cast but the one without the covert 1000 could be to foreshadowing the puck making moment the end of the make and you know when i say that america is this is it's the end of an american era look i mean i don't wish that it will be the styles are because i say this to the american century and the best parts of that but remember that all empires are born. all that coming up in the program but 1st alex if you take mess just odd. and we're going to spend a bit longer on your messages this week because last week's show featuring professor of human government of the intensive care and dr chris murphy the cambridge but all are just a provoked extraordinary 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 a frontline scientist working with a virus at the moment good to door there's

a lot of sharing of information going on around the world and cecile says definitely one of the best discourses on the corbett 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 cam i'm 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 covered 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 called it you let them speak and

did not interrupt them looks right to score political points and sky eckel says little bit scary that pass left the fair to know what we're dealing with under norful said should've that alexai show for the 4 star a more welcome aboard 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 that i have seen huge then. to top you. if you must for the highly recommended margaret says a must watch thanks for this hope it deals with some of the complacency that seems to be spreading. an opposite point of view to many of 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 money yes or do they not fit this disgraceful and very disturbing. and finally merely a side but in some ways a hopeful note she says having lost true friends to cool that i don't really want to experience what will seem to get back on its feet after 3 years flew i'm sure we can overcome this. so back to. last week the democratic national convention. said unfortunately. among the notable speakers rallying to the cause were former presidents 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 as a sample virtually to claim former vice president joe biden and finished.

california as the party's nominee for president and vice president. this week in contrast republicans have also met but actually but with a difference some convention proceedings just in scale were still held and the original venue charlotte north carolina but events and festivities including today's kito speech from the president himself are featured to monthly. payments of the 5 top featured speakers for the surname just troubling you. the democrats are to hate but the polls show signs of tightening both sides agree that it's all to play fight in the election but if that isn't an i.q. meant that whether it's a biden 1st time at a time 2nd tad america's days as a dominant well power by killing to a close and today show alex interviews that well leading anthropologist. he believes that the top tested thing and ability to handle covert 19 up at symptoms of the full automatic and. i'm not delighted to be joined from his home in

vancouver by wade davis wade welcome to the alex simon show thanks alex for having me so professor of anthropology in british columbia they went off multi awards for a exploration for photography author of many books but few have caused as much start us as remarkable and very political off to kl and the rolling stone one getting the end of a manic plus a pretty dramatic statement with well it's not really unless you get that list is 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 same 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 the question that looms in everybody's mind is why did new zealand do so well why is kind of that done so well and what went wrong so it's of our

border and so it's not really a political story for say but it does suggest that the countries that did well were those that have a strong social contract that a national health care law schools that cater 'd to the collective not the individual and certainly not the private investor could use every hospital bed as a rental property and it kind of reflected on the sacked epidemics often become so crimes of history you know the black death that transformed a medieval europe and basically br. at the back in the 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 the few would argue

that america president trump and protect us handled the crisis 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 as a high of definite 1000000000 so yes of a countries which have done spectacularly better but also social democratic countries which have been watched wells are going to nominees if you think about it i mean the swede made a very specific choice 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 be the case and the case of britain you'd like america or were led by an individual who was a populist who basically did not for alarm and 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 abut the donald is that he is the product of the saved as opposed to the cause effect sort of something about people going on in the miss america presidents 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 the styles are because 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 it for the 'd 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 salvation of moral authority a problem 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 10 part 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 certainly 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 dine 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 obrecht but also its crushing of democracy in hong kong when we the american foreign secretary secure state was front trying to sort of make a comment about that the chinese me. just recently had to take a breath and say you know i can't breathe invoking the treatment of the unfortunate and slowly he died and now to this 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 trump air 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 'd 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 when i speak of the countries that go out on top of this they are the social democracies and has always said you know social democracy will never work 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 said not all been caught in the metaphor be led by to the shining city on the hill of his joe biden the passion to lead them there 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 career that i soloed 'd to become an independent scholar could never have happened my home country. counted than 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 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 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 is 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 complete independent the absolute crisis of american democracy is not simply defeating trump but the cd resoundingly what he represents and if the election is close or heaven forbid he is reelected then i think the road into the

future looks very grim indeed so the united states. join me after the break we'll be talking with wade davis about the range of his work and in particular his love affair with the south american country of colombia. so what we've got to do is identify the threats that we have it's crazy. let it be an arms race in. spearing dramatic development only really i'm going to resist i don't see how that strategy will be successful very critical time to sit down and talk. welcome back alex is in conversation with

a canadian anthropologist we did things they were going to discuss his latest book . the great river office favor 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 control of this must the piece that out why did you fall in love with 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 lang's 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 the 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 which is homesickness and i by contrast sound that i felt

like i'd finally found a home that was just something about the energy of the people the the warrants 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 tentacle 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 in a way. there's a great colombian writer who wrote a book called oblivion and his father was one of the one of the deaths that he columbia during these horrible years that really shook the nation was the death of texas father and hector is thingness lee bitter about that and it's well known and

so he writes in the back cover of magdalena you know only wait 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. santoshi 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 to become of them in the case of mack to 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 that 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 a quarter of commerce and sounds in the culture that it is a source of ploy a tree in literature music and an prayer and a big point of the book is to point out to 2 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 piece that stablished for which he won the nobel award the kind that peace hold on us 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 knots 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 kay who despite the fact that homicide rates in the 1st year of peace after the agreement in havana and carter hinna in $26.00 team homicide rates dropped to levels 'd not seen since 1975 and yet still there 'd 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 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 most of the like the lana it is the color of the f. give us just a sign of what make she love this the public faith in this people so much will

source of all no columbia clumpy is with dote the most diverse. first boat just graphically 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 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 the 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 us a week just to buy elastic bands to wrap the money think about that and yet for all the challenges through 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. mic 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 a nation in the americas i would put my wagers on colombia and my final question to you in davis is as the big one and forget for a 2nd if their medical center is giving way to the chinese century who's up who's known who's right about 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 people because i also believe that pessimism is an indulgence and despair is an insult to the imagination i think orthodoxies and indeed intention i

think you know what i learned from i saw other outlets which she learned from his father is that there is good and evil in the world and my dad used to say 'd 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 knew 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 the wheel of what 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 the license and your you did your bit for all that is good in the spirit of humanity.

with davis on for apologist writer for mockable books and off the girls thank you so much for joining me a mailbox on the show thanks out so much for having us the gaze of wit davy storms fire and white from the rivers of colombia through the minds of nepal however few works in his quitting career have had more impact than his recent polling still an 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 covert $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 has been resilience it was after all as a davis puts it american industrial might and russian blood would save the world from darkness and world war 2 although still supreme in technology in commercial power a medical may no longer be totally dominicans however neither is she just and so from alex myself and all that issue is goodbye for life stacy and we hope to see you all again.

you know but you know here they are so being you. know yes for. yes yes. for on debt. free tuition yeah. i just can't deal. where yet sports so you. just be there to get the word whether it's for. these other stories of men who can't imagine 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. all of us have used. force for. if you go to the symphony

orchestra's warming up any musician is tuning his or her instrument. sounds a. bit. disorganized and then the orchestra plays. music with the brain. do you. take a. year now we're going to be talking. down . a long time. about. people who might not. get.

in the troubled 19 seventies a group. that was coordinated. with the police actually took part in the. streets. and we found more. to be named. the. the very

top i think if the. water where politicians you walk to school in on the go ahead. president putin says he's put a special force on standby to be sent about a roost if the security situation there breaks down although he expressed hope the things would be settled peacefully. the russian prosecutor general's office says it's found no evidence so far of an intentional criminal act against a. prominent opposition figure remains in a coma in a german hospital amid claims that he was poisoned. and on the 1st anniversary of the death of teenager harry dug u.k. officials say they're considering a virtual trial for the wife of a u.s. diplomatic used to running him down we spoke to his grieving parents. are truly amazing.