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One final Economic Data point before we start, the beloved independent, deepening your understanding. And politely suggest you buy the book on our event page where the url in the comment threads, but used to specialize in books. Townhall after all hosts those books. Doctor neil shubin is an evolution a biologist and Popular Science writer as well as the distinguished Service Professor at the university of chicago and associate dean of strategy of the University Biological Sciences division. The evolutionary origin, derived from fieldwork, greenland, china, africa and antarctica, discovered some of the earliest mammals, crocodiles and salamanders in the fossil record. In important transitional form between fish and land animals. Be on the research itself he is committed to sharing his work with the public for a variety of means, and active presence on facebook and twitter, the knowledge and cash and terrific books including the bestselling 2008, your interface, a journey into 3. 5 billion history of the human body from 2008 and 2013 the universe within, the history of the human body from 2013. One of these programs brought a visit to townhall in his latest book, some Assembly Required, the voting for billion years of life from fossils to dna, the occasion of tonights virtual return. Please join me in welcoming neil shubin. A delight to be with you to talk about some Assembly Required. I hope i find you and your loved ones well and happy and look forward to the next 34 minutes to talk about the transition. I have been a paleontologist and biologist working on this for three decades. It was stunning when i realized that. I began as an expeditionary paleontologist. Fossils tell us about how did mammals rise from reptiles. One of the first ones i let in the mid 80s. The paleontology thing is great and the graduate student eft on my desk a pile of papers, jeans how they evolved. Unlike okay, i got to learn this molecular biology stuff, like the species i study in the distant past, got to change or go extinct. It is both finding fossils and going to expeditions around the world, but molecular biology. And how did fish evolve to walk, these are the great questions. And and i was reading a biologist biography of lillian hellman. Lillian hellman had a very hard living existence. This woman is a federalist playwright, she drank a smoked, pulled in front of the house unamerican activities committee, Joe Mccarthys committee in the 50s, she was blacklisted from hollywood, from broadway as well. Thinking about her life years later during her autobiography as i was finishing the weird part, she had a quote that captures the spirit of the book in a nutshell. Nothing of course ever begins when you think of this. I remember reading that thinking that is the book in a nutshell, when you look at the history of anatomical features, structures, dna itself, nothing ever begins when you think it does. If you think when animals first evolved walk on land, if you think feathers arose as the ancestors of birds took place you would be in good company but you would be wrong. Weve known much of this for over a century. That is the story in a nutshell, whether it is jeans or anatomical structures, the changes we associate with the great transitions in the history of life rose well before in a different context and so much of evolution is about that. This story gains new meaning as we think about dna and looking at studies of dna, the molecule dna, what we have in dna, the double helix is six feet long, rolled up in on itself, not even inside itself inside the nucleus. Each of your cells has a 6 foot long strand of dna rolled inside itself, if you take all the dna of the body and lay it end to end, each of those from all 4 trillion or so cells in our bodies it would run from here almost to pluto. That is how much genetic material we have inside and we live in an era of genome project and genome technology. It took several decades to get the sequence, we can get a rough copy of the genome sequence for less than 1,000. We now have genomes for creatures as distant from humans to corn to flies to worms to thousands of species. With all that Genetic Information and all that genetic and computational tools we now see dna is a highly active molecule, crumbled inside the nucleus itself but opens and closes as the genes become activated in different ways. It is marvelously complex, the origins of different genes are amazingly wondrous. That we look at other aspects. Let me give you a striking example about the hidden mysteries of dna. It begins with this. Jason shepherd. Doctor shepherd is a professor of neurobiology, interested in the genes the control the formation of memories in humans, we have similar genes in this regard to mice. This particular gene, art is an interesting gene. A mutation is a problem. They can solve them but dont remember the solution the next day. When it is disrupted it disrupts memories that plays a role, they have many cognitive deficits like schizophrenia and other development of disorders. It is an important gene to understand the function. Jason was studying that. Like any biochemist studying a gene he was studying the protein the gene makes. What he did is popped under a microscope. He isolated the protein, jason sent a slide for me to show you and this is what he saw under a slide, under an electron microscope, you see these clumps, these globules fall and you can see them throughout the slide, this is a superhigh magnification, looking at this, thinking i have seen these clumps, these balls before, and you remember his training as a biologist and he pulled out a text book. Of virology textbook. And this is not a memory gene, and the university of utah, he invited them to the lab and asked them to look at the slide. That is hiv, because it is, jason is like no it is a memory gene. That set off a Chain Reaction of research leading to resources and looked at the sequence of the protein, the people, the signature of a virus of the kind which hiv is as well. When they looked at it they came up with the hypothesis that was originally a virus that invaded the genome of a distant ancestor, entered the genome and then is rented the genome it was repurposed by our distant ancestors instead of infecting and causing distress to function, what these pumps do is interesting. And hiv these clumps protect the genetic material of hiv as it travels from cell to cell to do its work. It is repurposed because this capsule protects the genetic material as it goes from cell to cell and making memories and narrow function as well. It is remarkable how a virus that entered the genome was repurposed for a new use. Heres the origin, a whole new gene that came from a virus, turns out thats not unusual. If you look at the proteins involved in pregnancy, some in the placenta, those were repurposed viruses, the list keeps growing as we understand more about the genome, to the point it can look at our genome, 8 of our genome is derived from ancient viruses, 8 is a derivative from ancient viruses. Only 2 are our own genes, only 2 of our genome in code proteins, we have five times more genetic material inside our genome than our genes that are derived from viruses. It is really remarkable, truly remarkable and serves everything from memories to pregnancy and many other functions as well. This just goes to show the mysteries in our own genome. It is surprising, this is all because new technology allowing us to see evolution in whole new ways. Some of the most important new ways we can look at evolution, the most exciting new ways, this is one of the greatest purposes of biology weve seen, significant progress in the last 30 years, you see a fertilized egg, sperm, egg put together in a single cell, that single cell from that single cell will be derived as it divides over and over, 2481632 and on and on and it will end up as a 4 or so trillion cell body like you and i and everybody in this audience is today with those cells all packed in the right way, differentiated, nerve cells and diverse cells inside of it, we call this going from single celled to a 4 trillion cell body, we call that bodybuilding. If you look at that slide, it catches how do you go from single cell on the left of the creature on the right and in that we have an enormous number of discoveries that have revealed the inner workings of the egg and how dna acts. What weve done is to understand the genetic recipe, the genes that interact to control the number of cells and their differentiation and where they are and so forth. As we begin to understand the process of going from egg to adult and different species, we can begin to understand evolution in a new way because changes in this process like changes in the process of how you build bodies explains a lot of evolution, changes in the process of how to build the body of a fish can produce the body of amphibians and so forth so changes to this development how it go to adults, a big piece of understanding evolution and people in our field have been interested in this for over a century and i want to talk about this historically and go into modern research. People have been interested in embryology, the transition from egg to adult and evolution for well over a century. One of the apocryphal moments in this is the work of bust duma real pictured here who had one of the worlds greatest jobs at the time, we are looking right after darwin published First Edition of origin of species in 1859, this is when the portrait was drawn and he was a lucky man, the keeper of reptiles and amphibians in the museum of Natural History in paris, people were coming back to paris from different parts of the globe with creatures they found and discovered and he got to describe them for the first time, to understand their basic biology. He received a package from people working in mexico, received a package of 6 of these and they were working in mexico and found these salamanders, four inches long, they are fully functioning sexually mature adults but they captured the imagination in the interest of these collectors for a couple reasons. The reasons are look at the gills, external gills, look at the tail, big aquatic tale, here is a creature that seems to be sexually mature and fully on aquatic. They thought darwin just published the origin of species in 1859, maybe he can understand the transition by understanding these creatures. What he did was he kept these salamanders. Little did everybody realize the Indigenous People of mexico knew these salamanders extremely well, so much so they had a soup recipe but they also knew quite a bit about their biology. So he kept these salamanders and put them in his menagerie and let them go and set up a quick aquarium, a terrestrial piece as well and let them be and came back and noticed months later he looked in his enclosure and these are the original he thought the salamanders were with them as well, they appeared out of nowhere. Look at them. They dont have an aquatic tale or external gills, it is like an entire different genus of salamanders, like some but he put chimpanzees in a cage one year and then came back the next here to find gorillas and chimpanzees in having the same cage. This got his attention in a big way, new species generate, a new kind of credit dont appear out of thin air. What he decided to do a study their biology, how they go from egg to adult and found something remarkable. He found like any good salamander they start at egg and hatch and have larvae, you can see at the top, the larvae have external gills and a big fleshy aquatic tale and the larvae in the water like little tadpoles and they swim around and get bigger and bigger and bigger but then there comes a point there are two possible states here. He noticed salamanders that at the fully aquatic ones get bigger and bigger and bigger and become sexually mature with all those aquatic features but then there is another way they can develop, they can undergo metamorphosis through an external environmental trigger, a hormone is released and they lose the gills, change the shape and change shape of the tail and become holy terrestrial. Heres one developing the program depending on the environment, two different states, two different kind of salamander can come from the same program. What is important to realize is a simple shift of development brings changes across the entire body. A simple shift in whether you metamorphose or not or there are hormones secreted can produce changes to tail, head, limbs which i didnt talk about, gills and so forth so this is a critical discovery igniting peoples interest in studying embryos and there is a whole tradition of people studying embryos and evolution in this way to see how small changes and development to bring about big changes in evolution in the adults. Now we can relate this to our own bodies. If you look at people, these creatures, human beings, as human beings we share a number of characteristics with other creatures which we are vertebrates, we have backbones, skulls, we share these features with fish and birds, mammals and reptiles, these make us vertebrates. There are other features we share, we have a spinal cord, gil arches and gill slits that form in development. Those are not in the skeleton but clearly in our developing of biology. For a long time people have asked what are the closest invertebrate relatives to vertebrates, what are the close relatives of squishy things with, claims, worms, you name it, what are they . People studying dna have come to the conclusion, well supported hypothesis that are closest invertebrate relatives are, get ready, these. Look at them. Compare the creatures on the left of the creatures on the right. You will not see a ton of similarities. The creature on the right is a sessile that sticks to the rocks, pumps water through in current siphon index current siphon, there is no spinal cord, no gill slits, no apparent body, some get even weirder. What do you do . Youve got to study the development, how they go from egg to adult, this is where it gets really interesting, one is through the lame of these things, this is the larvae, the closest squishy relatives. It hatches from the ag and has live a, head and tail. If you look at the head what does it have . Gill slits. If you look the rest of the body it has nerve cord which becomes a spinal cord and another structure, part a shared history. Are closest relative, there adults dont look like is that there embryos sure do. If you look at the history of these things they hatch from the egg, begin as a tadpole and have a nerve cord and gill slits and they swim around and eventually attached to rocks and if they attach to the rock they lose everything they share with us, they lose the tail, the nerve cord, the gill slits until they become that sessile . The way evolution worked is it stopped early. Our ancestors ray version of the sea squirt tadpole that kept the larval stage, didnt undergo the lower stuff but the larval stage and it became an adult for our ancestors. We are very similar to the larvae of the sea squirt. If you keep the juvenile stage and make that bigger, like an enormous amount of changes in surprising ones from looking at development. We now have tools to look at this through dna. He began to study them are a lot of reasons. They are tiny creatures. My kids call them jump these. You can see them. Look at all of them. They have lots of different kinds of legs. The front legs are sort of like lobster claws that your legs behind in the face to the back and you have legs behind those that face the forward and other wispy legs further back. He thought this was a natural creature to understand how legs for form and how genes control, what oregon is where in the body. When he noticed is theres a genetic which organ forms where in the body. Here we have three genes. There are different regions of the body that have activities of those genes. Lets look at the front part which is great where you had the legs the phase backwards. In that section which is shaded gray, you have legs that pace backwards. In that part of the body you have one gene of those genes expressed you be asked. Ubx. Theres a genetic address for each segment where you have ubx although, backward facing lake. He thought what if i use this genome editing technique to manipulate these addresses. Can i control what legs form which parts of the body . The answer is yes. He made an embryo that doesnt have abda. It only has ubx. He is one whole region which is just ubx activity and only end up is with backward facing lakes. He controlling the genetic address by getting rid of a gene and changing the organ. He can do that almost at will. Its just a remarkable set of experiment. The story gets deeper. As it turns out that flies have these genes, too. What you have in these colorcoded areas is the information, a genetic address for whether a leg forms in a ina particular area, a particular kind of wing, or what have you. It turns out we have these genes, too. These genes are active information of her own body plan and what are they doing . They are active in a lot of different organs but one is in our vertebral column whether neck vertebrae, cervical vertebrae, thoracic vertebrae, lumbar and so forth. You can ask the question what if we do a similar set of experiments . What happens if you change genetic addresses . You change the kind of vertebrate that develops in different parts of the body . These are experiments done at the university of michigan. We will zoom in, look at the rear end of the vertebral column. If you look at the normal development of the mouse theres a genetic address for each kind of vertebrae. Look at the embryo in the middle. You can see to genes we are showing. There are three regions, a region with the arrow. Turns out the genetic address determines which vertebra forms where. We have the joint address where that red arrow is showing. What if we do the same experiment . If you get rid of the 11th and all have a tent address you would only have lumbar, right . If the hypothesis is right and thats exactly what happened. Look where the blue arrow is. You get lumbar vertebrae where sacral vertebrae were before. You can change tons of different structures. The genes that for much of her body, where do they begin . They are repurposed genes that build the bodies of lies, of worms, so theres a commonality to the toolkit that built this. Following that same complex return to my own research. I looked at the transition from life in water to life unplanned. If you look at this you could say theres all kinds of things that happen, change your for animals to motor on land. You have to have a creature with a shaped head, a creature with a neck fish have fans. Thats just the tip of the iceberg. What about the lungs . Think about that. Do you have to evolve the lungs at the same time . If you meet a list of all the features that are needed for fish to evolve to walk a line it seems impossibly long. Lungs, take one of the great characters, Bashford Dean who had two passions in life. He was around to did most of the work in 19101920. Yet an incredible two jobs. He was a curator of armored fish. Fish. Ancient armored fish. He also held the position of curator of medieval armor at the metropolitan museum of art right across central park. In one case he was studying armored fish and he used to walk around new york city with, in samurai armor and various medieval armor as well and he designed his own armor for world war i. He discovered one important thing that lots of fish have lungs and they are the primitive condition in fish. He was fascinated by these fish which i say is the world cutest fish. That is the australian lungfish. Look at that thing. They live a long time. They have one in chicago that lived 84 years. Anyway, lungfish of both lungs and deals. They use the gills when the oxygen content of the water is high enough but when oxygen content of the water drops, what they will do and this is after one of his monographs, they will go to the surface and goal golr and forced into their mouth. And then force it into the lungs. He looked at the lungs and it turns out there lungs there are three different lungfish. This is the african one. Look at the lungs you will see the long on top, you can see it is this long structure and allies adjacent to the get tube. If you look at the lung, look at the bottom right. Theyve structures like our own. Its remarkable when you look at the structure of the lungs of these fish, they have histological structure virtually identical to her own. If you look at the genes that control the development of air sacs in diverse fish they are similar to the genes behind the development of her own lungs. Theres a deep dive lungs and our own lungs. The story goes, if you look at the evolutionary tree of life, which have is a very simple tree of fish. The closest living relatives of land animals. Your sharks and other fossil creatures. If you look at the presence of lungs, where are they . Lungs are primitive. Lungs evolved eons before animals took the first steps on land. Lungs were functioning to help creatures live in aquarist water environment when the oxygen content would very. When you think of this transition every of the trait of this transition pretty much arose in fish living in Aquatic Ecosystems. My team and i spent section is looking for fish that is between fish and limbed animal. Looking for thats what we found after six years of work up an arctic. We found a flathead fish with limbs. They can move independently. Its really workable. What does this mean . This means fish living in Aquatic Ecosystems about 335 million years already had lungs and arms, already had ribs, our headtohead those like limbed animal such that when the time came for them to walk on land they already had every tool. They were repurposed in what already existed. This is not just about we can relate this to every of the transition in life. Take birds. Heres a gorgeous bird. They all kinds of specializations for flight. They have wishbones, wings, feathers, hollow bones, high metabolisms. Guess what you would find each one of those teachers in dinosaurs, in feathered dinosaurs. These were not flying. They were using these traits to capture food on land. Feathers were originally not served to function in flight. They were originally functioning for thermoregulation, as insulation. Just like lungs, feathers and other structures all these things were major step in evolution is the repurchasing what existed nothing a course ever begins when you think it does. It begins earlier in a different context, and in that context what you find his structures arise during one thing and then the reapers another. Which of evolution is not about evolving new structures structe but fighting new functions in older structures. Thank you very much. Im more than happy to take your questions and if you type them in a double answer them as we go. I see a number appear so i will just dive in. Okay. Will would you be willing to weigh in on your opinion so Group Selection, this is a debate thats gone on for years about particularly about altruistic traits. If theres a trait that appears to hurt the individual, that appears to be good for the group how does it come about . That are two notions about these kinds of traits come about. One is perhaps theres groups that have individuals that sacrificed themselves for the benefit of the group. Maybe those groups would be better. The other is maybe its that these traits have other ethics and other individuals. When they appear to be altruistic, actually helps me because it helps me because i share genes with people with the individuals that in helping or saving. Theres the hot debate because the idea is Group Selection is a very slow process, whereas the individual selection is a very efficient process. In most cases people have tended to favor the explanation that its its not Group Selection thats important here but its more individual selection. But that being said there are many cases put it at multilevel selection. That is, you can have traits of act at Different Levels that can help the individuals that have been their members for particular groups of cooperation and of different origins. When you think of traits like sexual reproduction, that are the ones i would personally favor. It would be people who sharply disagree but for certain traits, particularly sexual reproduction because it increases the diversity. Creatures that have that are more evolvable in certain ways. Thats one of the cases where i would favor Group Selection. It would be topic by topic. The second question, on the topic of genetic addresses, do you believe development manipulation can pave the way for manmade species . It could come lets put it that way. Should it . Probably not. You could manipulate species to be reproductively isolated from other ones but i dont know why would we do that. Maybe for agriculture in some ways. We are already manipulating plants and certain other kinds of creatures particular purposes come to clean environment, to detoxify things. So we were already doing a lof that, quite a bit to be quite honest. Weve already been doing it through other means. Did i enter the whole question . I think i did. Any truth to the rumors that any of the genetic factors susceptibility i dont know. This is a fastmoving field of not an expert in it so i would be unwilling to offer an opinion because its sort of outside my zone. By the way, just to talk about covid virus for a second. We are witnessing signs happening in real time. We are watching science that normally happens in months and years. We are watching it happen in days and weeks. Just look at like you follow in the news or on twitter, what have you. Its also happening very fast because we now have a different kind of scientific publication process and in biology before. With whats called by the archive. If people compose papers online before peerreviewed. The results get in all diverse, cite his hands before they been peerreviewed so what you think is result after result after coming out on sarscov2 and covid19 the disease. You see, very rapidly. Thats one of the reasons its coming out rapidly, its not peerreviewed and people are doing the best with limited data. What you find is there a lot of discrepancies out there. It was susceptible, what services are most likely and how long can the virus thing onto surfaces . Simple questions which are very complicated. Use a diversity of viewpoints. The important thing is when you look at results for the virus sarscov2 and the disease covid19 keep in mind to look at sites happening in real time a look at hypotheses and what we need is better evidence and thus of people trying to do. Were getting evidence pretty quickly but just stay skeptical about anything you see right now because again the evidence is coming in. We really have only been in this for two and half months and its amazing what we know. The sequence for the virus came out like in midjanuary sometime come early midjanuary and so much as happened since then. This is an interesting time for science and for the public to see science because youre looking under the hood and see it happen in real time. Theres also short way of saying i dont think anyone has the answer yet. Also just read what i would love to about the emotional process of seeing videogame. Basic would happen, my discovery. Somebody sent this to me. This is the creature i showed you before. One of the greatest things i saw was a mine craft. I hope its a friendly, docile creature. If the dna with that allows to test sea squirts . Yes. See scores are or that group of creatures are the closest relative to invertebrates which is pretty cool when you think of it. The adults look very different but when you look at the embryo. Do we know how for example, what controls activity of these genes . What controls activity of genes is very interesting because what you have are networks of genes interacting with one another in each body segment. You will have factors that cells secrete that diffuse across the embryo and the cell divide at the same time. Take these diffused factors that go across the mpo, take Cell Division at the networks of other genes that are being turned on and off in response to those activities, then you get patterns, the net controls activities of genes like the hox ten and so forth. There is a relationship between the proteins that cells discrete and the genes that are active in cells, the cells that are dividing and the position in space. All that comes together to control gene expression. Then you have the balls of the dna that is wound up in the nucleus opening and closing, opening and closing, controllin controlling. Its an amazing dance. Why are octopuses so intelligent . Those brains, theres a team trying to stay conscious is because they can solve puzzles. You know the famous i think those in seattle where they put sharks in the tank and it would disappear and it turns out there was an octopus eating the sharks like every night or every week or whatever. I dont know why they are so intelligent but there brains to body size relationship issued so that contributes to. I dont know but it is being studied pretty actively right now. If i genie granted you the ability to have one question you are researching the answer, what would that question be . What would that question be . I would like to know how i would like to know how cellular life originally come about. We have lots of ideas, lots of experiments but i would love to know how that happened. I can imagine many working hypothesis how replicating molecules can happen, but cellular life, with the membrane and tablets and so forth i would love to see the steps involved in that. You know it we lillian hellman. What are the steps of that . Creations often cited ive something that would have had to be great but is it the genetic continuity yes, you can follow from primitive photoreceptors molecules, you can go all the way to the eyes and look at the comparative record. So if you look at our eye is a camera i and theres more simpler versions of the camera as you go to other creatures. And also when to look at the genes that control the development of eyes whether it is flies for people, theres a similar Genetic Network that gives rise to the eyes as well. You can look at the evolution of eyes at multiple levels. You can look at the level of the oregon itself, how it is structured with lens and retina and trace that two different creatures. You go look at the level of the proteins that control odor reception and have a duplicate and now theyre controlled and we proceed different colors. You can look at the genes that control all that stuff. Each one of those are showing the continuity that can happen in the origin of the eyes. How did bones evolve from those closest invertebrate ancestors . At the good question. Skeletal systems we know of multiple origins the different creatures. So some skeletons like our Calcium Carbonate base and others are hydroxy apatitebased like our bones, things like that. But when you look at the first skeletal tissue, its an open question whether the first skeletal tissue in vertebrates like us were teeth or bones. Because when you look at the first bones, the first hard parts, 18 to look a lot like teeth, and it turns out they first skeletons we see our armor on the outside of the body of early jollies fish. They are fairly common in the fossil record. When you look at the armor on the outside of the body and you look at under a microscope, its enamel on the outside. The first skeletons come about like a tooth like developing system on the outside of the body and later whatever the Development Process was that led to that coating on the outside was redeployed to make teeth on the inside. Its called the outside in hypothesis. Its an interesting if i could have that genie back i would like to see that, too. If i asked the genie for two, i think that would be another one. Is it any evidence to the original emergence of consciousness . Good question. Embedded in the question is also the notion is conscious is unique to humans . Is there, other antecedents to consciousness and we see in other creatures . I would say a a somebody who thinks that antecedents all the time and you know im going to go with this, i would see the answer is yes. I i would say, i would think probably cephalopods, octopuses have version of consciousness. We see in other creatures. The more we looked the more we find mental state that exist in that we used to think were quintessential human, that they are present in other creatures. There was study out of the university of chicago actually about six ago now that should particularly that racks in a certain regimes show empathy for individuals in the population that are suffering. Its not just caring for them. Its empathy. There was a paper published in science by peggy mason if you want to google it up. Theres been a number of studies. Just read a wonderful book that came out last year i forget the title of it. It was a bestseller talking just about this issue about how version of her own mental state particularly a motion ones. Follow up on the consciousness question is july to study lead you to be vegetarian or more and that direction . I flirt with vegetarian, presbyterian, beacon. Vegan rather than make two different dishes, that kind of thing. We all go through stages where straight on vegetarian and then i will add fish and then ill stop and then go back. I go back and forth. How far back in time could this trend of biological refocusing extend . I was it all the way to begin. Take it all the way back. Nothing ever begins when you think it does. Repurpose thing is it. When you think about this a couple of ways as can happen. Duplication, copying is one important way that makes things happen. But also what you duplicate you can repurpose also recombining. That is taking two different parts one plus 110 make for an that happens a lot. Its like when you have two cases and all of a sudden someone put wheels on a suitcase and the world changed. Same thing with biology. Repurpose thing, recombining, a la duplicating, these are all the pieces of the evolution of life and i would say they were part of it from the very beginning. This was really fun. Thank you so much, dr. Shubin for being here this evening with us, it was a fascinating presentation and think youre good else or in this evening. If you enjoyed this event you can find many more just like it on our website townhallseattle. Org. We help you also consider making a donation to town hall seattle as your support will allow us to continue to provide events like this when this evening. If youre interested in purchasing a copy of the book, some Assembly Required you can use the links on the live stream page to purchase it to our friends at third place books. Finally thank you for being here tonight. Stay safe and have a great evening. Tonight a special edition of booktv airing weeknights this week. Enjoy booktv on cspan2. Live tuesday on cspan fbi director Christopher Wray discusses how his agency is respond to chinas influence in the united states. This is at 10 30 a. M. On cspan. Then he of protecting workers pay during the coronavirus pandemic. Will join the House Financial Services subcommittee at noon eastern. At 2 30 p. M. From the Atlantic Council a a look at Global Cooperation in shaping the post that would world with why does coronavirus force coordinator dr. Deborah birx. And cspan2 a House Appropriations subcommittee goes over Homeland Security spending for fiscal year 2021 and that noon a house education and workforce subcommittee look at the impact of covid19 on higher education. Hello and welcome back to National Book festival presents brought to you by the library of congress. My name is marie arana and im the literary director of the library of congress. Our program today focuses on a fascinating new book by kate greene. Its called once upon a time i lived on mars. In 2013 she was