Honored to bring you to our virtual programs that weve been able to shift to and looking forward to having you join us more in the coming weeks. Before we get to the subject of tonights program i just want to share a little bit about some things we have coming up, things to look forward to. More virtual programs you may be interested in joining us. Well be hosting next week a separate teach outcome anticorruption expert and former neck state attorney general candidate will be sharing her new book, break them up in a conversation. Hell be exploring the connection between bigmoney and its impact on democracy. That will be on august 11 the following week we will be hosting in a conversation with Jeffrey Toobin discussing rick felsons new book dragon which continues an exploration weve been doing of recent history of the Republican Party in that is on august 19. We are also proud to partner with the foundation on an upcoming series living kicking off on the 18th and moderator kel willis to discuss issues pertaining to bodies of women throughout time and how they continue to be spiked with contention. Look forward to hosting many more virtual programs as they come together. You can learn more about the offerings that we will have for you at our website. In just a moment ill be welcoming tonights speakers to the virtual space. This is a powerful conversation we are looking forward to tonight. Of course mercy 75th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb in hiroshima. And tonight is the 75th anniversary of the same thing happening. These are events that shaped much of the 20th century. And we will be discussing the events themselves and their immediate impact, we are also talking about the role of journalism in sharing stories with people so we could truly understand the potential of atomic warfare. The human cost and the danger that it imposed. Reflecting today on the recent passing of the legendary journalist pete hamill who else had the pleasure of hosting a few years ago. I want to share a quote of that is the work of a journalist to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. So today, and her landscape of fakeness, such a narrative of potential danger of misinformation and propaganda how journalism can help us cut through to see the truth is something that brings at all the more important. Without further do i like to welcome tonight speakers. Who are very honored and glad to have them joining us tonight. The alley joined by leslie bloom who is the author of fall out. She is a New York Times bestselling author. Her work has appeared in vanity fair, near times, wall street journal, the lawsuit journal magazine the los angeles review of books, paris reviewed daily, vogue, teen, and your bio magazine, and many, many more, shall be joining conversation by adam got nick is running for the new yorker since 1986 during his more than 30 years at the essays and personal memoirs she reviews and profiled with the much reporting from abroad with fiction humor and part criticism. As the conversation unfolds, i want to remind you that we will be taking questions for if you have any questions for speakers you can submit them via the q a box at the bottom of your scree screen. Mcginley subject of tonights discussion is all out. We had teamed up our friends at Community Bookstore space here in brooklyn if youd like to learn more about the book and possibly purchase your copy you can do so via the link that is in the chat now. Without further do, please welcome leslie and adam. Can you hear me . Civic yes loud and clear. Think you both for being here, looking forward. Thank you for hosting. They give for doing this. Thank you for this extraordinary book. The hold up hardcover. Is my second born. The hiroshima covid part and should be hiroshima or hiroshima . I mix them up and i shouldnt because it should be hiroshima. But if i lapse please forgive me. Lovely small moment in the book by publishing this damn thing i want to know how to pronounce it. He met hiroshima. And he explained you got is a hiroshima. Not hiroshima. Its an extraordinary book. Catastrophic event. But even more importantly about the coverage of that event. And how it has turned into words. They called the hiroshima coverup. She not leslie i have a very particular and im im sorry very parochial entrance in this book. The history of a new yorker the development of a new yorker. But before we get to that and the internal dynamics of the narco shape this book in many ways, what do you mean by the coverup . What was the state of play when he would off to japan to do the reporting the produces legendary peace on hiroshima which filled an entire issue of the new yorker the first time that had ever happened. Year after the bombing. The audience should now that you are sounding board for me since the very beginning. When i first started researching this project i didnt realize the extent to which coverup is can play a role in this narrative at all. But truly just wanted the back story for taoist approach these journalists the story of hiroshima has always been about outsiders. Except no one really looked at how the story in first place. I started my career nightline newsroom as a production coordinator. They make you learn how the story comes down entirely t the ground how we got in. So start looking at how arthur education nation of japan at the time started to realize just how impossible it wouldve been dead and as an independent reporters to getting their help. The more research the subject, i came across town of his administration how much he had impressed the Japanese Press in particular. The magnitude of the coverup, it has been previously by scholars never to the extent that i felt it should have been and ended up being the six stream essential to the story. One who effectively wrote it. What book are they covering up leslie in a sentence or two . Guest they seem to almost a statically advertising the light of the bomb when they had an experiment to weapon on hiroshima. It was 20000 tons of tnt. It was the biggest bomb that it ever in the history of warfare. The United Government release pictures of the mushroom clouds in the landscape devastation. But what hurt the editors to pick up on, was there was weirdly no reporting on the human toll. Nobody was happening to the human being only humans in history what people were taught. On blessedly still are to this day. Lets move then, if that was the environment and which theyve started reporting this peace. Lets talk a little bit about the new yorker in 1945. And where it was. As we have discussed many times, the new yorker was in transition at that moment when hershey began the reporting for this peace. It had changed in the course of four years of 1941 from the onset of the war of pearl harbor until the end of the war. More dramatically than it had changed and now, 90 or history, because as you write underwrote beautifully, as is been essentially a humor local reporting magazine noted for fiction still very much in the initial imprint of how it brought then the war broke out , when one editor in particular played an outside role in making the magazine take on a much more ambitious anonymous magisterial role in its reporting. And that was to william. Absolutely. These were newsmen and disguised in a way as it started as you say 20 years earlier and these humor magazines. Never at that point had any aspirations for the magazine begin a news operation but he had been a news man before that. And so had William Shawn. And as you say once pearl harbor happened, that was it. Agassi went to wartime printing right away. Album amounts to one of his editors, it could not be a humor magazine anymore because quote nothing feels funny anymore. Sue and many of the writers on hand went off to the war and found themselves as writers. It was a looker feature writer within it off and became a. J. Liebling, she report the war in north africa and the normandy invasion and the rest of it. It was the next generation that made that trip they had correspondence all over the world. One and paris and is part of war, they had a pretty deep relationship with the War Department and their Public Relations operation. Mcelroy whose work i once edited must actually working for curtis lemay and pr throughout the cold war. So he was the linchpin of the new yorkers operation. Theres also a lot of overlap like that. Not a lot but a handful of correspondence with they were in the armed forces there acting for the armed forces. In york or randy profiles on military sometimes with the editors given permission for military figures, sometimes a Public Relations man to keep things cozy with the War Department. But for the most part, it was mysterious. Very much so William Shawn was the hinge man. For he had correspondence in the field. He didnt know what the scoop was going to be just in third b1. He trusted his writer he believed in his writer. So why john hersey . Kristi was actually not born and bread as a new yorker. He came from from a loose organization, what made sean trust that hersey could get this of all hard stories . He could not of done less from a new yorker hes writing for time magazine. Im ahead of the new yorker hated each other like voluptuous lee hole larry slee, publicly hated each other. Reporting for time since 1939. And one point really grooming him to time inc. I hate to interrupt but very timing as the kids would say no now, of that type. He was not a fat new or jew like a j liebling. [laughter] and he was also from yale, skull and bones. [laughter] whatever it is. And also when you read the way the dispatch wrote, it is a far cry from what he was writing for the new yorker later on. As someone who cares only about literary style and think that is hugely important point of it. Hold that for a moment. You run with it. You run with it. He had written one usually significant peace in historical terms for the new yorker before that. Right . Yes. Got about a back tuna second after queued up, thats how they came to the new yorker. He breaks up because hes far too chauvinistic patriotically chauvinistic. He said thanks but no thanks instead of being is that media empire be the freelancer in 1945. In 1944 he had managed somehow to do a story that William Shawn had really wanted to bring hersey in. Hersey had a story that was rejected. And it was come this way. It was the story of john f. Kennedy. In the pacific. So herseys wife had been the former of jfk. Is a significant class of people right . Hersey is on his way back to the pacific. Im sorry erase that. Jfk was on his way back from the pacific hes in new york. One night hes at a nightclub. Some people say its a martinique club. Runs and hersey and his wife. Jf hale selling hersey whats happened. Jfk had been part of the vote that was sliced in half by the japanese destroyer. And hes like i went that story. He said it was significant because he was just candy sign because it was a story in its own way. They rejected he brings it to the new yorker. And they expected to have it at last. So in many ways that story helps make kennedys political career. I got trotted out by kennedy and Campaigns Team for every Political Campaign that he had. It also makes john herseys career. As to the magazine that would make him famous hes going nowhere fast. Sue any mention to that old joe kennedy hated the fact that it appeared to the new yorker. That was not a big enough magazine. Life would have been great if the new yorker was just a little pie for him. And so he even badgered harold ross into having it syndicated and i think readers digest. It was another magazine. I dont know how kennedy twisted his arm, but it did end up being in the readers digest. So to get the publication of story first son. Sue and speaking of publication you make a footnote about this to the thing about the new yorker the war years is the pony edition appeared in a smaller addition which was available to servicemen. Her driving up circulation i make important to those coming home would buy tonight 46. So hersey has a relationship with sean base. And then what happened . How did he get to japan . And how does he break through the cover . Like they said one should never assume for the first lesson of not just journalism but life. She said never assume. [laughter] i did. I was initially very bad journalist. I chastise myself publicly for that right now. Thats because the future of hiroshima has a story. As a feeling of an expose an expose. I was him getting in getting out somehow is unilateral. The reporters had made a run that way. Dont stoop crazy into hiroshima and nagasaki. As a given york of august of 195 cares about it has mixed feelings about hiroshima and think is going to end the war. I think is totally criminal action. He knows hes going to cover but he doesnt know exactly how just yet. And he has lunch with William Shawn. They talk about the coverage. And they realized what hed been again was a story about the human toll. What happened to the human beings when there is this huge mushroom crop cloud. Its likely that they knew the extent or some of the extent of the restrictions being placed in the japanese reporters in tokyo because the Journalism Community was very close to beckman. A lot of former worktime friends and colleagues, they probably knew that the only way in is a paddle from guam to japan. He had to get military clearance to get in. Hes going to do a major reporting trip that starts first in china which is a country he was born in. And then apply for clearance is going to be accredited in china. Having reestablished himself of the military there, apply for clearance to get into tokyo. And it works. He gets cleared. But one of things that interest me are reading this wonderful book, they both have in a certain sense less freedom because everyone expects you to conform to the need for the military to the patriotic reflex that you could do both. But at the same time, more because the whole business of post vietnam with the military wedding to keep reporters as far away as humanly possible is not in place yet. They expected to be traveling with guys who would be writing. Guest it was the buddy system throughout the war. Thats when the things that give hersey the huge advantage to getting cleared to get in. Hersey had been with the military during the war. Had written glowing profiles with jfk, he was a war hero. He helped evacuate wounded marines on the islands where he was covering as a historic covering a battle between u. S. And japanese forces. Most significantly perhaps he had written a glowing biography of general Douglas Macarthur and his forces. Which he later thought was so lotta tour he wanted to take it out of circulation. They definitely thought to come into the country. They were really betting journalist coming and going into japan. He may have seen or been seen as a relatively an aqueous company man still. So then he gets it from china gets to japan. When he gets to hiroshima finally, tells about how he does that. The extraordinary step forward as he talks to people rather than reporting on events. On how would it be at their port the find of the great people . Guest i just say that was incredibly important departure. It may seem obvious now to just focus on a few individuals to focus on the element of the story. Those pretty revolutionary then. Because what he was proposing to do is dehumanize japanese victims and enemy number two theres not one because that attacked us directly. Right . So when he eventually is admitted to tokyo. And by the way he does not have free reign because his been the company man. He is not really being monitored by mccall through its author are just operation there prayed the fbi knows hes on the ground. They notify fbi d. C. Its surveying. But at the same time you dont want to read too much into it what you ate, what you thought, how many cigarettes you smoked everyday. But they gave hersey clearance to go to hiroshima for two weeks. That may include substantial but that includes 36 hours of travel in that time. And when he gets there, he has the help of a german priest who had been living there and had returned and spoken english. One other japanese administer who had been educated at Emory University and spoke english, these two gentlemen, not only gave hersey their own testimony, but they also made the introduction for hersey among the black survivors who had been returning to try to rebuild their lives among the ashes. And ultimately later on they could member exactly he had in tribute, well just say several dozen the most accurate will be six. Spirit coming back to something that preoccupied me, i dont think frivolously. One of the things that makes hiroshima such an important work of journalism and literature is that hersey saw his subject in a novelistic way. And even as you revealed had a very specific novelistic pattern and template is not just hes going to show it from the individual point of view. Obese six individuals lives introspective. And also their lives in the moment with the lead up of exactly what they were at that exact moment of detonation. And how their past cross in the hours and days of the aftermath. Sometimes pretty shocking ways. And so basically he was leaving a neighborhood, a neighborhood narrative anyway. That people who had ultimate profile were rather folks. When he was doing was creating empathy for them. As american readers cannot fathom the physics of how the bottom works is fathom the fallout of nuclear war it looks like. They would be able to relate to the stories of lets say a mother with three young schoolkids or young clerk or young doctor whos going about their business feeding their families, getting on the bus to work that is when the moment catastrophe strikes. Sue and i thinking specifically the novel clearly was the kind of gave him an organizing principle with the story of how six Able Strangers them selves share a moment of common disaster. Thats quite theoretical. He literally did have that is it inspiration he was covering in china since he gotten the horrible flu he was laid up ed china fluid china flow lesli leslie. [laughter] guest a godly freaked cursor china flu. He read the novel he was recovering in china. And so when he began to try as we all do and we are reporting something with any kind of definition, said that is the way i can tell the story of these intersecting lives. Guest yeah absolutely. It gave it a real cohesive structured italics. He knew he wanted to be novelistic. The state facts is going to be graphic was going to confront people with what they had the fourth of july attitude about the bombing it would be embarrassing to the government. Everybody has every incenti