It looks like this, we are americans can see democracy at work, where citizens are truly informed, the public get informed straight from the source with on cspan. Unfiltered, unbiased, word for word. From the Nations Capital to wherever you are. Because the opinion that matters the most is your own. This is what democracy looks like. Cspan, powered by cable. David quammen is with us today courtesy of hiding in the second row. David quammens 16 previous books and i noticed that this does not include the two you wrote as fiction. Is that correct . It doesnt include . Okay, my bad. 16 previous books include the tangled tree, the sighing of the dodo, the reluctant mr. Darwin, and spillover, a finalist for the National Book critics circle award, and a subpoena of the merck prize in he has written for the new yorker, harpers magazine, the atlantic, national geographic, and outside, among other magazines, and is a threetime winner of the National Magazine award. Quammen shares a home in a boozman, montana, with his wife betsy gains quammen, author of american zion, and with two russian wolf hounds, across side cat, and a rescue we wont hold that against you. Please give a warm savannah welcome to david quammen. [applause] thank you. Thank you, nancy. Thank you all. Nancy it is not like snakes. But thats okay. We talked about that. We talked snakes, spiders, Everybody Knows their boundaries. Thank you so much. Thank you bob and diane levy. Thank you nancy. Thank you savannah book fest. Thank you, parishioners of trinity is it Trinity Methodist Church . Its great to be here. I am honored and delighted to be here. It has been, i think, 35 years since i have been in savannah. And when i was last here, i was heading into the okeefe gnocchi okefenokee swamp and we were headed into the okefenokee for five days of heading around, enjoying that amazing place and sleeping on the platforms and it was a magazine assignment for me. I had a very unfortunate magazine writing career that, giving me license to go to wild places and see wild things and right about them. I am going to talk about this book, breathless, the scientific defeat of a deadly virus. And what is in it. Also want to talk a bit first about how it came to be, how it took shape. And that goes back well, it goes back 23 years, to when i first got interested in dangerous viruses emerging, seemingly out of nowhere, getting in the that was by way originally of ebola. But more specifically, it began when i published the book that nancy mentioned, spillover, in 2012. Spillover, subtitled, animal infections and the next human pandemic. It was a book about the broader phenomenon of new diseases that are known as is a window seat zooanoses emerging pathogens of various stores, particularly viruses come out of and sometimes infect humans and if we are unlucky, they cause disease in us, and if we are really unlucky then we transfer to one and you have outbreaks and epidemics and pandemics. Ebola, dnipro virus hiv, the in kendra virus. Australian that lisavirus, bolivian hemorrhagic fever. Theres a drumbeat of these things that come upon us in the last 60 years. They roll off the tongue. So, i published this book in 2012 and, as i was getting near the end of the research, in about 2010, i asked a number i had traveled around the world. To watch the scientists who work on the subject in the field, are to crawl into the caves in Southern China with them, where they were trapping bats to look for dangerous viruses, including the original sars virus of 2003. And to the congo forest, where they were tranquilized darting gorillas to look for antibodies to ebola, because ebola gilded gorillas and infects gorillas and sometimes kills them as well as humans. Theres lots of interesting places, rooftops in bangladesh trapping bats in the middle of the night looking for virus and other things and i got to know a lot of people who were and towards the end of the research i ask some of them some of the wise heads, is there another pandemic coming . And will it be a big one . And if so what is it likely to look like . And the consensus of what they told me in 2010, 2011, which i put into the book, channeling their voices, was yes, there is a pandemic coming. We cant say exactly when. But it could be soon, or soon ish. Yes, it will be caused by a virus. Yes, that will be a virus new to humans. Yes, that will be a virus coming out of a wild animal. That will be a particular kind of virus with an rna and a dna genome. Iran is another kind of, as you may well know, another kind of genetic single stranded rather than like the famous double helix. A single stranded of rna is less stable than the double helix. And it is more inclined to make comping six when it replicates itself. And therefore, viruses with that kind of genome and rna genome are more changeable, and therefore more adaptable and more likely to be able to adapt to new situations, including new kinds of hosts. So, these people were telling me, it will be a rna virus coming out of a wild animal. Maybe a bat. Where . Maybe in a wet market somewhere, where wild animals are on sale for food. We are . Maybe in china. What kind of an rna virus . But kind of influenza virus, a virus related to measles, or a coronavirus. Okay. So i published that in 2012 and the book had done fairly well. But there were people who reacted to it this way. Oh, yeah, viruses that come out of wildlife and cause diseases or could cause diseases. That is the kind of thing that dave it would be interested in. That kind of creepy fringe thing that would fascinate some. Okay. Fast forward. It is 2019. Its late 2019. And i am at work on another book for my publisher, simon and schuster. A book about cancer as an evolutionary phenomenon and the fact the the school of thought that cancers evolve, tumors evolve and the implications of that that are very counter intuitive but are very important to the treatment of cancer. This is something ive been interested in for a long time. I did a piece for harpers magazine 15 years earlier on the subject. Finally, i was getting back to simon and schuster was supporting me. For reasons i wont take time to explain, the tasmanian devil it was very important to that subject. Because the tasmanian devil is in the process of suffering an epidemic of a genuinely contagious cancer. Not a contagious cancer that virus generally contagious cancer that jumps from one tasmanian devil to another when they fight, when they bite one another in the face, when they are fighting over food or mates. And it across the island and it has killed large portions of tasmanian devils in the last 2025 years. Scientists are studying. If that case lies at one end of the spectrum of strange counterintuitive things that the idea of cancer is an evolutionary phenomenon includes. So and is going back to tasmania to do some more research on what the scientists were learning about here. Then, late december 2019, we started hearing whispers out of the city of wuhan. January 2020, more people started hearing those whispers. I was making my plans to go to tasmania. Thats early february. Ruary, midin the middle of janut emails from an oped editor with the new york times. Shes based in hong kong, as it happens. I write occasional hong kong oped for the new york times. She said, hey, quammen, isnt it time for you to do another oped for us . Anything that you might consider important or interesting right now . For instance, maybe even that virus thing in wuhan . I said, yes, i definitely want to write an oped about that virus thing in wuhan. So, i wrote an oped for the times saying, hey, folks, this could be it. This is a coronavirus. This is the kind of virus that has been on the top of the watchlist or, potentially, pandemic new disease. We should take this very, very seriously. This could go big. This could become a pandemic for the following reasons. That oped appeared in the times on january 28th 2021. And i got on the plane and i went to tasmania and i spent most of the next month in the bush with these tasmanian devil s checking them for this contagious cancer and talking about this phenomenon but. Every time i went back to my hotel in the city of hobart my email is lighting up, would you talk to us about the wuhan virus . Would you talk to us about spillover of diseases . Would you talk to us about the danger of pandemic . China television, russian television, cnn. Various npr outlets, Australian Broadcasting corporation. So, i spent a large portion of my time doing media responses to try and help people understand what might happen with this new virus. And then, on march 2nd, i flew home to boozman, montana. And march 20th, i think, the world Health Officially declared what everybody else could see in what everybody else could see, that this was a pandemic, march 2020. Soon after that i heard from my publisher, simon and schuster saying, david, we want to a book on the pandemic. And we think you are the right person to do it for us. Because of spillover and because of your oped. Because you know people and because you are already on contract with us. [laughter] anyway they said, why dont you push that cancer book to the back of your desk, and we will give you a nice new contract . And you do a pandemic book for us . And i thought about that very carefully for about five seconds. And then, i said yes, realizing that this was not an opportunity, this was an obligation to do it. So, i said yes, and i signed the contract. But thats based on, essentially, a cup tail napkin proposal that i gave them, quickly. Yeah, i will write a book about the pandemic. And fine. Sign a contract. The contract the downside of the contract was that i signed it in about may of 2020, and it had it had a rigorous deadline. Its more rigorous than deadlines are four books sometimes because they were giving me a significant amount of money, and this was an urgent situation. And they wanted this book out soon. So, the deadline was december 31st 2021. So, i had a year and a half at that point, to write this book. And i realized that i had to Serious Problems in terms of how i was going to do this book. First, of all, one of my operating principles, as ive already suggested, with a book, with a magazine article, whatever, has always been, go there. If you want to write about the question of whether gorillas carry antibodies to ebola, go there. If you want to know something about viruses and bats in the caves of Southern China, go there. But i was not going to be able to go there. I was not going to be able to get on a plane for wuhan, china. It was very clear in may of 2020 that none of us, really, could go much of anywhere at that point. And there was no sign yet when that might change and it didnt change very soon. So, i realized, im not going to be able to do the go their thing. The other problem i had was that i knew publishers all over new york were talking to rioters writers and saying, we want a pandemic book coming out. From new york publishers and i needed to figure out a way to write one that would be unique, and uniquely valuable, uniquely interesting. And another of my operating principles has been write books about things nobody else is writing books about. Cancer is an evolutionary phenomenon, and the tasmanian devil. Island biography and extinction. Molecular file of genetics but there were going to be a lot of people so, those were my two problems. I couldnt travel. And i had to create a unique book in a crowded field. So, i did what would any sensible 72yearold author would do facing a serious deadlines and those problems. I scheduled myself for double Knee Replacement surgery. [laughter] so, i spent the summer of 2020 getting my knees replaced with titanium devices, and going to rehab. I could not travel anyway. And i had to get it done. My knees were shocked. And rehab took some time, went into the fall. I did to do some work. I wrote a couple of pieces on the edge of the pandemic subject for the new yorker, and a couple more opeds for the new york times. But basically, i was shuffling my feet trying to figure out, how am i going to solve this problem . That went on until the end of 2020. And then around christmas i got a reveler tory moment. I know how i can do this book. Think. And the reveler tory moment had a couple of elements. First of all, i decided, i will write a book about the virus itself. I will make the virus the coronavirus causes covid as well, which is technically called sarscov2, covid19 sarscov2. I will write a book about sarscov2. That critter is my main character. And i will write about the science of that virus, the origin of that virus, the question of the origin of that virus, the evolution of that virus, its journey to the human population, where it is going, whether it is ever going to go away. That is my character. We all know well, i am not going to compare myself to im not going to say what i was just going to say, because i dont want to compare myself with john milton. [laughter] but i was thinking about satan as the riveting character in paradise lost. Okay. Forget that i said that. But [laughter] so, the virus is my main character. And im going to write about the scientists who study that virus. The most brilliant leading, courageous experts around the world who are working on that virus, trying to understand its origins, its evolution, et cetera, et cetera. And i am going to write about them, not just as scientists and not just the work that they are doing, they are views of this virus, but i had people during the pandemic. I am going to contact 60 or 70 of the worlds leading virologists in molecular evolutionary and epidemiologists who are at work on this virus and i am going to ask them, may i interview you by zoom for 19 minutes and recorded and ask you about your work and your views of this virus and then a certain amount about your personal life . Your life is not just a scientist but as a lab leader, as a teacher, as a spouse, and as a parent and as, perhaps, a child of elderly parents. And so, i started january 1st, 2021, contacting i made a whole list of scientists that i wanted to contact. Some of them i knew a bit well from previous work. Some of them were famous to me and some i just discovered by googling around to see who is doing the interesting work on this. And so i assembled this list of what i came to think of as my greek chorus. These voices that i would have. Theyre ranging from famous people like tony fauci, Bonnie Graham at, the Vaccine Research center, who led the mrna efforts to the george gao, director general of the china cdc in beijing. Carlos morrel, a senior guy in rio de janeiro. Ranging from them, to brilliant and important, but completely unknown young scientists, and graduate students and post docs who are working in this virus andworld. Verity hill and tanya otoole to, grad students at a lab in edinburgh scotland working in the lab of a scientist named andrew rambo. I emailed. Andrew rambo. His reputation was big. I said, can i interview you for this . He said to his great, dont interview me interview. Verity hill and tanya otoole. They are driving the Software Development that is allowing us to trace by sequenced genome the diversification of this virus. Theyre the ones who discovered the alpha variant out of southeastern england, interview them. So i interviewed verity hill and tanya otoole, these two young women, and they gave me wonderful interviews and thats in the book and gave me a lot of value and a lot of humanity, a lot of important science. And then i went back to andrew rambo and said, so ive interviewed verity and ive interviewed anya, can i interview you two now . Okay. All right. You can interview me now. A good lab leader, a good a good mentor. So i did all these things and eventually it came to 95 people, 95 interviews, almost all them extended hour and a half, 2 hours. I didnt get an hour and a half with tony fauci, but i got a very interesting conversation. Tony fauci and and its in the book and then i, i had them all transcript had transcript, transcript. Scribd these 95 interviews by my faithful gloria, whos been working for me for 30 years doing this, and i had the stack of these transcripts on my desk and i had my office was filled with Journal Articles about the virus that i had read and books and things like that and, and then i knew i had to i had to get busy and write this. So about on jan june two second of 2021, i stopped interviewing. I started writing and i had until december 31st and i dont like making outlines when i write books, i care deeply about structure, about intricate, organic, functional structure that serves a great purpose. Purpose is supplying the reader with a sense of momentum and sense of connectedness, but also a sense of surprise and the end, a sense of inevitability. All those things i care about, but you dont get that by making a programmatic structure for your book. You get that. I feel by growing your book organ, this might have something to do with the that i spent 11 years obsessed with the novels of william faulkner. I my training did my education not in science but in literature. And i did my graduate work on the structure of William Faulkners novels and. So i, i learned to be able to write long, complicated science books partly studying william faulkner. Anyway, no outline, just started to write. And whos the first voice that would help me tell this story . The murmurs in december of 2019 . Well its that fellow henry easley, the chinese scientist who is now in philadelphia studying, coronaviruses in the lab of susan weiss, a great coronavirus researcher. So i talked to henry lee about what he had learned through wechat from his friends back in shanghai in, the closing days of december 20, 20. And i talked to susan weiss and she heard from henry lee that. This is a coronavirus. So she immediately were going to work on it, order some masks, order some more gowns, order some more personal protective equipment. Were starting as of january 2nd to work on this virus. And then there was marjorie pollack, who was the Deputy Editor of an internal National Infectious disease Alert Service known as promed, who picked up rumors about this on new years eve of 19 and spread the word to a network of 80,000 people around the world, including subscribers to this and and and a scientist named yanjun zhang in who studies viruses and who became very concerned about very interested in this early on yangon, zhang got hold of some swab samples from of the first patients in wuhan and they were shipped to him in a metal on a fast train. They reached his lab on january 20, 20. He immediately set his lab to work on trying sequence the the genome of this virus, assembling the fragments of rna, transfo