u.s. senator, and as a democratic presidential candidate. she's anything by "washington post" white house reporter tonight at 10 p.m. eastern the development of precision bombing during world war ii is is the subject of best-selling author malcolm gladwell was new book obama mafia, a dream, a temptation, and the longest night of the second world war. watch tv tonight on c-span2. >> is: editor of a most, rather is editor of the most interesting problem, what darwin's the sin of man got right and wrong about human evolution. he is part of the research team that discovered and describes to that ancient members of the human family tree, oscar and -- he studieded wild chimpanzees in

early human fossils from 1998-2003 picky worked as an educator at the boston museum of science. kate wong a senior editor at "scientific american." she has been writing about the evolution of humans and other organisms for the magazine since 1997. she is also co-author with donald johansson of loose his legacy, the quest for human origins. tonight there will be discussing this new book "first steps: how upright walking made us human." in it he explores the history of the ability unique to humans among living mammals to walk on two legs. he makes the case bipedalism was a crucial change that allowed for the evolution of humans despite the difficulties that pose to -- publishers weekly prices his love of fossil

discovery and a collaborating with colleagues come through in the oney experiences in t examig bones firsthand because to turn anatomical evidence into a focused tale of human evolution and his enthusiasm for research will leave readers both informed and uplifted. i am so pleased to turn things over to our speakers. the digital podium is yours, jeremy and kate. >> thank thank you, nell. i appreciate introduction. thanks for doing this. >> great to see you. thanks so much nell and jerry and to the harbor bookstore. i'm delighted to have opportunity to peppery jerry with question thated is fabulous new book which is about all the things that i get most excited to write about, so it's really a pleasure to be here. i thought maybe, jerry, we could sort of kick off the conversation by having you tell us why, humans have a number of traits that set us apart from

other mammals, from other primates. we had naked bodies. we have larger brains and language. why focus on bipedalism? >> is a great question. like you said we have these differences. we have lots of similarities to our cousins and our primate cousins but we have these differences as well. upright walking is onece of tho. mammals fly live in swim int in leap. m mammals walk and climb. your typical mammal moves around on all fours. think about a cow, goat, dog, sheep, hat, squirrel but only humans will navigate thers world on their extended hind limbs all the time. it's really strange way to move.

the world on their extended hind limbs all the time. it's a strange way to move. one another mammal does it we lose our mind we take out are calm on - - camera and posted and he gets millions of hits. is researching this book and found examples of bears moving on to legs in new jersey. almost 5 million views through the spare walking through this new jersey suburb. gorilla in the zoo occasionally walking on two legs and someone got a video of it. it ended up on the cbs news. it's something we do all the time. even use the word pedestrian but when another animal does it is remarkable. but the fossil record which is what i work on.

i study fossils and what we can tell they going back in time the common ancestor that we shared with our eight cousins the further back we go we lose those unique characteristics of evidence for language or a large brain. that happened more recently like the stone tools. the most ancient characteristic is the ability to move on to legs. not only strange as a mammal that the most ancient thing that sets off our lineage so i argue in the book it was the key innovation that led to leading to those other changes that's an interesting lens to view the entirety of evolution. thinking about this from the biomechanics standpoint we take upright walking for

granted we don't think about it. so what is special about it from the point of biomechanics when you describe the act of walking on two legs and what is unique about it? >> it is a balancing act. think about when i talk to my students imagine if i give you an assignment to design a chair you're probably design it with four legs there may be some clever students that do a barstool out of three legs but if it's only two legs it will not work and the student will fail the assignment. to leg of locomotion is pretty unusual for a mammal to move around the world. we could get into bird locomotion then we see

bi-pedalism in dinosaurs even ancient crocodilians lineage which is fun to think about. from a biomechanical standpoint it is about balance. one way we can identify fossils coming from things that are adapted to move on to legs because they have the specific shapes. these individual bones to align the joints that prevent us from tipping over or we change the action of certain muscles. so they would act in a way to prevent you from tipping over the classic example if you take a step and lift your other leg you fall over. when a chimpanzee walks on to legs they waddle from side to side. but in humans we evolved a pelvis where the muscle

attachment wraps around to the side of the body and on the side it counters act the tilt every time you take a step. if you find this part of the body and it looks like this you can tell something moves on to legs. here is lucy's pelvis and sure enough she has the hip joint arrange in a very humanlike way. even of this is the only part we found we could tell she could balance on a single leg and why would you do that unless you move around on two legs? from the biomechanical standpoint and connecting it to natural selection, it's not a great way to move around your world. we are incredibly unstable and we follow a lot.

that can be quite dangerous 30000 americans die every year from falling. in addition we are stunningly slow for a mammal. you same bolt the fastest human whoever lived, the fastest he ever ran was 28 miles an hour and his 100-meter dash the world record 28 miles an hour. but that is half the speed of a galloping zebra antelope and perhaps half the speed of a lion and a leopard. so evil thing this form of locomotion made us slow so it raises interesting questions in what ways was this beneficial and allowed us to overcome some those now

adaptations. >> and then you anticipated my next question. why he even all it seems to be a subpar way to get around i understand scholarship over many decades and people coming up with all kinds of ideas why we did come to have this unusual locomotion and there are some interesting ideas going back as far as darwin and i thought it would be fun to take a tour through those ideas if you wouldn't mind indulging. >> if there was another mammal that moved on to legs regularly we could test this more effectively and say what does it do or eat or meeting

patterns that this form of locomotion is beneficial? as a scientist you want to look into the world and say where else do we see examples like this the fact we don't have other animals that habitually walk around on two legs make this a scientific problem to solve. and the reason we haven't solved it that you could go back and take it right up through 2021. people were hypothesizing why bi-pedalism was advantageous for our ancestors. also seeing over tall grass. interested in humans being able to stand and see off into the distance.

if you look off into the distance and to see a predator the worst way to get away is bi-pedalism you could gallop away if you would be much faster. it never made sense to me. there are ideas that darwin saw the connection between the small canine teeth and bi-pedalism and tools about freeing the hands for tools. that becomes somewhat problematic although it is an interesting idea worth visiting the problematic is the timing we have evidence for bi-pedalism may be 7 million years old but we don't have evidence of stone tools to three.3 million years is the oldest reported evidence for stone tools. then wild ideas about displaying genitalia that

showing off your body. the ideas are a little more reasonable having to do with food sharing if you can free the hands to make weapons or tools and gather food than there is an idea that has been promoted the females gather food and share with others and then to flex that and argue the males were collecting the food and sharing it with potential mates. an idea that has may be a little more lasting powers but moving on to legs yes we are slow but we are energetically very efficient one of the best ways to explain this is the ideas of an order to lose 1 pound of weight you have to

walk about 70 miles because we're too good at it we are to energetically efficient. now you don't want to lose weight but if you need to get enough food to survive and maybe there's not a lot on the landscape than those individuals are moving in a way energetically efficient may survive better. that's a possible idea as well. there are lots of hypotheses and we still don't have a handle on it and that's okay. there will be plenty of things new discoveries will allow us to go back to revisit these ideas. really the issue is not figuring out which one is right but narrowed the list for those that are clearly wrong. that's a science works by

refuting ideas rather than proving them. >> so we don't know why bi-pedalism but we do have a lot more information than we used to about the timeframe in which it evolved. maybe we can talk about the fossil discoveries that have allowed you and your colleagues to start to piece together when this all happened and what bi-pedalism may have evolved from and where it took us. >> yes a lot of false listening know about lucy discovered in the seventies. she is a magnificent partial skeleton the original of her is in ethiopia.

not long after there were footprints at the site in tanzania where i do some of my research as well. that pushed bi-pedalism from three and half million years ago a report and discovery that human life bi-pedalism existed at three.5 million but genetics point towards a common ancestor we enjoyed with chimpanzees at six or 7 million the split between the two lineage is complete by 6 million years that's a big gap three.5 million or 6 million what goes on in that time frame? it has been important discoveries that have been made that teach that story together one is a partial skeleton from ethiopia like lucy look at the pelvis in the

foot would indicate at least occasionally was able to move around on two legs and it was on the ground also has a big rasping told so when excellent tree climber with long curved fingers. when it came down to the ground it did not knuckle up and moved on to legs now four.5 million it is bipedal. then the evidence becomes more controversial and a little more difficult to interpret this is five.5 million from ethiopia it matches the shape of a human toe that would push

off the ground when you are walking whereas a chimpanzee the toll curves near the direction for grabbing. this has a curvature more like an eight but has the angulation to the base meaning probably it could push off the ground so this is a cool fossil but it is just a total. [laughter] here is a femur from kenya 6 million years old. compared to a chimpanzee, the head or the ballpoint of the hip joint is very similar but look how the neck is on this fossil compared to the champ and what that would do to reposition the hip muscles by drawing them farther from the head and making it more

efficient and we think that anatomy is evidence for bipedal locomotion and then if you go back even farther at 7 million years with this remarkable school discovered in chad and is very controversial. researchers who found and first interpreted it argued the whole at the base of the school where the spinal cord would exit was in a humanlike position and therefore this creature could hold itself upright and maybe even walk on two legs. we don't walk with our heads i like to see fossils from other parts of the body and now there is a femur that has been published by one team and another has a printout in it comes to completely different conclusions if this is the

upright walker or not. as you converge as a common ancestor you will get something that isn't quite to the living eight or a fabulous combination or may be a frustrating combination that are difficult to interpret. it's maybe what you might expect in a common ancestor. >> do you think that femur looks like that of a bipedal? >> i love to talk about fossils. this is not a fossil that i have not been able to see myself. however, there are even older fossils now we'll have much

room eight or nine or 10 million but there is a new discovery from a site in germany that may sound surprising because we been talking about sites in africa but apes expanded all around the mediterranean what is today and living in forest in southern europe's suites find fossils in turkey greece italy hungary but the new fossil from a new creature from 11.5 million years old in germany looks like it is very upright. to me that is an interesting find because it could imply were trying to figure this out it is the hottest topic in our field right now of when the body form from which bi-pedalism evolved. a lot of t-shirts and bumper

stickers and cost one - - coffee cups suggest a chimp turned into a human but chimpanzees are our cousins not ancestor the common ancestor is in eighth that we come from and so have chimps of they have evolved it's not a given a common ancestor was a knuckle walker and some of the fossils we are finding in those deposits might indicate the common ancestor was more upright in the trees and knuckle walking is a more derived form of local one - - locomotion plenty of colleagues disagree and think knuckle walking is the form from which bi-pedalism evolved and they make compelling cases for that we need more fossils to figure it out. >> a very revolutionary idea to think about that. actually it is a unique trait

and at 10 million years old to be a biped is quick. >> i don't think so i think the genetic data show very clearly when the lineage was branching. having said that, there are big marks around these divergence but you raised an important point they have always operated under the assumption that if you find anything that has characteristics of upright locomotion that it is automatically by definition a homonym meaning and ancestor or an extinct relative of us more closely related to us than any of the apes.

i think that assumption is on the table maybe not being 100 percent correct because in the late miocene you were experimenting different forms of locomotion like apes in the trees they might have some anatomies that look a little more humanlike for instance the tibia in some ways looks very much like lucy. i think that tells us about like positioning not necessarily weight-bearing at the terrestrial bipedal way but an animal in the trees moving with hand assisted bi-pedalism sometimes gibbons will do this. spider monkeys will do this. but it would mean that the evidence for bi-pedalism may

not be enough anymore to claim homonym status. this will be fine as we find more fossils from the 10 million your time. we can see a lot of experiments going on with locomotion and lots of false starts where bi-pedalism may have evolved and then the animal died out. that it was just not selectively advantageous form of locomotion in that habitat as those habitat changed it will be fun. >> definitely. so let the fossil record show that the origin of bi-pedalism but you mentioned briefly that there are other forms of data

we can look at to study the emergence of this locomotion and you mentioned a place that it was wanted to visit one of the most iconic sites even just thinking about it gives me chills. so there is the very famous set so you see behavior of an animal. what does that tell us about the evolution of bi-pedalism at that time compared to what you know about going back? >> it is bi-pedalism two.zero.

those footprints, i was there in 2019. yes. the place is magical. it is amazing. there are footprints in all of the's deposits coming out of the hillside and bones i love fossils these are wonderful and tell stories about the bones but the footprints are alive. they tell you about this moment in time in the life of a living breathing thinking individual who was a lot like us. and a lot of the recent biomechanical work that has been done on the footprints, tells a story it moves a lot like us.

it is not hunched over or crouch down like a groucho marx or a chimpanzee but something from a distance would look like you and i walking if you put on a treadmill you would pick up subtle differences and that's a fun thing to think about but from the footprints and from the bones looks like they are not pushing off the big toe quite as much as they do the legs are a little shorter and maybe not extending at the hip quite as much when we walk but those differences are subtle. one of the amazing discoveries of the last ten years we think of bipedal evolution in a linear way talking about

bi-pedalism two.zero but instead we see those evolving in a different species so at the team time on - - same time there was another species and had a divergent big toe and ethiopia climbing trees and walking in a different way. is a fabulous discovery and ethiopia in 2009 to show there was different forms of walking and coexisting and i worked on

the foot and the leg of a skeleton and when i first started to work on it, to me i just finished my phd i finish the foot and ankle and leg of domino aids i saw the biggest fossils it was interesting but not a functional variation until this. it was so different from any i had ever seen and aspects of the hip and the lower back we would've walked in a very different way than lucy and her kind this is right up through the pleistocene. even on the doorstep of homo sapiens and then right in

south africa a brand-new species so they were all the's different species coexisting some of them i don't think we did but from the foot down and the leg bone i think many of them walked in the's different ways or flavors so talk about jumping in a time machine to see the different species of the ancestors not only look a little different but they would be walking in slightly different ways. host: to think about that degree occurring for the vast majority of human evolution

not just in the miocene but when it was first appearing that virtually up until yesterday in geological terms. >> that's right. it is amazing. when i was in school at the university of michigan the story was home or rectus and homo sapiens and then what do we do? a different species or part of the heritage? and now studying upright walking the pleistocene was not that interesting so let's go back to the pliocene. that is interesting there's a lot going on there so the earliest evidence we have with

the evidence that we do it's interesting that just a few hundred thousand years later with those footprints so we are getting closer to what darwin was talking about potentially and i am wondering that could it be that bi-pedalism two.zero is what frees the hands to start doing things like making stone tools? >> i think that possibility is on the table and those bipedal origins also brain size and management which we know is probably not part of the story but you are absolutely right

if you go back and then the oldest stone tools at one.eight. so it looks like darwin was wrong that the two are chronologically not aligning then stone tools that are two.six found at the site of go now. we are getting closer. humanlike bi-pedalism did get pushback things to aid tibia discovered that would be four.2 million and very humanlike. i would like to see what the rest of that creature looks like. and honestly my expectation given how remarkable my colleagues are looking one - - finding for the on - - finding

these fossils. wish i could be out there but they are better. there has been extraordinary discoveries in eastern africa over the last decade or the last two decades. but we now have reports of stone tools three.3 million and it is controversial. i don't know why they would not be making stone tools there is slight black brain and large meant and there is a new discovery on the basis if they keep a child of a juvenile skeleton it shows they slow down brain growth. that is tied in mammals to

rely very heavily on learning edits but also heavily predated upon in the environment you want to speed up your growth rather than slow down and there are plenty of carnivores more than happy to be the early homonym so the fact it slowed brain growth tells the story heavy reliance on learning and that might have evolved but also cultural buffering how do you ward off how do you avoid and do that all the time you look out for each other and have each other's backs.

that is bipedal locomotion it is not an evolutionary success it is either superfast like an ostrich or super social and even compassionate like we are. >> that is a fascinating point you made in the book talk about the early ideas of bipedal is on to now you make the argument that it never could have worked with that empathy and cooperation. >> i hope so. i think that idea about the

upright not just for tools but for weapons is part of the popular culture we have seen in 2001 a space odyssey at the beginning with the weapons. and that has intellectual roots back to the very first the child sitting over my shoulder here but later in his career and he discovered bones that were smashed and he formulated a hypothesis that the homonyms themselves had been doing this that we were the blood thirsty killer apes and is part of the popular culture even though we know now but those bones were smashed up because of hyenas

but it is still part of how we think about ourselves instead i draw attention to a fossil like this and this is an upper leg bone about 2 million years old with that long neck that's how you can tell from the upward walker but what is amazing it has that heal fracture. this bolger bone sticking out of the medial side of the femur and think about breaking your femur 2 million years ago node doctors or hospitals or fire or shelter and you break your leg and heal and to survive? that cannot happen unless other individuals are helping you out. not just 2 million in fact

lucy species there is a second skeleton about three.5 million years old we think is a large male and he has a heal fracture he fell out of a tree or stepped in a hole and broke his ankle. if you are a zebra and break your ankle that's not a good situation but you can still get from point a to point b on your three legs if you are a biped and breaker ankle you are already slow now you are hopping around? i don't know how you survived but it is a healed fracture so he did survive it's connected intimately to bi-pedalism that then the fact we have injuries that make you particularly

feeble that is explainable only if we continue to be to be empathetic and compassionate and prosocial with one another. >> fascinating. we have questions from the audience. >> i have not heard that about that heal the ankle. i had no idea that went that far back. >> it was a discovery in 2010. now it is 11 years ago but it is an indication of how rapidly my colleagues are finding these fossils and to

put them out there and each has an amazing story to tell about why vr the way we are today so it's easy to be overlooked and that is a cool fossil to get the attention that it deserved. >> i feel like the memory that i have is there was evidence of that that is awesome and it is nice to know that is just very reassuring. we have a question if you were able to make bi-pedalism easier on us what would you

suggest? >> the foot. it is a disaster. [laughter] i study feet. the foot is evolution's example of a good try. [laughter] it did its best but what happened here is you converted a class being 8-foot into something that needs to be rigid and have moments of flexibility but also push off the ground we have the same 26 bones in our feet so if you try to create something from scratch and you need to contact the ground absorb the energy and kick off the ground and you make it out of 26 parts? you fail that engineering course. [laughter]

look at this. there you go. there is a foot. that is an ostrich. what has happened over bird evolution is the bones that make up the ankle and foot are fused together in a rigid structure composed of instead of 26 bones it is about eight in the foot of an ostrich. this ends up looking a lot like the blade prosthetic that the parent olympians will use with great effect and can run very fast. i would totally change the foot the back is a bit of a mess as well. but i will look more with the foot in the first place i would go. the knees are a disaster as well but we will stick with

the foot. [laughter] >> do you think. >> is it possible for bi-pedalism in humans or anywhere else to eve all for improve anymore? of what this will be? is that even possible? >> that's a great question. if you look at the pleistocene all the different body forms that existed, i don't see the human body today as homo sapiens having an advantage over others like, rectus. it looks like the joints were smaller in the range was not as large but i certainly don't think we have reached a

pinnacle of bipedal locomotion. i would much rather have the skeleton an ostrich getting from point a to point the one - - or point b so if you look back in the past one of the fun things i get to research writing this book were bipedal animals that have gone extinct there is a crocodile discovered in north carolina who is a very good paleontologist at north carolina state i'm sorry at the museum in north carolina. she reconstructed the gate of the ancient crockett daily and on two legs so imagine a 9-foot tall crocodile up on two legs that could sprint. that is horrifying. [laughter]

but yet what i find fascinating that didn't have evolutionary legs. but crocodiles are are on all fours so being bipedal was not successful ultimately but quiet was the earliest dinosaurs were bipedal a pattern stories and brontosaurus tego saurus and triceratops quadrupeds that evolved from the biped. since the pop up occasionally and honestly failed and convert to quadra pedal is a more it is a lineage. >> you brought this up in the conversation as a reminder but

what is the time span generally? >> we don't know. it depends highly on the body form of the ancestor because if it was a knuckle walker if that is the ancestral trait then chimpanzees retained it on their lineage, then you have to have intense natural selection to go from a knuckle walking common ancestor to something that is not just picked off by leopards because it is hunched over and cannot move quickly or efficiently. so in that circumstance it would have been incredibly fast or incredibly slowly of the common ancestor is

something more like a large given or smaller orangutan and the trees and then you get a patch year forest it has to move across the landscape but it already has the body form to do that. it's not a new locomotion but the old locomotion in a new setting. in that case it would be very gradual what we're looking for are the anatomies something from a terrestrial biped. we haven't even thought what that would be how do you distinguish from something walking on two legs on the ground versus two legs in the trees where the trees are more compliant so the force is different you probably wouldn't have to have the hip

mechanics because you hold your body with your hand see you don't have that tall thick tilt problem. >> so to contemplate these different scenarios it would be easy to trap these. it would be pretty easy trap to fall into. >> and there's probably not one explanation why it was advantageous but a host of things so however, you have a

population and the variation in certain individuals that move more than others and they end up having more food and reproductive opportunities. offer you go. we try to figure out what has those individuals to have more food. there are other scholars and richard docs it on - - dawkins has written about this he thinks bipedal is a merged that it was a cool thing to do. and chimpanzees and gorillas occasionally move on two legs but if for some reason that was the fat in that population then you could have more and more individuals aping each other.

and bonus to the extent you might get some of those anatomies that are key to bipedal locomotion not because you inherited them genetically but acquired them three or life. the best example is when you are born your femur is perfectly straight but as you start to toddle around your femur begins to angle in. you become not need but we are not born that way. some you find that femur with an angle it tells us this individual had to have walked on two legs because there is no other way to get the angle so there is a cool combination of anatomy you are born with an anatomy that you acquire that land together in your musculoskeletal systems to allow you to move on two legs. >> thank you.

>> what circumstances make it easier to find more fossils today? >> great question. like any science you build on the work of previous generations. there are a lot of false starts and mistakes made. you learn from the mistakes of predecessors. having said that technological advances are happening. in south africa one of the reasons why my colleague could find as many fossil sites as he has come is by using satellite imagery and looking at the clusters of trees that grow. on the landscape walking it is really hard to see. but from the top down you can see them much better. that's one of the things that is happening.

also the decolonization of east africa has played a huge role instead of dropping into the places spending a couple of weeks then go back to the united states or western europe, now we work incredible fossil discovery is being done by individuals that are from those countries. ethiopia, tanzania, kenya and many others. kate, why do you think we get this? >> i also wonder if there is a little bit of a snowball effect. so the cradle of humankind and

we found these amazing things so maybe we need to see a something we haven't looked at yet. with a fresh outlook. >> i agree. that is true. there are many great discoveries had already been made. so the last ten years i have been astounded by the number of fossils. it's not like were getting more but we already knew about. that is happening to some degree. but my colleagues are finding things that any of us could not have predicted i cannot have predicted any of them.

it has been a wonderful awakening in our field and it goes to humility there is a lot of us out there to discover and a lot of ideas will be wrong and that's okay as long as we follow the evidence then it's okay to have an idea based on the evidence that you have. look at this new fossil that shows that i was wrong. so well. >> i think we can leave it there. we are out of time. thank you so much jeremy and kate this is fantastic thank you for joining us read more about this incredible book is also a link to donate and thank you for

♪♪ >> the heritage foundation in washington, d.c. recently hosted a virtual event with author and historian george nash. he shared his thoughts on the state of conservativism in america. here's a portion of that conversation. >> in early 2021 many american conservatives are in a state of

acute anxiety, convinced that they are under siege as never before and that they are losing. across the nation the commanding heights of the federal bureaucracy, the news media, the entertainment industry, the high-tech corporations and the educational system from preschool to graduate school are dominated by people who seem increasingly hostile to beliefs. in social media and elsewhere, identity politics and the ideology of wokism appear to reign supreme, and the left-wing cancel culture operates with virtual impunity. adding to the sense of conservative vulnerability is a recent trend that appears to be accelerating. it's -- it concerns what scholars call america's civil religion. for many years nearly all

american conservatives have believed that the american experience has been, on the whole, a success story. and that at the heart of this experience has been a commitment to individual liberty, limited government and the political philosophy embodied in the constitution9 and the declaration of independence. today for many americans this story no longer a appeals. instead the, large numbers of young americans are being taught that the essence of the american experience has not been freedom, but slavery. and that even now america is mired in is systemic racism. which raises a trouble thing question, will the rising generation of young people who have been taught to despise their political heritage be reachable by conservatives who

defend it? is the american belief in american exceptionalism still persuasive? >> you can watch the rest of this program by visiting booktv.org. use the search box near the top of the page to to look for george nash. >> booktv on c-span2, every weekend with the latest nonfiction books and authors. funding for booktv comes from these television companies and more, including mediacom. >> the world changed in an instant. mediacom was ready. we never slowed down. schools and businesses went virtual, and we powered a new reality. because at mediacom, we're built to keep you ahead. >> mediacom, along with these television companies, supports booktv on c-span2 as a public

service. ♪ >> next on booktv's "after words" program, new yorker staff writer patrick radden keefe reports on the wealth built on pharmaceuticals. he's interviewed by author and journalist beth macy. >> host: congratulations on the stunning success of "empire of pain." you have really hit it out of the park. the reviews have been fantastic, and no wonder. in my view, not only as someone who has written a book about the opioid with crisis, but also someone who has spent a lot of time with families impacted by it, you've written a rivetting narrative that's a master class in investigative journalism. you've not only dug into the documents, you've interviewed the i doormen, the yoga teacher,