Transcripts For CSPAN2 Mario Livio Galileo And The Science Deniers 20240712

Research Public Lecture series youtube page and see previous talks you might have missed. This event will conclude with time for questions. If you want to ask the awe their something go to the ask a question abouton at the bottom of the screen and submit your questions. Well get through as many as time allows. Also the bottom of the screen youll see a button to purchase tonights featured book gray and the science deniers. All sales support Harvard Book Store so a huge thank you. Your purchases and financial contributions, theres also a donate button at the bottom of the screen. Make this virtual author series possible and now they ensure the future of a landmark independent book store, thank you to Tower Partners at Harvard University and thank you to all of you for tuning in and showing up for authors, publishers, indy book selling and especially for science because it really matters. And finally, as you might have experienced in virtual gatherings, technical issues can arise and well do our best to resolve them quickly. Thank you for your patience and understanding. So now, i am very pleased to introduce tonights speaker, a world renown astrophysicist and best selling author, mario livio is known for his many books which include why, what makes cure you, the golden ratio, brilliant blunder, is god a mathematician and the equation that couldnt be solved, the basis for an emmy nominated program. as a fell already the American Association for the advance0. Science he has made significant theoretical contributions, topics range from cosmology, super nova explosions and black holes and the emergence of life in the universe. Moving in this world of Scientific Research and popular re noun, he has appeared on numerous programs such as the day hi show, 6 minute, all things considered, on being and many others. Tonight he is present his seventh book, galileo and the science denears, hailed as a beautiful where i lint, entraveling and insightful history of a courageous genius. One call this poock one would happen the galileo story could be treat just as a fascinating history this books makes clear it is but we really need this because with arelying through the next chapter of science denial with stakes that could not be higher. We are so happy to have hitch digitally here tonight. Without further adieu the video podium is you. Thank you very much. With your permission i will try to share the screen. Sounds good. Yes . And just one second. Okay. Galileo and the science teeniers. This the cover of the book. So, some people ask me why did i decide to write this book . So, there are very simple reasons. One is that im an as trophies zits, galileo is the founder of, and he is a fascinating person in general ask this business of science denial, which unfortunately we still have to deal with today, so these are i think good enough reasons to do this. So, i started by noting the fact that galileo is wait. I apologize. My presentation jumped to the very last slide. I will start again. So, i start with the fact that galileo is really a larger than life hero of our intellectual history and for reasons that many of you know im sure but some of you will find out here. So, because he was such a hero, many works of art in various area of the humanities were devoted to him. So so i just collected a few of paintings where he is being painted, and i just throw them one on top of the other like you take bunch of photographs and look at them and throw them one on top of the other. This is the very earliest portrait known of galileo when he was 40 or so. Done by an unknown tuscan painter. His id are notsome metric, there was something that not symmetric which is in other paintings as well. Probably had a problem there. This particular painting is attributed to a famous painter about not clear where whether that is true. This is one of the most famous paint little of galileo. Hes holding the telescope in his hand and well be talking about that. But galileo appeared in many other types of paintings. For example, here is a painting of him showing the through the telescope to try to observe things, and this is even a cartoonish painting done in the last century with galileo trying to explain his discovers to people from the catholic church. But in addition to just regular standard classical paintings in are other types of works of art. For example, pop art. He appears in pop art. He appears even in graffiti. I was a florence for the week and saw this on one of the walls of the houses in florence. Here he is painted as if he is a scuba diving or something. Of course, he made it to the Google Doodle as well, the telescope, and he made it into works of art in other areas. There is a very, very famous, play, the life of galileo and this is a scene from one of the productions and there is even an opera written about galileo by phillip glass. I have small piece of that opera, but believe it or not, we were unable to make the sound work on this shared screen through crowdcast so youll not hear the music but see at least the images from the opera by phillip glass. Here are the images. And imagine that here there is some singing going on, only that it doesnt happen. Not only doesnt happen but in fact even the things dont at vans. Which is even worse. I cannot tell you why that is happening. So i will just jump over that. And let me jump to the discoveries. I apologize. I never used crowdcast before and i dont know how to arrange any kind of tech numberrallities here. Some of the discoveries had to do with pure fuse fixes. Galileo was very interested in freefall, and in freefall in particular he dropped objects from certain heights, makes heavy thats dropped objected from the loning tower of pisa. As far as i could tell based on me research he probably has never done that. He did drop balled from various heighted but i found in reliable evidence he dropped from the leaning tower, even though his first biographer wrote he did but wrote that when galileo was very young and the biographer was very young so imbell lisch hements could happen. What he suspected and wanted to study was whether or not heavy balls indeed fall faster than light balls because aristotle say that the heavier the ball, the faster it falls, and not only that but that it falls faster in proportion to the weight. And galileo wanted to test that. But you see at the time of galileo, there were no good time measuring devices, so to measure small differences in time was very, very difficult so he came up with this incredible clever idea of using inclined planes. He realized that freefall is in some sense can be seen as an extreme case of balls rolling down inclined plane when the inclined plane is actually vert tell to the ground. But by making the angle of the inclined plane very, very small, he was able to sort of dilute forget, if you like, to slow down the motion sufficiently so that he could make more accurate measurements for the motion. But he did more than that. By allowing the ball to roll down a plane and then fly into the air, he was able to see the trajectory that projectiles do when thrown into the air and the discovered that the trajectory is actually a concern that was wellknown from antiquity, from the ancient greeks and he was the first to discover that, that the projectiles trace a parabul how to the air he discovered laws of freefall, for example, the distance traveled is proportional to the square of the time, meaning if a ball falls for twice, lets say, one ball falls for a knowledge another for two seconds the ball falls for two second covers a distance four times if it is two squared, the distance covered by the ball that falls only one second. And many other such things. Of course, most famous discovers were with a telescope. So, he did not invent the telescope. The telescope was invented in neglect netherlands but as soon as he heard but the invention he realize it this could be a fantastic instrument help basically took tubes from organs and polish his own lenses and put two lenses at the two ended of the tube. These are two of his original telescopes. The only two that survived the Galileo Museum in florence. Instead of using this telescope to look at ships, after all he was in the or to spy on his neighbors, he turn his telescope to the skies and there he saw incredible things. This was one of the lenses that he polished. Its has now this very onate sort of frame around it but this is the very quickly managed to generate telescopes that had the power of about 20. I mean, the original telescope had a power of four and he did telescopes that had a power of 20. When he looked at the first object he look to was the moon, and here is the First Encounter we have with a situation where galileos artistic education helped him in his scientific discoveries. At the same time there was this english astronomer, who also looked at the moon, but when you look at what he drew from what he saw, you cannot understand anything and neither did hairot himself. Even though he saw some features there insuring but galileo because otherwise training in drawing and artist industry andlight and shot dough, he understood what he was observing was a rugged surface of the moon, surface with mountains and craters, by locking at looking t the dark part near the terminator, at the bottom right small figure, the one that has three above it, you will see that there are points of light in the dark side in the dark parts sorry unilluminated part he understand that was tops of mountains that were ill illuminated by the son and noticed that as the time was progressing, light sort of was creeping down the mountains just as it would do on earth. So he understood very well what he was seeing and was extremely important because until that time, the idea was that there was a huge difference between things at the rays central and selesat. Things 0 on earth spored to be corruptible, full of blemishes but thing in the heaven were supposed to be pristine, perfect, and no blemishes. What he showed was that the moon had a surface just about like the surface of the earth. And of course, we know now that to be true and this is an image taken astronaut bill lander from the obitter of the orbiter of the moonout can see hills and craters and we see the earth rise there. This has become a very, very famous painting because of that. As i told you, he galileo studied freefalling objects and what he concluded at the end, which was amazing, was that actually all objects in freefall, fall exactly at the same rate, irrespective of their weight and the only difference on earth is because of the airs resistance. Has at this time there was no vacuum pump so it was really more his intuition and basing this things on thought experimental thinking, what would happen of you drive a heavy ball and a light ball. This experiment was done on the moon by astronaut scott, and i want to show you the video of that now but im now a little bit concerned because that video also has sound in it and since the sound doesnt work im not sure if the video will work but let see. I dont now of you hear him but he has a hammer and [loss of audio] drop bowling of them on the moon. And you see they hit the ground at the same time. And he says i guess mr. Galileo was correct. Again, im not sure if you heard the sound but im telling you what he was saying. He said we get here to the moon because of a certain gentleman named galileo who made some certain discoveries but falling objects and then did this experiment. Turning hill telescope to other celestial objects the discovered four satellites of jupiter and that was an immense discovery. The wrote in a letter, and you can see his drawings very simple drawings showing four, sometimes you see all four satellites, timeouts saw only three, or two two on juan side, two on the other side, the on one side and one on the other side and so on. But the importance of this discovery cannot be overemphasized. The thing is the following. First of all this were the very first object since antic quit antiquity, new object in the solar system. Second, the people who objected to the the cap person cuss all the items in the sun resolved around the world. Galileo adopted the capernicum model where all the planets, including the earth, revolve around the sun. Now, people who objected to this raised a variety of objections. Some of those were the falling. Wait a second. If the earth is really just another planet like all other planets, how come it is the only planet that has a moon . Well, galileo thought that jupiter not just one moon put four. Second, they were saying, oh, well, if the earth were to resolve around the sun, surely it would have lost its moon. How come that it manages to preserve it moon . Well, here was jupiter revolving around something. You choose whether you want to make it revolve around the argentina or sun but obviously keeping it four moons. That kills that objection as well. This was extraordinarily important. It is less nope that galileo dethey could planet neptune in 1612. This is the point on he theft of the figure. Didnt recognize it as a planet because his telescone scope was fat good enough to be able to tell it was moving but he did detect it. The discovery of neptune was delayed until the middle of the 19th century when it was really discovered to be a planet. One of the most important discovers of galileo and im not giving you all of them, just a favor of the discoveries is the faces phase of the planet venus. Venus was known to be between the earth and the sun, and if venus is revolving around the sun, then it should show a whole set of phase just like the moon. For example, when it is the farthest from the earth, in the top of the figure, it should look smallest and fully lit. When it is closest to earth, as it is in the bottom of the figure, shirt look largest it should look largest and basically dark and the between it some show crescent phase just like the mon. It is not expecting if venus is involving around the earth. So by showing this galileo gave strong argument, perhaps the strongest, against the model. I want now to move to Something Else and which is particularly important since we are talking in the context of a book store and so on. There is this author and chemist who in the 1950s noticed the following. Noticed in england that starting from about the 30s, people in the literary circles started to refer to themselves as the intellectualsthereby santa clauses scientists from that definition. And furthermore they were complaining about scientists not knowing much about the humanities at all. At the same time, cp snowedden noted those same intelligence hules knew almost nothing but the sciences and they did not seem to bother them. so he rote a bookgive a talk and wrote the book called the two cultures where he basically described a schism he thought has developed between the humanities and the sciences. Now, if you look at galileo, galileo would not have even understood what cp snow is talking about. You see galileo lived during late renaissance, so even in terms of the chronology, we could call him the rein sawn person, but he was a renaissance person in every other aspect. Already at page 24 he gave two lectures on the on dantes inferno. So, he was very familiar with that. He could cite dante and gave lectures on the location and structure of the inferno. He was also a great admirerrer of this poet, he could cite spire passages from him. He actually wrote essay comparing him to another poet. But it wasnt just in literature and poetry. First of all he was a musician. His father was a musician in the music theorist and galileo was an accomplished flute player and very often played with his father. But not only that, as i said, he studied himself drawings but in addition to that he had painter friends. The famous painter was one of his friends, and this is here the chapel. The dome of the chapel, and i want to call your attention to the figure at the bottom which shows the virgin standing on the moon, and if you look closer at that, you will find that he painted the moon just as it was seen through galileos telescope. Until that time most painters who tried to paint this thing from the back of revelation they painted the book as perfect and pristine and with no blemishes but he painted it just like galileo saw it. Another famous painter that was a friend of his was one of the great painters of the renaissance, but perhaps the one of the very few women painters, and she painted this painting which was this was her first version of the painting. But she spoke to galileo and he told her about this business of projectiles tracing parabula when shooting in the air, and she applied it to the blood squirting from the neck. So in her second version if you look at the same area of the bottom, you will see this, where you actually see the blood creating this palabalic Tropical Storm and his is her second version of this painting. And for some reason things got stuck on me here and i cannot tell why. I have no idea what is hang here if apologize but we have a technical issue here which im trying to resolve. I cannot even escape from the presentation. I dont know what is happening. You want me to cancel out of it and bring it back up again . Please do. All right. One moment, everyone. You want to hit screen share again. Okay. Im not getting it. Sit tight for one second. Im doing it again. Awesome. Thats great. Let see that however advances me or not. Perfect i wouldnt say because i have now at vaned to a place where advanced to a place i didnt want. Okay. Ill go now back. Okay, yes, so, we saw the second version of her painting and this is the full second version. Thank you very much, kate. Okay. Let now jump over a few decade inside galileos life and this book that he wrote and tried to publish in 1633. This was called the dialogue on the two chief world systems, and the book was written as a conversation among three people. One of whom represented galileo himself, another one was an educateed but layperson and the third one was supposed to be an avid galileo called that person simple my joe which was lamed after a great supporter of gray, of aristotles theories but also has somewhat of a connotation of a simpleton. Said he holds the opinion. The earlier there is an injunction against it. Which in the strict version it did not allow either to hold nor defend nor teach in any way. He, haddock has possession of the old letter from the chief cardinal at the time, which was a somewhat softer version that basically said he could not hold the position but did not say he couldnt teach it or talk about it. He thought he was okay. But that did not fly very well and he was put on trial. I want to emphasize now a few points that he had in his discussion with the inquisition. Very often, when people talk about the galileo affair, they presented as if this was a clash between science and religion. It absolutely was, and galileo never saw it as such. He was himself a religious person. The clash was between the science he was presenting and literal interpretations of the bible. His point was that one shouldnt interpret the bible literally because the bible is not a science book. Lets say for example the mobility or stability of the sun is neither a matter of faith or concrete to ethics. So there is no contradiction he said. And he pointed out that look theres evidence this is in a science book the nays of the planets are not even mentioned in the bible. So basically his point was the bible was written for our salvation and not as a science book. Therefore should not be taken as a science book. And whenever there is an apparent conflict between what they tell us in the literal interpretation of the bible was written for Common People to understand. So the language was not scientifically accurate. The strongest point on this was that he said he did not think the same book was giving our senses mom we struggled with their use. So is if observation reasoning tells you one thing which is contrary to change the interpretation. Now unfortunately all of this did not happen. He was put on trial. The reason was perhaps an attempt to reach some sort of a preview. They were not as particular as well. The bottom line was this resulted in one of the most horrible events in our intellectual history were galileo, on his knees, was found suspected of heresy and forced to adjourn. I want to make a point here. With eyes of today of course, please see the assault on intellectual freedom. The point is that irrespective of whether galileo was talking about the correct model. Perhaps it was the wrong one. But it was still his right he didnt have the right to condemn him for in his books, the dialogue was under index of prohibited books in the middle of the 19th century. And so on. Now, they read this verdict and he was supposed to adjourn and recant all of these and he did. He recanted on his knees again, and they mentioned about the heresies, which basically went against much of lifes work. And so, this is a really horrible incident. Now, i do want to emphasize from his own perspective, because galileo did tell the people who gave him permission to bring the book that with the injunction from 17 years earlier, the church was right find him guilty. In that. But within assault on intellectual freedom there is no question about it. I hate to use the following phrase, but galileo ended up giving them the finger, this is galileos finger thats in the museum in florence when his body was moved from an obscure grave to the current tomb where he is. Hey couple of fingers, a tooth and they will reason and those are now here. The point is the following. In 1992, Pope John Paul ii recognized that galileo was right in the church was wrong. Here is what he said, he basically said simply that again, we lost connection. Kate, can you please do something . Stomach im sorry my mic was off. Okay the pope said paradoxically my fault. I canceled up that we were redoing it. Alright here we go. Guest are we a cato . Host yes. Guest soap Pope John Paul ii and 92 said paradoxically galileo proved himself more perspicacious on this issue that is theological adversaries. The majority of theologians did not receive the form of distinction between itself and its interpretation. Basically the pope completely agreed with galileo but it took some 350 years for that to happen. Pope francis, here i am with the pope its not the real pope it is a cardboard image of the pope. It looks very real. This is of the capital and pope francis also said the big bank does not contradict the divine act of creating evolution and nature is not inconsistent with the notion of creation. So two popes now basically agreed there is nothing. I wonder now, i want to tell you about galileo. But the book is called galileo and the science deniers. Like i said one of the reasons i wrote the book, one of the main reasons is because we are unfortunate in conquering science denial today. I want to give you one very clear example and that has to do with climate change. Look, i want to make what i present here completely nonpartisan. I just show you some data and you can judge for yourself. This shows the Carbon Dioxide concentration in the earths atmosphere in the past 50 years measured very, very accurately as you can see. The main thing i want to look at is not so much the values of the concentration, but enormously rapid rate at which his is changing over the past 50 years. If that did not impress you enough, you certainly may not have convinced you that somehow related to human activity, i want to show the past 300 years. So here it is in the past 300 years. And then when you look about 1850 i will remind you the Industrial Revolution on 1848, look at the rise in the concentration in particular the rise in the last 50 years. Old elekta people can determine side of it concentration in the atmosphere. Over the past 10000 years of bounces all over the place. There rate in which it happened in the last 50 years. We even hear from data for the past hundred thousand years. And this is not the right figure. So again kate, i am stuck again. Host while exit out. Guest yes. Stable ejecta screen sharing in . Guest yes i will. Speed. Host weakening really good at this. Guest yes but it is unfortunate. Guest i can give a talk for seven hours maybe by then we would be perfect. [laughter] host looks good on my end. Guest here is the 800,000 years producing people say yes can see the changes here but look at what happens in the recent past. It just blows off the graph here. So when you have situations where people try to ignore these for the 91st the existence of climate change, but after that whether humans had anything to do with this, we are in the middle of a pandemic now. This pandemic at the very early stages of the pandemic in the u. S. For example, statements such as oh we now have 15 cases very soon it will be close to zero, did not help. Had the initial response of to actually trust the science. We could have ended up with far fewer people dying from this disease. So basically i want to finish here with from lessons there is a main lesson. It is a beautiful term engine tomb. You can see me standing in front of it. Its in florence and by the way it is right across from the tomb of michelangelo, the painter. The main lesson here is the following. I just never really a good idea to bet against science. To do so, when things like human life or even the future of life on our planet are at stake, its really unconscionable. Its not that science is always right. Science is the first to admit that science is always only provisional. Science is only as good as the date that was available to create the models and things at the given time. Science also self corrects. Sometimes he self correction is very rapid sometimes it takes decades. But it does selfcorrect. So basically they believe in science so i am here to thank you and i will take questions if there are. Host alright. I will take this and post it . See on yes. To everyone if you have questions about this book or any of his other work for free to enter them in the question box below. Lets look at what ones we have so far. Richard asks what was the relationship, if any between galileo and other enlightened scholars of his time. Guest not with him. He was in good relations with many scientists of his time. In particular for a while he was in good relations with kappler very famous astronomer. They exchange correspondence. He was in relationship with the jesuit astronomer and mathematicians in rome. With some of them he had very serious disagreements and in particular he was very annoyed when they did not come to his defense even though their observations fully confirmed. He was in a relationship with other people of science at the time. Host alright, Paul Greenberg asks science advance in small taps building on itself over. Of time with many incremental contributors or visit vasily by lone geniuses like galileo . Who is galileo the 21st century . Guest i imagine from the question there was a book that was about revolutions in science the truth is that science advances not in one rather than the other but both. There is a lot of incremental work which eventually leads to a revolution. Sometimes the incremental work is not so noticed of course there are revolutions that are inspired for example in galileos case also by technology. The fact that suddenly theres a telescope available. When you have Something Like this clearly when there are people like einstein who suggests relativity out of the thin air with the sense its not was in the air at all thats the type of revolution. But otherwise, most of the time its more incremental. Also depends on technology for a while without the superstring theory was an answer to many questions are serious doubts whether thats actually true. We dont really know. Dont know with the vances in telescope and things like this there are new discoveries we will have many new discoveries. Host market helton asked how do we combat the continued assault on scientist so happening 400 years later . How do we turn the tide back to science . Guest i wish i knew the answer to that. As i said, i think that the current sidelining of science is alarming. To be honest. What worries me more is there are some studies which are to show it is extremely difficult to change those opinions even if you present them with clear contradictory facts. And so the only way in my opinion to combat this is to really start with Young Children not everybody should become a scientist. Lord tribbett of all society were scientist we need the humanness the artist, the musicians, we need all of that. We have a whole chapter in the book about this. We need to see science as a part of culture, as a part of one human culture. Everybody needs to have appreciation science. Everybody needs to have to know for example in galileos time people have their life expend engine expectancy is half of what it is today and thats only because of science. Look at the difference between what we call the modern world and the medieval world, the main difference has to do a science. So people need to have this appreciation of what science is. And they need to know some basic things like are there laws of nature the whole universe appears to obey. Host and picking another one. Question about galileo speaking of his facts with objects that he ever grapple with gravity itself . Guest yes to very good question the answer answer is no. He did not. He was a revolutionary, but in some ways he was still a prisoner of previous views. He did not believe much and serious forces acting across the this also for example why is the nation for all times were completely wrong. There is one was always right. As one occasion he was wrong. Even though kappler already suggested the moon has something to do galileo never accepted it. He studied motion instead and saw laws of freeform but he is not mutant. He was other things. This is related was galileo aware of jerrod dano brunos the different points of light called stars were actually sons . Unaware of this or not that he have his own revelation . Guest yes he was sought among his many discoveries he turned his telescope to the milky way. And he showed what normally looked to almost a sort of continuous light broke down to many, many many stars of different luminositys. He understood did with the vast number of stars he was aware of his fate. By the way, galileo i dont know what to say that thats horrible. So Michael Connelly asked concerning the term intellectuals, parallel term ha has . Did they refer to both scientists and literary scholars were only the latter, and if the latter was intellectuals a response in the term . Guest i dont know if it was a response to the bolsheviks term. Its galileos time if we go back 400 years, but certainly there was no very, very clear distinction among da vinci was famously having lots of science experience as well as being a painter. He was born from these stakes today. On may 21 he was a great painter but he was also a mathematician so people around that time they were blurred for being artist being people who were architects. They take as painters. Surely the phenomenon thats known, really started in the 1930s. It probably started before that. But he kind of documented it each day. Still thinking today that there are people as part of one culture. Host randy has a question thats very interesting experiment. Does the professor think that the covid experience will be the end of science deniers . They be easier . Guest no. First of all i dont wish anybody to die, even if i completely disagree with their opinions. It would not be the end of science denial. And the fact is that even now we are living through a stage where there is no question that the response of the u. S. Was in adequate lease at the very early stages. I maybe even to some extent now. Here is a statistic i looked at. I look for example on may 14, i looked at the number of deaths in the u. S. And south korea. I looked at south koreas 52 million people. The u. S. Is 328. I calculated the number of deaths. Million people. And south korea and in the u. S. In the u. S. The deaths. Million people are where on may 1, 4264 people died permit did what that number wasnt south korea . It was five. Five. In the u. S. It was two and a 64, and south korea was five. 5. 03 to be precise. Now what is the difference . The differences there response from the beginning was followed the science. They had the Contract Tracing in the isolation and all of the steps that we eventually ended up doing they did it right from the start. In vietnam things like that, germany to some extent, germany the numbers not as good as and south korea. They had Something Like 95 deaths. Million citizens. Germany has a population of some 83 million people. But again they responded more quickly and follow the signs. They followed the science. Host i think we have time for one more question. Think im going to take sydneys agree with the consensus on global warming, maybe for the people in her own lives not just global warming, but are not keen to look as science is a part of culture or as a source for decisionmaking. How would you respond to people in her . Look, i should think this is non partisan. Weve seen in the years again im not talking specific numbers talking about the rate of change is unprecedented. In recorded history in any fashion. So clearly we are facing a serious problem here. Even if you are not one 100 convinced that humans are responsible for these, there is no doubt that human activity if we continue to burn fossil fuels and this does not help the situation. So we must do something because if not places like bangladesh, like florida may be underwater. So we have to do something about this and hopefully everybody will recognize it. And yes it will cost money. Yes we work with this pandemic it did not cost money and sometimes things happen they are so bad that it costs money and you have to pay a price. And the price may be very, very difficult. There are so many unemployed it is horrible. I recognize that it is horrible. It is also horrible to have hundreds of thousands of dead people. Host it is a said note a bleak note to end up. Guest believing science is very positive note. I agree thats a very positive note and on thats kinda what the science theories are all about after all. Well, thank you once again for your presentation and for your patience with technology and crowd cast. And thank you to all of you out there for sending questions and spending a day with us. Please purchase galileo and the science deniers at the linked below. I got the Harvard Division of science in behalf of the Science Library all here in cambridge massachusetts have a good night, keep reading and please stay well. Good night everyone. Guest thank you kate and thank you everybody. Bins watch a book tv summer saturday evening 8 00 p. M. Eastern settle in a watch several hours of your favorite authors on saturday were featuring twotime Pulitzer Prize winning author and historian David Mccullough author of over a dozen books with the wright brothers, the american spirit and his most recent, the pioneers. Watch saturday, july 11 as we feature commentator author and founder of the National Review william buckley. Binge watch book tv all summer on cspan2. During a Virtual Author Program hosted by the free library philadelphia disability rights judith human has a lifelong worth for gaining rights for disabled people here is a portion of the program. Two i cant think at the last samurais on Major Television the story about disability rights. You actually point out when we see that they are the villain or the tragic antihero. Romantically they are never the best person in the movie. But if they are they arent the main lead in the movie. Im dating myself im 72. He was a positive and however he didnt really have a disability. And all these movies are archived messages have forced some there played by nondisabled people thats another whole issue. I think one of the issues around why not, why are we not seeing more as a combination. One is i think people are afraid of acquiring a disability themselves they look at people like myself or whomever and they say i dont know how they do it, i couldnt do it. Without really know what it is. And they dont really know, not only what it is we are doing, they dont really think about themselves in a little bit of discussion i had when i was doing the show when he is a right enabled body and i said no didnt use the word able body because i use the word nondisabled i use it for a couple of reasons because it implies i dont want to have to use the word to tell someone i have a disability that should be something they understand. So i think with the terminology of people using like the able disabled or whatever it may be. Maybe is not intentional. But i think the term we use we are over it. I think that is an issue. Another thing you were discussing not seeing and learning about a disability. The way people are characterized and they increase even when we are characterized. I think that also leads people to ask questions and i are afraid of asking them things have gotten a little better in the following way. Going down the streets, i use a motorized wheelchair. So children will frequently be curious because they havent seen one. And so in several cases they want to ask a question. Lisa called the potato chip issue. So a child wanted to ask me a question, the parents would pull the child away, distract them and then they would nasa question. This is not true of everybody, some people do not like to be asked about their disability. I really dont mind if somebody asks about it and for children, i really want to engage them. First of all im going down the street and there and the baby carriage theres more on the same eye level. [laughter] i am definitely drawn to them because i watch their eyes. And they look at my wheels and little boys look at the wheels all the time. Little girls not so much. Talking to them and getting the parents engaged, they are cool about theyll nail then and ill discuss the wheelchair and like where the batteries are where the chair gets plugged in and all these others and others dont ask any more questions. You can just see it. I think people ask questions, you know . We are whether were blind or dead or hard of hearing of a physical disability earn invisible disability people need to understand adult thing to understand. Then i think one of the guest issues is people dont even acquire the disability. People go all the time. And they pretend they dont have a disability. But as people get older your site, their hearing their ability to communicate there as independent as before, they have issues and they tend to look at marginalizing people. We look at whats going on right now at the pandemic both in the u. S. And around the world, there in the areas of death their people acquiring the virus are an institution. So why are people in the institution . People are institution because their homes are not accessible, people buying homes that are not accessible, they dont want to buy homes that arent accessible prayed we dont look at the need for personal things like i cant go to bed myself i cant get up i cant get dress i cant go to the bathroom i cant do all these things when i asked someone to help me i think of all those things. So as people become invested in their future, not even in my future, but in your own future what do you need to be preparing for . They need to think about these various things happened not in a negative way but in a positive way. What does one need to do in order to stay in their community . And really be willing to look at some of the more difficult questions. To watch the rest of this discussion visit our website, book tv work. And search judith human or the title of her book, being human. Youre watching tv on cspan2 next Washington Post Fact Checkers glenn kessler, salvador rizzo, and meg kelly talk about the compilation of more than 16000 misstatements about president trump. Later author and historian, offers her thoughts on the historical legacy of the covet 19 pandemic. Check your Program Guide for more information. Host good evening and welcome to politics and prose live i am brad graham coowner politics and prose along with my wife. Thank you for joining us here online where we have been able to move many of our events in response to the current pandemic and the continued need for social distancing. 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