Matt Kaplan

He understood how to make a demonstration that would grab the limelight.

Neil, there are some similarities there.

He really knew how to talk.

But he also, he had been, as a university student, he had a supervisor named Auguste Laurent.

who had been very involved with the student rebellion that you see a lot reflected in Les Miserables at the barricades, where the students rose up against the right-wing government to demand rights for the poor.

And Auguste Laurent had taken their side, and Pasteur watched as his research supervisor lost funding from the government for being on the wrong side of politics.

And it was a valuable lesson to Pasteur because he made sure that he never was on the wrong side of politics, ever ever.

So he knew how to milk the French government for money, but he also knew how to tell a story.

And he knew how to make sure that those stories never, ever had flaws in them so that people could raise doubt.

So, for example, chicken cholera.

was a major problem for the poultry industry in Louis Pasteur's day.

It's not related to the cholera that kills people, but the end result is basically the same.

Cholera causes you to have such severe diarrhea that you die.

And it causes chickens to have such severe diarrhea that they dehydrate and die.

And Pasteur was in a race to create the vaccine or a treatment for that.

and then went on to try to defeat the disease anthrax that killed lots and lots of animals.

It's the sound they make.

More liquid, more liquid, Neil, more liquid.

You know, bird poop is- Lots more liquid.

Yeah, I was going to say, yeah.