The bottom of your window and we will get to as many as we can. Second, we encourage everyone to purchase the book the next grade migration which you can do in the chat that i just posted. So with that science journalist and prizewinning author with human rights has appeared in the new york times, wall street journal and Current Affairs among many others. Also featured with her talk to the reasons why we still havent gotten rid of malaria. Other books including fever and pandemic. Tonight she talks about her next book that has an indepth overview of migration and the negative responses it provokes. In that response to environmental change it makes the case that migration is not to see on a source of fear but hope. Without further ado. Hello everyone. Thank you for joining us tonigh tonight. I wish i could see you in person. And the background of when i came to write this book, my last book was called pandemic. And before that i had which in other books about malaria and other aspects of Global Health specifically on contagion. So i finished writing in 2015 right around the time of the migrant crisis in the mediterranean when all thes people leaving syria and afghanistan running away from bombings and beheadings and trying to get up into europe and many were stuck in refugee camps and Detention Centers they were closing their borders. Having written a lot how microbes and animals and people moving around can be disruptiv disruptive, i went to greece to report on what i heard everybody calling the migrant crisis. These are people fleeing places for vaccination campaigns had failed or collapsed we were moving into the parts of the world with that different status. So all of this Mass Movement of people will trigger disease outbreaks. Went to greece to do reporting on that and doing an interview with a physician with the doctor without borders position and said what are the worst effects of the migrant crisis. He stopped and said there is no migrant crisis. I was quite puzzled and said there is all this time all ten people are dying and drowning and stuck in refugee camps and everyone is upset. Then what is happening . He said is not a crisis of migration because there are plenty of jobs for these people they wanted to take them. There is capacity to house and there is accommodation. Its probably better for them if they move. It may contribute to the resilience of the society that they left behind. Maybe they contribute to our society. The crisis is not big on dash of migration but reception. I had not asked those questions he was talking about. I reflectively decided there is a migration there must be a crisis. What i learned about the disease status there were no disease outbreaks except for the ones caused by the conditions they were kept in. They were being detained in unsanitary camps, abandoned schools and things like that and just by virtue of those conditions outbreaks of scabies and chickenpox. There had been no other outbrea outbreak. And a lot of my grades on migrants are healthier than their host populations the health the migrant effect is a wellknown phenomenon. So we started to think of migration in a new way. Why did i immediately conflate migration with crisis . This was a personal issue for m me. I am not as you know fold i am not xenophobic my parents are immigrants from india before i was born they settled in the United States that i had internalized the idea of migration as disruptive. That came out in my work. And with those disruptive effects of people on the move in the form of contagion. But even for myself with my identity i internalized my own body on the north American Continent with the act of longdistance migration , somehow is problematic and weird and exceptional and anomalous although i was born in new york city. I went to my whole life except a few years in australia. I never call myself an american it was always some kind asian, a fermentation. All the people around me tony did not quite belong. And that with people of color in this country to be asked him to say i am from new york and they will say where you really from cracks because you cant really be from new york. You are obviously an outsider or a foreigner because you dont look right. And i got the same response in india when i visited to see my relatives they would make it very clear i did not talk righ right, where the close writer eat the food right and i was alien in some way. And with that International Long distance of migration and that colored how i looked at migration i wanted to interrogate on interrogate that idea that was the spark that was the process of the boo book. I trace it back to the idea of things belonging in certain places thats what they are from. And adapted to those places. In terms of people and animals those masks we give to our kids with a camel stands for the middle east and a kangaroo for australia and the bear north america. Because the underlying idea is those animals belong in those places to such an extent they are almost one in the same. So that we and brace the history to say the catalyst hasnt moved and never will move. So now we know none of that is true. Everything belonging in a certain place back to the 18th century is a historical moment that i anchor the book around. Hes a very interesting character. And time in 18th century and polynesian parts of africa and to open up to europeans transoceanic travel. There is a wealth of biodiversity and human diversity confounded to European Society at the time. There was a big effort to figure out what are all the different species of animals , where do they come from and where do they belong . How do they get to these places . They try to answer the question. The way he answered it is wherever we found them is where they belong because for him nature is an expression of gods perfection everything is in its place where god put it. Just by the logic of that it is impossible anything would go extinct were have been moved in the past or future. He depicted nature and the world and and order that was very stable and still. And he created the economy naming thousands of species and came up with the system to classify and name creatures that we have retained to this day. It is the basis for all modern inquiry into nature and biology. So many essential fundamentals are the same even of it has changed a little bit. To also categorize humans , its a big open question 18th century European Society how did africans become so dark. They were very certain the people from asia and africa and the americas were savages not fully human or as evolved as they were. That was very problematic intellectually because they were coming out of the christian tradition and all humans in the bible descended from adam and eve in the garden of eden. So why did they have such strange practices . So he didnt tackle that question headon but said, he doesnt go into where they came from but he says very clearly that those other people are not the same. They are biologically distinct coming up at the system to classify humans. The subspecies of humans that were europeans and then a separate subspecies of yellow people that were asians and read people who are americans and black people who are africans. He gave these long latin names. And he actually said africans were maybe not even as human as the other subspecies and speculated in private papers africans could be across between a monstrous human heart humanoid something thats not even we all that he decided there is a whole other category of humanlike species that are albinos or other genetic conditions and he categorize those as one category of human monsters and he said those africans subsidies was across between them and the real humans. Its interesting to look at the basis because he didnt travel very much he was very provincial and didnt like to hear their language except for swedish or somebody spoke to him in french or any other language. He didnt like to travel or go anywhere. With a biological investigations based on specimens and that things and collections he would examine them and it is a common thing that european explorers go to different places and they would capture people and bring them back on display so they would have African Women on display to traveling exhibits and they would poke and prod these women as if they were not human and thats one of the most famous examples that i discussed in the book but the idea of people being separated to such a degree we are biologically alien from each other you raised any notion we could have migrated so the more differentiated we are less possible it becomes to imagine a history of migration in which we all started in one place and moved around. So we set the stage it was passed down onto the inquiries of biodiversity and human diversity. And in the 19 twenties scientist where racking their brains to figure out how exactly the human subspecies is different with a lot of scientific inquiry what makes africans so different . What is the biological criteria . Its very difficult because we all are the same and one human family. They put themselves out so maybe if you measure the circumference of the school and divide it to your back when you were sitting in these measurements with the bodily dimensions and try to pinpoint , this is the way they are different, none of it really worked. That was a very active area of inquiry at the time. There were huge worries among the leading scientific figures like Madison Grant the founder of the bronx zoo and osborne who was a cure reader of the American Museum of natural history, they organized Huge International conferences were scientist all over the world came together to figure out how exactly the racial groups are different and what would be the impact if we allow them to migrate. They were very worried when the era of mass migration started in the United States coming from eastern and Southern Europe and they started to come into the americas in the 19th century. Scientists thought it was biologically dangerous. Calvin coolidge said there are biological laws that prevented people who were born in different continents from mixing with each other. The president of the American PublicHealth Association said if the United States would allow immigrants to come from these other racial groups and subspecies, that could bring absolute rule into society. There was a big conference in new york about eugenics and immigration weighed be dangerous in the biological hazard and then after that conference they put all the exhibits together and shipped them off to congress for every member to look at as they would walk into their chambers. The leading scientist created a committee and drafted a policy based on cuttingedge science of facing heritage back how different people prolonged on their continent and biologically alien from each other and if they mixed it would be catastrophic and biologically hazardous for the nation. They drafted those laws and that is what became into law the 1920 immigration laws based on racial quotas that basically says no one from asia or africa could come that was in place through 19 sixties that is what shapes the face of the nation. So there were all these fears but at the same time there was underestimation about what migration is where the scale of it. One story i tell in the book is about polynesia and how in the early days of exploration james cook made it to the Remote Island in the pacific of polynesia. It took a lot of navigational prowess to get there. With the ships in the compasses and the latest so its very difficult to get to those places that he figured it out and then he was amazed to find there were people there already. Tons of people and it was already populated with the polynesian people. He could not understand that. They only have Stone Age Technology how do they get here . They could not fathom the idea that people migrated to the Remote Islands. Of course that people there said we paddled on canoes from asia and they got here and thats why we are here. So cook and the european explorers said they did not buy it that cannot be true they have Stone Age Technology. Those canoes could never do it if you travel from asia to polynesia you go against the prevailing wind and the current. There is no way they could have migrated here on their own. There is a huge conundrum. How did they get here . So in the 19 forties the norwegian explorer ended up in polynesia with the novel explanation how it must have been settled to figure out there is inertia on an ocean current from peru to polynesia and imagine that perhaps people are fishing off the coast of peru and they were sucked up in the storm and just by accident they drifted on the current all the way to polynesia. Maybe thats what happened pletter call that the accident all migration that they accidentally drifted over to polynesia and then populated the island. Of course it doesnt explain why there were the linguistic ties to Asian Countries and why they were all related to each other and a lot of things the theory did not explain. Nevertheless it became hugely popular in part because they decided to try this out he bawled a on built up also blood raft with the crew of the other norwegian scientists and they set off the coast of peru and drifted two or three weeks with sharks coming up around them, whales would look at the them, all these crazy adventures drifting. They finally did land on an outer island in polynesia and proved it. Thats what happened. He wrote a book about it. He deal on he did a documentary that won the academy award. And this really capture the worlds attention for many years. And only later in recent years we uncover the true story through archaeological and genetic and ballistic evidence that yes polynesians did come from asia and ancient times and probably use canoes but what we know now is a practice a traditional form of navigation that allows them to navigate with as much accuracy, if not more than modern technology. And a way to understand to plot a course by taking of thousands of observations a day from the behavior of fish, birds, the stars, cloud patterns, sometimes they lie down on their backs on the floor of the canoe to feel the ocean swells and from those feelings they could detect where head in land masses were out in the distance and you cannot see them. This is an amazing, amazing way of learning that took a lifetime to figure it out. Learned from your parents and passed down and a somewhat sacred practice. They never told the europeans so they say ukrainian never do thi this. You dont have these great things and in fact they did but you cannot tell them because it is secret knowledge for their own culture. Another example is a story in the book about bird migration. You think today we would understand birds are migrating all the time. But during world war ii, this is when the british started to use radar installations all up and down the coast. And they would find but then they go into better lurch and send out the fighter jets to look for oncoming enemy planes. They go out and nothing is there and they come back and the analyst says they are they are but then they just disperse one circle into another and then disappeared. It makes no sense after objects or the ornithologist at the time. To say that might be birds migrating. No bird could do that. Birds cannot fly at night. That was the conventional idea. They would crash into trees. It cannot possibly be a bird its not just the british of how the problem was a whole phenomenon the germans had this issue to find these echoes so they came up with the idea that ds must be goes dead soldiers from beyond the grave sending a signal. They called them radar angels. And then to follow some radar angels and assad to trace them back to the tree covered in starling and as they were watching they would all lift up all at once as one phenomenon together to land in the concentric circle so they finally proved it was birds migrating. There are two signs of this. With the amount of migration around us and also emphasize the negative aspects and you can see the legacy of that today where in this recent pandemic from wuhan china the First Response of many policymakers was closed down the borders. That those people in and you will be fine. And that was such a huge underestimation of the vast amount of human mobility that there is. Because by the time even before wuhan shut down 70 million left the city and had dispersed around the whole region, thousands were already carrying the virus and made it to europe and pouring into all over the United States. Meanwhile we say close the borders to repel it from china. It was a huge underestimation of the amount of mobility that we have. Animals move all around also when we underestimate that. And we over emphasize the negative impact. Even in policies so we know today 10 percent of all wild species introduced can establish themselves in the new places. Of those on the 10 percent cause problems whether economic or ecological impact . But yet at the highest levels of policymaking in the Un Convention of biological diversity that we should repel all species on the move before they could cause any problems the basically saying for that 1 percent before anything happens so it comes back to the same idea if they are moving around, its a problem. Stop it. Repel it and that affects conflation that we see to this day. But the other half of the book is how science has undermined that story. We have an idea of human migration as a treat. We walked out of africa and then stayed still for our secret little branches and tell and that ships made it much easier. And they discovered how to recover the past history of migration by looking at agency dna. And on the way and the remains are encased in i. C. E. But originally they understand you could get ancient dna and one of the hardest bones in your body around your ear so more ancient dna that is recovered and they are telling us in his story not rare and intermittent migrations once a long time ago with a long period of stillness but continuous migration. And then to go into the americas they did not just stay there i went back into asia and africa to go into the most forbidding parts of the planet not once or twice but multiple times in ancient days so multiple ways into the Tibetan Plateau