welcome to the alex adventure where we examine the geopolitical consequences of the global hunting for most people the spread of krona virus has been a matter of avoiding the contagion and keeping your job however on the public this week davies caused me a sensation this month by penning a political article in rolling stone which has gone viral he forecast that the one without the covert $1000.00 could be to foreshadow and he poked making moments the end of the american. when i say that america is is is it's the end of an american era look i mean i don't wish that it will be the style just as i say to the american century and the best parts of that but remember the old empires or. all that coming up in the program but 1st alex if your tweets messed this you know . and we're going to spend a bit longer on your messages this week because last week's show featuring professor of human government is intensive care and dr chris murphy the cambridge

but all are just a performing extraordinary a large the sponsor and the quality of the contributions was excellent many if you phoned the show both the star being very very informative janet for example says the 2 experts are like interviewed frontline scientists working with the virus at the moment good to know there's a lot of sharing of information going on around the world and cecile says definitely one of the best discourses on the corporate 1000 pandemic there are many variables and we will succeed together or fail together we are our brother's keeper roger says very informative the virus attacks everything not only the lungs there's no place for complacency and a hugely interesting tweet from neil campbell having hud divide the samee people and still have the lasting effects from it i find information really interesting but also what being considering the don't know what the long term holds for those

who have had the disease especially when it was said that the body is attacking its own healthy cells the big problem is very few have had called it i've had the opportunity to see a doctor regarding the ongoing symptoms and richard and kate see we are writing see how much we enjoyed and appreciated your item and call that you let them speak and did not interrupt them looks right to score political points and sky eckel says little bit scary that past leopard fair to know what we're dealing with 100 norful said shouldn't of that alexai show for the 1st time more welcome aboard andrew incredibly informative and helpful as mina a superb and glamorous horse missing from the house of commons a good one says one of the best most informative discussions of colbert i have seen huge lead. festing to top uki xpress if you missed it for the read on highly recommended margaret says

a must watch thanks for this hope it deals with some of the complacency that seems to be spreading. money high got to take an opposite point of view to many for contributors so that's why the skills the vast majority of people i thought the vast majority survive it very well and the kilo which will pale covert 19 into the ranks of generally non fatal diseases will be world wide unemployment and destitution killing millions upon millions and millions more than $1000.00 ever will we have on the voices of sanity muddy us or do they not fit this disgraceful and very disturbing knot of and finally maybe on the side and somewhere is a hopeful note she says having lost true friends to call but i don't really want to experience it what will seem to get back on its feet after 3 years despite the flu i'm sure we can overcome this. so back to this marina. last week the 2020 democratic national convention. and virtually across the country among the notable

speakers rallying to the cause were former presidents carter clinton and obama and former 1st lady michelle obama the democrats were also able to field george w. bush to secretary of state colin powell the star-spangled cast was assembled virtually to claim former vice president joe biden and senator hottest of california as a party's nominees for president and vice president this week in contrast the republicans have also met but actually but with a difference some convention proceedings just in scale were still held in the original venue charlotte north carolina but events and festivities including today's kito speech from the president himself are featured to monthly. of the 5 top featured speakers for the surname. the democrats are ahead but the poll shows signs of tightening both sides agree that it's all to play for in the election but

if there is an argument that whether it's a biden 1st term order thompson and medical status is a dominant power or drawing to a close in traditional alex interviews the world's leading anthropologist. he believes that the truck presidency and inability to handle covert $1000.00 are symptoms of the fall of the american. delighted to be joined from his home in vancouver by davis wade welcome to the alex. so professor of anthropology in british columbia of multi awards for exploration for photography author of many books but few have caused as much story as remarkable and very political after school in the rolling stone. of america that's a pretty dramatic statement well it's not really. you know i think of it less as political than a love letter to a country that i really adore i was born

a canadian but i married an american i became an american and my kids were raised in the states i found my career in the states and the interesting thing is this this article was really just trying to look at code through the cultural lens really a cultural story not a medical story in the question that looms in everybody's mind is why did new zealand do so well why is kind of the done so well and what went wrong south of our border and so it's not really a political story per se but 'd it does suggest that the countries that did well are those that have a strong social contract that have national health care hospitals that cater 'd to the collective not the individual and certainly not the private investor who gives every hospital bit as a rental property and it kind of reflected on the fact that epidemics often become fulcrums of history you know the black death that transformed a medieval europe and basically broke the back of the need medieval age some epidemics have less impact the spanish flu killed millions of people but in

a world that was so used to death because of the great war that almost went on past my own grandfather alex walked out in calgary one morning in 100-9001 his way to work and he was dead by the afternoon but they spent a suit didn't shake us in that way i think because we're used to death yet this cold it is different and it's coming at a point where people are asking what's become of america of if you would argue that america president trump and protect us handled the crisis so well but other countries have also struggled the impeccable social democratic credentials a sweden for example of a high of death rate have 1000000 than america the united kingdom is a high of death rate per 1000000 so yes the countries which have done spectacularly better there's also social democratic countries which have been washed wells are going to normally is if you think about it i mean the swede made a very specific so. it's didn't it to basically ignore the virus and hope that it would basically be absorbed by the populace and turned out to be the 9 that turned

out not to be the case and the case of britain you'd like america or were led by a critical period the brilliance of this disease look canada's no perfect place when rates of death and morbidity in the states were soaring we in british columbia in all of our hospitals had 5 cases of co there so what was the difference that's part of what this article tries to ask i think the most generous thing you say about the donald is that he is the product off the same as opposed to the cause effect sort of something about people going on in the miss america presence when i say that america is is is it's the end of an american era look i mean i don't wish that we'll be in a stylistic as i say for the american century and the best parts of that but remember that all empires are born to die as a journalist at the irish times said so putting it lightly you know people have had

many feelings about america over the years but they've never ever ever felt that the united states and as health workers desperately awaited relief flights of basic supplies from china i argue that the hinge of history moved to the asian century and you cite an exchange between the and the medical official in the a chinese official of the foreign ministry when he had a sub to protest stations about they situation in hong kong with wads let me brief this in the summer a bit of moral authority a problem that is so clever you mention that alex because i mean i mean that the tragedy of that of course is that is america suddenly started to act like a tin pot dictator i mean imagine you have the you know this is a country that's you know you know was a pioneer in all great medical breakthroughs defeating polio defeating smallpox leading the world in middle medical technology certain. in the 20th century and suddenly you have a bill soon of the president at

a point of incredibly desperate. national need where there's an american dying every minute of every day. standing at the podium and recommending the use of household cleansing distance ect and as a treatment of a disease that he didn't have the intellectual capacity even to understand and so the real tinpot dictators the world suddenly had a chance to take the high road and that the culmination of that is when when america tried to make comments about both the mishandling of the epidemic in china at the initial break but also its crushing of democracy in hong kong when we the american foreign secretary secular state was trying to sort 'd of make a comment about that the chinese ministry simply had to take a breath and say you know i can't breathe invoking the treatment of the unfortunate story who died in the outlets you know so i think i think there's these signs of an

america that is so deeply polarized and and one of the one of the extraordinary consequences of the trumpet there and whether with it i don't think there's anyone clever enough in that white has to have actually done this deliberately but the way that truth has become malleable the way that truth has become relativistic the way that truth is what you say it would be to the extent we're literally. his core followers will deny reality that serves his interest and that's a kind of stunning inversion if you really want to know one sure sign of what i would to sign as a terminal decadence the united states it's that moment when a nation doesn't recognize the truth it means it has no collective sense of itself no benign sense of its own internal wellbeing and. i speak of the countries that got on top of this they are the social democracies and has always said you know

social democracy will never work 'd in america it's you know it's socialism or communism lite well you know social democracy may never work in america but it's true it's a stunning indictment and it's a perfect in the case of what oscar wilde have in mind when he said the united states was the only time tree to go from barbarism to decadence without passing through civilization i finally on this section. hopeful some audio been caught in the metaphor be led by to the shining city on the hill of this joe biden the passion to lead them that you know i'm the 1st to say my life was made in the united states a kind of a collective entrepreneurial 'd risk taking creer that i soloed to become an independent scholar could never have happened in my home country in canada in a 1000 years so you know i revere that wildness the madness the united states and so with any kind of hope you know it will steer its way back because we need that this isn't of what the america that we all love represents but as long as

a country has been torn asunder by those 'd who are deliberately doing that for their own personal needs you know not and i saw them in law was on was present united states he turned down the vice presidency when nixon offered it to him because he he and he later served on the committee that brought nixon down my brother in law was a democratic senator for 18 years i mean i i love the united states. i love what it can represent you know. but right now i'm not sure that the the depths of polarization will ever pull it back together and unless someone can come along and i much as i think biden is a nice man he's not the figure of history he's he's going to be at best a caretaker and the reason to vote democrat in november is not. because of the values of the democratic party i'm a huge independent the absolute crisis of american democracy is not simply just

seeding but the cd resoundingly what he represents and it's election is close or heaven forbid he is reelected then i think the road into the future looks very grim so the united states joined me after the break we'll be talking with wade davis about the range of his welcome in the pick list love affair with the south american country of colombia. has changed american lives but pharmaceutical companies have a miraculous solution. based drugs to people who are chronic pain patients and believe that their prescription is working for them and the remedy be said to. price that they pay closer dependency and addiction to opiates to long term use

that really isn't scientifically just now study actually suggest that. the long term effects might not just be the absence of benefit but actually that they might be causing long term. welcome 'd back alex is in conversation with a canadian anthropologist we did they made a point to discuss his latest book magdalena the great river all this favorite kind of columbia. michael in us a remarkable new book i mean i can't imagine those any columbia this isn't the best pleased to you for your for to contribute to smush the piece that why did you fall in love of this country you know when i was a little boy my mother who was

a very. humble but determined canadian woman told me in 1968. that spanish was the length of the future and she worked all year in as a secretary in a local public school earn enough money to allow me to join a group of schoolboys at a british professor was going to take to grown bia and at a time when most canadians had never been in a commercial airplane the south american destination was terribly exotic and i was the youngest of the group of 14 and many of the older lads at 16 suffered from what the colombians call money it's just homesickness and i like contrast sound that i felt like i'd finally found a home that was just something about the energy of the people the the warmth the understanding its realities human spirit and then i just was incensed at the entire time and then i went back with a one way ticket when i was 20 years old and became an acolyte of the great the technical explorer richard soltys and and spent 2 years in colombia as a book as

a botanist and answer poetess living amongst indigenous people and studying the floor of the new york for a police force and magazine is you know way ector about who's a great colombian writer who wrote a book called oblivion and his father was one of the one of the deaths that he colombia during these horrible years that really shook the nation was a death attacked his father and hector is thing asli bitter about that and it's well known and so he writes in the back cover of magdalena you know only weight could make me love my country again he describes it because of love that it's of the country and just before you know we. we met today 'd 2 days ago i got a call from one man u.s. santoso ex-president a nobel laureate for peace and he had read the book i sent it to him and he's a friend of mine and he said every colombian must read this book and in

a way the book holds a mirror in a certain same way the previous segment we're speaking about at that rolling 'd stone piece my attempt was to really hold a mirror to the american society of show what that become of them in the case of mack the lead on trying to show holding near the communists to show all that's good about their their nation you know and one of the reasons the peace process drug moves is because of a kind of a laten leader ng testin ism the negativity that is inevitable in a people who 'd have suffered through 'd 50 years of war and the reason i picked the river back then is it's the mississippi of of corona it is both the quarter of commerce and the sounds in the culture the it is the source of ploy a tree in literature music and and prayer and a big point of the book is to point to to particularly north american audiences that you know yes colombia has suffered from 50 years of war 'd but that war would not have lasted

a day if it was not for the profits of the drug trade i mean the for the fuel of the fire of violence and war that has killed 220000 colombians and left 7000000 homeless and forced 5000000 to flee their country was always cocaine and so all of us who live in societies who have both the sewage say the black market by making the drug illegal and yet doing nothing to really limit the trade even as we consume the drug in boardrooms and bars across europe and north america all of us owes something to colombia. president santos of course made you a colombian citizen do you think that the peace that stablished for which he won the nobel award can not peace hold this as it is at the very shaky and difficult times no will the peace endure come he will never go back to the chaos of previous

years it's a little bit like ireland why did peace come to ireland the people just said and nuts and generally these wars of civil strife. come to an end when the whole also it's a kind of collectively exhausted so in that sense peaceful and you're colombia is safe to travel and it's it's it's extraordinary it's become kind of the it is tourist destination in the world right now. and yet and yet peace is used for terry is in part because in the wake of the peace agreement. those opposed to it elected a president do k. who this by the fact that homicide rates in the 1st year of peace after the agreement in havana and carter hinna in 2016 homicide rates dropped to levels not seen since 1975 and yet still there was attempt to resort of the the agreement that led to disappointment on the part of those who had signed the agreement so all

of this is in the balance but and of course it really is just been put under house arrest so there's some instability but i have great confidence as the book makes clear that fundamentally is a world seems to be falling apart clumsy is falling together now i'm going to vote if a great fuss like in the book prophet i was potentially in plaster of the the most of the like the lana as the color of that af give us just a sight of what makes you love this the public faith in this people so much. well 1st of all no columbia cumbia is with the most diverse both geographically ecologically britannic living biologically diverse country in the world there is no place in colombia more than a day removed from every known ecosystem on the planet there are more bird species and clumpy than any other nation it is it is a stunningly beautiful landscape and what really drives the wonder of climate is

that it is a spirit of people themselves which is something hard to explain you know people talk about a modicum governor garcia marquez as the creator of what is often called magical realism in the literature of latin america but people forget that as a journalist he was 'd an observer all his life he just happened to live in a land where heaven and earth converge on a regular basis to reveal glimpses of the divine you know when i was a young man coming of a cyclone in the early seventy's living where my hats on the open road i never once was afraid i was in my entire journey was and developed with. a kind of cloak of wonder in the kindness of people i mean another way of thinking about it and you as a government official of one point in your career you'd understand this i mean think of this you know all of that 3 way civil war there were never more than 200000

troops in a country of 52000000 people the vast majority of clintons were innocent victims of a 3 way war fueled exclusively by cocaine think of it at the height of the 1000000 cartel the amount of money coming in to climb the it was such that the cartel budgeted a $1000.00 u.s. a week just to buy elastic bands to wrap the money think about that and yet for all the challenges to all those years clumsy and maintain civil society and democracy green that cities created. millions of acres of national parks so restitution with indigenous people and critically 'd has paved the way for an economic response as thousands of kids forced to flee the conflict are returning home from every capital of europe every major city in north america with skill sets in every conceivable endeavor and so if i were to bet economically on the future of the nation in the americas i would put my wagers on colombia. and my final question to you in davis's

as the big one and forget for a 2nd if they met a consensus giving way to the chinese century who's up who's known who's one to vote his humankind as a whole still making progress on his essential aspect of progress which we have grown up with as an assumption is that no and question why i tend to remain completely optimistic a because i'm a father and b. because i also believe that pessimism is an indulgence and despair is an insult to the imagination i think orthodoxy is in and invention i think you know what i learned from i saw other outlets which he learned from his father is that there is good and evil in the world and my dad used to say to me don't expect to win but pick your side and get on with it and i like that in a sort of buddhist sense you know that the goal is not a destination the goal isn't to win the goal is the state of mind in the path you know you need one of the reasons i think people burn out in old age or becoming

bitter it's that they always expect to win something and then they lose and they get in bitter and vajra mental battle or or literal battle and if you realise that it's all a process of lies. it allows you to win some and lose some but keep pushing a wheel of of when my father would say justice and righteousness for and it's if you do that you can go to your death knowing that at least you were the architect of your own lives and your you did your bit for all that is good in the spirit of humanity we have davis on for apologist right now from mockable books and off tickles thank you so much for joining me i'm alex on the show thanks so much for having me douglas. the gaze of wit davy jones far and wide from the rivers of columbia to the minds of new pope however few works in his quitting career have had more impact than his recent rolling stone article on the decline and fall of

america perhaps both the democrat and republican convention should have started with a 3 minute silence to mourn the passing of dominance of their nation of course the american empire will inevitably fall just as so many others have before and it is to the covered $1000.00 has devastated one of america's key weaknesses the total inability to subordinate individual freedoms for the collective good even when the case for doing so is overwhelming but all is not yet lost for america one of its characteristics over the last 246 years or so resilience it was after all as made davis puts it american industrial might and russian blood would save the world from darkness in world war 2 although still supreme and technology in commercial power and medical may no longer be totally dominicans however neither is she thing just and so from alex myself and all that issue is goodbye for life stacy and we hope to

see you all again next. no but oh yeah they have so being you. know yes it's for. yes yet so we thought it. would for all deaf we've gotten free tuition is the activity i just can't figure you know pretty girl would just be you know yet spoiled so there you go again just to be you they take you there are good words for

it but. these are the stories of men who contemn magine life without fashion without a sense of style without things that might be seen as weakness in this masculine world but they still demonstrate incredible strength of spirit to live as they choose. to call them to learn to forgive of us have used. force for. if you go to the symphony orchestras warming up any musician is is tuning his or her instrument so you hear this. sounds or noise put it but it's it's a constant a it's disorganized and then the band the orchestra plays and you get up music so what the brain does what the maker tubules do is organize orchestrate one

collapses. in the troubled 19 seventies a group of page 3. that was coordinated. population . were forced to flee their homes. these attacks was a p.r. you see the police actually took part in the attacks so instead of preventing it they were active participants in the burning of the streets in belfast. more than 100 innocent civilians with. seniors and we found out more. about the extent to which the solution was involved in some of those cases they killers would lead to be named. and i think it went to the very very top i think it is. the water where all the take you on the go ahead.

after. looting and shooting rather. continue for store owners now that there was a. 3. boarded up. until this was the. u.k. government confusion as it u. turns on wearing masks in schools just days before the start of a new academic year. and morals borken money talks in washington is off to one of the world's poorest states pledging to take.