Science Friday - West Coast Fires, Sen. Ed Markey, Deafness Cures. Sept 18, 2020, Part 1

Episode Date: September 18, 2020

Peak wildfire season is just beginning on the West Coast, but 2020 is already another unprecedented year. In California, more than 2.2 million acres have burned so far this year, beating an all-time record of 1.6 million set just two years ago. And in the Pacific Northwest, where Portland’s air quality hit the worst in the world on Monday, raging fires have produced never-before-seen poor air quality that threatens the health of millions. More than 500,000 people in California, Washington and Oregon are under evacuation orders, and dozens of people have died. Kerry Klein of Valley Public Radio in California’s San Joaquin Valley, and Oregon Public Broadcasting reporter Erin Ross talk about the toll of the fires in their regions, the role of climate change and other factors, and what the rest of the fire season may bring.  Plus, with record heat and fires raging in the American west, and the Gulf Coast facing still more hurricane activity, is climate change becoming a more prominent issue for U.S. voters? Senator Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts thinks so. He recently repelled a primary challenge in what he calls “a referendum on the Green New Deal.” Now, just weeks before the November elections, candidates from both parties are forced to confront hazards worsened by climate change. Senator Markey joins Ira to discuss the Green New Deal, energy options, and environmental policy priorities for this election year—and many years to come.    Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. A bit later in the hour, Senator Ed Markey, sponsor of the Green New Deal, explains why his primary victory shows that climate change is a winning issue with voters in this electoral season. But first, it's time to check in on the state of science. This is KERNO. St. Louis Public Radio News. Iowa Public Radio News. Local science stories of national significance. And there are perhaps few things more nationally significant than the dozens of uncontained wildfires currently burning on the West Coast. Peak fire season is only just beginning, and California has already set a new record. More than 3 million acres burned. More than half a million people have been under evacuation orders this week.

And in Oregon and Washington, or even wetter, more temperate regions are burning, the air quality from smoke, has been setting records for both worst in the world this week and worst ever recorded for those regions. And here to report on why this season has been so bad, so far, and the toll these fires are taking on the millions of people who live near them are my guests. Carrie Klein, reporter for Valley Public Radio in Fresno, California, and Erin Ross, science reporter for Oregon Public Broadcasting based in Portland. Welcome back, both of you. Thank you. Hi, thank you. You're welcome. Carrie, I just set the scene with numbers, records, you name it, but as you've been covering the creek fire in the San Joaquin Valley, what's it been like for people actually living there?

Right. So there's been a lot of uncertainty because for just so long, they really didn't know the status of their homes. Many of the folks that I spoke with, they had kind of very similar stories. The fire moved so, so quickly, this particular fire. that they had very, very little warning. You know, evacuation warnings turned to orders almost immediately. And so many of them had the same reports where they were loading up their cars or their trucks. And they could hear or even see the fire raging near them. And so here's one person I spoke to. His name is Matthew Warner. And he lives in a community known as Toll House.

We could actually see the horrible glow over the far ridge. And we could hear it. It was like, oh, and we could hear pops, things that sounded like explosions. Erin, as we're hearing, the fires are actually worse in Oregon right now. Help us understand how bad it's been. Unprecedented is such a cliche word, but that's exactly how it's been. We had in the span of about six hours last week a number of fires either get stoked or be started by high winds. And then they ripped down these mountain canyons and burned pretty much everything in their path.

And they expanded to cover as much as 30 miles in the course of those six hours. That's not the type of fire we ever get here. And they were burning in areas that know that they might experience fires, but not like the dry east side where they're really prepared for it. And fires are kind of a part of life. It just really struck everyone by surprise. And there was so much fuel on the ground that the fires burned really hot and really, really fast. You know, that's kind of what we folks outside of Oregon are thinking. We know Oregon is not usually in the same category as California most years, but now it seems to be. Yeah, we've been having these hotter, drier summers now for a while. And that, of course, extends the fire season and creates really favorable conditions for things to burn. But what really happened this time was this unprecedented wind event. If the winds hadn't come and the National Weather Service described it as like a once or twice a century.

event that they don't think is linked to climate change, then these fires wouldn't have spread so fast, and many of them wouldn't have started at all. But at the end of the day, right, it doesn't matter how many down power lines you have. If the fuel isn't dry, it's not going to burn. And so at the same time, this wouldn't have been possible without climate change. What we can say unequivocally is what we know about the impact of climate change on our fire season, that it makes it longer, it makes it hotter, it makes it drier. We know that we were experiencing a record warm September with temperatures reaching into the hundreds, which is very unusual for this time of year. We know that humidity was incredibly low. And so climate change sort of built the fire. And then you can think of this wind

event as the spark that let it spread so fast and let it so many spread at once. Yeah. Carrie, California has already broken its own record for how many acres have been burned, 3 million and counting. Can you give us an idea of what's contributing to this number in California? Yeah, the number is up to 3.4 million acres now at this point. And well, so a lot of what Aaron said absolutely holds true here. Climate change is definitely a factor. You know, there's a lot of debate around forest management and clearing of trees and brush and things like that.

But one really big factor was we just came out of a really historic drought in California. a couple years ago. And one of the really significant impacts of that drought was massive tree die-off. It's estimated that nearly 150 million trees died off in the Sierra. And the main cause of that is, I mean, not just the drought evaporating the water that these trees needed down in their root systems and things like that, but it also allowed bark beetles to come in and infest these trees. And so, you know, if the trees were hydrated, they could fend these beetles off. But without the water, they could not. And so, you know, there's just a massive amount of fuel and Tinder out there to support these fires. We folks out here in the east, we see pictures of the fires all the time

in fire season, the choking smoke that you folks are going through. And last week, the sun was practically blotted out all along your coast. We have all these eerie pictures of orange haze. I mean, what has the valley been like, Carrie? Yeah, those, those orange. orange, those orange photos are hard to miss. I mean, they are really, really striking and really illustrate the impacts here. In the valley, surprisingly, actually, it hasn't been as orange, but it is still the AQI, this air quality index, one of these measures of air pollution has still been tremendously high here as in across the entire West Coast. And, you know, and that's really concerning for a lot of reasons. You know, in the short term, there are a lot of, we know that

there are a lot of respiratory impacts. You know, the smoke can impact or it can exacerbate, asthma or COPD, other things like that. But then when it comes to the long term, I was asking Kenny Bond about this. He is an assistant dean at the UCSF Fresno School of Medicine. He's also an emergency room physician. And he confirms that, yes, whenever it's wildfire season, he sees a lot more patients coming in with these respiratory and eye irritations because of the smoke. But then I asked him about the long-term impacts, and here's his response. The literature and that's kind of interesting because it's really hard to look at population bases based on wildfire exposures. they do have lung damage based on firefighters, which does show that there's correlation with

long-term damage, that basically being a long-term wildfire fighter is a risk factor for developing long-term lung disease. And of course, while the long-term impacts of wildfire smoke may not have been all that studied, there is one particular component known as PM2.5. You know, PM stands for particulate matter, a little, very fine little particles in the air. And there is a lot of research showing that that can be very harmful if people are exposed to it over the long term. Amazing. And Aaron, when has Portland before ever had the dubious honor of the worst air quality in the world? That's what they got this week, right? It is. It is. And actually, they did have the worst air quality in the world in 2017, which was our previous record setting fire season. It didn't come anywhere near this in terms of

destruction or acres burned or speed. But we are shattering that record. massively all across the state. I mean, there are places in Oregon that have been experiencing AQIs in the 700s, highs in the 600s, well over 500s, well over 500, which is considered to be above the index. And there's not a lot of research on what happens when that smoke gets really, really bad, but we know that there's an amount of pollutant that you're supposed to experience in a year. And this makes it easy to get above that EPA threshold. A lot of people with preexisting conditions are very concerned and at risk. I spoke with Rachel Kearns, who's a preschool teacher in Eugene Oregon. And she hasn't been outside of her house at all in about a week and a half.

I have a one-year-old and a three-year-old, and one of them has had lung issues in the past. So that's been, I think our biggest worry is just the air quality has been so poor. We've kind of tried to tape things up. And as you can imagine, a three-year-old kept inside of a house during a pandemic when you can't go you know, to the museum or the library or places you usually go to escape smoke, it's pretty difficult for her to understand why she can't go outside. Carrie, as I mentioned, this fire season is already a record one. Any idea how much longer it could go this year?

Fire season historically has ended around November, kind of late fall. But, you know, as Aaron said, these fire seasons are lasting longer than they ever have. I think that we just unfortunately don't really know. A lot of the historic wildfires have been even later than November even in just the last couple of years. So I think firefighters are preparing for a long fight. And Erin, there's been some rain where you are. Is that not a good thing? We can hope that it's a good thing.

We really, really need rain. But I think we were all hoping that the rain wouldn't come like this. There's actually pretty much as we speak, a string of very violent thunderstorms moving up and down that mountain range that these fires started in. And there's some areas where spotters have been reporting seeing as much as an inch of rain come down in just 20 or 30 minutes. And something that we've learned very much from California wildfires, but we've never experienced in Oregon because we just don't get fires on this side of the mountains, is that after a fire comes, you can get something called a post-fire debris flow, which is basically a really fast, watery, violent landslide that happens because of chemical changes to the

soil during fires and because all the vegetation is gone. And so the weather service issued flash flood warnings for the burned areas. And in one of the fires, actually removed all non-essential personnel from the fire area. Anyone who was returned to their home was told to leave, they aren't even allowing in utility crews or road workers. One of our listeners called in with a sentiment that I think echoes what a lot of people are feeling. It's pretty creepy and scary to think that this could be our new normal. That was Kramer from San Rafael on the Science Friday Vox Pop app. Erin, do we need to start to think of the West parts that haven't necessarily burned in the past as a fire danger zone now every year? I think, yes, we absolutely should.

I mean, again, like that unique set of conditions that caused this, that made all these fires light all at once and moved so fast might not happen again. But this proves to us that this side of the West is perfectly capable of burning. And it has indeed burned in the past, just usually every hundred years, thousand years, et cetera, depending on where you are. Clearly, it is just as capable of going up as the other sides. It's just not quite as prone to. I want to thank both of you for taking time to be with us and stay safe out there. Thank you. Thank you. Carrie Klein, reporter for Valley Public Radio in Fresno, California. Aaron Ross, Science and Environment reporter for Oregon public broadcasting based in Portland.

We're going to take a break, and when we come back, Senator and Green New Deal sponsor, Ed Markey, on whether the huge number of disasters underway in this country can be enough to get voters on board for climate action. It's all coming up after the break. Stay with us. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. When Senator Ed Markey, a four-decade member of Congress, won a recent primary challenge in Massachusetts, Many people saw it as a symbolic, if not explicit, public support of the Green New Deal. After all, Senator Markey was the sponsor of the Green New Deal in the Senate, and his election proved that the Green New Deal was popular among young voters and progressives.

Now, with the West Coast burning out of control as a consequence of climate change, record triple-digit heat and hurricanes, are our environmental priorities for, finally going to change. Senator Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts is with me today to talk about where he sees environmental policy going in the years ahead. Senator, let me begin with the elephant in the room, and this is the inferno that is roaring out of control in states in the West. Is there any doubt in your mind that these fires are linked to climate change? I have no doubt whatsoever that it's linked, and it is only intensifying to preview of coming. attractions. What we're seeing today is just a foreshadowing of even worse fires in the West

and in other parts of our country. We just have to accept the science and begin to take the preventative care, which is necessary, meaning that we need a renewable energy revolution led by the United States because what's happening here is going to be happening in the rest of the world as well. and we have a responsibility to be the leader and not the laggard. But do you think that there's going to be any more action in the Senate due to what we've seen, the fires, the triple-digit heat, or is it just going to be more of the same? I think we've reached a turning point. My race against Congressman Kennedy was a referendum on the Green New Deal.

It was a referendum on the kind of change which we need in our country to deal with the magnitude of the threats which we're seeing. And it's hurricanes, it's glaciers melting, it's the firestorms, which we're seeing all over the West. It's all coming together in one huge storyline. And my belief is that climate is on the ballot this November. Let's talk a bit about your primary victory. And why do you think that is something that other senators,

other people running locally, should use as a model for how to actually attract voters? We made a decision that climate change, the climate crisis, the Green New Deal could be at the center of a Senate campaign, and that we could use it as a way to activate young people, especially. And so in the under 35 population voters, what we found was that by 71 percent to 20 percent to 29% they were voting for me. And the Green New Deal was a central reason for that. But in addition, we also found that we could dramatically increase the turnout amongst under 35s in Massachusetts. And we did it. Just turnout that was unexpected from the experts perspective, but we broke the all-time

record for most votes in a primary in Massachusetts history statewide. And a big part of it was our attempts to actually increase turnout based around this whole issue set of whether or not the climate issues were able to galvanize support. So our pitch was we were going to save all of creation by engaging a massive job creation. It resonated. with the Sunrise Movement, with 350.org, with all of the traditional environmental groups, and it turned into a movement more than an election, and the turnout reflected it. And we largely believe that's why I was able to have such a large margin of victory over Congressman Kennedy.

Now, you saying that sort of backs up what I've heard from young people who tell me that unless serious climate crisis issues are on the ballot, they're staying home? I think that we should listen to them. Young people want to lead us, and we should let them lead us. We should understand that their issues are the issues of the future. And if we want to excite them, we should be talking about the issues of the future. We should be trying to convince them that we understand that there has to be an intergenerational compact that is put together to deal with these issues. That's what I did with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

when we drafted the Green New Deal. That's what I did when I partnered with Barshini Prakash and the Sunrise Movement in our efforts to build this campaign based around climate change issues. And if other politicians want to move to the future, want to increase turnout, want to excite young voters, then they should listen to them and let them lead politicians into the future. Why do you think Governor Jay Inslee,

who based his whole run for the president on one issue, and that's climate and clean energy, did not get that same kind of traction that you got in your primary run? Well, I love Jay, and he's a great friend of mine and he endorsed me wholeheartedly in my race. Jay did a phenomenal job in this presidential primary process as an educator. And all issues go through three phases, political education, political activation, political implementation. And so to a very large extent, what Jay was talking about a year ago in the presidential primaries is now what is becoming the agenda of the Democratic Party nationally.

So it got incorporated into this larger agenda. And I think that we should be thanking Jay for that leadership. In the same way, we should be thanking the Sunrise Movement, the 350.org movement. Sometimes you can be right, but too soon. And right now, I think people are realizing, as we're looking at this confluence of crisis, related to climate that are occurring in the United States and around the world, that Jay's message is one that's now being embraced by mainstream Democrats everywhere. I was shocked the last presidential campaign debates.

In 2016, not one question was asked about climate change. Do you think that, hey, maybe it'll make it on to the agenda this year? Well, when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and I had lunch in the first week of December of 2018, we sat down with the goal of drafting a Green New Deal, which would ensure that we did not have a repetition of 2016, which, as you said, had no question being asked of Hillary or of Trump about climate change. We introduced the Green New Deal resolution on February, of 2019 and nothing has been the same since then politically it caused a firestorm on the right

Fox News Trump even some conservative Democrats they were calling it socialism but again we then had an opportunity to have the debate because after all what are tax breaks for the oil gas and coal industry for 100 years out of the pockets of the taxpayers of our country if not socialism and we were able to say immediately, give us some of that socialism for wind and solar, all-electric vehicles, plug-in hybrids for battery storage technologies, for energy conservation strategies for the agriculture, industrial, commercial sectors in our country, and we will bury the fossil fuel industry within a generation. So once we introduced the Green New Deal, the debate was on, and now we reach the last few weeks before an election in the United States and climate change.

is no longer an avoidable subject. The list of energy topics on the Green New Deal does not really include nuclear power. What are your thoughts on where nuclear energy might fit into a decarbonized economy? Well, nuclear power is not excluded. Nuclear power right now produces about 19% of all electricity in the United States. There are two power plants being built down in Georgia and South Carolina, electric utility right now, that we're supposed to cost $12 billion, but which now cost $28 billion, which is a very expensive way to boil water to generate electricity.

So increasingly, what's happened is that nuclear power has met its maker in the marketplace. The cost for wind and solar energy efficiency have now collapsed. They're very low. Nuclear power is still very expensive. and while nuclear power is not excluded from the future, it has to find a way if it wants to be competitive to be able to construct and operate plants at a much higher level of efficiency.

And those power plants being constructed down there right now, I think are a warning signal to electric utility executives all across the country that if they move to wind and solar energy efficiency, other renewable energy resources, they'll be able to get those construction projects finish very quickly and at a cost that is affordable for the consumers in their states. One of the environmental topics that's been an issue on the presidential campaign trail already is fracking.

The president is supporting it. Joe Biden has recently said he would not ban fracking if elected. Is fracking here to stay? Fracking on public land should be banned immediately. Going forward, if we move as quickly as we can to an all-electric vehicle model, which I think is possible, we have to put the tax and regulatory policies in place. If we move to a massive deployment of wind and solar, then we can very, very quickly reduce the amount of oil, which is consumed in our country.

We put 70% of all the oil that we consume into gasoline tanks. If we move the whole fleet very rapidly towards an all-electric or a plug-in hybrid model, then I do believe we can reach a day very quickly where we do not need to authorize any additional fracking in our country. And I do think that day is going to arrive very soon. All of the motor vehicle companies, not only in the United States, but in the planet, now have a design for electric vehicles that is going to telescope the timeframe that it takes for us to have this revolution. occur. I recall not too long ago when offshore wind was very controversial in your home state in Massachusetts. Do you think now that offshore wind is part of the energy mix? Offshore wind

is going to play a huge role in the future. We right now have a project, vineyard wind, which has been delayed by the Department of Interior. We have to resolve a few issues with the fishing industry. But once we resolve that, we're going to move quickly from 800 megawatts to 1,600 megawatts to 3,000 megawatts to 10,000 megawatts off of our coastline. It's going to create tens of thousands of new jobs. We're going to need long electric cords in order to bring that energy in and plug it into Hyannis or Plymouth or New Bedford. But it's going to substitute very rapidly for the existing electricity infrastructure in Massachusetts, in New England, all along the East Coast and in our country. And it's going to happen very rapidly.

And ultimately, these will be good union jobs, and they are going to replace the need for new pipelines to be bringing in natural gas into New England and other parts of the United States. It's going to happen very rapidly. The technologies have developed dramatically over the last five to 10 years, each one of those wind turbines can now produce five to 10 megawatts of electricity in a way that was almost unimaginable 15 years ago. So like electric vehicles, like solar, like wind, onshore, all of this is happening very, very rapidly. I'm I reflato, and this is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. In case you just joined us, I'm talking with Senator Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts about environmental priorities for the election year and beyond. I know you've been working

on environmental issues for 40 years now. You sound like you're just getting started. Again, as I said, you know, liberals are usually right but too soon. And I think to a certain extent, our time has come. I addressed the Democratic National Convention in 1980, primetime 10 minutes. I was a young man. they gave me 10 minutes to lay out an energy future for our country. And in it, I called for an entirely solar society in America. And I think that the time has finally arrived. And it's young people who are leading the way. And I believe the policies are going to follow very quickly at the federal and state level to implement that vision. So you think it's going to be sort of a grassroots movement up instead of a top-down movement, perhaps?

I think the politics of 2020 are going to inject themselves into the congressional business of 2021. I think it's going to be very clear that young people really want fundamental change and they want it now. The age of incrementalism is over when it comes to responding to the climate crisis. They're looking every day at the lead two or three stories on. television stations and they are demanding change. And next year, there's going to be a big IOU that young people are going to have and demand out of the political system. And I think it will happen.

A lot of what they're seeing on their TV stations and online is the COVID epidemic. And I response to it, is there breathing room to worry about more than one thing at a time? When Alexandria Ocasio-Betka-Tez and I were drafting the Green New Deal, we made it very clear. that it had to be done with intersectionality. It had to be done with a reference to communities of color, indigenous communities, the frontline communities in our country. Because obviously black and brown communities

have always breathed different air than white suburban communities, which is why they have higher incidences of asthma, which is why they're more vulnerable to the coronavirus. We are now calling them a central worker, because they can't zoom to work. But the truth is that they are already exposed to a higher level of asthma, and as a result, they do contract coronavirus at a higher level.

So a big part of what we're talking about is moving quickly to remove those pollution-creating facilities out of those frontline communities, and then putting those communities at the front of the line to get the jobs to construct the new successor technologies that have to be installed. So we don't have a choice. We have to do this in a way in which we deal with multiple crises at the same time. The way to deal with it, the racial inequality, the economic inequality, the health care inequality,

is to ensure that we take this revolution in environmental justice and make sure that we provide the jobs and the safety for families across our country. and it has to be done simultaneously. We can't avoid it. They're interrelated crises. Senator Markey, we have run out of time, unfortunately. We'll have to have you back as things roll along. Thanks so much. Senator Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts,

co-sponsor in the Senate of the Green New Deal. We're going to take a break, and when we come back, we'll dive into a new book on the history of so-called miracle cures for deafness. A spoiler alert. None of them really work. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato.

At age four, J.Preet Verdi's world went quiet. A severe bout of meningitis left her deaf and shifted how she navigated in the world, as is the experience with many deaf and hard-of-hearing people. J-Preet went through all sorts of treatments, said to, quote-unquote, cure her hearing. Her experience and a love of history led to the writing of a book. joins us now to talk about it. Her book is called Hearing Happiness Cures in History. Jay Preet is also an assistant professor of history at the University of Delaware in Newark, Delaware. Welcome to Science Friday. Hi, Aara. Thank you for having me here. It's a great pleasure to be

on the show. I'm a huge fan of Science Friday. Well, thank you very much. I think our listeners would like to know, please. How are you able to hear me if you are deaf? Well, first thing, I were hearing aid. And we are currently communicating on a video conferencing platform that provides close captioning, which does help me better understand some of the things that you are saying. That's terrific. This topic of so-called miracle cures for deafness is, I understand it's very personal for you. I'm hoping to start by you telling us a little bit about your personal experience with them. Sure.

One of the things that listeners should keep in mind is that, that many deaf children are actually born into hearing families who might not be familiar with deaf culture or sign language. And it is kind of a learning process. That was the case for me as well. So nobody in the hospital and none of my doctors were able to advise my parents on how to raise a deaf child. And my parents being devout Sikhs,

they turn to religion, they turn to family, to kind of figure out what was the best way to help me grow up. and be a happy child and how they could communicate with me. So they tried everything. They turned to my grandparents for advice on old folk remedies. We went to the temple to receive blessings. My mom even took me to India to get a special blessing at the Golden Temple. And we even tried hearing aids as well,

but nothing really worked for me until we left Kuwait and immigrated to Canada where I got a more powerful hearing aid and was placed into a special school for the deaf and heart-de-hearing children that allowed me to learn English again, allowed me to learn how to speak again and communicate in different ways. What turned you toward researching deafness cures in history?

I was actually initially researching the history of medical anatomy, but became interested in how these anatomies were trying to classify types of, of hearing loss by looking at the anatomical defects or other kinds of medical problem that were basically in the eardrum or in the eustachian tube or in the anatomy of the year. Following this line of research, I just started to realize there was a huge history of people trying this so-called miracle cure that some of it was actually promised by the same anatomist and same ear specialists who were trying to figure out the hidden history, sort of.

of hearing. And I think because I resonated so much with the stories in the archives, you know, people are talking about trying this cure or receiving special blessing or being swindled by a crack seller. It dawned on to me that the history that I was researching in this archive, and historians, by the way, spent a lot of time in the archives. It also made sense to me, because it felt like it was my own story being reflected back. So that's kind of what led to the book as well. So this is a very personal book for you then. Indeed, yes, definitely.

And it's kind of a very terrifying experience as well. I mean, how much do I reveal myself in this book? I spent almost 25 years of my life trying to, quote unquote, pass as hearing, pretending that I wasn't as deaf as I actually was, trying to assimilate in hearing society, trying to appear as normal as possible. And opening the book by talking about my hearing laws is essentially me revealing to everybody.

I'm deaf. Here I am. I mean, I kind of talk about hearing happiness as my coming on story as a deaf woman and coming to terms with the kind of barriers that are in place for me to address, but also acknowledge the deep history as well. Why do so many deaf people try to pass in hearing?

Why do society expect that from us? And why do we get so excited when we see, you know, this whole hearing for the first time videos or other stories of that people succeeding? Like, why do that turn us on when we don't really acknowledge your kind of struggles and unsurmountable barriers that are also in place in society as well as a huge stigma against deafness? And that's true because I used to research the history of the telephone as evidenced by Alexander Graham Bell, whose whole family. tried to teach deaf people's sign language because, as you say, it was very controversial. Deaf people have to learn how to speak, and it was not accepted that they have their own culture. Yes, indeed. I mean, there seemed to be this misconception about deaf history that on one side, there was a sign language and the depth with the capital D culture. And the other side,

there were those who called themselves as hard of hearing and people who were hearing aids and use speech to communicate, but what deaf history actually is, is an audiological spectrum. There are various types of experiences, technology, communication, et cetera. But speech is always used as a marker of normality. It's the expectation that if a deaf person can manage speech,

then they can pass the hearing. No one's going to really notice them. I mean, I can't tell you how many times people have said to me, you speak really well for a deaf person. And I have to explain to them, well, that's like 10 years of speech therapy. That's like me trying to make sense of auditory clues around me. But that's also my kind of internalized stigma. And with what society expected of me to succeed as a deaf person,

where I think if I had also had sign language when I was young, it could have made things a lot easier for me. But one of the things that come across my book, And the emphasis on speech was also part of a broader history of normality in which deaf people had to move away from the stigma of deaf dumbness, which is usually we still kind of do that as an insult when we say, what are you deaf? Putting forward this idea that that's a less than type of human behavior. You know, I can understand, as you say, the pressure on people to not be quote unquote deaf, but to be quote unquote, normal. I can understand then, as the topic of your book, where all these cures come from or even the phony ones, because people want to be that way, don't they, from society's pressure?

Yes, exactly. I mean, it's this idea, what do we expect any citizen in society to do to uphold standards of normality? Like, what is the normal citizens look like? In many cases, you know, is someone who is able-bodied, godly, in many cases, self-sufficient, and hearing. Like, hearing is this marker of normality because we believe that anything that deviates from that is abnormal. So if you put this pressure on deaf people that they have to achieve to this higher standards of normality,

that includes being hearing, even if all you're doing is pretending to be hearing. So let's talk about the very interesting and fascinating things you've discovered in your research. First, let's talk about how far back in history have people been looking for cures for deafness and hearing loss? I imagine it goes back hundreds of years. I would imagine that as long as people had experienced hearing loss, they have devised some kind of ways to alleviate it or deal with or maybe even cure it. But I think your question for an historian would be better with phrase as, how far back did the historical evidence go?

You know, where in the archive did I find these kind of stories? I mean, I have found people talking about folk remedies and using botanical, so using herbs and plants and animal products to devise some kind of treatment. And there's evidence people have used things like berries or garlic. Garlic is another one because garlic is known for is antibacterial and duratic property. So there's lots of histories in there as well. So these cues aren't just about medicine or surgery or even technology. They're really about people making sense of the environment around them

and trying to turn to nature and use botanical to cure the hearing. But as you say in your book, there are really no such things as real cures are there? Cures can have a very flexible type of meaning. I mean, a surgery that can help someone who has autostalosis, which is a buildup of calcium in the earbone, then it's kind of a hereditary disease that can actually be promoted as a cure. A hearing aid can be considered a cure.

But if we're talking about drinking coffee on the belief that it will flush out your system and so for restore your hearing, if we're talking about ear candling, the solution, then no, these aren't really cured. But the promise that they're offering, this hope of normal hearing, I think that is also a common thread amongst all these different kinds of cures.

I want to talk about one so-called cure in your book that just blew me away. There have been cases of people airplane diving as a treatment for deafness. Tell us about that. Airplane diving is actually probably the most surprising fact I discovered when researching this book. I mean, I thought it was this one-off story about a man going up on a podcast. plane because he heard from somebody else that the loops and spirals and dives that the 1920s planes could somehow relieve your presence or when you land you are miraculously cured. I thought it was the one-off story, but looking in newspaper archives, it was very popular.

Like it was a 1920s bad. Like people generally believe that if you go up in the air, there's something magical that happens in there that cannot be replicated down on earth in that the air presence. targets your station tube, which is the tube connecting your funnics and your ear passages, and then relieve this pressure. I mean, parents

are standing their children as young as one year old. Children screaming and crying and like going up on these planes. And even with all these plane crashes, people which are not deterred from trying these experiments. And again, it tells you something about this

huge cultural stigma against deafness. You are willing to put yourself in harm's way and go up in the air and do this really terrifying stunt diving because you have this third promise. When you land, your hearing will be restored. And I think it's probably the most extreme example of a deafness cure. I'm Ira Plato, and this is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. Talking with J.Preet Verdi about her new book, Hearing Happiness, Deafness Cures in history. We heard from a lot of listeners on our Science Friday Vox Pop app who use hearing aids or have cochlear implants. And here's what Anne from Forestville, California said. Hi, I have bilateral

profound hearing loss and have bilateral cochlear implants. They've definitely been a miracle cure for me. And I have no idea what my life would be like if I didn't have access to this amazing technology. Do you consider these tech-based solutions, miracle cures? Definitely. I mean, deafness is an auditory spectrum. The way people negotiate with these kinds of cures and treatments, how they, in other words, position their bodies and their ability to make sense of their community is up to them.

Like the kind of what I refer to in negotiation between the self and environment in the book, that is a really personal experience. So for some people, cochlear implants give them this most amazing tools to pick up on auditory cues to learn how to speak and learn how to hear on the telephone and things like that. So for your caller, you know, is it definitely a miracle cure because it gives them something to succeed in society they may not have otherwise had before. And for me, hearing aids do that. Close captioning do that. Sign language, not so much because I'm not that fluent in sign language. And there are many people about me who also rely on sign language.

But it is really a kind of personal process where deaf people try to find the best tools for themselves to navigate in the hearing world. Do you think that society is going to change or has it changed a lot in terms of how it understands and accepts deafness? I really wish I can take an optimistic stance and say yes, but one thing I have seen in my research is that the same kind of promotion for deafness cures that we see now, things like not your digital hearing aids or auditory brain implants, but also like genetic engineering, like the whole CRISPR technology, all of them propagate the same rhetoric that deafness is a problem and needs to be fixed that I have seen in the to 19th centuries, and even the early 20th century, it's no turn that if you are deaf, you have to fix yourself. You have to restore to one of the many types of cures, whether they're surgery or technology or other kinds of folk remedies, and then restore yourself back to normal. So that is a huge problem. But I also see another problem in society in which we don't acknowledge the fact that there are social barriers in place that prevent deaf people from advocating for

themselves and even being able to fully participate in society. I mean, close captioning is one thing. And I know with this whole lockdown and in the middle of the pandemic, basically, we are living in a society where we are relying so much on communicating through videos and audio and things like that. And yet, I see many instances in which huge platforms either post recordings of audio without transcript or post videos without captioning. assumption that, well, there aren't that many people who are going to benefit from it. And that's the talk of the problem. That's not the point. The point is to make things accessible for everybody. And as I talk about a lot, it's really not that hard to come up with transcripts or provide

accessible platform or put captioning on your video and there are many different apps that allow people to do that. By taking the time to be accessible and not doing that, further creates all these barriers and make that a tremendous struggle and challenge for deaf people who need assets to continue advocating for themselves. Well, I hope we've done some advocating on this program today. I'd like to thank you very much. It's an excellent book. Jay Prid Verdi, author of the new book, Hearing Happiness, Deafness Cures in History. She's also an assistant professor of history at the University of Delaware in Newark, Delaware. Thank you. for writing the booker. Thank you for taking time to be with us today. Thank you. Thank you for having me.

You're welcome. We've got something cool for you after the show today. If you head over to Science Friday's Facebook page at 5 p.m. Eastern Time, we're holding a watch party. We'll be showing the video version of this segment with closed captioning and ASL interpreters for our death and heart of hearing audience. 5 p.m. Eastern today, Facebook.com slash sci fry. Charles Berkwist is our direct. Our producers are Alexa Lim, Christy Taylor, Katie Feather, Kathleen Davis, B.J. Leatherman, compose our theme music. Oh, also, this week on the Science Friday Vox Pop app, we want to hear from our listeners out on the West Coast. Are there long-term health effects due to these wildfires that you are concerned about? We want to hear from you.

That's on our Science Friday Voxpop app wherever you get your apps. You can also email us at SciFri at ScienceFriad. Have a great weekend. I'm Iroflato.