes concrete and builds artificial land. So i was really stuck on that for a while and i read an essay by delma kevin who probably some of you guys have heard about, he is a grade under great food writer. Anyway he writes a lot about food and one of the things that he said, he addressed the exact question editors are saying find a person, find a character and i feel like processes can be a character in objects can be a character. He does follow the character. A standard self is a character. And then i had to figure out how to expand that to fit the book and the metaphor that i came upp with the hold the book together i hope. Its stand as an army. Because we have concrete, that is the main thing that we use sand four. Those are the foot soldiers in the millions and billions. In glass sand and refined sands, theres a special force all the way to the per silken ships its really rare to find sand. I start to sound a lot more interesting plain oldg sand. One thing interesting that i did not know before is that we are running out of sand. You want to explain the and how thats even possible. Do i ever. [laughter] so here is the thing about sand, it sounds like the most boring thing in the world but is the most important solid substance on her earth. Our civilization depends on it. Number one its what concrete is made up, the building youre sitting in the inter city, every Shopping Center or apartment block built anywhere in the world is made partly with concrete which is mostly just sand stuck together and every piece of glass is melted down sand. But first and foremost and by far most important, we are using concrete, just unbelievable amounts of concrete to build cities and were building cities around the world especially with the t developing world on a piee and scale that is never happened remotely before. We are using theres a lot of sand in the world obviously but because there are more and more people in this world all the time and more and more the move into cities all the time, were adding the equivalent of eight new york citys to y the plaintf everplaneevery year. We are putting down thatir much concrete and adding that much to the plane every single c t year. We are using about ng50 billion tons of sand every year. When youre talking about amounts that large, sooner or later you start to run out and that is what is starting to happen. There is so much demand for sand that we are stripping riverbeds and beaches all over the world causing massive environmental damage to get epicene we need in some places its gone so bad that the black market has taken anover organized crime with the sand business and hundreds of people have been murdered over sand of all things. One thing that was interesting to think about sand running out, what was interesting about a lot of these, you talk about the modern moment, ways to talk about our modern moment in a the fact that now that we live in, then out of concrete buildings, highways and everything has not always been the case. One thing that wasasay interestg about marcias book the argument about the way that we interact with the past and the present and the future in her book is called kind fullness. I hope you can explain what you mean by that concept. I claim the term i think as a deliberate counterpoint to timelessness. Which is something we think we should expire to which is outside the realm of time but theres ultimately a steer id, everything has a past and evolves and is more interesting because of the history and that is the way geologist see the world and think. One metaphor i use is that of an obsessed text, when people do not exist in most writing was done on parchment was expected thing to produce instead of just throwing a document away it would be scraped off and reinked. But underneath there is vestiges of older writing remaining in thats way geologist see the rock and landscape in their complex in which the past is very much present and can be read when one learns to read that. The idea and s understanding how things came to be is what i intended in the think for most geologists, the vast explanatory power is what attracted us too the field, i sometimes say its the etymology of the world. If theres something satisfying about being able to look out and understand how they came to be is not an arbitrary thing. The thing that blew my mind was how the himalayans were created and how short a time it was and you want to tell this story and put it in perspective . When one sees the earth over geologic time you see it is very much alive or dynamic and changing. One of the most remarkable things about this planet is how the titanic process driven from the internal heat in the earth, radioactive is still going on in the heat of the earth are almost matched with the external process of erosion. The case of the himalaya what is under which is the greatest moan built on the planet today. Which is a subcontinent of india and subjective partly beneath asia, the mountains are raising erosion is carrying them down nearlydo as fast in the erosionf the himalaya over the last 50 million years is lying on tho ocean floor into great submarine fans that wall out over the floor of the ocean for thousands of kilometers and represent a me material than modern mountains. They are growing and being eroded and metaphor, the analogy i use is exhibit a sitting in the barber chair the hair is growing as fast as the barber can cut it. There is more clippings on the ground then on the head which was a pretty interesting thing. And i dont know if you drove over the onetoone in melrose bridge but he was talking about looking at the crooks withh caltrans. Maybe you can forgot the rest of her audience. One more thing to worry about. [laughter] all the concrete our world is buildup is breaking down. Concrete turned into new material and i had annoyed you but its about the last 100 years that weve been using reinforced concrete to build all the stuff. Before that it was bricks and timber and more traditional building methods and concrete just revolutionized building and its so easy to work with, cheap to make and as we all know it has taken over the world. The problem, it does not last, it looks like stone but not nearly as durable as stone particularly if its not wellmade. So basically, all of the concrete in the world is going to need to be replaced within the next 50 100 years. [laughter] think about that for a Second Period in the book i went out with caltrans, the folks who managed the highways and navy team of people who do nothing but go around and check on elevated roadways and they are constantly playing catchup because if you driven around l. A. , you know. Things are falling apart, for love cracks, potholes and nobody wants to put money in to fix them. There is not a political lorry and patching cracks. So its a really big problem and especially in the developing world like china where the notorious for putting up building cities an incredibly fast rate but using shoddy methods. We are talking about billions and billionsli of concrete, countless building and runway and anything you can think of that is breaking down and will need to be replaced. We are already running short and doing environmental damage to heild the world we are building and pretty soon like the next 5o come up with that much again. Cannot add to the bad news briefly. [laughter] the other component cement is from limestone which is Calcium Carbonate which has to be heated so it gives off co2 and second to fossil fuel burning concrete production is a second after dinner to greenhouse gas. I thought it was the third tag us . All fossil fuels combined and then concrete. It is really that. [laughter] i think thats the point of r general theme of double edged sword. A lot of science books about progress in a lot of ways. There are things to make us better as society or more in advance. A lot of time is spent of how well the progress in the negative unintended consequent this. So rose i was thinking, would you tell story about plasma in the hemophiliacs . Im really interested in the progress as we say in england. [laughter] so one of the things is very interested in the blood supply in the industrialized world camn about. Which is when an extremely astonishing thing and we have something that is pretty mino the states giving transfusion or giving away blood. Many people are giving away a blood that they will never meet for no money. Its an interesting business model. The u. S. Does Everything Different we saw in the u. S. What happened after the Second World War after the blood supply, giving your blood for free and expecting nothing in return, there was a fork in the road and because what happened, your blood if you let it sit the red blood will sink to the bottom and the top you get yellow which is plasma. And it does not look like much but asai it contains lots of vey useful proteins and things that can be turned in to lucrative. In the u. S. What happened the plasma industry grew up and convince people even though it was considered to sell your blood, you cannot s actually sel it, is not accepted anymore. But you can sell your plasma. In the u. S. You can sell your plasma twice a week which is the most frequent level which is allowed in the entire world no one else makes advisable. Im not going to say safe. In the u. S. Has been called the opec of plasma. So the u. S. Supplies the world 80 of the world plasma around the world and this is not usually plasma transfusion. Its very useful if yo you havea booklet. One of the things that was made in the 1970s which was an absolute resolution for people who have hemophilia where you have a genetic defect where youf blood cannot clock. It does not mean you cut yourself shaving and bleed to death, your internal blade an extremely painful and agonizing and crippling. Also used to be fatal eary on in life. But then as thing came about discovered in plasma which was called factor eight. Enable lead to clot. It was an extremely magical product. Most people with hemophilia suddenly theyve been forced when they would leave it have to go to the hospital for weeks on end. They were in agony and their treatment was very difficult. Suddenly this thing called factor came about. They could treat themselves at if you look on youtube, there are videos of kids injecting this stuff with big grins on their face and magical, its really transformed lives around the world as we know now what it also did is gave thousands upon thousands, millions around the world hiv and hepatitis as well, so the trouble is that plasma, to get enough plasma, you need tens of thousands because it is filtered and concentrated. In the 1970s in the u. S. , it was still a good idea to get this for example. There was one person where they would come into the centers and give them money and packages whatever. Andd also, plasma was sold by people but for maybe on skid row. They were given money, and of course the reason they think of the voluntary play is because if you think of someone paying for blood or plasma and they may be encouraged not to tell you the truth of how healthy they are feeling because they want money for the next dose. So, it is a terrible consequence around the world. Thousands died. For example, if the college and the uk that was specifically really horrific death toll, and england and the uk that some companies, lots of Big Companies controlled plasma industry, and they used it but they didnt start being strategic for two years and sending out a tainted product around the world. It was exporte is exported to fg kong, canada, and people died because of this business decision. N decision. With absolute glee a business decision area debated and once empty shelves. They wanted to get rid of the products on their shelves. Soy it was a shameful episode in history and a terrible, terrible warping of what was a wonderful, scientific progress for science. And still ongoing people are still dying and being sued. The uk is only just sent over an inquiry, a decent inquiry. In the u. S. T its been that wa. [laughter] canada sets up a really comprehensive inquiry that overturned and fired people that have been running the blood supply and revolutionized. If ongoing and pretty shameful. In your book, you had a lot of stories about the doubleedged sword, although maybe it also if antibiotics at a slightly happier ending. It seemed like there was a little more progress made. You know that story about plasma is so reminiscent of every story ive ever heard about any drug ever. [laughter] because, you know, its happened so often a new drug gets introduced, and everybody, the Drug Companies put out this marketing and advertising in the case of forprofit pharmaceutical development. You get this wave of enthusiasm as the new wonder drug thats going to solveve everybodys problem. And there is a honeymoon period during which sales skyrocket, and then it all comes down to earth. As the negative reports of side effects start to come in and the newspaper people and media find out actually t

© 2025 Vimarsana