Eric Topol

So welcome, Carl.

Well, you know, the book starts off with the Skagit Valley choir that you and your wife, Grace, attended a few years later, I guess, in Washington, which is really interesting.

And I guess my first question is, it had the look that this whole book was inspired by the pandemic.

Is that right?

Yeah, no, it's striking.

And we're going to get, of course, into the COVID story and how it got completely botched as to how it was being transmitted.

But, of course, as you go through history, you see a lot of the same themes of confusion and naysayers and

you know, just extraordinary denialism of whatever.

But as you said, this goes back thousands of years.

And perhaps the miasma, the moral stain in the air, that was kind of started, this is, of course, long before there was a thing called germ theory.

Is that really kind of where the air thing got going?

Yeah, now, as we go fast forward, we're going to get, of course, into the critical work of William and Mildred Wells, who I'd never heard of before until I read your book, I have to say.

Talk about seven, eight decades filed into oblivion.

But before we get to them, because their work was seminal, you really get into the contributions of Louis Pasteur,

Maybe you could, you know, give us a skinny on what his contributions were because I was unaware of his work and the glaciers, murder glass and figuring out what was going on in the air.

So what did he really do to help this field?

Yeah, I know he says these gentlemen are the germs of microscopic beings shown in the existence of microorganisms in the air.

So, yeah, amazing contribution.

And of course, I wasn't familiar with his work in the air like this, and it was extensive.

Another notable figure in the world of germ theory that you bring up in the book with another surprise for me was the great Robert Koch of the Koch postulates.