Simon Schama on Pandemics and the Health of Nations, Part Two

Intelligence Squared

Arts, News, Society & Culture, News Commentary

4.2 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 22 October 2023

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This is the second instalment a two-part discussion. Bestselling author, historian and broadcaster Simon Schama discusses Foreign Bodies, his new epic history of vulnerable humanity caught between the terror of contagion and the ingenuity of science. Produced in partnership with the British Library, the talk looks at how the narrative of cities and countries engulfed by panic and death, desperate for vaccines but fearful of what inoculation may bring, is one we have seen before in the past as well as during the Covid-19 pandemic. Joining Schama in conversation is our host, Kavita Puri, the award-winning journalist, broadcaster and author of Partition Voices: Untold British Stories. We’d love to hear your feedback and what you think we should talk about next. Send us an email or voice note with your thoughts to [email protected] or Tweet us @intelligence2. And while you’re listening, why not visit Intelligencesquared.com and sign up to our newsletter to be the first to hear about some of our great upcoming events and deals. If you’d like to support our mission to foster honest debate and compelling conversations, as well as ad-free podcasts, exclusive bonus content, early access and much more, become a supporter of Intelligence Squared. Just visit intelligencesquared.com/membership to find out more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Rory Stewart, and I'd like to tell you about an intelligent squared event
0:04.8	I'm doing with the classicist author and broadcaster Mary Beard. Together we'll be discussing
0:10.1	politics and power from the Caesars to Sunak, who gets to Winpar, who is excluded. Does power
0:16.6	always corrupt or other examples of leaders who've maintained their integrity while an authority?
0:22.3	And how does the nature of power vary across different times and cultures? These are just some of
0:26.8	the questions that Mary and I will be trying to answer. In person tickets are now sold out,
0:31.7	but you can still watch online on the 13th of November at 7pm BST. Put your questions
0:36.9	to us live as we discuss power and politics down the edges.
0:41.3	Welcome to Intelligent Squared. I'm senior producer Connor Boyle. We rejoin our conversation
0:46.5	today with the award-winning historian Simon Sharma. If you haven't called the first part,
0:50.4	hop back to the previous episode to get up to speed before enjoying this one. Sharma joined us
0:54.9	earlier this year to discuss his latest book, Foreign Bodies, Pandemic's Vaccines and the Health
0:59.4	Nations. It was in conversation with Kavita Pori, author of Partition Voices, and if you want to hear
1:04.8	more from Intelligent Squared, do sign up to our newsletter on IntelligentSquared.com and you'll
1:10.0	hear all the news at upcoming events with the likes of Nick Cave, Jillian Ted, Mary Beard and Rory
1:15.6	Stewart before anyone else. Now let's rejoin Kavita Pori and Simon Sharma in conversation.
1:20.8	There is a central character in this book, a fascinating character, Valdemar Havkeen,
1:27.8	Havkeen, who is a Jew from Odessa and here he is and just give us a little bit of his back story
1:37.8	and then we'll talk about his parents in Paris and then to India where he did some monumental work.
1:43.9	Yeah, absolutely. Well this is a photograph. I'm showing you a photograph actually taken
1:50.1	that a height of his fame, his briefly famous. This is taken in 1899 in a chilly summer in Oxford
1:58.6	by another wonderful woman who occurs very fleetingly in a book called Angelina Atland who was a
	...

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