Kind: captions
Language: en
if you're a jasmine in the movie aladdin
would you trust this guy
is it safe sure do you trust me
what do you trust me trust can be a
delicate matter
including when it relates to science
medicine and writing magic carpets
it has to be built gained and kept but
that's not an impossible task
let's meet two women who have worked
really hard to build trust with other
people
and have made major changes in their own
communities in the process
the first is lady mary worldly montague
she managed to convince people living in
england in the 1700s to inject
themselves with a scap
yep to inoculate against smallpox
the second woman is a scientist and tv
producer and among her million
accomplishments
is that she's best friends with
elephants meet elephant whisperer
paula kahumbu okay let's dive
right into lady mary's story time
machine
take us to 1716 constantinople
otherwise known as modern-day istanbul
in turkey
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in 1716 lady mary her husband
england's ambassador to the ottoman
empire and her son
moved to constantinople probably to
enjoy amazing baklava in budak
and the company of brilliant turkish
ladies who had surprisingly flawless
skin
not ravaged by smallpox unlike its name
smallpox is no small matter it's a bunch
of rashes and sores and blisters all
over your skin
it's accompanied with fever and it could
be pretty deadly
like it killed about 3 out of every 10
people who got it
and for those who didn't die they were
left with horrible scars and some were
even blinded
luckily it's not a thing we have to deal
with anymore because vaccination
yay but hey no spoilers
at some point mary found herself in the
middle of smallpox parties
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basically parties where someone from the
community takes a wound scab
that is dried smallpox blisters caps
from someone sick with a mild case of
smallpox
makes a cut on healthy people including
kids and then
adds some of the scap into it then they
just wait to recover from a mild case of
smallpox
the idea is that hopefully the kids are
less likely to get it again
and this whole process is called
inoculation
note please don't try this at home
especially with covet
infecting yourself or others would covet
intentionally is extremely
dangerous now mary was not only
fascinated by this technique
but she also noticed that smallpox was
far less extreme in the ottoman empire
than it was back in england
this was especially important to mary
because some years before
she had lost her brother to smallpox and
not long after that
mary herself had become ill with
smallpox which left her with visible
scars on her face
eradicating smallpox for mary was
personal
before leaving for england mary ran to
the british embassy surgeon
and asked him to inoculate her babe
under the observation of a wise turkish
lady who knew how this whole inoculation
thing works
and thus the babe was inoculated that's
how the brit said child
babe when mary went back to england she
said
hey everyone i found a way to protect
our children
thanks to the brilliant turkish ladies
just take this cap and inject it into
your babes
and people and some other doctors were
like um you
no thank you which kind of made sense
cause why would they trust a rando
saying please
inject grossness into your children so
mary had to go to her super popular
high society friend caroline princess of
wales the future queen of great britain
the vogue magazine cover of her time if
you will
and mary said listen terry um
can you maybe infect your babes with the
scab in the name of science and let
everyone know about it
please and princess caroline said
girl mary my muffin sis
honey anything for you but i'm
kind of a science nerd so i think we
need to arrange for some science trials
to make sure this thing you say actually
works
so caroline got the royal surgeon to run
some trials
he inoculated a few prisoners with the
premise of earning their freedom
and then he ran some more trials on
orphaned children
and had doctors watch them to make sure
the inoculation was safe
okay pause honest chat
i was supposed to talk here about
medical ethics
did the prisoners know what to expect
after the inoculation
how about the orphaned children what if
the inoculation would have gone wrong
i started looking into medical
experimentations especially those done
on children orphaned children black
indigenous latinx and other people of
color
medical experimentations done by the
nazis on jewish and other people
during the holocaust and horrible things
happening to ethnic and religious
communities or just for seeming
different
it's a horrible place to go to but hey
that's also the history of science yes
today u.s hospitals and researchers have
rules in place to make sure that
medical procedures are as safe as
possible and yes
when there are experiments that involve
any risks people are supposed to be
fully informed about those risks
but we also have to remember the harmful
things that the science community has
done
those things don't just vanish and we
still see different versions of them
happening today
we have to remember the past and
understand why different communities
might find certain practices dishonest
and uncaring and then work really hard
to try to rebuild that trust by
demonstrating real integrity and
transparency
okay back to the smallpox story after
princess caroline felt safe inoculating
her babes
more royalty followed in her footsteps
and more people were like
um if cool kid caroline inoculates her
own base we will do it too
you see now that the royalty was
inoculating their babes
the public felt more comfortable
trusting the practice of scab injection
of those who got inoculated against
smallpox only about two percent died
compared to about 30 percent who died
after contracting smallpox naturally
what mary did was immensely important
she brought back the knowledge of
turkish practices back to england
but education and access to information
on their own are not necessarily enough
to change behavior
without a trusted source like caroline
much of england would have suffered the
same
fate as mary or worse yet her brother
well if there is one thing we have
learned from aladdin is that you could
still lie and get the girl
okay no obviously trust is very
important if you lie to people then you
have to work really hard to rebuild that
trust and sometimes you have to do some
really extraordinary things
so we have to get people to trust us we
have to be honest and tell them what our
real intentions are
and that brings me to science
communication superstar
elephant expert paula kahumbu i
am from kenya i run a conservation
organization
called wildlife direct and we produce a
television series
called wildlife warriors to help educate
inspire and just bring the wonder of
nature into the homes
of people all across kenya and in fact
africa
we'll get back to the trust story in a
second but first let's learn about an
unlikely friendship that inspired paula
to protect the forest
and its inhabitants after finishing my
phd at princeton i continued
teaching undergraduate courses and i
would take these students all over the
country
ambaselli being one of my favorite
places you have the backdrop of this
majestic mountain mount kilimanjaro
and these elephants that are kind of
tame they're really calm and relaxed and
they're
everywhere and you can get quite close
to them and one day while i was with my
students we were watching
the mountain just enjoying this
afternoon and this
monumental elephant came into the scene
he was an elephant i'd never seen before
just magnificent huge tusks
right down to the ground and i took
photographs of him and went to the
elephant research center and they told
me oh
that's tim later paul and her team
managed to put a radio collar on them so
that they could know where he was going
you see tim was really into going to
neighboring villages
and steal food from the farms so by
having the radio collar
the researchers would know if it was
going near any of those villages
and could help dissuade him i could
always find him
and he'd often be standing underneath
acacia trees and if i called his name
he would often you know walk up to my
car and just stand there
towering over me and just looking at me
you know he had this like sense of
full awareness of who i was he was he
was unbelievable
tim would just fall asleep around paul
you know chill
just fetch the ball and do back flips
ah yep no no no fetching involved
paul was dark okay tim and his entire
family of elephants
fell asleep in front of me and my crew
eight elephants
lying down snoring for an hour in front
of us
could it be that the elephants
recognized paula's good intentions
and trusted her maybe
tim died of natural causes in 2020 but
his memory lives on in the hearts and
minds of those who loved him
but i wanted kenyans and people around
the world
to know this magnificent elephant called
tim
and perhaps his story about being this
naughty elephant
who wanders across the landscape
interacts with people
you know he's relatable in 2013 wildlife
direct
launched hands off our elephants a
conservation campaign aimed at ending
the poaching crisis in kenya
since then elephant and rhino poaching
in kenya has dropped by 80 and 90
respectively that's awesome but there's
something deeper going on
we have separated ourselves from nature
we see ourselves differently
but when we reconnect and develop that
trust
we can experience something that is
truly unimaginable magical inexplicable
something that is worth more than any
amount of money
you could possibly pay paula gained
tim's trust by truly caring for him
and there's a lot of ways we can show
people that we care for them we do that
all the time with our friends
by being there when they need us by
being honest with them and show them
what's really in our hearts
and by listening to their long long long
stories
as a communicator building trust is at
the heart of every interaction
every day so when paula approached the
maasai people for an episode of her
program
wildlife warriors she knew she needed
their trust
the messiah are a kenyan tribe who've
been protecting nature and as a result
the elephants
but you know no one really likes to let
a rando in their house and then spill
their guts in front of them
you need to really trust them but paula
is anything but a rando she's like the
opposite of a rando
she's more like a ran don't
down near the masai mara just to the
east
is a mountain range called the loiter
hills these hills are cloaked in this
beautiful
rainforest and the people who live in
that area call themselves the loiter
maasai
and they have a very very strong and
ancient tradition and culture
of defending forests they have spiritual
elders
called the libon they're not very old
but they just have this
sense of calm you can't actually tell
how old they are
they smile a lot they're very relaxed
and
they wear traditional clothes they seem
to like
look right through you it's a very very
strange and amazing experience
it never occurred to me how important it
was that people
really felt my intentions i always
thought you know
you know it's on my cv you know here are
my credentials
so when i went to see them i was trying
to explain to them you know i've come to
make this film
and they just looked at me and they said
we know we've already
accepted you we already know that you've
come here with good
intentions they could see it in my eyes
in my body language they could hear it
in my voice
they could see it in the way i
interacted with other people it was
very important trust is really important
that it's backed up by integrity
and that what we say is what we're
thinking
what we're doing they're all aligned
and that people know that if i say
something
it's what i'm going to do what i'm doing
is what i promised i would do
paula has credibility she's the expert
she shows care by listening to other
people
and she shares her worthy intentions
with them she also shows integrity by
telling people what is important to her
and she behaves accordingly she builds
trust
and with the messiah's trust paula got
to learn a lot about how they protect
the forest and encourage their community
to do so too
how they are only allowed to collect
what they need from the forest
because if the forest goes we all go
science is valuable
it offers solutions treatments
improvements
but none of those scientific
advancements mean anything
if the public the communities don't
trust them
building trust like mary caroline and
paula
isn't just pizzazz and it isn't just
showing everyone you're smart
it's doing the hard work to show people
that you're trustworthy
and for science to mean anything for it
to have true
impact the people who do science and the
people who communicate
science need to be worthy of people's
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trust