tv Simon Winchester Land CSPAN March 7, 2021 5:00pm-6:01pm EST
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>> tonight on booktv in primetime, african-american history, a history of the civil rights movement, on the 2019 college admissions scandal. federal reserve board chair weighs in on how to build economic sustainability for workers in he future, and an interview with elizabeth kolbert. that all begins tonight at 7 kole 10:00 p.m. eastern. ... please ensure your questions anytime by clicking on the cunard the bottom of the
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window. please be sure to put the questions in the q&a and anything else need chat. in fact want you say hello and the chat right now and tells we were joining from. if you select all panelists and attendees everyone will see your comments. as many of you knowns a wonderful historical building we are an independent nonprofit library and cultural center near the boston comic were welcoming people's safety measures in place. i like to extend a warm invitation to each of you to join if you are not already a member he can join us but the day passed our virtual event season passport find out about the many benefits we offer or by sending us a note to the event staff in the q and a. b be happy to answer your questions and welcome you. i also enjoyed knowledge the boston is on these ancestral homeland of the historical people passing present it and itself of the people of stewardess throughout the generations. this causes us to continue
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stewards of the land we inhabit as well. our speaker this evening simon winchester is a massachusetts resident claimed author of many books. here at the professor and the madman, the men who united the states atlantic pacific the man he left china and a crack in the edge of the world. all of which were near times bestsellers and appeared on numerous notable lists in 2006 mr. winchester was a leading officer of the order of the british empire. tonight i'll be talking about his brand-new work of nonfiction land, all the hunger for ownership shaped the modern world for the boston globe praised his unique blend of wide-eyed curiosity meticulous research and analysis but were here to see it firsthand, welcome simon to the virtual boston athenaeum.
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>> thank you very much indeed. it was really lovely to be back. every time i come i join and i attend may be once in the subsequent year i get harsh lessons you're going to renew again and i don't renew until you give another speech so i imagine i'll be at the end of this i'll be joining once again the wonderful wonderful institution paid one thing i do want to say speak into from the farm on a dirt road in a tiny little village southeast brookshire county. the wi-fi here is pretty feeble. local farmers decide to watch an episode of the crown or something like that it make it really wobbly. i will warn you this may go down for now do my best anyway
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and hopefully the internet gods be kind to us tonight. how did this all come about? i used to live in hong kong. and lived there for 13 years and write an occasional book. and then in june 1997 when the retro session, it was called happened at back in the hands of china, i decided to leave and to come either to back in britain or i came from or come to the united states. in the "new york times" correspondent in hong kong at the time said if i wanted the beauty of the english countryside and all of the efficiencies of the united states should cover new england. so i did come over i bought a tiny little cottage in the village and dutchess county,
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new york which had a small garden was surrounded by relatively large forest. and who lived in the bronx would come up each autumn give himself of the hunting season he would always leave me a cooler with a beverage and then usually a bottle of cognac so i liked him very much. one day he come to me and said i don't uses land very frequently, so why don't i sell it to you would like to buy it? when he named a price which back then i could afford. so we agreed and i bought this land. and since then for the first time in my life is the only one in my family who'd had a land owner.
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my family had a postage stamp of a garden in central england that was the nearest we could come to land owners. now we have this big chunk. as on the north face of a mountain i do say use footed to little streams and a stunning view and they had a marvelous selection of trees, ash and cherry, all sorts of stuff. then a large array of wildlife things that were fairly unusual to me as an englishman and i liked it. but then eventually i decided i had this fantasy of becoming a quasi gentleman farmer, i wanted land that was more horizontal. in bought this little peace of land appear in massachusetts.
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sold the house in new york but kept the land. and visited maybe once a year. but didn't think too much that was on the uss constitution which many of you will know is in the harbor in boston became an american citizen. and there were about 16 of us was by far the oldest. there's the young lady from vietnam i believe was the youngest. i found it critically moving. then suddenly the land i own in new york assumed a much greater significance to me than it ever had. it's quite literally invested in the country to which i had become a citizen. i used to go down to fairly often started looking in history. i bought it from this man
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caesar, see the transactions before that until the 19th and typewriters became day hand writer in these things. we went back they were all written in english dutch and whoever they agreed with were not people who were able to write. they were castles or some such. i realized these were the originals of the land. and they were indians the further south. [inaudible]
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until i was suddenly struck by this notion that the people from whom the land was stretched and acquired, henry hudson expedition some things for the dutch did not have the concept of ownership. they owned the land they grew agriculture on it, they raised animals, they hunted the superintendent overcome the world. but they did not own it. but they defend the speech by chief when he was selling lands that would eventually become seattle made this famous, famous speech think we can know more own the lands then we can only breeze or the ocean.
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the land is your mother but you don't exactly own it. and here was i looking at the land and falling to my knees and running the soil through my fingers and being able to say this belongs to me. how did all this happen? this change from never owning land to the arrangement by which i and thousands of others all over the world did own the land. this is something i thought i would like to explore in more detail. so i thought about it the admirable idea and restricted in united states only around the world. so i did. if you can remember when mom was actually able to travel i
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did indeed around the world. where i used to live and of course the united states as well. in looks to behold business of owning land and develop over the years went like with the future going to be in the result they have received i very much enjoyed talking about it. so here i am an owner. and first of all with nonfiction books you can have the greatest idea and you can try to breakage but the crucial, crucial component particularly of the large lake this is the structure. how do you structure a book
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about somewhat more. because land subjects like this with how do you write about land? i thought it would divide this into five parts per did i would write a prologue which describes my land 123 acres of the county and i writing epilogue someone starts the book will provide a way to wrap the whole thing up. then five name part of the book. it seems to me if you want to own land you have to know where it is. you have to know where it begins and ends. to this a great deal and it fascinated me. they created borders and how does everything map.
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and how do you require land? the fight for or there might be other ways. so that is how you require it. and then you know only too well you try to fight for the land. let's talk about how people agitate to get each other's land causes problems. and then how steward their land. after they look at it don't look after. and then look into something that's very relevant there in boston and to me here in western massachusetts. perhaps reforming the idea of who should own land in the future. possibly look forward to
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returning it because the land was owned by the native americans who were here first. but i thought i would do was try for each of those release most of them one of the negative like me is somewhat interesting. you might find it too, so first of all how did borders begin? tiny little things between fields of they can be magic and often they are defined by mountain ranges or rivers or that sort of thing. as a slight diversion but if you accept the human civilization began in eastern africa and spread north and south, and then social local civilization he had no river
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in china. these began and stood out the petri dish i suppose, which is the first of those in effect with each other. and i think is probably the nile civilization spread eastward. and mesopotamian civilization spread westward. all of the sudden, probably near the city and the marshes of southeast iraq, that's what i think is the first international border were two completely different peoples meet each other. the consumer granular scale, how did the first border really get noted?
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i would like to think of farmers. stick to england. a lot of this, imagine in the bronze age using a fire hydrants speckle may be running out with metal catches soil and low and behold. [inaudible] a fruit or vegetable he can eat. but psyche makes a line of these the early and creates a referral. that in that he can create lots of stuff and then produce what's used to feed with neighboring farmers and
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indulge therefore in some sort of trade. so increasing and creating luck let's say we get an orderly fashion all going in the north-south direction. and then he's got a neighbor, and similarly let's say his land is not on the side of a hill and he is following the contour lines. instead of going north/south he is arranging them in a northeast, southwest direction for can work it out properly. so there comes a point where they intersect like ripples into a pond where they in effect make sure one farmer may be growing a different
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crop marks the intersection on a ditch or a hedge, that is the first boundary. they then became not just between fields the devil or wimberly people. in england, but then they became borders around villages and what later became and then and do course countries in the whole business of so forth living within a border. has completely fascinated me. i said this a little, and a variety of ways. and i should jump forward, no
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i won't i won't jump forward for a moment to bring them going to just turn to the discussion of borders. there's one tragic border creation story i wanted to tell you. land has borders. people need want to acquire it. they need to know where it is, where it begins where it ends. leaning too many things but one of them if you haven't accurate map. you'll probably all or member from school the greek mathematician in egypt who thousands of years ago doesn't just the angle down a well and southern egypt. as a slight shift.
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the angle of the sun and a wellin alexandria, he was able to compute about 38000 kilometers. which is more or less right. makes the center by which the whole business of land owning has really become big business. it was decided that we need to know the size of the world accurately. on the way this was done sent one or two times before but number two great accurately, is to measure a meridian coming to the earth was, so the russians a great
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astronomer and mathematician, he commissioned in stony which in those as part of the russian european empire who was an astronomer who measured a meridian. he was often very it was 18 children or something. he was given permission to measure a meridian in europe. he decided to do so meridian 25 degrees east of greenwich. he drew a line north of norway down to odessa of the black sea. onset of going to measure the exact length. to the way you do that remember geometry by measuring triangles.
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using a baseline and a chain of specific length. then then using that point to get three points to get the angles very accurately. you can measure the other two sides. but to do that you had to create a system of triangles about 5000 miles from odessa. this took him it would take in 45 your space you go to a forest and you would measure a baseline from iraq somewhere stuck in the earth in a circle and exxon took. if it is in the forest you want to be able to see above the trees. sooner or rickety power exactly above his head.
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in using great convection of mirrors and others things, you pull is great thing up and pointed he measured a church steeple or a tower among other things, and you begin your measuring length and the rest of it. it took 45 years and when they finished it, it came up with a figure. [inaudible] it was 40038 because they're too hundred 56 meters and a few centimeters. in other words he was able to measure with confidence.
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after just a few centimeters. that was completed in the 1850s. and basically was challenged before by gps and various it was a remarkable, remarkable achievement. i've got about 15 years ago someone walking in his stony laffey a came across one of these marks in the force within x chose into it. and thought this must be one they used it to the circumference of the earth. i wonder if there are others? any set about finding 275 of the stones all the way from norway to the ukraine.
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and petition the united nations to make these things into a world heritage site they deserve to be. and so they have someone surveyors around the world through the geo getting arc sounds terribly arcane. there is a great pilgrimage. went to laffey aware had friends anyway i went down a rainy rainy day one of these marks deep in the forest. all sorts of adventures and they had to be rescued they were all in his and eventually we found it. there is a magical moment and realized connecting this long forgotten this is the accurate
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deduction. the similar thing happened on a slightly larger scale a few years later than that. which i also had a personal connection. i like maps, i became fascinated by another equally. he said in the 1890s, now we know the size of the world we to create a map of the entire globe. fiftys stuck them altogether the weight they were arranged would make a globe of the planet about the size of a house. it would be to scale of one per million. and will have the same
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language english no country should map itself so the american is mapped with china and south america and the english in africa, and so we go on. there is a neutrality there's no preference of any particular juncture. so it's off to the races. it began just at the turn of the century. the new the entire plant the land area anyway would take 870 and so before this outbreak in 1914 they created about 60 in the war obviously interrupted things predate team 181819 under instruments and went off mapping again.
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by the end of the second world war they produce about 300. so the world was getting pretty well mapped in its entirety and would be once the second world war was over. basically had to do with air travel. slowly out of the project and by the 1970s, about 800 sheets had been created. we think that's all but that's not all. with western china, parts of india. and finally had a conversation bangkok in 1987 the united nations, is now superintendent the project pulled the plug. said estimate 850 we are just shy of mapping the entire planet but were not doing it anymore the project is officially dead.
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so the world was sad i was interested i wanted to see these maps and the things of external beauty. is there a complete anywhere? you'd see occasional ones in a book and map shops. one to a million they are called. on them. [inaudible] i see it beautiful beautiful thing and i know the american geographical society stop the national geographic society, it's the american society they had some and manhattan they fell on large times largely because geography he thought being important there's declining declining interest
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in geography. they have had to move. [inaudible] i went to university were you would think there might be a better map collector. it's a know it exists but you have no idea where the connection is. i found in wisconsin i thought they might be there is a very active department but know they hadn't. i'd sort of given up. and then one day not long ago about four years ago i think, i was on a book tour for an earlier book. he was a driver in chicago he lives lived in bays. we are approaching milwaukee's i've rather bad news tonight. you're supposed be talking at a bookstore called basel but
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unfortunately you have been ousted because someone popular is there for the night. i'm afraid you have been assigned to a building in the milwaukee campus of the university of wisconsin. my ego was bruised i will have to say. so we drove to this dreary looking building, i walked over too this skyscraper i will never forget when i got into the left and there was tons up to be the biggest collection of clothes in the world. happens she was people waiting there's an ego was quite happy. there is this a lovely young woman the curator waiting to greet whoever it was about to
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speak. she looked at me and neither of us that anything specific other than i said to her, she can from the save the day, i she said yes, i do. we've got the complete sets. she walked over to the map cabot and pulled them out of there. sheets, after sheet, after sheet, after sheet. that was a century and a half ago so a wonderful memorial to the operation and we now know despite the world we have not nearly all of it to the same scale and people therefore to acquire land without any doubts of where it is, how big it is, words borders and boundaries are. i want to get back to this question of borders. one very sad episode which i
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find absolutely fascinating not the least because i used to live in india in the 70s. it is sort of relevant drove to india when he took up the assignment i drove from london. my 12-year-old son so we drove from europe and before the bridges built we took the ferry. so we were into iran and pakistan on a great u-shaped road and then and pakistan and the borders what i what to talk about because it indian
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regulations i have actually to drive back to pakistan every six months and stepped into india back to the indian government did not want to do that. i used to go back and forth something i should do in the studies of course. at august back to what happened in 1947. what happened in 47 has we all well know is ceded to the demands of india. they were replaced by the final viceroy. they installed themselves in the pallets and delis said india would get her
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independence in a really short time. he and other british government wanted india to be made into present as in one country. the head said india at once her own country. acronym. and he was interested in finally needed on the west side of indy to be called west pakistan. in one on the eastside called east pakistan. so how to create the borders between these new countries and do it in six weeks? the call someone and london it
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was a very proper, very mild mannered very unassuming welsh lawyer who thoroughly never been to india in his life and never traveled east of paris. the. [inaudible] come and create borders. which is in east pakistan's. they came over almost immediately felt ill with all of the problems to which new arrivals are up and gray. it was summer time, was sent up to a manchin in the capitol given a staff and they
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constantly are fighting the breakup of the demographic breakout of various villages and drew a line. he labored hard for six weeks despite the fact the nation was way out of date, he managed to draw a line 100 miles long and see the hidden layers which have effectively illegally alleviated the western border of india and the eastern border of pakistan. and even for of days independence was declared. it seems the border was
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announced a couple of days later and you all know very well because those who lived in what is a now muslim dominated, was to get into the safety of india led westward into the security to the holy city. it is been unbelievable amounts to a million people died. in this awful awful carnage and slaughter which the british of course had a very, very heavy responsibility. and radcliff was a broken man. he refused to see, he burned all of his notes for they could talk about what happened
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and went to london. visit charming short point made by india actor and his wife because w.h.o. about what he would call the bloodied line he has created. i did not dedicate this book as i might've done. i dedicated to the fact that, we need to keep an eye on the clock we got about another five minutes. [inaudible] something there. this open simply by mentioning there's an awful lot of land of course.
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there were people in canada the originals are australia, i write a lot about this. think about superior and he actually dared his not a human being of the united states. we did not think, i say we, we officially did not regard they were like squirrels or like groundhogs. as the ways in which we managed because the law says is this idea of uninhabited land. if you draw the world and you're crossed a part of the word which is uninhabited by
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humans, there are people in north america as being human you can say it's not inhabited. it's free for the taking. east of america, east of canada and destroying and resilient. in 1879 stan thereto's face to the supreme court declared him to be a human being. all of the sudden goes back to the motion of owning land. began, ongoing to have to hurry this along, it began in england. england is to blame for so many things i would apologize
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myself but accepting blame in the middle east and africa and solanki and all over. because of policy an idea 15th, 14th century in england you had a village surrounded by the houses or surrounding the houses the open fields and the villages could raise their cattle, their pigs, or that. his publicly held land. and then since the population was growing whose deemed by some unknown person and an efficient form of agriculture, someone came up with the idea of the open fields will be divided, will be segmented will be enclosed.
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and they own the land and raise cattle and it would own the land and raise pigs. so increasing which did happen. it happened with such speed and general good of the nation. but parliament got involved in 1604 happened in the village for the school endorsed and they go a radical. it says the common land would be enclosed. there is a notice saying they were to be owned by the intolerant village would be owned by a mere seven people. i notice to that effect with parliament authority was nailed to the church door. people were invited to comment if they wished. if not. it was repeated time and time
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again. as in the bill the 19th century a lot of people who had cattle or pigs or tenants, their ways to do it. they left the land, they went to these newly growing cities which caused the industrial revolution began late 18th century really began to expand. the irony is when they came in this country, when they came to australia and new zealand, now with their heads full of the idea, they had been dispossessed because the closure had kicked them out if they were. what did they do? they brought the idea of private ownership to the new world or by getting centuries of misery and degradation and unpleasantness.
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as you can gather i tend to go off at great length. i would have to be able to tell you about slavery land in holland, able to have a land rush. like to be able to tell you skewed as occurs in genocides in the ukraine all had to do with land. i'd like to tell you a story with which i end the book how much land does a man need. meanwhile there's any questions i would be delighted to have a go. if indeed they want to. >> of course. have the i am w1 to one mass
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of the world been digitized to the rest us can appreciate them to? >> guest: you know i think they have not sprayed the person to ask about that is this very nice woman in milwaukee. i will provide you with her name and e-mail. i know they have the equipment there to do that. the digitized other maps. i've written a peace about this magazine is a great deal of interest. like investing in really obscure things. she was a lovely person of sure if anyone wanted at least one digitized should be happy to do it.
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there's all eight to 50 would cost a lot of money but it's well worth doing. i will provide details. select fantastic, ensure that information. are you for both william kearns 1983 book changes in the land? in the new college of new england customer gets history from the point of view of the land of two cultures at such different views of ownership or stewardship about the land as you have been talking about. >> i am and i think it got on the shelf. these are all land related books. i do in the closing chapter of the book, do new england quite a lot. i think i mentioned i lived in oklahoma for a while when i was a schoolboy effectively. so came to know clue.
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i now live here also because i'm a moderator of this town called sanders field. i'm an elected town official making $150 a year old boy, i really do it for the money. [laughter] we have adopted what i'm so heartened to see you have adopted and offer your respects to the original. and initially there's the pledge of allegiance and then would you stand for a moment while we remember. they say the same thing honestly and new zealand. on their people are totally with this hit something the least they can do. the old-timers it's
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embarrassing. and now they can sense because it's spreading it's becoming this new england phenomenon. a bunch of other new england books. peace of the reservation land in the charles river i believe it was king philip looked after the trustees of the reservation. not with the resource council. the idea particularly in villages in the west in the state of the community land trust growing up here in vermont where communities are about too have landed open access to everybody. and there is the notion of
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trespassing is very interesting. of course it is the country that events the barbed wire. the idea to keep off my land is very much an american phenomenon. let's say in scandinavia the idea, everyone every swede to walk over and enjoy all of the land in sweden and who it belongs to. you can't go into someone's garden but providing you behave decently you could walk over land is privately owned. no such exists in the united states. you risk having your head blown off. that will be more or less legal in texas. so this is something in which needs to be reformed.
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and you ask about land ownership. i'm pleased that it is beginning, particularly here in the commonwealth. c100 to research about land, borders and ownership change of thinking of you about the land that you own? >> guest: i'm very glad you asked that. i put my hand on my heart and giving it away. i am certainly not putting barbed wire around it. to exist putting these post notice the little acreage here in massachusetts. and my neighbors have been urging me to it put the signs on posts, no trespassing for the very simple reason they know my identity in the audience today. this idea of attracting endangerment which means
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someone wanders onto my land without permission, without having put those signs up and shoots himself in the leg, i am liable. not having put those signs up is effectively saying yes come on, come into my land. and if he trips on iraq which is my rock, or injures himself it is my fault. so put out these notices and effect comes back to a point in dutchess county. i'm giving it to the dutchess conservancy for public use. undoing that in perpetuity it will never be developed. so my land will eventually become everybody's land. there will never be housing. >> host: that's amazing. does your book has a correction length such as one
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correction ville, iowa? >> i am fascinated by this. the answer is no and i am learning things. the joy of writing nonfiction is your learning all the time. i'm sure the question about that is the point of beginning. and east liverpool are the properties is where the very first with the geographer of the united states. from which all of the lands north/south were measured. when you fly over this country once again if people reboot flying over this country was like, you see all the lines a 1 mile apart squares endlessly. they all have that point of
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origin it's obvious on the banks of the ohio river in this broken down town of east liverpool. it always astonishes me but did not have a huge protected center parking for school buses and things. it's a broken down place with stuff all around it. advocated in the book that should be especially the jefferson monument. i'm fascinated by this direction any information you can please give to me. svend i will pass it along. but if you've dealt with the creation of registry systems need to create such systems of
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record of prior ownership like eastern europe. >> guest: yes. registry is a big problem. england, wales and scotland about who owns the land today and who used to own it. i don't know about your part of the world but certainly here and massachusetts we are involved in that big brouhaha at the moment. i started the local village newspaper. we actually go to press tomorrow so it is been a busy day. it all has to do with, many of sure familiar with this, of desperados went to put 100,000 square-foot in the beautiful pristine silver birch woodlands. it has caused a great issue. so the question of who owns this land it's all a very
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well-kept register. and the land registry is rather transparent as it wasn't my land in new york. for the landholdings kept very, very private. it's very difficult to find. the british are much more private people. >> host: this attendee says we lived in pittsburgh we found that we owned our house but not the middle rights underneath. have you come across other ways of restricting full ownership of the lands while will water rights come to mind but others? >> guest: of course this is the fate of many native americans that is their land. original settlers were they can occupy the land.
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but there's oil underneath it or general wealth to them. i think that is monstrous. i am so sorry that you don't are did not have no wonder you no longer have. i think that is extraordinary. they certainly not point this out. yes, i have come across. there's actually a difference between real estate and real property. real estate is the house and the structures on it, real properties all that plus the so-called bundle of rights. the bundle of rights is when it the right needs to extract them but to extract minerals it's likely to do from it. mr. singh lee enough all land
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in britain is held in what is called feesimple which means yes you own and you can sell it and you have a body of rights, but it ultimately belongs to the queen. queen is the world's largest land owner because of this concept. so it looks as if i owed it. but really she does. >> host: this will be our last question. what is your next book? >> guest: it gets smaller and smaller, the working title is knowing what we know. it's true the confusion of knowledge the future of wisdom
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if knowledge is now so easily available you can just pushing a button you google with expedia or whatever. then if you believe wisdom is knowledge multiplied unity full of experience but have knowledge if ever accumulated. therapy wisdom. i am looking at schools, looking at the very knowledge is disseminated around the world. stomach that is that's our time for tonight. simon, as always at such a pleasure to see you. and hopefully when that book is finished we will see you in person. >> : : :
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