WEBVTT

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So this is a question for Elena.

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Have there been any developments
about any of the animals

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that you've been
thinking about--

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[LAUGHTER]

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That you want to bring
us up to date on?

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Yeah.

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That's my-- I'm
talking to the students

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tomorrow about reading
your work aloud.

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And one tip is plant a possible
question for the Q and A

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that somebody can ask first and
then it gets asked in the room

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this morning.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Something like that.

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Yes.

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So my-- I have an essay on
deextinction in the book

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and this process of taking
these cellular materials,

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animals that aren't around
anymore and trying to revive

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them through--

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used of cloning and now kind
of hybrid cell technology.

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And I-- one of the--

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and yes, he also
talks about endlings.

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So when there's a last
member of the species

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it's called an endling.

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There's one of the
endlings who has died.

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So now there's a species
in my book that says--

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the book says it's alive, and
no it's not alive anymore.

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RIP Toughie the tree frog.

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But there's another
species that has long

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been considered extinct that
just two weeks ago people

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have spotted.

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Scientists say that the reported
sightings are credible rumors,

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whatever that means.

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[LAUGHTER]

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When you're thinking about
de-extinction it's kind

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of hard--

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you kind of want to
push away this kind

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of the sort of charisma idea
that we can clone a mammoth

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or something like that.

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You kind of want to push
it away and sort think

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more about science--

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the cloning cells
and things like that.

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And I tried really hard when
I was writing the essay not

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to get too caught up in the idea
of bringing back the passenger

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pigeon.

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And some people are
so obsessed with it.

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There's one animal
that I was really into,

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the Tasmanian Tiger.

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Do you guys ever-- have you
ever seen the Thylacine?

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It's this kind of
strange marsupial

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that we just kind of just
shot out of existence.

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Australian people who kind
of immigrated to Tasmania

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in Australia did.

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And they were great.

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They didn't do anything wrong.

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And just two weeks ago there are
some incredible sightings there

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might-- we might not need
to de-extinct Thylacines

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because Tasmanian
Tigers might still--

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Benjamin the endling
Tasmanian Tiger

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might actually have been just
a member of the species that

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still continue.

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So if you find
some wood tonight--

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[KNOCKING] if there
are still Thylacines

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we'll probably do
something terrible to them

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and put them on American
Idol or something.

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But--

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[LAUGHTER]

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--my fingers crossed,
I really hope that--

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I really hope the book
is wrong in that respect.

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Did you really plant
that question over here?

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I know it felt like a plant.

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Well, I just said something
at the very top of my thing

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that I had like [INAUDIBLE].

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Right.

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Right.

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Right.

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Right.

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I got you.

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Elizabeth.

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Well, I'd be curious to
know who else you read

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in the middle of the night?

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Who else you read in the
middle of the night for the--

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I could feel that question
coming to because I feel

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like even as I said I actually
don't read Salinger that much

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anymore.

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[INAUDIBLE]

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But who are the writers I
love that are those writers,

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which may not be exactly
my favorite writers,

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but I think that's--
a few come to mind.

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I'm a huge, huge fan of
Simon Gray's Smoking Diaries.

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Is that a book people know.

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He was a relatively
mid-late British playwright

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during the '50s,
and '60s, and '70s.

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And then in his late
career blooming,

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he kept a diary, a
four volume diaries,

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which he called The
Smoking Diaries of sort

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of very much like Rembrandt
like self-portraits.

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He's just thinking very,
very hard about himself.

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His friends basically die.

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And it's an amazing,
amazing book, right?

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It's also full of just
wonderfully malicious gossip,

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and great jokes, and
celebrity sightings.

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But it's an amazing book.

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I can't recommend
it highly enough.

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It's hard to get in the US.

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It's sort of semi available
here but you can easily

00:04:03.970 --> 00:04:09.280 align:middle line:84%
can find it in sort of
a similar four-book set.

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I love David Markson's
last four books.

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Is Markson a writer
that people know.

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That he too interestingly was
kind of a mid-late novelist.

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He wrote this sort
of detective novels.

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He wrote a book
on Malcolm Lowry.

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And then again, kind of--

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I mean, again, the apparent
theme, as Elena said, that when

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we're looking at
the bear that we're

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looking at ourselves of course.

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And this must be a
theme of interest to me.

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But Markson's last
four books, This

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Is Not a Novel, The Last
Novel, Vanishing Point,

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and Reader's Block are
these amazing books

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of sort of curated
quotations of him

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thinking very hard about
the books that he's read.

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And each book is a
remarkable meditation

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on a particular theme.

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The book of his,
Vanishing Point,

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is the best book I know
about post 9/11 America.

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And it barely mentions 9/11.

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So I'll count those
eight books as eight.

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And I feel like I've
answered Elizabeth's question

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more than half way.

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Well, that's more than-- oh, OK.

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One more.

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[CHUCKLES]

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About Jumbo II-- you know
this, but for the benefit

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of the crowd.

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It's a chapter about the arrival
of electricity and elephants

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in the United States in
the late 19th century.

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And combining them
doesn't really

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seem intuitive but
in your telling

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it's like mixing
oxygen and gasoline,

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and it just explodes into fire.

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[LAUGHTER]

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My question was,
was there a moment

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in your research when
the two connected?

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Yeah.

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There was.

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And you guys can hear me, right?

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So the moment was
I discovered I was

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sort of going down those kind
of procrastination research

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wormholes.

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That you go down when you're
not ready to start writing yet

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and you're like, oh
no, I need to watch

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this fourth documentary
about beavers.

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And you're not even
writing about beavers.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Found-- found the newsletter
blotter for the World's Fair

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in Buffalo where they--

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Jumbo II is completely
unrelated to Jumbo

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I and wasn't nearly as
famous or as exciting.

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But he does bear the distinction
of being the first elephant

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that we tried to
electrocute unsuccessfully.

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Hope I didn't give
anything away there.

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Actually, I think
you're probably

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more likely to read the essay
knowing the elephant's OK.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Is it OK.

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But-- so he was
electrocuted at this fair.

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And-- so I was researching
this Buffalo Fair.

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It's also the fair where
President McKinley was

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assassinated and his killer
was electrocuted during--

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over the course of the fair.

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And I found this just maybe
80,000 word daily, sometimes

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bi-daily, twice daily
newsletter of the things that

00:07:23.130 --> 00:07:26.550 align:middle line:84%
happened over the course of
this World's Fair, which was

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about four months in length.

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Tesla had a part in it.

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And it had these collage moments
in it where it would be like--

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the Ladies' Oratory
Society of Philadelphia

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showed up with their
triangle collection.

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Someone was run
over by a streetcar

00:07:43.410 --> 00:07:44.790 align:middle line:90%
would be the next paragraph.

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Calamity Jane, who at the
time must have been like 90

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passed out drunk in front of
the Wild Bill Hickok Show.

00:07:51.420 --> 00:07:53.430 align:middle line:84%
Oh yeah, the president
got murdered.

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The flower show was
very successful.

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[LAUGHTER]

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It was this kind of
awful, and wonderful,

00:08:02.340 --> 00:08:03.940 align:middle line:84%
and I was feeling--
not nostalgia,

00:08:03.940 --> 00:08:06.420 align:middle line:84%
but I was feeling this sort
of kind of old timey glee

00:08:06.420 --> 00:08:08.130 align:middle line:84%
at some of the
details of the piece.

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And also this kind of horror.

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The way that people were moving
on and this sort of pastiche.

00:08:12.660 --> 00:08:15.240 align:middle line:84%
The pasting together of
it all just really-- it

00:08:15.240 --> 00:08:18.480 align:middle line:84%
galvanized for me the idea
that people were first

00:08:18.480 --> 00:08:19.860 align:middle line:90%
electrocuted in Buffalo.

00:08:19.860 --> 00:08:24.390 align:middle line:84%
An elephant-- the circus
elephant sort of craze was huge

00:08:24.390 --> 00:08:25.470 align:middle line:90%
in these--

00:08:25.470 --> 00:08:26.370 align:middle line:90%
at this big fairs.

00:08:26.370 --> 00:08:28.530 align:middle line:84%
And electricity was born
in Buffalo, New York.

00:08:28.530 --> 00:08:30.450 align:middle line:84%
And the first person
that we ever electrocuted

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was in Buffalo, New York.

00:08:31.492 --> 00:08:34.950 align:middle line:84%
So both the fair and
the way that the fair

00:08:34.950 --> 00:08:37.020 align:middle line:84%
was reported in this
document was the kind

00:08:37.020 --> 00:08:38.950 align:middle line:90%
of like the aha moment.

00:08:38.950 --> 00:08:39.850 align:middle line:90%
Does that make sense?

00:08:39.850 --> 00:08:40.350 align:middle line:90%
Yeah.

00:08:40.350 --> 00:08:40.650 align:middle line:90%
Thanks.

00:08:40.650 --> 00:08:41.733 align:middle line:90%
That was a great question.

00:08:41.733 --> 00:08:44.260 align:middle line:90%
Thank you for asking.

00:08:44.260 --> 00:08:44.950 align:middle line:90%
Great.

00:08:44.950 --> 00:08:46.150 align:middle line:90%
Thank you both so much.

00:08:46.150 --> 00:08:48.130 align:middle line:84%
More time for more
questions [INAUDIBLE]..

00:08:48.130 --> 00:08:49.980 align:middle line:90%
[APPLAUSE]