David quammen is with us today, courtesy of diane and robert levy. I didnt say shes over there. Shes hiding the second row David Quammen has 16 previous books. I notice that this does not include the two you wrote as fiction is correct. Doesnt it does include. Okay. My my bad 16 previous books include the tangled tree. The song of the dodo, the reluctant. Mr. Darwin and spillover, a finalist for the National Book critics circle award and a recipient of the merck prize in rome. He has written for new yorker harpers magazine, the atlantic, national geographic, and outside among other magazines, and is a three time winner of the National Magazine award. Kwame and a home in bozeman, montana with his wife, betsy gaines quammen, author of american zion and with two russian wolfhounds, a crosseyed cat and a rescue python python, we wont hold that against you. Please give a warm savannah. Welcome to David Quammen. Thank you. Thank you, nancy. Thank you all. Nancy does not like snakes, but thats okay. We talked about that. We talked to that. Snakes. Spiders everybody has their 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 at trinity church. Its great to be here. Im im im honored and delighted to be here. Its been, i think, thousands five years since ive been in savannah. And when i was last here, i was heading into the okefenokee swamp with john croft howard, john crawfish, crawford. One of your cherished local teachers, naturalists. And hes this afternoon, which delights me john. And we were headed into okefenokee for five days of canoeing around and enjoying that amazing. And sleeping on the platforms and. It was a magazine assignment for me. Ive had very fortunate magazine writing, career giving me license, go to wild places and see wild things and write about them. Im going talk about this book breathless the scientific race to defeat a deadly virus and whats in it . I 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 20, 23 years to when i first got interested in dangerous viruses emerging out seemingly out of nowhere and getting into humans. 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 was a book about the broader fandom and then of new diseases that are known as zo no. Cs zoonotic diseases because they come from animals and they get into humans emerging pathogens of various sorts, particularly virus has come out of wild animals and sometimes infect humans. And if were unlucky they cause disease in us. And if were really they transmit from one human to another and you have outbreaks and epidemics and, pandemics. Ebola, nipah virus, hiv, the influenzas, hendra virus, australian bat list virus, bolivian hemorrhagic. Theres just this. Theres just this drumbeat of these things that have come upon us in the last 60 years. They roll off the tongue. So i published this book 2012, and as i was getting near the end of the research and between around ten, i asked a number. I had traveled around the world to to watch the scientists who work on this subject in the field 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 to the congo forest where they were tranquilize, darting gorillas to look for antibes to ebola because ebola kills gorillas and infects gorillas and sometimes kills them as well as humans. Lots of interesting places, rooftops in bangladesh, trapping bats in the middle of the night looking for nipah virus and other things. And i got to know a lot of the people who were the experts in the world on this stuff. And toward the end of the research i asked some of them, some of wise heads. All right. Is 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 into the book channeling their was yes there is a pandemic coming we cant say exactly win but 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 would be a virus coming out of a wild animal. That will be a particular kind of virus with an rna rather than a dna genome. Rna is another kind of, as you may well know, is another kind of genetic single strand id rather than double stranded like the famous double helix, a single genome of m rna is more is less stable than the double helix. And its more inclined to make copying mistakes when it replicates itself and therefore, viruses with that kind of genome and rna genome are more changeable and therefore more adaptable, more likely to be able to adapt to new situations, including new kinds of hosts. So these people telling me itll be an 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, where maybe in china, what kind of an virus . Probably either an influenza virus, a virus related to measles or a corona virus. Oh, okay. So i published that in 2012 and the book did fairly well, but there were people who reacted to it this way. Oh yeah, viruses that come out of wildlife and caused diseases or could cause diseases. Yeah, thats thats that kind of thing that david would be interested in. Thats that kind of creepy thing that would fascinate him. Okay, fast forward. Its 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. The fact the idea of the school of thought that cancers evolve, tumors evolve, and theyre implicated signs of that that are very counterintuitive. But that are important to the understanding the treatment of cancer. This is something id been interested in for a long time. I did a piece for harpers magazine 15 years earlier on this subject, and finally i was getting back to it for a book and simon and schuster was supporting that. For reasons i wont take time to explain. The tasmania devil 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 virus that triggers cancer, but a genuinely cancer that jumps from one tasmanian devil to another when they fight, when they bite one another in the face, when theyre fighting over food or mates and it has spread the island and its killed large portions of tasmanian devils in the last five years. Scientists are studying it that case lies at one end of the spectrum of strange, counterintuitive things that the idea of cancer as an evolutionary phenomenon includes so i was going back to tasmania to do some more research. What the scientists were learning about this. Then late december 2019, we started hearing whispers out of the city of wuhan on january 2020, more people started those those whispers. I was making my plans to to tasmania early february, middle of january. I got an email from an oped editor with the new times. She was based in hong kong. As it happens, i write occasional op eds for the new york times. She was saying, hey, quammen isnt it time for you to do another op ed for us on anything that you might consider important or right now, for instance, maybe even that virus thing in wuhan . And i said, yes i definitely want to write an op ed about virus thing in wuhan. So i wrote an op ed for the times saying, hey folks, this could be it. This is a corona virus. This is kind of virus. Its been on the top of the watch list for a potential pandemic. New disease we should take very, very seriously. This could go big. This could become a pandemic for the following reasons. So that op ed appeared in the times on january 28th, 2020. And then i got on a plane and went to tasmania and i spent most of the next month in the bush with tasmanian devil biology strapping these Little Creatures and checking them for this contagious cancer. And then about this phenomenon. But every time i went back to my hotel in the city of my email was lighting up. Would you talk to us about . The wuhan virus, would you talk to us about spillover of new diseases . Would you talk to us about the danger of pandemic . China television, russian, cnn, various npr outlets, Australian Broadcasting corporation. So i spent a large portion of my time doing doing media responses to try and help people underplay, understand what might happen with this with this new virus. And then on march second, i flew back to my home in bozeman, montana. And march 20th, i think the World Organization officially declared everybody else could see, which was that this was a pandemic. March 20th of 2020 and soon after that i heard from my publisher, simon and schuster saying, david, we want to book on the pandemic and we think youre the right to do it for us because of spillover, because of your op. Eds, because, you know, people and because youre already on contract with us for a book anyway. So they said, why dont you push that book to the back of your desk and well give you a nice new contract and you do a pandemic book for us. And i thought about that very carefully for about 5 seconds. And then i said yes, realizing this was not an opportunity, this was an obligation and this is a duty. So so i said yes and i signed a contract. Based on essentially a cocktail napkin proposal that i gave them quickly. You know, ill write a book about the pandemic and find heres a contract. And he signed the contract the contract. The downside of the contract was that i signed it in about may of 20. And the end. And it had it was it had a rigorous deadline, more rigorous than deadlines are for books. Sometimes because they were giving me significant amount of money. And this was an urgent situation. And 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 two Serious Problems in terms of how i was going to do this book. First of all, one of my operating principles is 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 in bats, in the caves of Southern China, go there there. But i wasnt 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, none of us could go much of anywhere at that point. And there was no sign yet when that might change. And it change very soon. So i realized im not going to be able to do the go there thing and other problem i had was that i knew publishers all over new york talking to writers and saying, we want a pandemic. So there were going to be a bunch dozens, maybe of hundred pandemic books coming out. From new york publishers and. I needed to figure out a way to write that would be unique and uniquely valuable, interesting and another of my operating principles has always been write books about things that nobody else is writing books about. Cancer is an evolution fairy phenomenon and the tasmanian devil island biogeography and extinction, molecular phyla, genetics. But there were going to be a lot people writing about this subject. So those were my two problems. I couldnt travel, i had to create a unique book in a crowded field, and so i did what any sensible 72 year old author would do facing a serious deadline. And those problems i scheduled myself for double Knee Replacement surgery. So i spent summer of 2020 getting my knees replaced with titanium devices and, doing the rehab. I travel anyway and i had to get it done. My knees were shot and the rehab took some time went into the fall. I did do some work. I wrote a couple of pieces on the edge of the pandemic subject for the new yorker and couple of more op eds for the new york times. But basically, i was shuffling my feet trying to figure out how am i going to solve those two problems . And that went on until the end of 2020. And then around christmas i got an aha. I how i can do this book. I think. And the aha had a couple of elements. First of all i decided i would write a book about the virus itself. Ill make the virus the coronavirus that causes covid to which is technically called sas covid to covid 19, cause sas cov two ill write a book about sarscov2 critter is my main character and ill write about the science of that, the origin of that virus question of the origin of that virus, the evolution of that virus. Its fierce journey through. The human population where its going, whether its ever going to go away. Thats my thats my character you like. Well, no, im not going to compare myself to im not going to say what i was just going to say, because dont want to compare myself with john milton. But i was thinking about satan as the as the the riveting character in lost. Okay, just forget that i said that. So the virus is going to be my main character and im going to write about the science who study that virus, that the the most brilliant, leading courageous experts, the world who are working on that virus to understand its origins its evolution, etc. , etc. And im going to write about them not just as not just the work that theyre doing their views of this virus, but as people during the pandemic, im going to contact 60 or 70 of the worlds leading virologists and, molecular evolutionary biologists and epidemiologists who are at work on this virus. And im going to ask them, may i interview you by zoom for 90 minutes and record and ask you about your work and your views of this virus, but also about your life, 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 as a citizen, as a. As perhaps a child of elderly parents. And so i started january 1st, 2021, contacting. I made a whole list of that. I wanted to contact some of them. I knew a bit or well from previous work, some of them were famous to me, some of them i just discovered by googling around to see whos doing the interesting 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 ranging from famous people like tony fauci, Barney Graham at the Vaccine Research center, who led the the rna effort that became the Moderna Vaccine. George gao, director general of the china cdc in beijing, carlos morel, senior guy in rio de janeiro, ranging from them to bring and important but complete unknown young graduate students and postdocs who were working in this virus in labs around the world. 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 gen