Who Was Christopher Columbus?

Liam Heffernan: 00:00:18

This week we are talking not about an American, but an Italian. A man who is credited for his discovery of America and has gone down in history as one of the great explorers.

But his achievements did not come without its struggles. So in this episode I want to know who was Christopher Columbus? Welcome to America, a history podcast.

I'm Liam Heffernan and every week we answer a different question to understand the people, the places and the events that make the USA what it is today. To discuss this, I am joined by an award winning biographer, historian and criticism chronicler of exploration.

His books include Columbus the Four Voyages, which we will link to in the show notes, which you can check out after this. A big welcome to Lawrence Bergreen. Hello, Lawrence.

Laurence Bergreen: 00:01:26

Hello. Good morning. Good morning, Liam. Thank you very much for having me on your show.

Liam Heffernan: 00:01:30

Yeah, really, really delighted to have you on talking about this.

I feel like we're over a year into the podcast now and there's still these like really big topics that we haven't covered and I feel like one of them is the guy who actually gets the credit for discovering America. But of course he's not an American, he's an Italian.

And as we've very recently discovered to recording this episode actually may also be a Jew as well, which was previously unknown. Right?

Laurence Bergreen: 00:01:56

Yes. Well, you know, it's been sort of brooded about for a while that he was Sephardic Jewish or part Sephardic Jewish.

You know, there are various divisions in Judaism, depending going back to the Inquisition, Ashkenazi Jews who are more prevalent, Sephardic Jews who travel to Spain. But I would say having read about six of these accounts in the past seven or eight days, I'm not really convinced.

There are some academics who said, oh, it looks like that they're doing some genetic testing, but I don't think they've really, as they say, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. And I don't think they've gotten to that point, but it's certainly possible.

the Inquisition took hold in: 1492

And some of his crew members and perhaps his navigator were conversos, in other words, converted Jews, some of whom may have been Sephardic or so called hidden Jews. They tended to be navigators, but you know, who really knows? So the moment that he sailed suggests that there was a Jewish origin to it.

But you know, the Inquisition is As you peel back layers, gets more and more complicated about who was being expelled and why. Anyway, Ferdinand and Isabella's loss was the New World's Gate. Oh, that's another controversy, you know, as they say.

So, you know, where you sit depends on where you stand. If we were talking about it from an American point of view, we would say, well, there was nothing to discover about America.

It had been, you know, inhabited by people for centuries, if not millennia. So it was being rediscovered by Europeans. Whether Columbus was the first European or his is on his first voyage, you know, it's not clear there.

There may have been some other voyages and their records were lost. You know, this is a long time ago. So keep in mind he never knew this, that America existed. He was looking for India, one of the words China.

And in fact, he even brought with him a Chinese translator to be prepared for that. Instead, he bumped into one or two islands in the Bahamas and in the Caribbean. He never knew North America existed.

He may have glimpsed the coast of Florida, of the peninsula, but I think if he came back today, Liam, he just would have been flabbergasted by the number of a couple things, the number of places in the continental United States that are named after him. Statues, schools, cities, squares, public facilities. He would have been absolutely.

Imagine if you would come back to America many years later and everything was named Neeson. Not everything, but, you know, countless places. You would have scratched your head and said, what's all this about?

And so, you know, so many ironies of history. But anyway, why did Columbus become almost synonymous with North America?

Well, of course, there were four voyages, and my book, which was published by Viking, is called Columbus the Four Voyages. It seems to me, and I don't think that's an unusual opinion, that each voyage was longer and more complicated than the one before it.

The first voyage, which is the famous one, the one that school children study, is the simplest, and there are some takeaways from that, but that the following three voyages, which are come in quick succession, I thought, are even more challenging and interesting. You begin to see the more.

The darker side, if you will, of Columbus emerge as he decides it might be a good idea to exploit or enslave the people whom he encounters along the way.

And by the way, I just want to emphasize that although Columbus, for some people, has acquired a reputation as an unusual monster or cruel person in his era, he really was a carrier of conventional Western European feelings about, or beliefs about what we would call the New World now. And he did not stand out for his Cruelty. There were others like him who had the same points of view.

Ferdinand and Isabella shared at that wholeheartedly. So he was not sent on a mission to destroy a culture.

He did, it seems to me, and he writes extensively about it, have a kind of messianic interpretation of what he was doing.

And at several times he, when he's in a store, and particularly in these voyages, he writes about or people recall him saying that he was hearing the voice of God. Well, today you might say, well, this person's psychotic. They're hearing the voice of God. Well, okay. In Columbus's time, that was not unusual.

Many people thought they heard the voice of God. So as I said, he was not a. An outlier in that respect.

He was a person of deep faith and went partly out of religious conviction and partly out of greed. Greed in the sense he was trying to get wealth for himself and Spain.

Liam Heffernan: 00:08:08

I'm really keen to understand why.

How, when we're talking about, as far goes as we are with Columbus, how did they even know that there was something out there to potentially discover? Because there was no technology. How could they have known?

Laurence Bergreen: 00:08:27

Right, right, right. That's a really good question.

First of all, imagine the courage or foolhardiness that it took to start sailing across the Atlantic not knowing what would be out there. There were rumors about sea monsters and other things nobody really knew for sure. And this was way before the Enlightenment.

And so that really took a lot of courage.

Also, he really wasn't aware of what we would call the South American continent of Central America, of places that like Mexico and Brazil and many others. When he began bumping into Caribbean islands, almost by accident, he thought he was on the outskirts, if you will, of China.

And so he was really confused by our standards about where he was. By the time he got to the third voyage, he had a better idea, but still it required a lot of trial and error and conviction that he was on a mission.

You know, the stated part of it was to, if he found any people who were not Christian, to convert them to Christianity. And that may have been part of it, but he was also looking for gold, literally to bring back to Europe and other things that could be valuable.

And he was not the only one doing this. By the time he got to the fourth voyage, about 10 or 11, 12 years later, others were getting into the act.

He was the pioneer, but in some ways they were one upping him.

Eventually, Francis Drake, sailing for Queen Elizabeth in England, as you well know, was able to build the exploits of Columbus and later on Magellan and sail with relative confidence. Ease is probably pushing it, but circumnavigate the globe. But he was also not in a way driven or hampered, if you will, by a messianic goal.

It was a purely imperialistic and piratical one. He also had a sense of humor. I don't know, I've read a lot about Columbus and I've read a lot of Columbus's comments and statements.

I cannot imagine Columbus ever making a joke so. Or saying anything light hearted or ironic or anything that would, would bring a smile to our faces. He seems to have been extremely serious.

He was from Genoa, that's where he learned his trade as a fisherman. So why did he wind up sailing for Italy instead? Spain? Rather it's because he really couldn't find a commission that would back him.

Ferdinand and Isabella particularly were looking for, you know, people who would carry out this very dangerous mission. You pointed out that what would impel somebody to, you know, to sail off into the unknown like this and they were willing to risk it. Spain was a.

Was a different story.

Liam Heffernan: 00:11:55

Yeah. And it is that maybe fearlessness, maybe slight recklessness that maybe must have driven explorers like Columbus to embark on that career path.

So I'm just really interested to maybe understand a bit more about who he was because you've sort of alluded to the fact that, you know, there's a bit of a dark side to him.

Laurence Bergreen: 00:12:17

Yes, yes.

Liam Heffernan: 00:12:17

So how would you describe his character?

Laurence Bergreen: 00:12:20

Well, very serious, a person of faith, for sure.

Perhaps messianic, you know, obviously a very, very skillful sailor and pilot, which is not the same thing as being a, you know, good navigator because he really didn't know, you know, where he was, but nobody did at that time.

And extremely courageous, you know, maybe daredevil is pushing it, but, you know, the ability to endure, even though the voyage was, you know, relatively short, you know, a matter of weeks each way, was, you know, there was no comfort on these tiny ships that he was on and constant danger. So it was in many ways when people left, they thought they would never return home after that. And you may wonder why they went.

And I'm not sure I have a completely satisfactory answer for that. If Columbus hadn't gone, I think other people were, you know, we would be calling them the Columbus.

You know, they, in, in world history, you know, this was a time had come.

Liam Heffernan: 00:13:32

So in my research for this episode, I encountered something that I really feel like I need to fact check with you, which is that Columbus never actually set foot on American soil. Is that correct?

Laurence Bergreen: 00:13:49

He Never did? No, he never knew it existed.

Liam Heffernan: 00:13:52

So then why, like, how does he get the credit? Because there have been a lot of people who have come over and settled and actually, you know, it's mad to me.

Laurence Bergreen: 00:14:00

Someday, a thousand years from now or maybe 400 years from now, they will credit to you for discovering I don't know what. And you wonder how is that? It's just a series of. No, it's actually a very.

The answer to that, which is baffling is very enlightening too, because it was his reputation eventually became important to the Americas as its identity grew as the discoverer.

And I think it was President William Harrison in the early 19th century who decided to nominate or just consider Columbus a discoverer of America based on very little historical evidence. Why did he do that? Well, because by this point a number of Italians had emigrated to the United States and it was a political move on his part.

He wanted to curry favor with them and I think it worked.

Later on Columbus Day, which, you know, we're celebrating or observing in the United States today, became a federal holiday because Franklin Delano Roosevelt designated it as such. There aren't that many federal holidays. There may be 11 or 14.

And he did that also for political reasons because he wanted to demonstrate or get, you know, get the Italian vote for himself. So it was often political on his part. So after a while Columbus, you know, the myth really outran the man.

However, there are so many primary sources around from Columbus and others that, you know, we can get a sense of what he's really like. We don't have too many accounts of Columbus from the so called indigenous people, the people who were already in North America.

So that part can only be speculated on. So there are still many fascinating loopholes that, you know, are so intriguing.

You know, the record, I don't know if it will ever be complete because we know a lot, but we really don't know everything. We can also infer things.

By the time Columbus got to his fourth voyage, he was no longer, no longer had the backing of Ferdinand Isabella, was sailing more or less on his own and was beginning. People say, oh, he was losing his mind. I'm not sure what that means.

He was certainly more vulnerable physically and psychologically and was still chasing an illusion or illusion kind of an ideal that kept receding into the distance. By that time history had overtaken him and he seemed even only 10 or 12 years later, something from the quote, distant past.

So it was the first one or two or maybe three voyages which are the robust Columbus exhibitions I think, you know, he's constantly being reevaluated in terms of political realities in the United States and other places. For example, he's, you know, in the past few years, you know, we mentioned his possible Sephardic Jewish origins.

He's seen as a genocidal monster and because he inspired a lot of attacks on some indigenous people, particularly the Taino and other tribes in the Caribbean. And so there was a lot of talk about renaming Columbus Day Indigenous Peoples Day instead. I think for some people that's what they're going to use.

And you may see that on calendars or school lessons in the United States that it's Indigenous People's Day, you know, used to be Columbus Day. I'm not sure that's more helpful, but it does show what the way the pendulum of history swings.

Liam Heffernan: 00:18:35

And there's definitely a debate there, isn't there, that has surfaced more recently around how we remember particular individuals. And it seems to center around, you know, statues. And these things are seen as celebrations of people that are then being torn down.

I mean, there's definitely become a more problematic narrative around Columbus. Yes, that makes him less popular than maybe he was before. But does that mean we should tear down statues?

Does that mean we should try and forget about Columbus?

Laurence Bergreen: 00:19:12

I think the way you're asking the question suggests the answer, which is, I think the correct one, which is no.

But I think we should try and keep a more balanced view of Columbus, which is first of all grounded in reality and also keeps a sense of what his real accomplishments are. And you may say, well, it's not such a pretty picture.

Keep in mind that the idea of exploration and discovery that is a commonplace or second nature to us isn't necessarily the same for everyone. And it's a recent invention. Not until the 18th century did that idea of a science tific or exploratory voyage really exist.

It certainly didn't exist in Columbus time. And people didn't go for the scientific return.

They went for specific, in Columbus case, religious and material goals or what we would call colonialism. Yeah.

Liam Heffernan: 00:20:18

And do you think that's maybe why it was so easy for people like Columbus and others in his profession to develop almost a God complex because they're sort of, they're discovering new parts of the world and.

Laurence Bergreen: 00:20:30

Yes, yeah, I think that's an interesting idea that they would have an exalted sense of their self importance.

Well, they were important because they were, you know, pushing back the boundaries of what we knew and adding new elements of the history which would Require, you know, several further revisions to the significance of what they did. Some of this came much later, as recently as the 20th and 21st century. The Columbian Exchange, I don't know if you're familiar with that term.

by an academic, maybe in the: 1960

Was items that he transferred intentionally or usually accidentally from the Old World to the new to simplify it. And some of these are agricultural problems, problems, interesting slip products. And some of this was animals. I'm not sure.

I think a lot of cattle or horses or other things did not exist in North America before Columbus got there. So he was one to introduce them to the New World. Not intentionally to say, aha, let's see what happens, you know, if we bring them.

But they came along because he needed them.

And then there were other items as well that had to do with food, which made a big difference, and it transformed the economies in both the Old World and the New. Before Columbus, there were no tomatoes in Italy nights. Sort of hard to imagine Italy without tomatoes and tomato sauce.

But that was one of the, you know, things that he transferred. And there were other items as well, that seemed like staples to us, but they weren't necessarily always there before him.

You also wonder about lost items that might have been or almost were, and we just don't know about that fell through the cracks of history.

But this is why his voyages, people keep returning to it partly because they're sort of multifaceted and controversial and partly because, you know, they really, you know, intentionally or not, broke through so many barriers or boundaries. The world was really a different place after Columbus finished these voyages.

He, by the way, was sort of in disgrace and died, you know, broken in health. He was considered by some to be almost a religious figure. His corpse, parts of his corpse are buried in three different places.

I was thinking about this because of the scientists or who were studying, you know, his genetic remains, and I was wondering, you know, where did they get it from? Because I think his heart's in one place and other parts of his body are in other places.

And, you know, is it really Columbus, you know, to begin with? So, you know, it raises a lot of questions about, you know, how we understand the past.

Liam Heffernan: 00:23:58

Yeah. And just for context here. So when. What time period are we talking about? When was he born and when did he die and where?

Laurence Bergreen: 00:24:07

Oh, well, he was born in Genoa, and he was, you know, his father was a fisherman. He was. He Claimed to have, Columbus claimed to have a fairly rigorous education but it was not really by our standards.

And still he was, you know, fairly learned, but he was, he was a commercial fisherman. That was, he wasn't, you know, the occupation of explorer didn't really exist.

And people's information about in the west about what the rest of the world was like, a lot of it came from the travels of Marco Polo.

You know, we think of part Marco Polo who came even earlier, who you know, might have been real or might have been not, but was actually a real person and had went to his father and uncle had gone to China to twice first earlier on their own and then again with Marco and some others. And so when people thought about going to explore, they were not going in for conquest.

They were going along to what was now called what's now often called the Silk Road to trade with the Kublai Khan and others in Mongolia and China. So that was most Europeans idea and that was 200 years earlier of what discovery and exploration and international or global commerce would be like.

How do we even know about the.

Marco Polo is unusual because he, when he, when he came back to the United States he expected to live in peace and quiet, but he was actually captured in a naval battle and was thrown into prison in I think it was Genoa, but I think this was a VIP prison.

And because he was well known for talking and bragging about his exploits in China and with Kublai Khan and others, somebody said, you know, get this man a somebody to write all this down, whether it's true or not.

And there was a second tier poet named Ramusio who became his cellmate and wrote down a lot of the adventures of Marco Polo, I think with a somewhat skeptical eye. But that was the best record. We don't really have too much of it, if any in Marco Polo's own words. It's a secondhand, somewhat random account.

Nor was it chronological. We now think of a chronicle of exploration, discovery written in a logical way chronological and conventions that we're used to.

But that didn't exist in those days. Ramusio was setting down episodes and information that Marco had, was telling him.

And you know, it's not even clear that this was firsthand for Marco or things that he had heard when he was in, you know, on the quote, Silk Road with that even that term did not exist in Marco Polo's day. Nobody said, I am, I'm going on the Silk Road, seeing you in 20 years.

It was a series of trade routes that went from Europe Through Mongolia, very, very arduous. Some sailing, very arduous. Walking and climbing and riding horses and goats. So, you know, exploration works in, you know, all sorts of peculiar ways.

Now, of course, we think of the. Just to get off the subject or roam for a little bit, if you'll indulge me, about the exploration of space and you know, why are we doing it?

Well, it often seems like it's done for, quote, pure science. But there's often an undertone or a subtext that there is a conquest or imperialist aspect to it.

s and the Soviet union in the: 1960

Liam Heffernan: 00:28:31

Yeah.

And it's a good parallel to draw, you know, because nowadays, obviously, and again, even today, now there is this re emerging space race, albeit not to the moon, but to Mars and beyond. And I guess that's today's equivalent of getting on a ship and sailing and seeing what you find, Right?

Laurence Bergreen: 00:28:52

Yes, yes. Although people have a better idea because they virtually can get to Mars, of course. Keep in mind that the scale, the distances are truly daunting.

One can get to the Moon in a matter of days and therefore get home. What you find there, there isn't that much there. And it's not like getting across the Atlantic and going to the New World.

Whether you call it China or the United States, the Moon is barren, it's arid. It's been pretty well explored. It could be a useful base for something.

But you know, there's a lot of, a lot of speculation about establishing a permanent or long lasting outpost there. I don't know. And that's only the Moon, which is, you know, a matter of days away. Mars is years away.

So the time involved, how do you get people there, how do you sustain them? The radiation involved is lethal. This doesn't, these factors don't really apply when you're going to the moon.

So the challenges of sending people to Mars are extraordinary. Again, what do you find when you get to the Red planet? It's as arid as the Moon.

There's speculation that there may be all sorts of wonderful subterranean wealth of platinum and gold and God knows what else that might be there, but no one knows for sure. But it's not a land of milk and honey, to put it mildly.

Liam Heffernan: 00:30:26

Yeah, and you know, I think sort of coming full circle to think about, you know, Columbus when, when you look at, in today's environment, you know, really divisive figures like Elon Musk who's obviously founded SpaceX and the work he's doing, it's kind of, there's, there's similarities there to what explorers did in Columbus.

Laurence Bergreen: 00:30:49

Yes.

Liam Heffernan: 00:30:50

And actually, do you need to be quite a divisive and potentially unpopular figure.

Laurence Bergreen: 00:30:55

Yes.

Liam Heffernan: 00:30:56

To have the character to push through.

Laurence Bergreen: 00:30:59

With something like this, you know, it's very possible. I think every time I read something about Musk, I scratch my head and I modify my opinion and I think, honest, he's terrible.

Oh, no, he's really remarkable.

And I kind of go back and forth and then, you know, this latest, you know, rocket ship, the SpaceX, which was able to, you know, I mean, it's a fantastic technology if it becomes adopted and widely used. So I just don't know what to say. And I see your point that Musk is, Could be ambiguous, to put it mildly.

And to me he's just sort of enigmatic and fascinating character. But beyond that, who can say?

Liam Heffernan: 00:31:43

I think, you know, I guess then to draw, to draw them parallels to the likes of Christopher Columbus, you know, I think we've sort of touched on some of the darker aspects of.

Laurence Bergreen: 00:31:55

Yes.

Liam Heffernan: 00:31:55

Of what he did.

But would it have been possible for him to accomplish what he did as an explorer without also making some enemies and doing some questionable things along the way?

Laurence Bergreen: 00:32:09

That's a good question. I don't think so.

I think that, I think as your question implies, I think that was inevitable partly because of the limitations of the time and partly because of his mindset. When he first encountered people in the New World, his thought was not to launch genocide, to enslave them or exploit them.

He was originally impressed by them. It's just as time went on, he realized, oh, there could be another use for it. And slavery or exploitation in Columbus's time was not.

Was the sort of standard operating procedure. So it would not have been, it would have been unusual if he had left them alone.

And so he was following kind of, you know, standard or accepted behavior at that point.

Liam Heffernan: 00:33:03

Yeah, And I guess that sort of raises the question of how we, how we remember someone and how someone's legacy should be shaped. Is it by the standards of today or should it always be in the context of the time that they lived in?

Laurence Bergreen: 00:33:18

Yes, yeah, that's. I think the answer is both. But we know often, you know, how it looks on the standards of the time.

How do we work our way to how it seemed in the context of the past?

You know, is a more slippery question because it depends what elements you bring to bear and you know how well we can understand what it was like, what pressures they were under. How do we know what was in a person's mind, especially four or five hundred years ago? We can often only infer, and other times it's total guesswork.

Liam Heffernan: 00:33:56

Yeah. And, you know, kind of touching on the point that you. About Columbus Day that you mentioned earlier.

I mean, when it comes to then celebrating him and actually creating a federal national holiday around Columbus, it kind of forces those conversations to happen, doesn't it, in terms of, you know, should we be celebrating him? Is there a right answer here?

Laurence Bergreen: 00:34:21

Well, I think. I think it's definitely important and worthwhile to study what Columbus did.

And the more and more we see, you know, different sides of the question, and I think it's a good idea to bring that up because otherwise it's sort of an irrelevant or deceptive fairy tale, especially because he never knew America existed. So how can you say Columbus discovered America? It's, you know, it makes no sense whatsoever.

Liam Heffernan: 00:34:48

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, so do you think that Columbus was a good person? And I say that knowing that there's so much nuance in this.

Laurence Bergreen: 00:34:59

Yes. Well, you know, I don't know where to begin.

Was he important and significant and might be called a world historical individual unquestionably, but good in the sense that, you know, he was, you know, a moral person or, you know, on balance, what he did left the world a better place. The answer is I don't know. And I think it's really worth thinking about for sure. Sure, he changed things.

If he hadn't, I think somebody else would, because historical forces were moving in that direction. But beyond that, you know, it's.

Liam Heffernan: 00:35:38

And like, do you. Do you then think perhaps, you know, we need to try and separate Columbus's accomplishments as an explorer from perhaps his flaws as a person?

Because, you know, it.

It feels like if he's a guy that's going to commit genocide along the way, we should be acknowledging that, and maybe we shouldn't be building any new statues for the guy. But on the other hand, his accomplishments as an explorer sort of shaped the future of the world. Right?

Laurence Bergreen: 00:36:11

So, yes, yes.

Liam Heffernan: 00:36:13

You know, how do we remember that?

Laurence Bergreen: 00:36:16

I think by having a corrected version of it. And, you know, we're both wearing glasses. We have corrective lenses.

I think we need maybe corrective lenses in the way we view Columbus, so we see both his accomplishments and his courage and give credit for his messianic vision, because I think it was legitimate and the byproduct of cruelty and other aspects of it that he could not have anticipated at all.

For example, people say, well, after Columbus, he brought all sorts of pestilence and germs with him to the United States that devastated the local population. Okay. In his day, nobody knew about the existence of germs, so he would have been, again, amazed that anybody would have attributed this to him.

And so I think it's also, there's a third aspect which is unintended consequences of his voyage and sometimes good, often threatening or dangerous. But, you know, we have the concept of silos, people, you know, or civilizations or cultures, you know, in their own set of circumstances.

But once you get out of the silo, it's much more interesting, as the Colombian exchange demonstrates, but also can be threatening and menacing and not really understood.

Liam Heffernan: 00:37:44

Yeah, well, that's it really, isn't it? I think Columbus as a person is probably no more or less nuanced than any other person.

He just happened to do some fairly remarkable stuff along the way. And I guess we should probably reword the introduction to this episode from saying he discovered America to saying he just found it.

Laurence Bergreen: 00:38:11

Not just that he didn't discover America.

Liam Heffernan: 00:38:13

He didn't discover it. Right. He kind of stumbled across it while looking for India. And that's actually another thing just to end this episode.

Is that where we misnamed Native Americans as Indians? Was it because of Columbus?

Laurence Bergreen: 00:38:30

Yes, yes. They belonged to various, what we call tribes or, you know, nations or peoples. They had their own names and.

And often we as outsiders don't respect that or give it only partial lip service.

And so, yes, so much of it is a matter of perspective and what, you know, and I think that's what makes exploration so exciting, is pushing back on these boundaries, winding them and bringing more into the field of view than. Than you had before.

Liam Heffernan: 00:39:07

Absolutely. And still no less relevant today as we, I guess, pivot exploration from being on our own planet further afield, as we're now seeing with SpaceX.

But, you know, I think there's a lot more around Columbus and his voyages and his relationship to America that we probably need to explore further on future episodes. As is always the case, we never quite have time to cover everything or on a single episode. Thank you, Lawrence.

Really, really good to chat to you for this.

Laurence Bergreen: 00:39:37

Great talking with you.

Liam Heffernan: 00:39:39

Yeah, thank you, Lawrence.

And for anyone listening, we'll leave some links in the show notes as well to your book as well, Lawrence, but also to some other resources if you want to find out more. And, Lawrence, do remind our listeners, if they want to connect with you directly. Where can they do that?

Laurence Bergreen: 00:39:54

Okay, the book is the Four Voyages and you can reach me. My email is L Bergreen L B E R G R E e n@yahoo.com Amazing.

Liam Heffernan: 00:40:06

Thanks again Lawrence. And you can find me on X at thisisthe Hair. I'm still hanging on there and on LinkedIn as well.

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