This book the anatomy of blackness, sites of slavery in the age of the leather. And then came last year the much diderot and the art of thinking freely which is now in paperback and im holding it up. Its a beautiful cover. Andrew, how did you go from, im curious about the through lines of the three books. How did it start with the first book which is about an intellectual history of monstrosity in literature and ideas which have a lot to do with bitter row, to what the enlightenment figures thought about race and onto the third book diderot and the art of thinking freely . First, thanks, jim pick a truly great to be here today. I have always been attracted to which my call intellectual history, tracked down an idea over time, both of the affects people and the people are affected by the idea. So very quickly about this first book, how to monstrosity was incredibly important for people of the 17th and 18th century because it was this hotly contested topic. Was god responsible for human monstrosity like to have the babies or was it the fact chance . This was really important for the beginning of biology. I believe all that to the site but when i was studying all this figured out that of you who wrote on human monstrosity also wrote on africa. It was africa, africans were considered monstrous but africans were seen as a kind of extreme data point in terms of what humans were. I had this gigantic compost by which writers do of all interesting things that it went back to after finish this first book. I also was living in new york at the time of profound racial strife in the 90s and, of course, were in that error right now. Era. I spent ten years doing that moving through both history of colonization and also the history of medicine which made race crystallized during the 18th century. Its a long story but an interesting story people know about. Youre right the third book is entirely different and thats a biography, and i think how that happened was more anecdotal than intellectual, that i saw this article in the New York Times about russo and i thought it was kind of dumb in some ways. I wrote an article for the New York Times celebrating diderots birthday in 2013 and was approached by a press to write the biography because it is such an interesting person. I have to say writing a biography, writing biography is in some ways a better gateway into really understanding and era of food people a, where this luck come within the stucco have traveled and other more about the 18th century by doing a biography that have for the first two books. Beatty road started off as a young person training to be a priest, cry . Had it is change of radical base now known as with the signature atheist of the enlightenment . He grew up in a very small city which is this kind of game of thrones type cities, a squaremile the size of hoboken if youre from new york. What was interesting about that is that he was, he said to be a priest and he was very, very religious. In fact, he went to paris to university of paris which was within was in the faculty of theology to study to become a priest. He fell in with a bunch of freethinkers and became supposedly contaminated by these ideas, ideas that questioned kind of who god was and how you relate to the world. Essentially he took all this in heritage baggage and kind of dumped it and became a free thinker when he was definitely dropped out and became a translator and then by the time he was 33, 35 he was writing atheistic type books. I imagine it was a challenge to write a biography of someone like diderot who for so much of his life was hunched over a desk writing and thinking when he wasnt being jailed for his ideas. How did you deal with that is as a narrative challenge, writing about someone who was doing the same thing you are doing while writing about him . I live in William Manchester is house, the great biographer would written many, many and testing biographies and and i r met him but i wish i had to ask him how you deal with the lifecycles. Certainly as you find out as you age yourself as you get into the second half, what happened to you usually and that was the case with diderot. The first 35 years of his life he had an astonishing interesting life, at the second half he wrote for posterity. He had been thrown in jail at age 35 and was told he would never leave jail if you wrote the same time the things fancya young man. He wrote for the drawer as a frank say and he was freed in many ways. He said one does ones best work from the bottom bottom of the. You get rid of your own era and right, you can write way beyond your era. This is what he did. For the second half of the book come to answer your question,i had to do with this more because you spend so much time doing this. The same time theres a lot of very interesting things that happened in his life, for example, he went to russia to speak with the great democratizing the russian empire, 80 still had a mistress and all sorts of problems in his own personal life. But it was, made more sense to follow his life more chronologically to begin with. What were the things he wrote that cutting thrown in jail in the first place . We are now back in the time with things people right, people and not so much in the United States getting thrown into but there are reporters around the world who are facing prosecution by the state for simply recording whats going on. What did he do to get to win over the wrath of france . He did a couple of things here first he really ticked off somebody who is very important, a friend of high place minister, and that got i should say let me start over. Let me say france was kind of like combination of soviet moscow and tehran in that it was a theological, religious and a framework of everyday life. At the same time that were spies everywhere. It was already a thick dossier on diderot before he got thrown into jail. And then he slighted this woman and she mentioned this to the head of the police who start looking at him if they arrested him, and when they arrested the town he had his books, these anonymously published books. The first one was called a letter on the line and thats the more intellectual. A study on blindness but the gigantic metaphor is that we are all blind and only, as people think vacancy actually cant understand god. Since sorely and intellectually impossible to understand god. And the blind person also says that how can god have been so ingested me . He brings up the problem of evil and this wonderful death scene where diderot refused to accept god. The second book is probably more interesting in some ways today. Its a precursor to the vagina monologues come all the indiscreet jewels. Its a story of how looking with a magic ring is able to make womens sexual organs tell their stories. This is seen like a smutty novel, and diderot was very ashamed of this whole thing for a long time and later on we could set he becomes famous. He was always castigated for being a purveyor of smut. These two things were the things that cutting into trouble, in jail coming to spend about three months in jail, very, very cold cell until november and finally gets out. In his lifetime was most famous i suppose, tell me if this is why come for the encyclopedia. Is actually also almost intended the idea for an encyclopedia . What im curious about is especially encyclopedia seems to us like a neutral almost a reference book. Why did even the encyclopedia anchor the authorities of his time even i believe you write his publish himself would strike at some of the things he thought would be to offensive to be published at the time. What was it in the book that angered people, and added diderot feel about it or deal with it . Yeah, so its right. There had been kind of controversial even political reference works before him but nothing on skill and certain people published atheistic type things but there published in small books and they were small sickened by the indie bookstore and the stick them in your coat and take off. The encyclopedia is enormous folio edition. The entire set, think about how big this was. Nothing had ever been done this big here 17 volumes of text, 11 volumes of beautiful illustrations. It takes up an entire bookcase and as they talk always a 150 pounds, enormous undertaking. 74,000 articles, 3000 illustrations, 26,000 26,000 crossreferences backandforth, just amazing one person could preside over this whole thing. Its true reference works, dictionaries were seen as replicating knowledge. Diderot wanted to do something entirely different. He wanted to create computers knowledge as a cudgel cudgel to break and superstition and received ideas. He wanted to really change the way people thought, and he also wanted to change what people thought about the way they thought he wanted, the entire, how to explain this . The entire cycle b is based on the idea of human cognition being something where people have innate ideas. They have ideas that come to their senses. Once you start thinking that way, you start questioning your religious ideas, et cetera as well. Its a really interesting book in that he decided to change what people think and it really did become the most Controversial Book of the 18th century, was persecuted by the king, the jesuits, the pope, all sorts of different constituencies, the police. We had a hard time. He was also helped by some people who might be seen as conservatives. Its a cobbler kit an interesting story would make a great movie. Ditty function as an editor of the project as well . Did he oversee the writing by other writers . Yeah. When he first started the encyclopedia he was sitting about actually rousseau, its best rent at the time, rousseau and a couple of the people and can you imagine you have to write at all the warts to begin with the free construct because you have to figure it were often crossreferences were. He had this editorial vision. He wanted to hire the best people bring on the best people like the specialist and Natural History and chemistry as opposed to replicating knowledge. That worked for a while, but at the same time he needed to write a lot of stuff because he didnt have everyone he won early on. He wrote 2000 articles for the first volume, another 2000 for the second volume and ultimately he wrote about 7000 articles, which is Pretty Amazing when you think about it. He edited probably tens of thousands of articles, constantly. He worked 14, 15 hours a day. He spent 25 years of his life doing it any thought it was a waste at the end. It gave him a panoramic view of the century, like probably no one had during that time. Neck. This is one of reasons he was able to do so many Different Things. Art history or art criticism to thinking about come rethinking human sexuality, colonialism, postcolonialism. He invented so many Different Things that didnt exist during the 18th century, thanks to the fact he was a polymet who had studied so many Different Things. How does france change so quickly that diderot was arrested for his religious views, and what is it, five, ten years after his death atheism is basically the official policy after the revolution . Its interesting, we think about our own era, what ever going to call the 20 , the 20th century whats we tend to assign gigantic labels to the time. Period which dont live up to complexity at the time. Because once people are fighting during different decades, things are shifting and certainly during the 18th century things shift very, very radically in terms of understanding god in 1730 come something for his consenting 50s at the country does move for much more, its not secular yet but its moving toward that direction. That he comes part and parcel of the revolution. I wanted to get back to the idea of atheism during the revolution because you brought that up. Diderot, although is one of te people who put forward a lot of democratic ideals in the encyclopedia he was issued by the revolution because they knew they couldnt be crazy and pcs. They were much more comfortable with someone who was a dais, some who believe in god but had no use for scripture. And it didnt believe in the bible a church. The revolution gets rid of the Catholic Church more or less, that they didnt get rid of god. They actually got rid of diderot. Its true france changes very, very quickly in the 18th century. France is a country of 25 million people, the Biggest Country in europe by far. England had 5 million people. Spain would be 7 million people. Its enormous and future import so it becomes this crucible for heterodox inking. I think the more repressive a church or a religious entity is, the more kind of radical the opposition is and thats what happens in france. The enlightenment is a little softer in england. You dont have the same kind of vociferous atheist dance you in france. I think you had this feeling when youre writing, works according to the public, you are kind of in a dialogue with how ideas are changing in a larger way to pictures about this idef diderot thinking of himself as writing for the drawer and transcending his time. Once he truly able to do that . Or use in his work a dialogue with the ideas that are coming in at the time, you do what i mean, is engaging hobby will go over with the audience that he is imagining in his mind . You know, i should quickly talk about this, though can think about the drawer and his manuscripts. A lot of us his things are published during his lifetime. People knew him as a great encyclopedists but he also thought if something a folder riser of the ideas that belong to other people including his most radical ideas. As jim was saying a lot of his ideas were put to the second reserve for posterity. He prepared three manuscripts the one for his daughter, one for catherine the great, and one for one of his literary air. He thought the sink would be published right after his death in 1784. His daughter became much more conservative. Catherine the great was ticked off at him because he written some stuff about her that she didnt like and so neither of them published his works. And slowly, slowly they trickled out over time. The people he was thinking would have this stuff didnt have it for a while later on, around 1830, karl marx, Sigmund Freud and the germans absolute loved him. They found him to be really the most interesting and radical modern thinker of the 18th century. At the same time he was thinking profoundly about the 18th century and i think my favorite work is a book called my favorite nephew and there he interrogated himself about philosophy of the 18th century. After member diderot with somebody who engineered the encyclopedic in which to say education, progress, evaluation of the human species, and yet he creates this character was going to deconstruct all that. He had the ability to kind of interrogate his own era as well. Rameaus nephew was the best way to get a taste of diderot and get a taste of diderots love of dialogue. He with his wonderful, modern kind of voice even though its a concentric voice, and he always loved to take a subject and split it into dialogue. Sometimes he allows dissident voices to not resolve the problem, the problem of enlightenment. If you get rid of god, morality is some unnatural, what happens if my Natural Inclination is to want to do evil . So diderot is confronting ideas that become very important in the 19 century insert the 18th century thats exactly what the marquis de sade is would say. In other words, if morality comes from nature and my nature is that i want to do all sorts of atrocity, commits all sorts of atrocities, then that should be allowed at a certain level. Diderot was grappling with some of the ideas and inconsistencies in his own philosophy. One thing i really enjoyed in the book is that although he wasnt out on the town a lot, he was intellectually robust into his later years and productive, even if the company even if nobody knew about it. A lot of biographies you read about the rise and if it ends too early, the rest of the book can be depressing if you have to get through four decades that someone passed their prime. How did he continue how did he stay in a lecture a light years . How old was he when he wrote rameaus nephew and was at a particular, the age it was when he wrote and how did he develop after that . There is a late period diderot. He started writing rameaus nephew around 1761. He was very well look at the time and somebody put on this play making fun of him, ridiculing him and made him so angry that he started off friday and saturday of this people which you could never have published. He wouldve been thrown into. He writes the satire and it becomes rameaus nephew. He takes it over and over, the next ten years or so and is constantly working on it, and nobody knew about it. It was so outrageous that he couldnt show it to too much me than one or two people. The second part of your question or actually your first question was about the older diderot. There was a couple of works that i write about too much it had to do with seneca, great roman philosopher, or he is talking about the problems of being a philosopher who is counseling teens. He canceled catherine the great and he felt guilty about some things. He backtracked from what he thought about catherine the great having spent a few months at st. Petersburg and we came back he realized she is a despot infected he thought she might be an enlightened despot. He realized making back the idea was really kind of bankrupt. They became much more radical. Diderot again we compared to other people, sometimes we hear about people becoming more conservative as they get older. He became more radicalized in a lot of ways, and some of the interesting things he does are to talk about desperate ill take the example of the american revolution. He was an americanist who believed, and americanist and 18th century france is someone who is a proponent of the american revolution. He met Benjamin Rush at one point in 1776 he is writing a ton of, ghost writer for this super important bestselling book of the 18th century called the history of the two indies which is a first book on the colonial expansion of europeans into the rest of the world. In this book part of the colonies, one of the columns to consider is this fledgling country of the United States. He writes through amazing letter. By the way, nobody knew he wrote this because he was doing this anonymously, and he is probably in contact with Benjamin Franklin through the innate editor of the book. When he writes this letter to the american insurgents, and in this letter he says american can be a fantastic country if it gets rid of slavery. Slavery is the big problem of this country. But at the same time this country has, putting together this federal system that all the advantages of a monarchy and all the advantages of a democracy the same time. He writes to the insurgents,