Lucia DeRespinis explains why empathy — and knowing how to throw a good party — is the key to success. Then Max talks with Dr. Anthony Fauci about what these last 540 days have been like for him: how he has taken care of himself throughout the pandemic, how his 37 year career as the director of NIAID has prepared him for this last year and half and what “getting back to normal” will look like for him personally.
Know someone who should be on 70 Over 70? We’re looking for all types of stories and people to feature at the top of the show. To nominate yourself or someone else, email 70over70@pineapple.fm or call 302-659-7070 and tell us your name, age, where you’re from and what you want to talk about.
transcription
[PRE-ROLL]
[OPENING MONTAGE]
Madeleine Albright: I know this program is 70 Over 70, but I really wish I were younger. I wish I was 70…but, I am ready!
[THEME MUSIC STARTS]
William: I’m 72 years old.
Paula: I’m 75, miraculously enough.
Sandy: I am 83 years old.
Betty: I am 88 years old.
James: You know, I’m here at 92.
Lucia: I’ll be 94 in May.
Donalda: I’m 101 years old.
Lucia DeRespinis: My name is Lucia DeRespinis. I'm 94 and I live in New York City.
[THEME MUSIC FADES OUT]
Lucia: So I taught industrial design at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York up until last year when I was 93 and the first thing I told students when I was teaching is “never say no” because once you learn how to design, you can design anything. But they have to understand who they're designing for and that was always the thing that I kept in the back of my mind.
[MUSIC FADES IN]
Lucia: Well, I was working at Sandgren and Murtha, and they were basically corporate identity designers. And Dunkin Donuts had asked if they’d redesign their Dunkin Donuts logo. So I went over and, um, walked into the graphics department and they had been working for about a couple of weeks. And I looked and they were all brown and black and white and I said, “No, donuts are fun!” And I jumped up and clapped my hands. They're colors! They're parties! They’re--and they said, “Well, you're an industrial designer. You're not a graphic designer. You don't understand this stuff.” I said, “Well, I've got an idea. Take that hot-dog lettering, why don't you make it pink and orange. My daughter's favorite colors for all of her birthday parties--every time she had a party, she wanted pink and orange balloons.”
[MUSIC CONTINUES]
Lucia: “No, no, we can't do that. We've got all these finished and we're going to go on Friday to Boston, where the main, uh, office was.” I said, “just do one, please.” “Alright, we’ll do it,” and everybody was sort of snickering. You know, here’s this freelancer. She wants to change everything. Oh, yeah, sure. So Monday morning I went in [laughs] and I said, “So what happened?” And one of the guys said—they were all guys, of course—they said, uh, “they chose yours.”
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Lucia: So now my daughter, who is now 58, [laughs] has gone through her life looking at Dunkin Donuts signs saying [laughs] “they're my colors” [laughs]. But a lot of the designers that I knew--men in industrial design--were very separate from the real world. And their stuff looks it. But as an industrial designer, aren't you trying to make the world better? We don't exist for an exalted group. We have to think what makes it beautiful for the average person. That's why we exist. It's because I had a daughter, and when I was thinking about donuts, I was thinking about her birthday parties and that's a part of everybody's life.
[THEME MUSIC FADES IN]
Lucia: Now, if I had not had a child and she had never wanted pink and orange, I never would have done that.
Max Linsky: That was Lucia DeRespinis and from Pineapple Street Studios, this is 70 Over 70, a show about making the most of the time we have left. I'm Max Linsky.
[THEME MUSIC CONTINUES]
My guest this week is Dr. Anthony Fauci.
It may feel like, 540 days ago, Dr. Fauci became an overnight celebrity…
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Max: But he’s actually been one of the nation’s top infectious disease doctors for decades now. As the director of the national institute of allergy and infectious diseases since 1984, Dr. Fauci has advised and guided seven presidents through everything from swine flu to ebola to the AIDS crisis, his work has profoundly changed the way that we treat and prevent the spread of new life-threatening diseases.
We've all listened to Dr. Fauci's voice over these last 540 days.
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Max: But what I wanted to hear was what this time has felt like for him. Honestly, I wanted to know how he’s doing. Whether, unlike so many of us right now, he's somehow holding up okay.
And since he's asked every day when we'll get back to normal, I wondered what getting back to normal would mean for him.
Dr. Anthony Fauci is 80 years old.
INTERVIEW
Max: Dr. Fauci, what I uh what an honor to have you on the show. I really appreciate you taking some time.
Dr. Fauci: My pleasure, Max. Thank you for having me.
[MUSIC FADES OUT]
Max: Ummm. I've got a lot of questions. But, uh, to start, I don't know if this is your experience, but in my experience, lots of people in my life right now, um, I would say they're, like, they're not doing great. Uh, the prospect of things shutting down again and being as far into this as we are and not knowing what's going to happen, it-it just feels like people are down. Uh, particularly over the last couple of weeks and it made me wonder, like um, how are you?
Dr. Fauci: You know, I'm-I'm fine in the sense that, uh, this is what I do. You know, this is the life that I've chosen, uh, and it's a life of responding--you know, I'm a physician, I'm a scientist, I'm a researcher. But one of my responsibilities, not the only one, but one of them, which is really in many respects dominated my life over the last 37 years that I've been the director of the institute, is to respond from a scientific and public health standpoint to emerging outbreaks of infectious diseases. And when I first took over the job in 1984, it was with HIV/AIDS, the first few years of AIDS, which has now really persisted as a major global health issue for the last 40 years.
And over the years we've responded to different outbreaks of influenza, pandemic flu, Ebola, Zika, Chikungunya and now it's Covid-19. So my-my life has always been very intense, uh, depending upon the acuteness of the situation, uh, the level of stress varies. But Covid-19 is really something over the top in the sense that it combines the most intense, uh, of this stress that you would get when you're dealing with an outbreak that has already killed about 625,000 Americans, over 4 million people worldwide. And we still don't have it really under control and that's the-the very, uh, challenging news. So we are now in a surging stage of the infections, people are down because we went up and then we came down, and then we went up, now we came down, and now we're going back up again. Um, so when you ask how I'm doing, uh, this is what I do but it's-it's intensely stressful [laughs]. But the thing that is a little bit different about this is, as I mentioned a moment ago, it is a cut above all the others for-for the intensity of it.
Max: It's almost like there's no way you'd be able to be OK if you hadn't gone through all the rest of it.
Dr. Fauci: I think that it has been an incremental building up of experience, of knowledge, of instinctive way to respond to things that fortunately for the most time are correct. But, you know, not always. Um, but the thing about this is that it's been so intense that I can honestly say that I really have not taken a day off in over a year and a half--18, 19 months [Wow] I have not taken a single day off. It's not to feel sorry for myself at all, because that's the nature of what I do. I mean, it's such an intensive, rapid moving situation that, you know, it's almost like you don't have time to take any time off. There's too many important things going on.
Max: Are you able to take care of yourself?
Dr. Fauci: Um, you know, in the beginning of the outbreak, when things were really beginning to explode for the first time, I-I really didn't take good care of myself. Uh, I have an extraordinary family that's very supportive, my wife and my three daughters, but my wife particularly is an incredibly intelligent, insightful person who saw that I was really wearing myself down because I was getting 4 hours of sleep a night for like 10 nights in a row. That's completely impossible to do, you know, when you're working 18, 19 hours a day. [Yeah.] So she really, you know, grabbed me by my lapels [both laugh] and said, “OK, now you're going to drink water, you're going to eat and you're going to sleep at least 6 hours a night.” So I'm actually physically much better off now than I was. The one thing I do every day, if I could--it just doesn't happen every day, but I try--is I used to be a marathon runner and a 10K runner and my wife and I together I've run several marathons and dozens and dozens of 10Ks, but I'm at I'm 80 years old now, so the idea of running three to four miles a day doesn't do good for your back and your knees, so I power walk, which I find is as exhilarating in some respects as running. You don't quite get the endorphins up as you do when you run, but it is a stress reliever, particularly when you do it, you know, together with my wife gives us a chance to chat for a bit.
Max: Yeah. People tell you about the, uh, runner's high, but not-not as often about the power walking high.
Dr. Fauci: No, there's not a lot of power working high [laugh]. You know, having run so many races, the-the great feeling you get when you're running and going fast, but there is something about getting your mind at least off it for a little while for that hour that you do a power walk.
Max: [laughs] How you make time for yourself is, um, deeply fascinating to me and I could talk to you about it for a long time, but-but we don’t have a lot of time here, and so I wanna get back to what you were saying earlier about the building up of experience that allows you to do this work, specifically the work you did with the AIDS epidemic. What did you learn then that you’re applying now to COVID?
Dr. Fauci: You know, there were subtle things you learned and rather concrete things that you learn. The subtle things that you learn is never underestimate an epidemic outbreak of an infectious disease because it can be insidious and highly impactful the way HIV was. I remember like it was yesterday sitting in my office right here at the NIH reading the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, about 5 gay men from Los Angeles who had this strange disease that no one could figure out. How did--nobody had any idea what the cause was, much less what it was. And then a month later, in the same Morbidity Mortality Weekly Report, which is kind of a report of new diseases from the CDC, 26 men, curiously, all gay, with this extraordinary disease that was destroying their immune system, and we didn't know what it was. I-I made a major decision in my life at that point, which really transformed my entire life. I decided I was going to turn around completely the direction of my career and study this absolutely fascinating new disease, which at the time was only known to infect about 100 gay men in the United States. And we had no idea, if you had asked me fast forward 40 years later, will it have already killed 36 million people and infected 77 million people and have 36 million people living with HIV. But it was insidious because it was an infection that when you first get it, you can go for years without symptoms until your body's immune system collapses. Then you get a whole array of opportunistic infections. The contrast with Covid-19 is that it's a completely explosive outbreak, uh, that when in a period of a year and a half is,as you know, killed 4 million people. Uh, so you always learn that you can’t predict what’s going to happen with an infectious disease. The other thing I learned was you got to engage the community when you're trying to interact.
You got to engage the community to do those public health measures. The things that we spoke about before vaccines and even after vaccines, masking, social distancing, avoiding crowds, all the kinds of things that we learn that when you have an evolving outbreak, people think you have all the answers on day one. And that's the real critical issue. It's like they always say, “what would you have done differently if you knew in January of 2020,um, what you know now?” Well, of course, you would do an extraordinary amount differently because (A) we weren't even sure it was efficiently transmitted from person to person. Then we found that it was efficiently transmitted. Then we found that it was incredibly well transmitted. Then we found out that 50 percent of the infections were transmitted by people who had no idea that they were infected. They were completely asymptomatic. So what would I have done different [laughs] [Right.] 18 months ago? Like everything. [laughs]
Max: But that's part of what makes your job so hard, at least from the outside, is like you're supposed to be the voice of reason, but you don't have all the data.
Dr. Fauci: Yeah.
Max: Like, you-you're supposed to know it all and you don't know it all, so h-how do you do that?
Dr. Fauci: Well, if you don't know what you should know at a time that you know it [laughs], then you're-you're remiss, but when you're living through an evolving outbreak and you have no way of knowing certain things, then of course you would have done it differently if you had all the knowledge. You know, and it's very pronounced with Covid-19. But there was a little bit of that, um, back in the early years of HIV, you know, when we, you know, had no idea what the ideologic agent was.
Max: Well, there's one other thing about that time that feels similar to now, which is that a large group of people were really mad at you personally.
Dr. Fauci: For a different reason [laughs].
Max: For almost the exact opposite reason. So for people who don’t know this history, AIDS activists were fighting for access to experimental drugs that were being developed, they were literally the only hope that people had to stay alive otherwise it was a death sentence. But what the scientific method called for was going through multiple stages of trials to not just know that drugs were safe but that they were effective. And through these conversations that you went and had with these activists and with gay communities across the country, you changed your mind, and you changed your way that this system works. You allowed people into these clinical trials before the drugs had been proven to be effective.
Dr. Fauci: Totally. Right. That's exactly what it was, was in the beginning, uh, as a scientist and as a public health person, I was actually doing whatever I can to address what this brand new outbreak was and how do we get drugs out there quickly and things like that. But the activists were looking to bring attention to the fact that the old paradigm of how you address an emerging disease, how you develop drugs, how you test them, and how you involve the afflicted community was an antiquated approach in the beginning.
Max: And people were dying as a result.
Dr. Fauci: Well, yeah. And-and it isn't like we had the magic wand to prevent it, but I was out there very publicly trying to call attention to the things you can do, wear a condom. And I became the face of the federal government. So when the activists decided that they wanted to call attention to what they felt, uh, correctly in some respects was an inadequate approach of the federal government, the President Reagan at the time, was not using the bully pulpit of the presidency to call attention to the risks of this. The-the support of research was not adequate at the time.
Max: Right.
Dr. Fauci: So what did they do? They picked out the face of the federal government, i.e. me.
Max: Yeah!
Dr. Fauci: And the next thing I knew it was, you know, these iconoclastic theatrical demonstrations against me. And I think one of the most important, best things I've ever done is that I kept an open mind. And when they did that, I said to myself, “wait a minute, these people are suffering.” They-they're concerned that they and their colleagues and their friends and their lovers are dying, which they were. And they don't feel that the federal government is paying enough attention and really not on the right track. But no one was listening to them. So they became very confrontative, very disruptive, including against agencies like the NIH and the FDA. So one of the best--
Max: And personal.
Dr. Fauci: Oh, totally personal, because I was the-- everybody else was running away from it.
Max: Right.
Dr. Fauci: I was the only one that was out there, you know, publicly talking about it. Most, in fact, all of the scientists, when they would demonstrate and try to shut down Wall Street, shut down the Golden Gate Bridge, shut down St. Patrick's Cathedral, everybody, when they’d hear about the activists and they would run away. And every time the activists became more provocative, they would pull back even more, the scientists.
So I said, wait a minute, I'm going to do the opposite. I'm going to surprise them. I'm going to listen to what they were saying. And when I began to listen to what they were saying, they were making perfect sense. [Right.] And I put myself in their shoes and I said, holy mackerel, if I were in their shoes, I would do exactly what they were doing. And that's when I started to bring them in around this table that I'm sitting at right now, actually, historically, when instead of when they were demonstrating, the police were trying to arrest them, I said, no, don't arrest them. Bring up 5 or 6 of their leaders and let's sit down and talk about this. And I listened to them. And, boy, did they make sense. And that's when we started a dialog of getting the activists involved in all of the things we did, the planning, the implementation, the discussions--
Max: And the clinical trials, and I think that's a connection that people today might not make which is the reason we had Covid vaccines 10 months ago before they were approved by FDA was because they were emergency authorized. And the emergency authorization the idea of that is born out of this experience that you had in the 80s with the AIDS epidemic. And so when you think about these people who are mad at you now, for-for whom you've become the face of the enemy, when you put yourself in their shoes, how do you make sense of the fact that they don’t want to take the vaccine?
Dr. Fauci: Well, uh, we-we're talking about apples and oranges now [Max laughs] Apples and oranges. So let me explain. So here's the deal. For the people who really feel that they don't want to get vaccinated--they're a heterogeneous group--there are people who don't want to get vaccinated because they want more information. So today, interestingly, today, the FDA gave a full licensure to the Pfizer, which many people were saying, well, I'm waiting for the full licensure, I don't trust--I think you went too too, uh,too uh quickly. So you never get accusatory to those people, you never confront them, because even though some of their concern is based on misinformation.
Max: Do you believe in your heart that it's going to change now that this is official?
Dr. Fauci: I-I think about 20 percent or so--and that's a pure estimate, Max. I don't know the right answer--maybe 20 to 30 percent of people who were really, truly, sincerely waiting to get the full approval because they sincerely felt that it wasn't safe or effective, even though we have given it to 200 million doses so far, they still needed further proof, and they have that now.
But there is something different about the, uh, confrontation against me now just don't want to get vaccinated because many of those people, if you explain to them why it's important, give them the information they need, they'll get vaccinated. I'm not talking about them. What's different here, Max, dramatically, 180 degree difference is that I'm being attacked by conspiracy theorists, you know, Fauci is this, he's that, he’s the other thing. And it's really more of an attack without a reason. Uh, or maybe the reason is that during the Trump administration, I had enough integrity to get up and say, you know, I'm sorry, but what you're saying is not correct. And I think that probably rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. Whereas back in the-in the era of AIDS, the confrontation against me was to get my attention for something that was really right. They needed to get more attention and they needed to have more of a voice in what the government was doing. Whereas now it's really just attacking for the sake of attacking. I mean, all you got to do is get on Fox News every night [laughs]
Max: Right.
Dr. Fauci: And you know what I'm talking about.
Max: So you think it's just that you went against their guy?
Dr. Fauci: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Max: Was that a mistake then?
Dr. Fauci: No! It was the right thing to do because I wasn't against anybody. I was trying to get the right information and the correct information out. So there was never anything that was a confrontative or against, uh, a person, certainly not the president. I have a great deal of respect for the office of the presidency. It was when something is said that's completely incorrect, as a scientist, in order to maintain my integrity and my obligation to the American people, I had to correct things that were incorrect.
Max: But did you but did you know at the time that there was a chance or even a good chance that that would risk politicizing the science?
Dr. Fauci: Well, you know, you-you're asking a question. I never want science to be politicized, but if I agreed with something that was incorrect or I went along with it, I'd be violating my own fundamental principles of integrity to do that. [Right.] So I had to come out and say, no, you know, that's not so. Hydroxychloroquine is not a cure. You know, the pillowman is not right [Max laughs]. You know, I'm sorry. Uh, you know, you just can't--you can't go along with those things. And I didn't mean anything at all as anything against the presidency or the president.
[MUSIC FADES IN]
Dr. Fauci: I mean, if you go back and look, it wasn't anything that I've ever said against a person. It was always against misinformation.
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[AD BREAK/ MIDROLL]
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Max: I know that you're not going to talk too much about the former president and-and I understand that, I'm not going to ask you about it, but-but can you tell me what it felt like in those moments to stand up and say, actually, that's not what it says? Like, wh-what was going on in your gut and in your heart in those moments?
Dr. Fauci: No, it was a very, uh very tense and intense feeling that I had to do the right thing and whatever the consequences, I'm willing to accept.
Max: Were you nervous?
Dr. Fauci: You know, I wouldn't say nervous. I-I would say kind of in a zone [laughs].
Max: Yeah, you were-you were in like-like your version of the flow state.
Dr. Fauci: Well, no, like, you know, go back to an analogy or metaphor. So you're on a landing craft in Normandy, and the door opens and you run out [Max laughs] and you're trying to make it to the hill without getting shot [laughs]. But, you know, you got to make it. So, you know. I--there is one thing that I think could explain it, Max, is that the first time I ever went in to uh brief a president was Ronald Reagan back in the early 1980s and a very close friend of mine who had been working at the White House for years in the Nixon administration, when I was getting ready to go in, he said whenever you go into the West Wing to to brief the president, say to yourself that this may be the last time that I'm going to walk into the White House, because if you go in there and you get overcome by the awe and the majesty of it, and you really feel very strong about wanting to get asked back, you might hold back in telling the president something that's an inconvenient truth that he might not want to hear. And if you hold back because you want to get asked back, you've made a big mistake. So you just got to tell the truth and if they are good enough to respect you, they'll ask you back again.
Max: And here you are. It’s been, uh, 40 years of continually being asked to come back to the White House.
Dr. Fauci: Right, exactly. So that means that that really works. You know, there's some bumps across the road and the bumps were last year, there were some serious bumps.
Max: Maybe there's a little bit of a gap between bumps and storming the beach of Normandy [Dr. Fauci laughs], but I think I understand what you're saying. I want to know a little bit about how you're thinking about what comes next for you. I mean, you know, you're saying that you're fine and I'm glad we've got it on the record for everyone who’s listening, but how much longer can you do this? Like, what do you want from the rest of your career?
Dr. Fauci: Well, you know, there is some unfinished business. There's no way I'm going to walk out in the middle of a catastrophic pandemic when I've spent my entire professional career chasing outbreaks. So at least until we get this under control, that's, you know, whether that's next year, I hope it's before then. Uh, but also, there are some things with HIV that I really want to wrap up. You know, I-I don't think I'm going to end HIV outbreak during my professional--what's ever left of my professional--career, but I think there are some major dents that we could still make. I think in the United States we could dramatically diminish the number of new infections per-per year, um, both with, you know, treatment as prevention, pre-exposure prophylaxis and hopefully even a modestly effective vaccine. So the one thing that I am is a realistic person. I mean, I actually think even in my age, that I'm going on all cylinders, in fact, even more.
Max: There's nothing that feels different about doing the job at 80 then it did at 70 or 60 or 50?
Dr. Fauci: No, it-it-it just does--you know, sometimes I wake up in the morning and I think I'm 40 and I have to slap myself [Max laughs] and say, excuse me, it's 2021[laughs]!
Max: Where does-where does that come from? Like, how-how have you held on to that feeling for so long?
Dr. Fauci: Uh, you know, it's very interesting, but I don't know because it-it gets a little odd when you're dealing with people who are, you know, uh, 50 years younger than you and-and you don't really feel like you're much older than they are. And you find out that you're old enough to be their grandfather [both laugh]. It's a strange feeling.
Max: So you're saying you-you're sort of walking through the halls of the NIH, sort of like, um, feeling like it's 1990 and then all of a sudden you look in the mirror and you're like, “Oh my God, look at that guy”.
Dr. Fauci: [laughs] It's exactly right. Every once in a while I wake up and I think I'm 45. And then I go to shave and I say, “ah!” [both laugh]
Max: All right, so you feel like you're firing on all cylinders, but on some level, you've got to be thinking about your legacy too, right?
Dr. Fauci: Right….eh.
Max: What do you think about that? What do you think of as your legacy?
Dr. Fauci: You know, my legacy is going to be judged by other people. So I can't describe what my legacy is. I can say when I realize what I've done, uh, and that will be judged historically by others, which is appropriate. You shouldn't be, you know, making judgments on yourself. But, you know--
Max: I'm interested in your judgment for yourself. That's what I'm asking about.
Dr. Fauci: Well, I've been at the NIH over 50 years. I've been a physician scientist and a public health official. I've made, you know, some substantial contribution to the research endeavor and the thing I like about that is whether I say it or I don't say it, it's the matter of record. People just can go look in the literature of what you've done, so you can't make it up, nor can you diminish it. It's there! [Yeah.] You know, that's the good thing about that. And I've made a number of, I think, important discoveries in my field. The development of drugs, the development of prevention that has really turned HIV/AIDS from a universally fatal disease to a manageable chronic disease. But one of the other things that I did purely almost by-by accident, because a president, President George W. Bush, asked me to go do it, was to figure out a way how we can get drugs and prevention and care for the developing world, particularly sub-Saharan Africa, which has probably saved about 15 million lives already.
Max: That's incredible.
Dr. Fauci: And I had the-the privilege of being asked by a president to put that together--I didn't do it alone, but I played a major part of it--he gave me the Presidential Medal of Freedom for doing that. So that's a very important milestone in my career.
Max: 15 million lives.
Dr. Fauci: Yeah. Right, exactly.Now with covid, the research enterprise that I've led for now 37 years has led to the fundamental basis that made the vaccines possible.
Max: What would the kid who graduated from Regis-- the 5' 7" kid who's the captain of the basketball team--what would he think about everything you just said? What would--how would he understand what you've been able to do?
Dr. Fauci: I don't think he would in-in my 15, 16, 17 year old basketball days at Regis High School, I don’t--I could not even have imagined the opportunities I've had. You know, some people who are as talented or even more talented than I am maybe didn't have the opportunity to have this kind of an impact. So I just feel very fortunate and privileged that in addition to whatever, you know, genetic or God-given capabilities I have, that I was able to utilize them and be put in a position to be able to work with President Bush or to do the kind of science I did because I went to medical school and had the privilege of coming to the NIH and learning how to be a researcher. I mean, you have to have certain fundamental core capabilities, but also you have to have the opportunity placed in front of you to be able to do those things.
Max: Well, there is something that feels unique to me and innate that allows you to have gone through the last 540 days and say that you're doing OK?
Dr. Fauci: Yeah, I'm doing fine [laughs].
Max: I'm sure everyone has asked you in every conversation you've had for the last 540 days, when are we going to get back to normal, but my last question for you is, what is normal going to mean for you. Like, what are you looking forward to? What do you-what do you want for yourself on the other side of this?
Dr. Fauci: You know, Max, that's a great question. Maybe the most important and I would say problematic question that you've asked me in the last how long we've been talking to each other. Is that, for me personally, I don't even know what normal is going to mean, because I've been living a life of of responding to these outbreaks and essentially having everything I do be science and public health and clinical medicine and taking care of patients and running an institute and getting involved with advising now 7 presidents, so if that goes away [laughs]...
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Dr. Fauci: I don't have any idea what normal is going to be like. I just don't know.
CREDITS
Max Linsky: 70 over 70 is a production of Pineapple Street Studios, and it’s produced by Jess Hackel.
Our associate producer is Janelle Anderson. Our editors are Maddy Sprung-Keyser and Joel Lovell. Research and additional reporting by Charley Locke.
Our mixer is Davy Sumner and Jenna Weiss-Berman and I are the executive producers.
Our theme song is Like a Dream by Francis and the Lights. And the music you’re listening to right now is by Arthur Russell, who would have been 70 this year. Original music by Terence Bernardo. Additional music by Noble Kids, and music licensing by Dan Knishkowy.
Our cover art is by Maira Kalman, who’s 72. And our episode art is by Lynn Staley. She's 73, she’s my mom, and she’s had a pretty rough week. Mom, feel better.
Special thanks to Emerald O’Brien, Anne Oplinger and Ed Yong.
Thank you, Lucia DeRespinis and thank you, Anthony Fauci. .
I'm Max Linsky. Thanks for listening.