Druid Hills

00:00:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin. Six years ago, before podcasting was even a twinkle in my eye, I wrote a screenplay for a TV series. It was called Druet Hills, my first and only screenplay. I spent a year on it. In the opening scene, a battered Honda pulls up to a house on a long, leafy street.

00:00:42
Speaker 2: Angela Nation thirty one is behind the wheel, jeans, Afro sunglasses. She's beautiful, though trying not to be. The car looks like a family's been living in the back seat. She pulls up to an immaculate Victorian. A petite, very proper African American woman comes out the front door, Ingrid James sixty three. She gets in.

00:01:09
Speaker 1: Beak clear, nothing happened with Drewett Hills. I got as far as pitching it to a Hollywood studio. I shouldn't say who, Well, okay, it was Fox. Imagine a room full of TV executives around a table. I talked about the big themes, the theories, race, conscience, conspiracies, corruption, blah blah blah. I waved my hands in the air for a good hour. The room was hushed, and when I was done, the executive in charge said, we love it, but do you think you could work in a car chase. Things went downhill from there. My name is Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening to Revisionist History, my podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood. This is part one of what will be two bonus episodes for the holiday season. I'm going to answer your listener questions, riff on things Revisionist History ish, and tell random stories, including in part two, what about my Dad, another about a famous rapper, and beginning in an act of shameless self promotion, with the story of my failed screenplay. We brought it to life with the help of the Pushkin theatrical players. I promise the point of all this will be clear.

00:02:29
Speaker 2: In a moment, Angela looks over at Ingrid season Atlanta Hawks cap in the bag by Ingrid's feet.

00:02:40
Speaker 3: Oh, Ingrid a Hawks cap? Wait? You made Wyatt take you to a game.

00:02:47
Speaker 2: Ingrid leans forward and pushes the cap down in the bag so it's no longer visible. My one indulgence, Angela rarely gets the upper hand on Ingrid.

00:02:57
Speaker 3: Do you have one of those big phone number one hands?

00:03:00
Speaker 2: I most certainly do not.

00:03:02
Speaker 3: Will you make buy you big things of popcorn?

00:03:06
Speaker 2: Ingrid shutters involuntarily, then with a mischievous flint. Although I did once try out for the Hawk's cheerleading team. What it was the seventies. She makes a dismissive move with her hand, as if that explains everything. I thought they were dances. I did ballet, you know, I didn't realize it would be so vulgar. The men play a beautiful game, the women shake their bosoms. Angela instinctively does up the lower of the two open buttons on her blouse. They had a player named John Drew. Oh my Ingrid gazes out the window. It's nice to be reminded of those days.

00:03:57
Speaker 1: My screenplay was set in Atlanta. Now why did I write a screenplay set in Atlanta? Because I'm obsessed with Atlanta. Ask anyone who knows me. I'm always threatening to move there.

00:04:11
Speaker 4: You know.

00:04:11
Speaker 1: People always say such and such as the future of America. Texas is the future of America, Florida is the future of America. No, no, no. Best case scenario for all of us is if Atlanta is the future of America. Because Atlanta is the most wonderful mashup of all the most wonderful bits and pieces of this country. Birthplace of the Civil Rights Movement, Janelle Manet in Wonderland, and Gucci Mane and Migos, and basically half the entire hip hop world CNN, Jimmy Carter, Stacy Abrams, the best Indian food in the US outside of Queen's, the Running Oval at Piedmont Park, Little Tart bake Shop, I could go on. I was once in my favorite coffee shop in Atlanta and realized that around me were a rock band writing lyrics, a couple of folks having a Bible study, someone from the Mayor's office, and a handful of moms with kids, all representing, by my count at least six different ethnicities and an age range of maybe seventy. How beautiful is that? I love Atlanta? And I thought that if I set a TV series in Atlanta and somehow magically it got made, then I'd have an excuse to go there all the time.

00:05:26
Speaker 3: How have you been, I'm recovering getting there. I've spent seven years buried away day and night. Then one day it's over. It's almost like I got a divorce. I'll tell you the whole story someday.

00:05:45
Speaker 2: I already know Jesus, I will always watch out for you, my.

00:05:51
Speaker 1: Dear, remember that by the way to break in here. This is an allusion to the dark mystery at the heart of the story.

00:06:01
Speaker 2: She reaches over and grasps Angela's hand briefly. Ingred is not one for prolonged displays of a mother. The two of them sit in companionable silence from Grant Park, the grittiness of the old fourth ward, finally regal Druid Hills, leafy streets, turn of the Sentry Mansions. Ingrid is now back to her church lady routine, adjusting her hair in the visor mirror, subject closed, we see a big sign Emory University Hospital. Angela heads toward the main entrance. Ingrid shakes her head. Angela keeps driving around to the loading docks at the back. Ingrid smiles at Angela touches her arm affectionately as she exits the car. There's something so ostentatious about the front door, don't you think?

00:07:03
Speaker 1: Our hero Angela Nation and her mysterious sidekick Ingrid James are brilliant scientists on the faculty of the Medical Center at Emory University, hence the title Druwood Hills. That's the neighborhood in Atlanta, where Emory is now. You may have noticed that Emory University is the sponsor of this bonus episode of our Visionist History. Emory came to us and asked if they could talk about some of the work they've been doing during the pandemic. And it's super interesting, as you'll hear in a moment. But the offer made me happy for more selfish reasons as well. The first time I went to Atlanta nearly thirty years ago was to visit Emory. I was a science reporter back then for the Washington Post, and if you write about American medicine, you eventually make the pilgrimage to Emory. Emory is how I got obsessed with Atlanta. My disaster of a screenplay was a medical mystery set at Emory. I mean, what are the odds? How often does life come together so beautifully and serendipitously under the sacred umbrella of the four h four area code. See here we are Revisionist History Bonus Holiday Atlanta Addition Part one. All Right, before we go any further, I want to explain why Emory is such a magical place for people interested in medicine.

00:08:30
Speaker 5: Healthcare has been part of Emory since the campus moved from a small town east of Atlanta to Atlanta in about nineteen fifteen, and at that point the Atlanta Medical College became part of Emory University as a school of Medicine.

00:08:47
Speaker 1: This is Greg Fenvis, the university's president.

00:08:50
Speaker 5: A decade or so after that. One of the most important benefactors for Emory University Robert W. Woodruff.

00:08:58
Speaker 1: He's the Coca Cola guy, right.

00:09:00
Speaker 5: He is the legendary CEO of Coca Cola. But mister Woodruff, as we call him here at Emory, loved the rural areas in his ranch in South Georgia. Malaria was a huge problem, and so Georgia as a state was one of the leaders in developing treatments for malaria in the early part of the twentieth century. Years later, after World War Two, mister Woodroffe was very good friends with Dwight D. Eisenhower. Malary had been a big problem in World War Two that Eisenhower had had to deal with, and so the federal government wanted to establish a research center to solve malaria, treat malaria, prevent malaria, and mister Woodroff, through his friendship with President Eisenhower had it located on Emory property, which became the Center for Disease Control and Prevention that is now not only across the street, it's actually on the Emory campus. And so that relationship between Emory It's School of Medicine and focus on infectious diseases, and the CDC has been very, very close since World War Two.

00:10:16
Speaker 1: One of the heroes of the AIDS epidemic was Jim Curran, head of the CDC in the nineteen eighties. He's now the dean of the Public Health School at Emory. Emory was where one of the most important drugs against HIV M treva was discovered. When the American medical workers who had fallen ill with ebola in Africa a few years ago came home to be treated, where did they go Emory because Emory was one of the few places set up in this country to treat them. Tucked away in Druid Hills is a really remarkable place that has played a key role in our understanding of infectious diseases for seventy five years, which is something to be grateful for, especially now. My favorite part of Emory is the Yerkees National Primate Research Center, one of the oldest and biggest non human research centers in the country. Three thousand non human primates and eight thousand rodents eight thousand. Do you know what the plot of my screenplay was. Our hero Angela was testing an experimental drug for Huntington's disease on a specially engineered strain of mice created by her boss, Rajen at the Yerkie Center. The whole story was about mice.

00:11:29
Speaker 3: And this.

00:11:31
Speaker 2: Angela opens and adjoining door.

00:11:33
Speaker 3: Is where Rajon keeps his mice.

00:11:36
Speaker 2: In metal cages. We see mouse after mouse, dozens of them, moving like old men. Rajon's Huntington's mice. The air is filled with a sound of feeble squeaks.

00:11:49
Speaker 3: Rajon is much better with mice than people.

00:11:56
Speaker 1: If there is anyone out there in Movieland who is interested in a screenplay about two black women from Atlanta trying to cure a deadly disease co starring a room full of specially engineered lab mice at the Yerkei Center, call me let's make this happen. Okay, Time for the listener mailbag. Ryan am asks, if you could have dinner with any three people from history, who would they be and why I think it would be my great grandmother's. I only met one of them, Martha Nation, a very regal Jamaican lady who when she died in her late nineties had just a few strands of gray hair. She was the embodiment of black Don't Crack. But I never met the other three. How great would that be? Here's a comment from a listener on iTunes, DC Commute. You know I read the comments right. DC Commute says, I think you should revisit The Obscure Virus Club, Season four, episode ten. The recent success of vaccine development stands on the shoulders of giants. This is actually a great point and it deserves a long answer. Obscure Virus Club, if you haven't listened to it was about all group of virologists who spent years and years in a scientific wilderness studying a group of weird animal viruses that no one else thought were even remotely meaningful. They were ridiculed, ostracized. Then one day all those naysayers woke up and realized, oh, the work these people were doing, often the shadows is going to save the world. And if you want to know how the Obscure Virus Club saved the world, you'll have to listen to the episode because I don't want to give away the ending. The point of the episode was that's how science works. Everything important and beautiful begins years and years earlier with someone's quixotic obsession. And so thanks for your comment, DC Commute. This is absolutely the case with COVID vaccines as well. There are countless examples. But since we're telling Emory stories, let me pick one from one of their scientists, a guy named Rama Amara, who is so obscure Virus Club. In his case, his obsession was with something called the envy a vaccine. This is a vaccine made from the pox virus family. A version of it has been used as a vaccine against smallpox. It's been tweaked so that it can't cause disease anymore, but because it still resembles something menacing, the immune system goes on high alert the minute it comes across it. And the theory that scientists like Amara had was that if you tinkered with MVA and customized it, you could produce an immune response against other deadly infectious diseases.

00:14:38
Speaker 6: I was working on tuberculosis vaccines and I used to go to TV sanitoria to collect samples from TV patients. That's when I started seeing HIV infection.

00:14:53
Speaker 1: That's amara So then.

00:14:55
Speaker 6: I developed interest in also developing a HIV vaccine. That's how I came to Emory to.

00:15:02
Speaker 1: Work on that problem. He moves to Atlanta to Emory, and just to put this in perspective, he moves to Atlanta in the year two thousand. So for twenty years his lab works on the problem, learning everything they can about how this particular vaccine, emery MVA, interacts with the body's immune system. You've been working on this vaccine for this model for twenty years, as yet nothing had reached the market. Did you get discouraged? Did you wonder whether anything, whether this research was ever going to bear fruit.

00:15:34
Speaker 6: Personally, I was not, but I have heard a lot of times from my friends that you know, this is going to be a long road, maybe you should start working on other vaccines as well, so that there is some result at the end. So I was never going to leave the HIV vaccine at foot, but I did think about branching into other vaccines as well. So I was thinking too. We started actually working on vaccines for TB so that was that's where I started it's again a hard target.

00:16:17
Speaker 1: So you picked two of the toughest targets out there. Yes, you're someone with a you're a glutton for punishment.

00:16:25
Speaker 6: That's true. So but I wanted to tackle something really challenging.

00:16:31
Speaker 1: And then what happens and we had.

00:16:34
Speaker 6: A meeting in the center at the Erkes Primate Center, and all our colleagues got together and we were talking about what we should be doing. I think that was towards the end of February or beginning of March. I think then at that point it, you know, I came back to my lab from the meeting. Then I was discussing with my people. You know, it would be good to make a vaccine, but do you think we have the band right now? And then they all said no, no, no, we really want to do it, and they're also excited. Everybody wanted to do it, so that gave me a lot of push and then I decided that we should do one. We should make one.

00:17:24
Speaker 1: And what the idea was that if you'd made such progress against HIV and HIV is much harder target, the notion was, well, we should be able to make really good inroads against COVID. Was that the thinking.

00:17:36
Speaker 6: Yes, that's the thinking.

00:17:40
Speaker 1: HIV is hard to make a vaccine against because it mutates like crazy, So you have to design a vaccine that can handle all these constant changes. And HIV integrates into your body's DNA, it literally becomes part of you. HIV is mount Everest. Then COVID comes along and it doesn't mutate as much, doesn't hide in your DNA, and Amara realizes, I can make my vaccine climb that mountain. Had you not done those two decades of prepper work, you would not have been in a position to jump on. You wouldn't know whether MVA was a safe and effective vehicle for COVID. If you hadn't done all of that preparatory work with.

00:18:19
Speaker 6: HIVA, no, I would not have any clue.

00:18:23
Speaker 1: Now, will the Emory MVA vaccine turn out to be effective against COVID? We don't know yet. It's still being tested. At best, it's a second generation vaccine after the first wave of vaccines that were created in record time. But if the Emory vaccine works, it will be a crucial addition. The first wave vaccines are all super specific. They work against COVID nineteen. This COVID, the Emory MVA vaccine would be different because it triggers a much broader immune response. It could work against news strains of COVID. It could conceivably be used as a booster to extend your initial vaccine immunity. Here's my point. The lone success story in the pandemic thus far has been medical science. We have vaccines available just over a year after the pandemic started. That's bananas. But we shouldn't draw the lesson from this that science is fast. Science only looks fast. It's actually really slow. The quote unquote sudden development usually has twenty years of work behind it, and you can't order up progress because sometimes the magic happens only at the end of a wandering, serendipitous journey that may have looked like folly before it became a success. And what all this means is that progress doesn't come from ideas. It comes from places where smart people have the time and freedom to wander around and make mistakes and pursue interesting ideas that one day may end up saving your life. Well, thank you so much and good luck, Thank you much. We're all cheering for you.

00:19:55
Speaker 6: Thank you, thank you very much.

00:19:57
Speaker 1: Okay, we're back with more of your insightful listener questions. Marianna Missic at Mariana Missic writes, do you actually watch Friends? This is actually a question related to my book Talking to Strangers, which had an entire chapter on friends. And in answer to the question, of course I do. And while we're on the subject of friends, let me tell you the following true story. Now you need to know something about me before I start. I'm not good with faces. I usually identify people by the way they walk or how they dress. So this is years ago. I'm in a coffee shop in Miami, working away. Woman sits down next to me, leans over and says, super friendly, Hey, what's that you're eating? Is that good? And I'm working so I kind of grunt and ignore her. Five minutes past and I think, you know, she was really attractive. Five more minutes past, and I think you know, she looked really familiar. Five more minutes past and I'm like, oh my god, Jennifer Aniston. By that time she was gone. My big chance at tabloid immortality, and I blew it. Next. Courtney Miller at co A, Miller asks, is Canada better than America? Is even a question I actually thought of? This a lot this past summer, during all the George Floyd protests. You know how police departments all have slogans. In Los Angeles, the LAPD motto is to protect and to serve. In New York City it's fidelis ad mortem, faithful unto death. You know what it is in my hometown in Ontario, people helping people. Now, I don't want to read too much into the meaning of mottoes, but if you live in a society struggling with persistent problems of police violence, would you be happier with the police department that thinks of itself as a quasi military force engaged in life or desk struggles, or one that chooses to self identify as people helping people. I don't know. Mitch at Papa MITCHI asks who's smarter, you or Michael Lewis Michael is. It's not even close. Let's put it this way. If you said to me, would I trade Michael's literary output for my own? Would I do it? And the answer is in a heartbeat, I actually think that The blind Side is a perfect book. I would have retired after writing that and his podcast Against the Rules, which he does for pushkin, I might add, is so good. This is actually a great time for me to give you my grand unified theory of Michael Lewis. Ready, it's that virtually every one of his books is a biblical allegory. It's why they strike such a chord. So Liar's Poker, his book about being a young naive college grad in the heart of a hostile Wall Street bank. That's Daniel in the Lionstan The blind Side is Easy. A couple rescues a young boy literally as he is walking alone and neglected by the side of the road. That's the Good Samaritan Flashboys, his book about a group of people trying to clean up crooked trading on Wall Street. That's Jesus and the money Changers. My father's temple is a house of prayer. You have turned it into a nest of thieves. Moneyball, which is about a group of baseball executives finding value in a group of players others have overlooked. I mean, come on, that's Jesus and Mary Magdalen, the prostitute and the outcast he drafts onto his team. Just so you know, I once ran this theory by Michael Lewis, and he looked at me like I was crazy. This next one is actually more of a comment than a question from Ryan x J nine hundred on iTunes boring two stars. I tried, it just didn't interest me. Scroll through the episode titles and see for yourself. It's kind of random and nothing all too interesting. Mah wait, isn't it's kind of random? A compliment I live for kind of random, Ryan, dude, lighten up? Okay? Final question from Twitter from normal guy one. What show idea that didn't make the cut was most surprising? Also? What idea ended up being different than expected? Well, it was this, Wait, Casey, can you play that song for us? Is it going to be two?

00:24:56
Speaker 7: Let's say? Okay, okay, Well we'll see if this happens.

00:25:16
Speaker 8: She grew up playing Calgary girl in Reilroadtown.

00:25:23
Speaker 7: Dream and she'd see oh shoot, hold on.

00:25:27
Speaker 1: I went to Nashville when I was reporting the final episode of season three, which may be my favorite ever analysis parapraxis Elvis. It's about the one song Elvis couldn't sing, and I arranged for a session musician to do a version of Elvis's song for me, very straightforward. So this musician, Casey Bowles, shows up. We start talking and eventually I persuaded her to sing one of her own songs, and it's one of the most magical moments I think in all of Revision's history.

00:25:58
Speaker 8: Dream and she'd see Hollywood Sunday, she do some distant Friday night at just right.

00:26:13
Speaker 4: Fate would come in.

00:26:14
Speaker 1: And carry her away.

00:26:20
Speaker 8: It's far shake cut safe from there.

00:26:24
Speaker 1: I never thought when I started this podcast that it would be a way of making friends, but it has. Anyway. I've stayed in touch with Casey and she's made some new music, including a song for kids called Dare to Be Me, which is really really lovely.

00:26:44
Speaker 4: Dare to be Dead to be Dare to be.

00:26:51
Speaker 1: Stay tuned to this feed for another bonus episode because I can't quit you, Atlanta, but for now, this is what I'd like to leave you with, Casey Bowls, Dare to Be Me. Happy Holidays everyone, well of again, said Zaga.

00:27:07
Speaker 3: Back would dance a.

00:27:08
Speaker 8: Roundside of the papering of Lion Anna Scotforto pigeonsality and sergic composition, no carbon copy, afta.

00:27:19
Speaker 1: Money relaize my amazing when the speed of a Varri Origin's history is produced by Mia Label and Lee m Gistu with Jacob Smith, Elouise Linton, Kobe Guildford and Anna nim Our. Editor is Julia Barton. Original scoring by Luis Skierra, mastering by Flan Williams. Special thanks to the Pushkin Crew head Fame Carly Migliori, Maya Knigg, Maggie Taylor, Eric Sandler, Jason Gambrel, Emily Rostek and of course el Hafe Jacob Weisberg. And special thanks to our actors. Angel Nation was played by Miriam Victorias Simmons, Ingrid James and the narrator were all played by Anto Jacob, who actually has a short film out called Love and Submission which you should look up. And finally, extra special things to Emory University Greg Friends, Rama, Amara, Robert Goddard and my mysterious behind the scenes friend Dan who made this happen. Oh and will someone please buy my screenplay please? I'm Malcolm Grado.

00:28:42
Speaker 4: To me, damn, damn to me, damn to me, to me, to me, damn to me.

00:29:07
Speaker 2: Interior Doctors, Emory University Hospital Day. An elderly African American woman sits alone. Eden Cummings seventy six is dressed as if for church, blue dress, pearls, her hair is all gray. She's reading Brown Face, Big Master. The door opens in walks Angela Nation, reviewing a clipboard in her hand. Nurves, can you tell me when the doctor gets here? Angela stops. She turns to face Eden, and for a long tense moment, their eyes lock.

00:29:49
Speaker 9: They break into peals of laughter. You must get that lot, not as much as you do.

00:30:00
Speaker 2: Eden nods her head slowly.

00:30:02
Speaker 3: How is Mike.

00:30:03
Speaker 2: He drove to the supermarket last week and turned left out the driveway instead of right. He's made that term for forty years. It's time to take away its keys.

00:30:14
Speaker 3: He's eighty four.

00:30:15
Speaker 2: He's eighty four. Angela says nothing. She waits for Eden to speak again. Why did you want me to come in by myself? Doctor Bennett always had us come in together.

00:30:27
Speaker 3: I know what doctor Cole did, but you're stuck with me now. If Mike comes here, the optimologists will get all worked up about his glyocoma, give him drops which will irritate his eyes, even though he's ten years before that becomes a problem. The cardiologists will tell him to change his diet and eat things that he's hated his entire life, and I'll diagnose him with early stage Alzheimer's, which will turn him from a human being into a patient. He's eighty four.

00:30:53
Speaker 2: Eden is becoming emotional and trying her best to hide it. Angela waits, lets her regain her composure.

00:31:00
Speaker 3: Are the two of you happy eating nods? How are the grandkids good?

00:31:07
Speaker 2: Eating nods?

00:31:09
Speaker 3: You don't need me, not yet.

00:31:12
Speaker 2: She escorts Eden to the door, sits back down at her desk, takes out an enormous ham sandwich in a bag of potato chips, and painstakingly places the contents of the bag, chip by chip between the two slices. Then she takes out her cellphone, takes a picture of the fortified sandwich and posts it to her Instagram