We kind of run out of time, but i just want to thank you so much for kind of sharing wisdom. And, you know, the book is called you will own nothing. Its fantastic. Its available at amazon was i think its still on New York Times list. So please go buy it. It is worth your time and thank you everyone for for listening in. We really appreciate it. And wish everyone a goodim gla. Im the executive director of the Temple Emanuel stryker centers and. Im thrilled to welcome you to an evening with a man Whose Research brought to life centuries of jewish history in books and documentary films, jewish hastily, he wrote. Turns out not to be an either or story as in either pure. Judys detached surroundings or else a simulation, but rather for the vast majority. The adventures of living in between. I loved it quote. I actually think it describes tycho so because it is like a santa we celebrated leaving and living in between through the books we love the politics we debate theyre performances we enjoy and the individual who inspires us for saw for all you inbetweens, please join us next tuesday to celebrate truly inspiring woman sheila the first female African American billionaire who will be in a conversation with gayle king. And later in the judy collins will return for another concert. Mandy patinkin will discuss Albert Einstein in the refugee refugee question. David brooks, Rachel Maddow are joined by and also two to name a few i you will join us again and often but tonight guess but now for tonights guest who is returning to the striker center stage for the third time sir, simon schama. I think those books about the french revolution they were all charles and zionism is laughing though im not sure why dutch history and the relationship between landscape memory for the bbc produced history of britain and a tv show about britains slavery and american revolution. And that doesnt begin to cover incredible output, which includes musings on the boston working red sox. Obama and american food. He stood at complete cambridge, oxford and harvard, now columbia. And in 2001 was awarded the commander of order of the British Empire by queen elizabeth. Hence this is why the sale appears before his name tonight. He joins us to offer a chilling reminder that worlds class mishandling of covid pandemic is hardly unique in Human History is new in us book for in bodies, it copied each you will get tonight also can be signed following the event outside in the lobby is filled with stories of how greed and politics have overwhelmed science. He will be in conversation with one of new yorks most eloquent leaders, adam gopnik, author of nine books, including the New York Times best seller paris to the moon. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you again for joining us and please welcome sales simon schama and adam gopnik. People still pouring in. I know this, simon, from on this strange day of wall street. So thank you so much for coming. Do you are you aware is schama you and i have known each other now for precisely 40 years. We first met. I was when we met actually, but actually we met you at the offices of kinnock, the publishers, when i was an extremely inefficient young editor. And youre, i think your first book, the Carol Janeway bless your memory, had brought your dutch book embarrassment of riches and said this is the most young man in all of britain and had your book. And i said that and then i read the book and it was and it was thank you it was dazzling it was your first book was it not . No, it was it was my third. The first one was also a book about dutch history of even by my standards, incredibly ponderous. Over written about the dutch during the period of the french revolution and and although people were quite nice about it. And the second one was a book called two rothschild. So they said and the land of israel. And it was based on archives that the rest of our family owned. Its actually a little worthwhile. And give me a little story i was doing a seminar when you Cambridge University in the seventies. There was no way you do modern jewish history absolute. No way that if you were doing religion, you couldnt do it. If you doing history couldnt do it or religion. It was comically known or shouldnt say that it was known as moral science. Its really a fabulous, not an oxymoron, exactly, but a surprise. So nicholas delonge, who other things was among sources and, is both an associate translator. We ran a kind of informal seminar at work, got round to the brilliant but extremely scary figure who was. Rothschild . Did you ever know him . I dont know if. Yeah. And so he said, come, you know, would you like to have a talk . And he wanted me to go and look at this archive which was sitting in a sort of a un office in a slightly seedy part of and i said, well, im no particular expert on this, on your papers. And he said it sort heralding a refrain which we now have to our costs. Weve had enough of experts so he pulled out he said would you like you can see it now it was november something it was raining it was kind of a terrible needle, sharp raindrops in cambridge. And i said well and i think i would end it so he pulled out an Airline Ticket at that point actually and said ive taken liberty of booking you tomorrow so i went efficiency we had a stormy relationship all this again digression what a shock for me building up to the moment the manuscript was sort of always a bit late one point he would go from yeah sort of wine lubricates it to gangster rage really with nothing between and he pounded his fist on the table says simon. You remember what our family motto is . And i remember them, and im not sure i remember now. And he said, service and buy, get it, you know, not give it, but we get it. So was that was a third was the first one the first big one in america at least and it was and it was it was memorable. Ill never forget reading it for the first time as i never forget reading your new one foreign bodies for the fifth time as i as i as i leap through it. Thats me. Its an extraordinary its an extraordinary book. And and and amazing accomplishment. Before we talk about this particular and id love to talk particularly simon some of the people in this book because its a beautifully people book its though its about a not abstract but about a specific its a history of medicine in a certain way. But its its beautifully populated. But i wanted to ask you, ive always wanted to ask you this. How do you go about writing a book like this . Because whats extraordinary about this book, like all of your work, is that it is who was it was it mcauley . They said his omniscience was his foible. Well, since this is your foible in that way too, you seem know so much, and yet its always passed through a prism of your beautifully digressive and ironic. How does one assemble a book like this . Well, i just have, you know. Good question. And it from book to book, i mean which is sort of a slightly dull way of answering your good question. I mean, this one was staggering only happenstance, really. I mean, the only other book that was really happenstance in the same and i wouldnt spend all our time talking about other books was, rough crossings, which really was most affected by the fact that i found in New York Historical site. Its extraordinary of this young 27 year old naval officer whod taken exslaves whod fought for the british first in nova scotia. And so i was just utterly captivated by the physical object. They wanted to show me the microfilm, the physical object of the sea splash diary in this case, really, i was writing a book fully expected by my publishers called return the tribes, which is likely i know later, but it title now. Come to think of what it was about the culture of nationalism, and by which i mean debris, invention of music and glinka and sibelius and so on, as well as painting and and i was getting more and more depressed once the pandemic arrived and i thought, you know, one moment, really, surely when national selfinterest probably gave way will definitely play selfevidently gave way to the sense in which were all in it together. Would have been the founding of the w. H. O. , World Health Organization in francisco in 1948. Interestingly this was going to be a chapter and didnt make it. Founded by a chinese diplomat. Diplomat in the last years of chinese republic and a norwegian diplomat. That itself is an amazing story and i went to the online archive. We were all stuck to it, but very grateful for the enormous of archival material you can get online and discovered this extraordinary institution called the with the not very appealing title of the the International Sanitary conference which was the First International organization that was put together not to deal with matters, war and peace in 1951, but to against cholera. And i was very interested in a surprise by that and that led me and i think we can without dwelling too much, ive got to make sure. Yeah oh yes, this was b typical alex. I was so to alex like that moment when am i doing it wrong. Okay, we may not have the slides that i know i want to do one before. There we go. Right. Him, this is andrew and this is what his father actually on purpose turned out to be great mover and shaker in the battle to try and contain cholera principally with the system of quarantines. British didnt like it because it interrupted trade between india and britain. But i thought to myself all sorts of little and i still wasnt. It wasnt yet a book. It was it was sort of an undergraduate curious city, really. And i thought, well, this is, you know, the father, the greatest hypochondriac in the history. And i always sort of him, i knew that he was a doctor, but i had idea about this extraordinary career nor the kind of journeys that hed made into the hottest at the hot sands cholera and his conviction, which was intuitively brilliant, really that the more modern we become in of shorten distances communication whether by train or steamship, the more likely it was that toxins would hit or hitch a ride. Yes. And then i then it started to flow from that from. Yeah. That was the chapter wrote first times that specificity was one of the ones i wanted to discuss with you and its if i may, so im typical of your method that you would begin with a person and proceed to a pandemic. So to speak. And. Yes, exactly. But lets since why dont we just jump in there . Because one of the things thats fascinating about proust as a character, and it is it is irresistable that this that this man whos represents it very obliquely in in his sons great novel as a sort slightly intimidating and remote figure had this passionate will towards benevolence towards improving the condition of mankind. Hes physically fearless as well. Yeah. I mean, theres one moment which i discovered actually late on in research by accident after id almost finished the first draft where he shows up in bombay as it was then mumbai i just as bubonic plague has returned to the city and i hadnt noticed that its a little page or two in one of his lengthy treatises. Yes. Well, one of the fascinating things im going struggle to articulate this is one of the things that moved me and excited me most in your book is its a kind of strange dialog between Public Health and the pathogenic series theory of disease, because one of the things that proust is all about is the necessity of quarantine, right . And its just, as you were saying, this was resisted very much in the same way as people have resisted in the context of the pandemic. Its bad for business, its unnecessary. Its its inhuman. Its certainly dictating to the population. But he recognize is that it was essential to prevent the spread of cholera. Yeah it helped that he was french in the sense that the british justified is to kind of cynical term but the british believed a better word that actually the whole of their occupy of the promising zones imperial commerce were free trade. So this sense you know which again resonates with of the rhetoric now. Yes the sense actually that the liberty of commerce and the, you know, morally imbued notion that you are not just in this for extortion and and loot and brutality so a lot the people who were arguing whether they were in public or whether they were in the government said it is wrong in so many ways actually to shut down trade. Yes. Whereas the pattern this tradition in france statements of exactly stated tradition which went all the way really back colberts absolute labor certainly went back more recently. The doctors and engineers who the french had sent after the napoleonic wars were over to egypt, mohammad alis egypt to a kind of scientific, cultural. So, you know, free trade for the french was not on kind of absolute value and proust could see that it was very important to stop it in the interest of in a not only containing a kind of horrifying contagion, but also properly restoring kind of economic division, we see we see to this day the other thing that, its a thematic in the book and very much involves is the idea that i was thinking about this that the pathogenic theory of disease is very counterintuitive in other words the idea that what makes us sick is not yet a miasma we put the next picture. Yes that i was going to she was there but. Can you see her actually lady can see its very, as i say, very counterintuitive for people to understand it isnt the general state of the world. It isnt vapors it isnt a miasma, rising river. Its these little foreign bodies that invade our own, that are the cause of disease. Its very you think its a crucial modern idea, but its very hard for people to accept. Yes. Well, there were two other wildly counterintuitive, you know, thoughts that are provoked by that. You know, understanding. One is that actually well, i mean, i suppose it amounts to one that you needed actually get this, you know that you would only be able to fight off the foreign bodies by the antibodies that are in, you know, your immune system. But that this woman this is the second counterintuitive thing, because clearly in the early 1700s, i tell you, is in the second in the 1700s, theres no no understanding, no knowledge that there is such a thing is immune system, no understanding. Of what antibodies might be there a hunch is that the body has sort of arsenal of internal weapons to contain the most virulent diseases. But then in those circumstances of microbiological complete to actually invite a toxin into your otherwise perfectly healthy body on the grounds that a mild attack smallpox, for example, is killing one in six people in the first decades of the 1700s is to kind ensure that you will not die of it presuppose the staggering leap of faith and this lady mary well it montagu whos the wife the British Ambassador in constantinople around 1715, 1760, and also and shes part of the circle of pope. And so, yes, i mean its very important that shes a literary celebrity. Shes been published not about poet. And, yes, Alexander Pope is unsurprisingly hopeless, only in love with. Yes and, but she knows john gay and, you know, people of that kind. And so this is very important terms of popov being four foot nine and hunchback. So he didnt have a didnt have much of a shot. Yes, thats right. She was had been a famous beauty. But shed suffered a horrifying attack. Smallpox herself in she had lost her brother her elder brother in 1715. She was a famous beauty in london at that time, and shed been very badly disfigured as you were lost to eyelashes, which sounds like a small thing, but not, of course. So awful thing. So when she went to turkey with her husband, noticed that and two daughters, right. Sorry. And her daughter said, well, no, it was born in when got back to london. She had a six year old son at edwards. She noticed that people not disfigured. You could also go from smallpox were you to survive . And she asks around, particularly as she asks women of sarala, as both of the sultan and the pashas. And they they say, well, this has been a custom for many generations that we we we take a small of pass. Theres no way to this particular toxic lily. And we and we appreciate and stop you know creates a kind of a collision an asian. Yes. In which so this and she sort takes it on faith to such an extent that she just that she will inoculate. This is 100 years before but jenna on a much safer process of cowpox vaccination so she decides she will inoculate little edward and. It works he gets a a mild fever very few pustules they fall off hes totally unmarked but when she goes back to london a couple of years later, she inoculates her daughter, three year old daughter, three, right . Oh, yeah. And shes friendly with them of wales, who becomes Queen Caroline to george the second. So becomes she throws herself into the public fray in this extraordinary way and she is immediately of course met with a of absolutely resistance and both on on general grounds what are you doing but also because this is from the ottomans and a third ground is that its woman and a mother and shes accused by one pamphleteer saying, oh, what kind of mother would deliberately invite into the healthy body her children. So you know, she she shes an extraordinary kind of campaigner in that respect and goes on being so in some senses, you know even though has not necessarily the breakthroughs dont happen in this of ethically personified way there are particular where you can absolutely see a particular individual makes a difference and she and she did and not only and the other thing that fascinated me about this story many things did is its such a cosmopolitan moment in words. Its a moment when intuitive eastern understanding of Health Practice makes its way to the west, to i think, actually, this is really again startled me almost. I think the receptiveness to actually taking as it were, epidemiological from the orient from the church back. Yes. In 100 years that follows its not only the key you know and others publish theres an extraordinary network i fell possibly excessively in love with. Im not very interested. And these are a group people, a lot of them scots and people from other parts of from england course, who are often commercial agents. Their extraordinary kind of, you know, augustan age. I mean, the collector and antiquarians and historians they speak many languages there in aleppo, algiers and smyrna and adrianople and india and they are all, you know, entirely open to what you can learn from cultures which are not western bacon in science. And what is even more remarkable is that the august fellows of the Royal Society in london listen