these are the earliest photos of child exhibits and when i saw it, they looked like scared young brothers, had been taken from their mother. they were told that she was dead and they should quit crying, and i just studied it and then somebody said, you know, there's-- there's a person in charleston named joshua bond, a professor, who studies historical costuming. i sent him the picture and he blew it up and he saw so much more in the picture than my eyes could see. he noticed, he said the seams were stretching. he says these suits are about two sizes too small. they're kind of nice suits, so there was some care given to ruse of these boys eastman's monkey men, but the suits are too short. during this time, so you've got

that evidence and what's going on in that picture and then family stories of willy telling everyone that when he was little, he was-- georgi would look after him and there was a popular song in 1914 called it's a long way to temporary, the world war i anthem about missing home. you can have stories, pictures, and the documentation and it exists in sort of this very racialized lens, but that's what i tried to do, just to bring it into its fullness. the pictures were great. i found this picture, this is from around 1917, there was the circus by then and so mr. barnes writes his memoir in 1930's and he brags about buying them and making them a paying proposition, so, that's more proof. i mean, he was proud of it because why wouldn't he be

because everybody thought african-americans were subhuman and he was getting something over on them. and so this picture, i showed to nancy when i found it and it's the first picture of them with instruments. and we weren't driving around, but that picture prompted a memory. she remembered willy saying the first time they were handed pictures, it was just to be a photo prop. so one of the ways that managers would make extra money is they would have pictures of their acts. and then they would sell them and they would keep that money, and so, some of the-- they were called pitch cards. so, that was supposed to be a photo prop. oh, certainly, they can't play instruments. it turns out they were kind of geniuses. they could hear a song once and play it, according to many, many reports. and we have a recording, unfortunately i can't share, we have a recording of him singing and there's a picture in the

book of him playing his guitar and the fret boards are total worn down. and when nancy had that photo. she had the joke kind of on them because they were wonderful musicians. and here is another picture, the only known picture of them with their of their captors, al g barnes. and once their mother got them back, a protracted legal battle to get them paid, you can see in the pictures that they have more agencies in their lives, they're happier so this is a casual back yard picture, that's what they called kind of back stage in the circus and you know, they had friends, they'd play music. there's accounts in my interview of people remember them playing music and the music gave them like this agency and power that music does. like any skill that we have. any, like writing makes me feel good when it's working and

music made them feel good. and it gave them something to do and it gave them self-power, so-- >> and can you describe what their life was like in the circus before their mother got them and after? and explain how many years went by before she-- >> right. so i'm sure at least 13 years went by. it could have been-- the documentation is scant on that, but he said, willie always told nancy that, you know, they were guarded kind of closely in the beginning. there was a bit of stockholm syndrome going on. they were illiterate, never allowed to go to school. late in life she taught him how to write his name even though he was totally blind. that was a big moment for him, he can't have to sign an x. the side show managers -- and

their main manager was really the only person he said anything bad about and he really hated him even at age 107. he remembered him -- he remembered some pretty vile things about him, but once she got them back, they were-- and they knew they could come home after that, even though they still tried to take advantage of them and not pay them when they could get away with it, they became happier and as i say, that was really the only world they knew. >> and they traveled the world and they became famous. >> yeah. >> and the headlines of the new york times. they became famous. they performed before royalty in england. one of willy's-- whenever the door bell would ring when he was an old man at the house in roanoke which was able to be bought and paid for by the time they retired. that's what she did by getting that legal settlement. whenever the door bell would

ring, he would go "housekeeping" which he learned at a hotel in london and i just loved that. >> well, one of the real heroes of this book is willy and george's mother harriet. and what you call as a badass in a quest to get her boys back. >> in 1927 roanoke, virginia, very harsh place to be an african-american. there was actually city code that said where you could live and you know, you couldn't -- segregation was just so ingrained and everything. so at the circus, blacks were told they had to sit in the back, under the big top. if it was a carnival, they would make one day out of the seven-day stretch the day that from i can one day

african-americans could come. october 14th, it had come to her-- she told relatives in a dream that her brothers-- that her sons were with the circus and this is a story that passed through the family for generations. so in 1927, the top law enforcement official in roanoke, virginia, was the founder of the local kkk, which was the largest kkk in the state. there's picture of them in the book. it was a semi respectful institution. the families were members of the kkk. the train unloads, goes over to the fairgrounds, and that's where they set up. the fairground is where the kkk had had the rallies. so, the side show was the one of the rare places in the circus where segregation broke down because there weren't seats. you walked around. like you would go from-- the crowd would sort of walk

from one part of the stage to the other as each act demonstrated their skill or answered some questions. i have a picture of her from the next day so i know what she looked like and i know how the side show worked and the brothers remembering, they're on stage playing one of their songs, and they can't see very well because of their albinism. and every member of the family recounts it the same way, willy elbows george-- and george elbows him and there is our dear old mother, she is not dead. >> and the police come and ringling lawyers, they want to take the brothers to the next stop. and the mother wants them home. the manager says they're my

children and had paper work that had their last name as his last name. and somehow she got them-- she got the-- she talked the police into letting her bring them home, not going back to the circus. and then not only that, a couple of days later, she hired a really young ambitious lawyer and she filed a lawsuit against the greatest show on earth. i mean, that was moxie. >> and she kept at it. >> she kept at it because whenever they could, because they could get away with, they would not pay them. so the manager would switch them to another show. ringling was paying them and he would switch them to some other show and he would pocket the money and then she-- she and another-- she found another lawyer and through this very clever, but kind of awful sounding legal arrangement. she had them declared incompetent. so the court was in charge, if the checks bounced they would go and find them and they might be in canada, in oregon.

they would actually, this lawyer and a bail bondman would find them, track them down and get the circus to pay up. >> and figuring out how they did that was another to untangle. >> there was no internet and she was illiterate-- >> they were written about in the new york times, but in roanoke, this they would get it now in roanoke. >> it's amazing that she intersected with them finally. >> it is. it isment. >> and when told the story has been largely untold mainly because of their race and social status and not to mention their disability. help us understand this widespread story of erasure and

interviewing after the ordeal. >> i interviewed one of the reporters from in roanoke, and i-- he remembers whenever an african-american was in the news he had to put comma color, in and that gave me feedback what it was like being a reporter then. and i wrote down some of the quotes of the way the media treated the reunion. and the roanoke times from the day after she found her sons, the family reunion was quote, was told of in the newspapers, others talked of it all the while, humming happy mammy songs, never reported the family. not that they were developed in mental capacity which i refuted over and over again in interviews. a new yorker piece the

following year in 1928 said. they did as they walk, their eyes didn't quite focus and loved monkeys and kangaroos. >> their eyes didn't focus because of albinism and the fried chicken had given out in roanoke. there's no mention of the years of servitude and blacks are considered subhuman. they're happy and they didn't mention the laws or servitude. they're back and happy it was surreal and the predominant way

that people saw it. it's heart breaking and shocking and that's the world they're trying to create and that's the challenges they face. >> here you thought it was a book about the circus, it certainly is and they're endlessly fascinating stories about the circus, but it's so much about race and here you were, this-- the roanoke times reporter and they were one of the many paper, how did you get them to trust you. and what were some of the stories that they told you as you were driving around? >> well, one of the-- one of my story beacons was joanne poindexter. she's now retired in her 60's and she called up basically the older ladies in her church that had grown up in the neighborhood and asked if i would interview them. she helped me in my career. when i wrote that pregnant and

proud story that got me in so much hot water, half that i had a hard time getting african-american people to trust me in the city. i didn't mean to make those girls the subject of ridicule, i honestly didn't, but that's what happened and she would actually go out to interviews-- like there was a church that was starting and it had been a crack house and i was trying to get the neighbors to open up to me about it because i wanted to do a story on-- that's a pretty cool story, the crack house turning into a church. and joanne went around the neighborhood and vouched for me. and she did the same thing-- much years later with this, too. and again, they had read my stories and seen the work i had done since then. where i wasn't just doing like

drive by anecdote reporting, i was digging in, spending time with people and so, i think i was able to reap the bounty of just my time there. >> well, one low point in your research, you complained to canadian historian jay nicholas about the difficulties of your tasks and she gave you a valuable people of device. if we wrote only stories of people with stories, you had to use what was at hand. how did the words inspire you? >> i was beating myself up because there were so many holes still. that's right, the way she put it like that. it gave me permission and there's a reason i had that because there was institutional racism because of the coverage

of it and it just, if i can write about that, i can cast it in even more deeper context and that really helps me. and i also complained to one of nancy's younger relatives, that it was hard to get some of these basic facts. like their births weren't recorded and the years are listed in numerous different years in the documents. and the i was just complaining to a younger relative, so she told nancy and nancy sent back the message. if she thinks the story was hard to write, she should think about how hard it was for uncle georgi and uncle willy to live, she better pick her ass up. so-- >> you picked your ass up? >> i tried, i tried. >> tell us about george and willy's life after the circus. >> because of that secondary

lawsuit where their mother got guardionship, the checks were sent home and most of the money was settled into like a retirement account. when this was, social security didn't exist. by the end of 1961, a really nice house was bought and paid for for them and the family, nancy, her mother dot, her grandparents, they all lived in the house together and they took astonishing good care. they sort of protected them, the barber would come to their house to cut their hair, they wouldn't have to go out because people would still say rude things and they watched over them and later, when he was in his late 90's, i think it was, he was in the hospital. actually, he was incredibly healthy, he was on no medication and, and put him in the hospital and and a nurse

put a-- it was too high and when nancy came in he had life threatening burns it took two years to he heal. the family called her the warden and she was not happy. she, like her grandmother found a scrappy formidable lawyer in town and sued the hospital, which is the largest employee in roanoke, and the settlement enabled her to work and have full-time care for him. and so, some of the best sources of him in his later life are the nurses who would come to the house to tend his burn wound and to take care of him. and it's like-- how the story progresses and in

cautionary tale and what the parents would say. >> they all stay together or you might get kidnapped like eko and iko. and the end of their lives, the wise elders in the community, given the nurses or willy, giving his nurse great advice, to feed them honey. being better than the person who was mistreated. and i just-- i think he had a wonderful late life and you described him as being so gracious and he always said god is good to me, even after all he'd been through and it's on his botombstone. >> and he said that, god is good to me. >> she said he had almost a magical quality? >> she did. initially, i had a little bit of trouble convincing my publisher and editor that i was going to be able to find enough facts to make this a book so i

was asking, i was calling nancy and she had given me permission. i'm not sure i'm going to be able to get this as a book, so finally, i did some more research, i did sort of an addendum to my proposal how i was going to find out all of this stuff and when i finally called and told her i had sold the book. she said, i told you, just remember, they always come out on top in the end. so uncle willy was having this-- she believed uncle willy is responsible and she thinks the book is going to do really well, because uncle willy is looking out for me and i love that and i hope she's right. [laughter] >> well, you-- your books are about connecting with people and about connecting the past and the present. and this is your advice for young reporters, get away from your damn smartphones and computers. go back to the basics, papers,

scissors, be the glue, as a reporter once told you. and can you elaborate how this has been your m-o? >> documents can only take you so far. memoirs written, i mean, that was a great find when i found the guy bragging about buying this. all the paper work can take you so far, but there's no substitute for going and meeting people and hearing their stories. >> i mean, the best parts of the book, i think, are this-- these gritty, kind of microaggressions that these men and women lived with during jim crow. like the little girls walking to school past the white lady's house and there were parrots and they were trained to squawk epithets at them. and the ladies, rent collectors

who accepted sex in partial payments. i'd never have the stories had i not gone out to spent the time to know people and they know me and open up to stories. >> that's the heart and soul of your book, i think. >> thank you, thank you. >> in addition to the remarkable story. one i think thing if you comment on. because the brothers were portrayed in the circus as sort of being i mbeciles. >> it happened that a lawyer interviewed him, and i took him out to lunch and i was having trouble finding documents. and the circuit court clerk helped me find them. and he took him out to lunch. he he said i deposed him. and i said what was he like? he gave me detail. if you think he was mentally

incapacitated? oh, my heaven no. another lawyer to deposed him said it was mid december and there was a better handle on his christmas shopping than he did. >> and he was blind. >> he was blind and he knew exactly what nancy was getting and how much money it was going to cost and, yeah. >> the doctors, the nurses, he just had this way about him. one of the nurses remembers walking up the stairs and he heard her footsteps and he said, who is there? and he she said, it's the nurse and he said, does the nurse have a name? >> you know, like you can tell me your name. >> how hard was it making the leap from writing articles to books? >> well, a good friend of mine that was in long time reporter with, ralph, jr., had written

his first book before factory man had come out and gave me the advice, it sounds simple and it was so on and gave me the confidence. it's just like one very, very long feature article, so it was. it's all the same tools, it's all the same reporting techniques, and the trust building, the documents, calling around to experts, taking what experts said, running it by another expert, showing a picture to somebody who is an expert on cast assumisum-- costuming. it's the same skills, but it's over more, more time, 100 years, both books covered 100 years and it has to, like things have to kind of did-- can't be totally apart from this part and this part. in factory man, my editor said the first time he read it, he said it reads like two books, the first part like southern virginia and the second like china. a southern virginia maker,

keeping on trade to keep workers employed. what his section was was to build on what was going on in china early in the book, so at the same time it would seem to be more seamless. i had that in my mind as i was writing truevine. this is boring office supply shop talk, but i have this stuff called wizard wall, plastered, like a dry erase and you can move it and all over my walls and so i would keep up with little threads that i'd know i'd want to keep back to. to me, that's the big difference, you're still writing and i write like, i plot out a chapter and then i put up the sections and i want each section, each chapter to read almost like it would stand alone, but then i want each section to have a little, in journalism kickers, the end. and i want each section would have a kicker and the chapter to have a kicker and then all to sort of feed on what the next chapter will be, so you're

leaving people wanting to keep turning the page. >> so this is such an intricate story, there are so many facets, in the past and present and how did you figure out that structure? you know, i like the way you interweave it. you start with the basic story. and then you go into you trying to get the story. so-- >> and then basically, it's chronological after that. except for these digressions and then i say, i did this because that adds another lawyer of context to it and newspapers are not allowed to include ourselves in stories and i always-- i mean, i always just went along with it, i didn't put myself in stories, but i have written some essays, and i-- i feel like it's almost more honest when we're peeking behind the curtain a little bit and showing the leader how we got the information. in factory man, some of the

best, most telling details about john basset iii are his constant calling me on the phone. he's just relentless trying to control the story and what it is. one day, 8:00 in the morning, he's called me three times and my phone was upstairs and i was downstairs. by the time i go up at 8:14, he says, well, i guess you're sleeping in today. like, can you imagine that? not being in the book? like that shows like his relentlessness. and so i would have lost some of the best stuff on the cutting room floor. that's why i do that. >> well, do we have any audience questions? if you could come up to the microphone, if anyone has any questions for beth? >>. >> thank you for being here, i've enjoyed so much. your sign instead of saying sit

down and shut up, should say i don't give up. i feel like we've been with you through your journey to write this work and i'd like to know how you celebrate it when you knew it was going to publish and going to become a book. what did you do to celebrate? >> well, i called nancy and i had a little celebration with her and then, my husband and i celebrated because, hey, i've got an income for the next few years. [laughter] >> and this week, the book comes out tuesday, we're going to have a book launch party in roanoke, and nancy and her family are coming, and all of those old ladies that i drove around, i hope, if they're willing are coming. 102-year-old aj reed from truevine who brought sort of the world of share cropping alive for me in this book. he's going to be-- i said, now, your niece estelle said she would come and get you because truevine is an hour away. he said if i feel like coming i'm going to drive myself. i think it's going to be really

fun and exciting and to me that's going to be the moment like, when nobody celebrated them when they came home in 1927 except to want to see them and ogle them again and i hope it's going to be a kind of special thing for the family, almost like a homecoming, you know? so that will be great. >> you definitely needed a party. >> yes. >> thank you. . >> yes, ma'am? >> can you hear me? >> i can hear you. >> [inaudible] >> this is such an important story and i am so glad you never gave up trying to write it. i'm wondering if you are african-american, would it have been easier for you to get the information or what is your perspective on that? >> yeah, i mean, i don't really know because i'm not.

i -- it took me a long time to understand nancy's mistrust of the media and her mistrust of me. i mean, really, i would have held the story if she'd let me interview her, but really not until i delved into the way the family had been treated did i really understand this tough, tough layer that she has. and because i was there, she-- she's read every single article i'd written, she was kind of judging me for 25 years through the stories i wrote. when i would go in to get my ribs and fridays, she had talk about whatever i had written that had been in the paper she'd have a discussion about it and she became one of the people, one of the story beacons in the community that would help me find other stories. i did a ten-part series on care giving for the elderly in 2008 or so, and all the people we profiled in there were people i

got from nancy and so, i just think it's really important that we have to be inclusive. so, back to the first rule that my old editor caught me, you know, you need to write stories that reflect all of the community and-- >> and it's how you set up a relationship. >> it is. and it's a joy to do. i mean, there are days when i drive around and i can't believe i get paid to do this. i basically get paid. like getting a graduate degree in whatever you're interested in and that's, that's why i love what i do. >> thank you so much. >> thank you. >> thank you, beth for your wonderful conversation. >> wonderful. here is the new bk

the gene. [inaudible conversations] >> i m the co-owner of politics and prose.

we really enjoy hosting the author talks at this true leave wonderful venue be -- and the executive director and everybody else deserves lots of credit and recognition to turning this place and to such a vibrant center of cultural life. let's give them a round of applause. >> we will hear about human dna in important element of community is a local independent bookstore many still exist the numbers have been growing thanks in large

part to many people like you so when you feel the urge to buy a book, and shop local you can get the full experience by coming to politics and prose with personalized service as well as a sense of discovery or if you want to order online click on the book that you like. now to human dna, siddhartha mukherjee awarded the nonfiction prize the emperor of formalities was an inquiry that had clinical and personal.

he has done it again the tells the story of genetics with the social history of a personal narrative. he was so physically and mentally exhausted after emperor she did god expect to write another book but it was a natural paring with the prequel with that biological normalcy. and to ever wonder how much of our lives depend john dexter of parks down to expect a simple answer it is complicated.

as far back that was a couple decades ago he kid distinguish and self then went to harvard medical school with a professor at columbia at university and to me n conversation this evening the:editor and managing editor of the pbs news hour please join me to welcome siddhartha mukherjee and judy. [applause]

>> thanks for that creches introduction -- gracious introduction. if you read a the emperor of all morality issue will be more than fascinated by "the gene." i feel like my microphone is a little bit louder. there are so many ways with like to begin but the years that you worked on the book you said you were exhausted but then something else was going on in your mind and you write about that in a way that will pull every right to end the beginning of the book. what was going on in your life and to even think about

writing this? i did not think of it as the name of the book but as i was growing up by had a history of mental illness and my family i had to uncles' with bipolar having lived with that for many years one of them lived with my family what was growing up. then some time in my childhood was also diagnosed and institutionalized. and that elephant in the room would not go away.

most families said that they could not deny that any more like my father could not that that was a part of his life with that heredity component. that is when we began to talk about it. so constantly in the back so who else send what does it look like? some of this story was my story long before it came my story and when i finished riding "the emperor of all maladies" in i thought i

would be done but then i kept coming back to this idea it was like star wars the prequel to the sequel laugh laugh. >> rededicate the book to to people none of them was your own grandmother so there is the powerful story there but to read from the start of the book you were with your father and went to visit your cousin? >> this is where the story begins. >> this is the prologue of the of book the blood of your parents.

in the winter of 2012 my father accompanied me lost in the private anguish. the hearing testified and he was the firstborn. since 2004 when he was 40 he was confined for a the mentally ill. end before out -- and would treat him throughout the day. the lonely counter campaign with that diagnosis that

magically easy demands and self. and once without warning to leave it -- to live a secretly normal life. but my father knew and i knew there was more than these visits. the only member of mental illness of the four brothers to suffered of the unraveling of the mind. and les part of the by-elections lies in the gramm recognition that he pay be buried. then this the first paragraph of the book. >> so in your family you heard stories about it you

said your grandmother was influential fan to how she was toward your uncle. >> he came to live with us because he could no longer take care of himself. so in this nuclear family growing up with aspirations in new delhi was saved remnant and he moved in with us by then. >> years later, and the idea that in your family were constantly thinking about this one generation to the next but it wasn't everybody in the family or every cousin and certainly not you . but, that was the impetus that brought you to think, that he wanted to spend more time looking at the genetic mystery. there is a connection to

cancer in the first book you were embarking on a completely different and ambitious story. >> i published a small excerpt with that picture of me and my father for a price set on a for many years i didn't do anything with it but the first thing that i wrote and didn't give it out to the left anyone as part of my writing process but i went back to wit -- to it and the genetics is about family, it is this a reminder we think of the

word genius has infused our culture as the abstract concept that people talk about in a laboratory. but it is family. it has to do with family and how you and i are made. who doesn't have a of relative that is affected? you could put that with an interaction with the jeans now when i look back, this is really about family and living organisms that emanate of the things that are called genes. >> you wrote this and before i ask you about the history history, you write this with the sense of real urgency

that you felt was important to get this down now because there's a lot going on in science. we talked about this earlier , you had a sense it is important for people to understand don't just leave that up to the experts. >> i will give u.s. sense of what is going on moving forward. we are learning to read and write the as human genome. i mean as you know, 2002 we obtained the sequence. that is what it is the entire repository of genetic information of the human embryo and it is written in

code one. i have not memorized it. [laughter] but here is what is interesting, if you imagines the encyclopedia, it is 66 false sense of the encyclopedia britannica lining up all the edges if you would pick them upper -- pick them up, yet out of that there is the four-letter code that builds you and me.

with small variations and that is the difference between you and me. so to understand those technologies number one to read that code very clearly beginning to predict what might have been in your future of the genome for one example if you have the one gene mutation for breast cancer but it could be 10 times higher than those who don't. if you have cystic fibrosis gene mutation if both parents the chance is nearly 100 percent the diseases in your future.

i can tell you from your embryonic cell that you will have that disease 100 percent that is reading the genome and now is more complicated about illness. and complicated things about potential identity. that is hell we enter the territory to have some moral concerns. not only do i do that reading but to make intentional directional changes those astonishing technologies that they learn to use says humans and then

pick out one volume erased one word playback in -- to playback believes the rest of untouched. seems once they acquire the technology we need to talk about them. >> last week there was a closed-door meeting and that entire human genome one but in other words, they you could take that entire human genome. it is not science fiction fantasy but all the technologies that allow us

to get there and to think about mental illness that you may be interested in and if you don't you have an unbelievably important piece send our future. . .

i was thinking about this and that the information kind of sat there and it was another couple of thousand years, or almost a thousand before charles darwin started doing his work and then some other interesting characters and their almost these signposts along the way people who have worked on genetics and it all came together later to be critical. talk about that early work that was done. >> what's interested in about it is that of course this is a perennial question. since the dawn of human history, you can imagine one of the first question we asked ourselves is why do we look like our parents were why do we not look like our parents. these two simultaneous contradictions, the ying and

yang of of these two questions have been part of our dna forever. who hasn't asked that question. when an illness strikes. when two identical twins are born we say why do they look like the same and so forth. it's an astonishing fact and he was in astonishing biologist. >> which most people don't realize. >> yes. he was trying to divide the world up into different organic forms of.

aristotle realized, or he made the argument that what was really moving was message, some kind of message. it's a little bit like a carpenter shaping a piece of wood. the carpenter, when the carpenter shapes it, how human beings are formed, when a carpenter shapes shapes a piece of wood, he doesn't shape it in a material way ,-comma what he does is he transmits information as it were his handiwork or her handiwork into that piece avoid. that is what happens. he is transmitting information, message into that piece of wood and that's what make that would acquire whatever form. this was back in, i don't remember exactly when that point the time was, but this was back in the day when people were

debating about how god gave us forms. there's a long silence after that. for a while people thought that in fact this was so complicated, how on earth could a fully formed embryo develop when a woman conceives, how can that possibly happen. they made the argument, it was an argument made in the 1600s that hundreds that in fact a tiny miniature human being was sitting inside sperm, wrapped up like this and major pictures of it too. if you thought about it carefully and i had to be the case that since that animal would also generate its own

children, many had to be sitting inside. and so forth and so on infinitely. it's a little crazy if you think about it. this was one of the most popular ideas about how we transmitted likeness which was of course the gene. >> but the information ,-comma what he figured out and shared really sat there, along comes charles darwin who did some important work in all of this, but there are some others who came along that were not appreciated. you spend some interesting pages on the monk. >> yes, it's a fascinating story

he realizes, it's very interesting that both darwin and him are monks. it's instructive about our times and people found no contradiction contradiction about exploring our universe, someone should read -- the capacity and compassion they brought to their scientific explorations was incredible. so he was a monk and he began to do extremely simplified experiment.

that was his trick. his main insight was to simplify this idea around genetics. he said i want to forget all about that and all i'm going to do is study with almost monastic concentration, i will study what happens with one or 27 individual features across multiple generations of peace. here were people talking about hugely complex experience about human embryos and how we were born and there was him sitting in a small monastery at the edge of the city where he sat all i want to do is study seven tests and map them, he didn't coin the word gene, he had no idea what these were and at the end of it, just by mathematical reasoning, he realized realized that has

got to be something, the unit of information must be passing between the parent and the offspring. >> he wanted to work with mice, but in fact his superiors would let him. >> that's right because mice was a little too risqué. so i spent some time in the monastery. it's a beautiful place. you can get to it easily from vienna but it's a little bit of a schlep. i traveled over to the monastery and i arrived there and there was a woman at the front desk and i said i've come all this way, i want to see the birthplace of biology. was like a pilgrimage for me. he said i'm sorry, the monastery is closed so this is the czech

republic and i said i pleaded, i bagged a knife that i've come to all this way and i just just want to be inside and see the library and she said no and i said who do i apply to and completely without any irony she said to me. so i'm from india and i said to complete this game and i said i hereby apply to you and so she was defeated and she let me in so i spent four or five days going back and forth, being in the library and looking up that garden where he planted those peas that generated this thing which is now taken over the world. >> and with the work that he did, it wasn't appreciated for a long time and he was gone and at some point, there are a number of other important figures. remind us, who who came up with the term genetics?

psalmody gets credit for that. >> remember he doesn't even have that word in his vocabulary but he knows he stumbled on something. >> he sent copies of his report, he condensed it to 40 some pages and sent it to the scholarly centers but it was dismissed. everyone said what is he writing about and why should i be reading this and he went on describing and then in the 1900s he gets rediscovered and soon after in 1909 we find the word gene because botanists and biologists begin to say to

himself we have to have a word for this. it's abstract, we don't know what it is, is a molecule or a structure, but something carries this information. we know it's important and so we've got to have a word for it. william, one of his great defenders, i talk about him and there's a great picture of him in the book and points to the word genetics from genius, generation, all of these words coming together and he coins the word gene for genetic and then his colleague says we have to name that thing and they name it the gene. >> so it's fits and starts. this progress and set back and more progress and you do an amazing wonderful job of bringing to light these people who really probably led on

extraordinary lives and then you fast-forward, but before you get to that point things really go badly. why did that happen? >> it's important to remember that off-track. the desired you manipulate heredity, you can do powerful studies. he invented the term eugenics. he didn't know very much about genetics and he made a huge

mistake. he was a great mathematician and statistician, but he also lived in darwin shadow all his life. can you imagine these two giants , he had many important contributions to statistics and he thinks that regardless of what the gene is, whether it's a gene or no gene, we can use human heredity by manipulating heredity and make better human beings. he supposedly coined the word eugenics, good genes, in order to make better human beings. if you selectively breed the best we can superiorly emancipate ourselves and here's

what's astonishing, this was considered a progressive idea like taking evening walks or getting a very healthy idea for humankind and many progressives, some exceptions and notable exceptions that this this is a great idea, we should do more of this. it took off in england and stayed in england, and that idea metastasizes and reaches the shores of this country where it mingles with the yankee practicality and becomes, it morphs into not just let's breed the best, let's sterilize those who carry bad genes. that escalates slowly and leads to a case that many people know, the carry box case. carrie carrie buck was a woman who was accused of having to be

sterilized and the great judicial moderate, the case climbed to his court and it said three generations of imbeciles is enough and carrie buck was moved to a state colony and she was forcibly taken to an operating theater and sterilize sterilized on that pretext. >> there was no proof that she had anything. >> there was no evidence. if anything she was, she was a bit of a rebel. that was the worst of her sentence. >> you are saying to me early today that you felt it was so important and she's one of two people you dedicate the book too this happen. it's not just nazi germany. >> right and to finish up the

story, it metastasizes again and moves from selective reading to selective sterilization to selective extermination and that is the final incarnation and we now remember it by that. beginning with people who had mental illness, moving on to things like depression and moving on to the racial and athletic and human cleansing, and i put that right in the middle of the book. in fact i wanted to start the book with that idea, but then i realized to start the book with the german episode, i realized it was much much more chilling to watch what happens in front of your own eyes.

that the road to that menace, the road to that ghastly nest was paved by a desire to emancipate the desire for perfectibility and to make ourselves better and less than 30 years, the extermination of someone who has a mild form of mental illness. >> i think we all want to believe that could never happen again, but as you set a a moment ago, because of the incredible advances that have been made in such a short time that people really don't understand ,-comma what do you think the possibility is that decisions could get made now or in the near future that not a repetition of some of the worst of what you described, but we could head off in a direction that could be hard to turn around.

>> the one example in the united states and one example internationally, i personally think having read the story, i think it's very likely that we will have a state-mandated form of eugenics. i think what's much more difficult to contend with is that we are entering an era of personalized eugenics. this technology is available today. very soon you should be able to sequence every single gene of your unborn child. the question you need to ask yourself is what to do with this information. you won't know what to do with the information unless you know what genes are and how they interact. that is one arena that's important, but men men meanwhile let's not forget that numerically the largest project is already going on in india and

china. in some parts of india there are 700 women compared to 1000 men. there has never been this large of a skew that is a project fostered by science, beginning with ultrasound diagnosis and ending up with amniocentesis and gender diagnosis through chromosomal analysis, etc et cetera. ladies and gentlemen, welcome to a time where were already part of it. it has destabilized the way we think about it. it's not someone else's am i it's not some other worlds problem. this is our world's problem and the faster we accepted and the more we understand it, the more armed we will be in able to mitigate internationally. >> it's clearly a case of the science being ahead of where government policymakers are

prepared to make decisions. how much of that is the practical effect right here in the united states. you talked a minute ago about the work that's being done to edit genes and what you just said about creating a person synthetically. >> creating a genome. >> how much do scientists talk about that? homage to they sit sit around and worry about that, think about it, and how much do they talk to policymakers. >> they think a lot and worry a lot about it but the policymakers don't have the language to understand what the implications are of them. the scientists don't have the language at all.

my mentor for many years, paul and several other scientists discovered the technology to close list genes together in the 1970s pretty one a nobel prize and it's relatively simple technology. you take one piece of dna and you cut it up using tiny molecular scissors made by bacteria to kill each other and you stick them together with another enzyme and another factor which is used normally when you're dna strands break because of x-rays, something to stick them back together and maintain the integrity. if you just combine these two pieces you can certainly start taking a gene from a frog and stitch it together with another animal. you can take to genes of any sort. this is incredibly important technology.

cancer drugs are made this way. you take, because the genetic code is uniform and universal you can take a gene from a blue well and put it in a monkey and the monkey sells would recognize that for all intents of purposes of a monkey gene and make it as a monkey gene. that's because we all evolve from the same original organisms and we share the same genetic code. so when this technology was first created, scientists got together and created an open meeting. journalist came, policymaker came, they all spent months reading. there was no document about the gene but they all spent months collecting the information, learning the vocabulary and then they had a meeting in which they said we are going to put a voluntary project for one year before we can figure out what the next steps are because this

technology may unleash biological catastrophe. it is possible, i think, at, at least within the united states to put it on things before we figure out what to do with them. two weeks ago, two months ago there was a large conference and it was suggested there should be a moratorium on editing human genes, in particular kinds of cell. certainly not not every cells but embryonic stem cells of certain kinds, although that's unlikely to happen, but certainly human embryos. meanwhile, to finish up, there's up, there's an experiment in china that was published where they went ahead and tried to define genetic mapping in a human embryos. they tried to make a defined genetic change. >> what happened. what was the result. >> we don't fully know because it was published piecemeal and they were nonviable embryos so

the quick answer is any principle they could make genetic changes in human embryos. >> what does that mean? >> that means in principle, if you tweaked the technology you could say yourself that i'm interested in, and i talk about how you might treat that in the real world, the chinese experiment is actually not a great way to do that experiment, but if you tweaked that you could say i'm going to try to erase the mutation from my genetic heritage. i'm going to try to erase or change the mutation or variation that causes alzheimer's disease from my heritage. in the bars are a scenario you could say i want to add information back to the human genome which you could do. you could add information to the human genome. >> we want to make people taller

or something. >> i talk about this. it's very important to realize, tallest or height is genetic but at least five or seven genes govern not. could you change five or seven genes? maybe you could. , but also, you can add information back to the human genome. that is a surprising thing and we should take that very, very seriously. >> we are going to be taking questions from all of you in just a couple of minutes but before we do, just how do we make sure that this kind of work goes in the right direction and not someplace that we don't even want to think about? >> i think there has to be an international consensus on health because the next thing you know there will be an arms race, china china korea india

will start making genetic interventions and outlying one possibility, one thought experiment that happened, but long before the atomic bomb was made there was a famous letter that said there's no such thing as the atomic bomb, but here's a thought, just in your brain walk through this process and you end up with the unleashing of immense power in a concentrated manner and even write and say this could create a weapon of great destruction. nothing has been made yet. it's just that you can walk the mental steps to it. i think we need to walk those mental steps and figure out what the possibility is. we need to walk those steps internationally so we can figure out what the realm of control is, and i suggest a kind of framework by which we can stick

to before we enter an error that we don't want to enter. >> so we are going to take questions. i guess there are couple of microphones. before they come to the microphone, when i think about what you do, when i think about the book that you wrote on cancer and the work you did with public television and sharon rockefeller who is here and is the president of w eta who worked with you on the film and ken burns, and i think how do you even have time to sleep because you are scientists you're a scientist and oncologist, you write books, your husband and a father and you write books, how do you do it all? >> this? >> this book came out of such urgency that it had to be written. i sort of prioritized it. it took five and half years so

it seems as if it came up one morning, but it took a lot of time and i spent a lot of time on it and a lot of it was going back to the stories. i thought to myself if i can just knit together the stories, one after another, i would achieve the book. >> it's kind of extraordinary that he can get it all done. let's start over here. i can't see very well but stepped to the mic and ask a question. >> hi, my name is andy and i'll be starting school in the fall to study the intersections of anthropology and i just had a question along the lines of this discussion, exploring new frontiers of science so i know you've written about genetics and were starting to find a lot more information and evidence about the transgenerational

generations of transmitting information and i was wondering, in the spirit of this conversation understanding the ethical and social considerations of new scientific findings ,-comma what those would be? >> let me rephrase the question because at the very important question. the question is, to what extent, we know that genes transmit information across generations, but lately there's been a lot of interesting finding about whether things that happen to you in the environment can also be transmitted across generations. the evidence for that is very, very minimal right now. it's a totally unexplored frontier. :

>> >> what is amazing about it with this idea is that the genes actually protect us from that there almost designed to wash away the sins of our fathers and all

the scars that we have in our body are washed away it is a very beautiful thing as a solution to read generation but there is evidence with very detailed studies on starvation of simple organisms that does have any effect across cogenerations. >> for years we have had a dichotomy of genetics and environment even when sociobiology and i always thought it was a false dichotomy everything was genetic form tried the environment not genetic war or environmental but the commonality maybe having pour eyesight is genetic yet

we could do lace sick surgery to affect our behavior so that is a false question quite. >> it is in just a false question but that has led us lot i write about this in of book extensively when somebody asks the question is in nature or nurture the first question we should be asking back is what are we talking about? what aspect? some concrete examples of gender is strikingly genetic one that aspect of gender anatomy if you have that gene you will have one particular anatomy gender and physiology that goes

with them and if not it is the opposite how do we know? if you have some women that the one gene is mutated these women are self-described with most gender anatomy in tact and so the agenda anatomy strikingly government by the genes but the gender identity, so the idea that that is an arm assist it depends on what lovell love hierarchy we are examining

and it is amazing to me that he meant cannot understand a simple idea to be dominated by jean store environment it depends what we are asking about. >> would lead you please elaborate on the recent developments of treating cancer with the gene modification particular the breast cancer? >> right now all of these technologies can have powerful effects. one of the things there are some recent striking trials the gene therapy and

certainly the adn of genes being used in breast cancer and has really changed the life of those who have the mutation. the only way to make that is a human gene antibody from that other technique so when you talk about genes and cancer they run the gamut from diagnosis, a genetic therapy, drugs, we would not be here today without genetic engineering in particular. >>, it promised you feel is

in that area? >> certainly with the antibody therapies they do more and more it is impossible without genetic engineering. we would not know what the entire body was. so when it underlies these miraculous advances. >> so that distinction of breast cancer they are genes. it is a marker for certain kinds of cancer. did you have to learn genetics very quickly.

>> how close are we to getting a cure for cancer? how close might ppv quick. >> care is a complicated word because it depends on what we talk about if you ask me to be helpful in some ways but it is helpful to refocus the attention at the time when we talk about what is irrelevant issues of how to emancipate the health problems so rather than

focusing on to rebuild the systems whether federally funded that can provide medical confirmation. end already if they have not met their goals and that has allowed us to clear some of mccaw blabs i think there will be a backlash as well to say how dare we we have said otherwise. i think it has advanced significantly over the last decade. >> to more questions. >> we have spent talking

about human genetics the policy might first thought goes to the gm ball and that is a huge gap with that scientific consensus and the perception. >> to be honest i do think it deserves a full second book. [laughter] the issue to be genetically modified beds talk about the technology's but i don't go into the pros and cons are pluses or minuses but the

one thing i would say is these sophistication is increasing daily that raises the specter of unintended consequences to be less concerned locally but personally in that biosphere at large with the much larger conversation you have that another time. >> we will count as a question but as the lead in into another conversation. >> want to ask european. >> i n9 graduate student

finishing up interested in science policy, it should do they talk to the policy makers? he responded a scientist to talk to science policy talks government and you do a great job translating that difficult talking to media. >> particularly on cancer and so the of problem is not

that there isn't meeting spaces opportunities but the whole category is different. once that becomes common it becomes much more easy so part of that effort is to arm ourselves if you open the newspaper with the human genome what does that mean? what are the implications and and we can have a real conversation with thank you for reminding us that is the effort that we need to have to work. >> originally i m from the czech republic. [laughter]

>> let's have a drink. >> do you think in the future we could identify the gene quick. >> these are complicated questions and 15 years ago david say they are great but now they're not so crazy rather genes for temperament personality quirks almost always there is a very high order principles that lie a in between the environment but do life feel that these qualities have some components that the answer

in is yes studying identical twins separated at birth the famous teddy i interviewed one of the authors product in very different circumstances shared surprising kinds of behavior is. personality traits preferences, anxieties, what does that mean? that what predisposes does to certain kinds of behavior or also not identical twins but siblings that falls dramatically it is a very artificial effect.

and to manipulate. and that these are inheritable. >> this is a great question. >> we have to stop the is a fascinating book don't think it is about science is about people and family but done ended the approachable way