[00:00] We have an appendix that can burst. You
[00:02] have a pinky toe. When was the last time
[00:04] you made good use of that?
[00:05] you'd be surprised.
[00:07] Natural selection is not completely
[00:09] random.
[00:10] And all these stages, one by one, they
[00:12] step by step, they incrementally
[00:14] improve.
[00:15] And every improvement is the new
[00:17] starting place for the variations at
[00:19] that generation.
[00:20] And they come about not through any
[00:22] design process, not through any
[00:23] deliberate design. Natural selection is
[00:25] the blind watchmaker.
[00:30] This is StarTalk. Neil deGrasse Tyson
[00:33] here, your personal astrophysicist. And
[00:36] today,
[00:37] I'm in conversation
[00:40] with
[00:41] the one, the only
[00:45] Richard Dawkins. Richard, welcome back
[00:47] to my office.
[00:48] Thank you very much.
[00:48] This is like your fourth time here or
[00:50] something. I've lost count.
[00:50] think it's something like that. It's
[00:51] always
[00:52] always a pleasure, Neil.
[00:55] Oh, welcome. I mean, we we we we have a
[00:57] lot of catching up to do, I think. Um
[00:59] so, recently, or at least this year, we
[01:02] lost Daniel Dennett, philosopher Daniel
[01:05] Dennett. I recently learned I didn't
[01:07] read all of his books, I read some of
[01:08] them.
[01:09] Uh he declared that Darwin's evolution
[01:13] by natural selection was the greatest
[01:16] idea anybody ever had. He's coming to it
[01:19] not as a biologist, but as a
[01:20] philosopher. So, how do you reflect on
[01:23] that declaration?
[01:24] He said that at the beginning of his
[01:25] book, uh Darwin's Dangerous Idea.
[01:29] And his point was that uh before Darwin
[01:32] came along, it seemed obvious to
[01:34] everyone that big, complicated things
[01:37] like humans and oak trees and things had
[01:39] to have a
[01:41] an an explanation in terms of design.
[01:44] And it was a huge
[01:46] stroke of insight for Darwin to see that
[01:48] it didn't that the laws of physics alone
[01:51] could produce this prodigious amount of
[01:54] complexity filtered through this odd
[01:57] process of natural selection. To me,
[02:00] it's always been strange that it took so
[02:01] long, that it took until the middle of
[02:03] the 19th century for Darwin and Wallace
[02:06] and even a maybe one or two other
[02:08] people. This is thousands of years of
[02:10] thought. But brilliant people have come
[02:12] before.
[02:13] Aristotle could have could have had it
[02:14] and didn't. I mean, when you think how
[02:16] much cleverer you had to be to do what
[02:18] Newton did
[02:20] uh
[02:20] or or Leibniz. Um inventing calculus, um
[02:25] working out about the laws of how how
[02:29] how gravity
[02:30] have a I have a Newton finger puppet
[02:31] here.
[02:33] Um you'd think that somebody would have
[02:35] tr- tumbled to evolution by natural
[02:37] selection before the middle of the 19th
[02:40] century, yet they didn't.
[02:42] And so, that's an astonishing thing, and
[02:43] it needs an explanation. Did Daniel
[02:45] Dennett explain why it took that long?
[02:48] Or and if he didn't, what would be your
[02:50] explanation?
[02:50] don't remember whether he did. Um well,
[02:52] first of all, Ernst Mayr, the great I
[02:55] mean, he was here, I think, in Here at
[02:56] the American Museum of Natural History.
[02:57] Yeah. Uh he thought it was because of
[03:00] essentialism. He thought that that
[03:01] because of Aristotle and Plato, who
[03:04] thought that
[03:06] just cuz they thought like geometers. I
[03:07] mean, a a a right angle triangle is a
[03:09] kind of perfect form sort of hanging out
[03:11] there.
[03:12] And they thought that the perfect
[03:14] rabbit, the perfect rhinoceros was
[03:17] hanging out there just just like a right
[03:18] angle triangle. So, you couldn't imagine
[03:20] how a rabbit could turn into anything
[03:22] different. That that was his
[03:23] explanation. That wouldn't be mine. I
[03:25] mean, I I I think I think it's just that
[03:27] That's an interesting one, though,
[03:28] because it speaks to the bias that we
[03:30] have observing nature. I mean, even in
[03:33] my field, so my people, including
[03:36] Copernicus,
[03:37] could not shake the idea of orbits that
[03:40] were per-
[03:41] perfect circles. They couldn't shake
[03:42] that. Why would God design a universe
[03:45] with a shape that wasn't geometrically
[03:48] perfect? So, even Copernicus, putting
[03:50] the sun back in the middle of the known
[03:52] universe, had circular orbits. And since
[03:56] the orbits are not circles, they
[03:58] actually differed from predictions on
[04:01] the night sky. So,
[04:04] that was a problem at the time. It's
[04:06] like, Copernicus, this might work, but
[04:08] it still doesn't fit. The epicycles are
[04:10] doing much better. And so so, it wasn't
[04:14] instantly
[04:15] taken up. It's including the resistance,
[04:18] the church resistance, of course, cuz
[04:20] course, yes. Earth wasn't in the middle
[04:21] anymore. Our counterpart to what I think
[04:24] you're describing is the urge to try to
[04:27] presume nature was perfect and then
[04:29] account for it with everything we know
[04:31] that is. Going back to uh
[04:34] why it took so long and the idea of the
[04:36] perfect rabbit, the perfect rhinoceros,
[04:38] the perfect horse. Um in a way, that's a
[04:41] bit silly, because if you were to look
[04:42] at them in
[04:43] a population of rabbits is is pretty
[04:45] variable.
[04:46] And um
[04:48] anyway, that that was uh Ernst Mayr's
[04:51] explanation for why it took so long. Um
[04:54] Darwin did it by going via
[04:57] artificial selection. Um everybody knew,
[05:00] farmers knew, horticulturalists knew,
[05:02] gardeners knew that you could change a
[05:04] rose, you could change a cabbage uh by
[05:07] just breeding. And really, Darwin's
[05:09] insight was say, "You don't actually
[05:11] need a breeder. You don't need need a
[05:13] human to do the breeding. Nature does it
[05:15] for you. Survival does it for you." It's
[05:18] not that difficult. I mean, it doesn't
[05:19] require any sort of higher mathematics
[05:21] or anything. And yet, nobody got it
[05:23] until Darwin and Wallace. And this is
[05:25] why I'm intrigued that Daniel Dennett, a
[05:28] philosopher, who in principle, any
[05:31] philosopher could have come up with
[05:33] this, because unlike relativity and
[05:35] unlike quantum physics, which are realms
[05:38] of
[05:39] behavior of the universe
[05:41] large and small that you can't just
[05:43] deduce from your armchair.
[05:46] But
[05:47] evolution by natural selection could
[05:49] have been deduced in an armchair. It
[05:51] just wasn't.
[05:51] it could. It It's It's surprising that
[05:53] it didn't. Um it's interesting that both
[05:56] Darwin and Wallace were traveling
[05:58] naturalists, and they both were
[05:59] collectors uh in South America. Both
[06:02] were in South America. Wallace lost his
[06:04] entire South American collection in a
[06:05] fire. Ooh.
[06:07] Um and then he went to the Far East. But
[06:09] but they were both collectors of natural
[06:11] history specimens.
[06:13] And um the other person who might have
[06:15] thought of it is Patrick Matthew, who
[06:18] who was a gardener and an orchard
[06:20] keeper.
[06:21] Um but philosophers know they didn't do
[06:24] it.
[06:24] They didn't it, and they could have.
[06:25] They could have, yes. So, you've
[06:28] written and I have a list here of like
[06:31] all your books.
[06:32] You've been out of control over
[06:35] Not as much as some people.
[06:37] Was The Selfish Gene your first book?
[06:39] Yes.
[06:39] Back in 1976.
[06:41] Yes. Um I was that was the year I
[06:44] graduated high school.
[06:49] No, I remember cuz it was like the
[06:50] bicentennial year. Everybody made a big
[06:51] deal of this. It was my first
[06:54] presidential election that I could vote
[06:56] in. And I voted for Jimmy Carter. And I
[06:59] got to tell him this so clichéd line,
[07:03] but I when I met him, I said, "You were
[07:05] my first president that I voted for."
[07:07] And it was 1 month after my birthday, I
[07:10] got to vote for him.
[07:12] So, I thought I'd have short exercise
[07:14] here. I'm going to mention your books.
[07:17] Could you just tell me
[07:19] what your favorite bit of that book was
[07:22] that you were communicating with the
[07:23] reader, if I may. So, start off The
[07:25] Selfish Gene. Natural selection chooses
[07:28] between genes. Genes are the only thing
[07:30] the information contained in genes.
[07:31] Digital information is the only thing
[07:33] that goes from generation to generation.
[07:35] That which survives is information,
[07:38] digital information. Some genes survive
[07:41] better than others. We, the bodies, we,
[07:43] the animals, we, the plants, are just
[07:45] the machines that are there to preserve
[07:47] the genes that ride in the that ride
[07:50] inside us.
[07:52] Whoa. Okay, so
[07:55] that reminds me of how I describe your
[07:58] gut bacteria. I I say
[08:00] Yes. People want to think they're like
[08:02] top of the world, and I say, "All you
[08:03] are to those bacteria is a darkened
[08:06] vessel of anaerobic fecal matter."
[08:09] That's right.
[08:10] And and it's pretty much the same with
[08:11] your with your genes. I mean, it's not
[08:13] it's not fecal matter, it's testicular
[08:15] matter or ovarian matter, but
[08:17] Yes. Okay, so they're the ones and
[08:19] they're the ones carrying themselves
[08:20] forward.
[08:21] Yes. So, if it's just information, can
[08:23] you imagine a day where the biology is
[08:25] no longer necessary and you just have
[08:27] the digital information stored or or
[08:30] duplicated in some way?
[08:31] Yes, certainly. Uh you could have I
[08:33] mean, already, you could preserve your
[08:34] entire genome. Um I mean, I've got my
[08:37] entire genome on on one disk. Uh and I I
[08:40] once
[08:40] you have a backup?
[08:42] Just checking. Um Is it on the cloud? Is
[08:45] it The The idea was I don't have a
[08:47] backup. The idea was it was a television
[08:49] program, and the conceit of the program
[08:50] was it was going to be posted into the
[08:52] family vault The Dawkins family vault in
[08:54] the church at Chipping Norton.
[08:56] Oh my gosh. To be dug up in a thousand
[08:58] years.
[08:58] Uh-huh. And they were and Like a like a
[09:00] time capsule.
[09:01] Yes, yes, exactly. And the idea was that
[09:03] in a thousand years, they dig it up and
[09:05] make a duplicate of me. And of course,
[09:07] then we talk about why it wouldn't
[09:08] actually be me, because it would just be
[09:10] an identical twin of me. Um but that
[09:12] that was the idea. Was Was it you? Yes,
[09:14] it must have been you, cuz who else
[09:15] would do this? Posted on social media.
[09:18] It was No, if you had a a book of the a
[09:21] picture of your mother, I think you're
[09:22] thinking of
[09:23] of your mother's mother, Yeah, you you
[09:25] you pile them up. It's just one one of
[09:27] many ways of of dramatizing the the
[09:30] enormity of of geological time. I forget
[09:33] exactly how it goes. There are lots of
[09:34] ways of doing it. I mean, No, but you do
[09:36] this, and if you keep doing it, one of
[09:40] those pictures is
[09:41] a fish.
[09:42] is a fish.
[09:43] And yet and yet, every single generation
[09:46] looks like the the the previous one and
[09:48] and the next one. There's no sudden
[09:49] There's no sudden It's not sudden.
[09:51] And many people can't grasp this. They
[09:53] think, "Well, there must have been a
[09:54] time when it stopped being a fish, and
[09:56] you know, it must But there wasn't. It
[09:57] just gradually, gradually, gradually,
[09:59] gradually changed. Okay, will you allow
[10:01] me, given this, which I completely
[10:03] understand,
[10:04] you have to allow me my explanation for
[10:09] the chicken and the egg. Okay.
[10:11] Okay. So, I tell people, but I've never
[10:13] gotten your blessings on this. Can I use
[10:17] that word with you?
[10:18] Yeah, of course. I'm all for blessings.
[10:21] So,
[10:22] so, I simply tell people, they say what
[10:25] came first, chicken or egg? I said, the
[10:27] egg.
[10:28] It was just laid by a bird that was not
[10:31] a chicken. Yes.
[10:33] That's a fair statement. I mean, it's
[10:35] I'm I'm compressing Yes. a billion, you
[10:38] know, the 100 million years of time
[10:39] there, but at some point you're going to
[10:41] say what comes out of the egg is a
[10:43] chicken.
[10:44] And but that's a that's a genetic
[10:48] um
[10:49] alteration from the previous generation.
[10:52] But there never was a moment when
[10:54] a bird that was not a chicken gave rise
[10:56] to a chicken. It was never was it never
[10:58] course. So, this is a very compressed
[11:00] uh it's a shorthand
[11:01] Yes. for what you just said with the
[11:03] book of your ancestors
[11:05] going back to the fish.
[11:06] Yes. I I mean, I I once had a letter
[11:07] from a a lawyer who said um roughly
[11:10] speaking, you evolution can't be true
[11:12] because it's because a
[11:14] a species is defined as
[11:16] members can always interbreed with each
[11:18] other and you can't imagine that there
[11:19] was a time when child generation was
[11:22] incapable of breeding with the previous
[11:23] generation. Of course, couldn't. But he
[11:26] thought that meant that
[11:28] somehow evolution was invalid. He
[11:29] couldn't grasp that
[11:30] that everything was specially created.
[11:32] Yeah. Ev- everything is it it's a
[11:34] gradual process all the way through and
[11:36] and and as you step back through your
[11:39] ancestors, they become slightly less
[11:42] like a human, slightly less like a
[11:43] human, but you never notice it as as you
[11:45] walk past them if you imagine I want to
[11:48] see a fish.
[11:49] It's just funny. So, you skip ahead and
[11:52] there's a fish. You say that's my
[11:53] parent. Yes. That's Yes.
[11:56] It's a little freaky for people. You got
[11:58] to You got to appreciate
[11:59] you walk along the generations, you'd
[12:01] never see you'd never see them them
[12:02] getting more fish-like. It'd just be
[12:05] so so gradual, you'd never notice it.
[12:07] Cuz generations are only 30, 40 years
[12:08] and we're talking billions.
[12:09] Yes, that's right. You needed deep time
[12:13] for evolution to do what it needed to
[12:15] do. Even in the 19th century, my people,
[12:17] the most we were going to give you as a
[12:19] biologist or even the geologist was 10
[12:22] million years, 20 million at tops. We
[12:25] didn't know about energy contained
[12:28] inside the nucleus of the atom yet,
[12:30] nuclear energy, which is how the sun
[12:32] makes fuel. We didn't know that at the
[12:33] time. So, the best we could do was say
[12:35] it was a lump of coal. Darwin's son
[12:37] George was Darwin's son George was one
[12:40] of the people who pointed out eventually
[12:42] that nuclear energy um could do the
[12:44] trick. Oh. My little p- Okay, thank
[12:47] thank him for him.
[12:49] Which of the Darwins explained tides for
[12:51] the first time? Probably George. I I'm
[12:53] not sure.
[12:53] I think it was a Darwin and Newton and
[12:56] Galileo did not understand tide. It was
[12:59] even though they had all the gravity
[13:00] necessary
[13:01] Is that right?
[13:02] account for it. It's there's a subtle
[13:03] point with tides where if you look at
[13:07] any textbook,
[13:09] any textbook,
[13:10] it'll have like the moon
[13:12] and Earth and it'll have a tidal bulge
[13:14] pointing towards the moon.
[13:16] Yes, that's wrong.
[13:17] It's wrong. It doesn't It the moon would
[13:19] want that to happen, Yeah. But that's
[13:20] not how it is. Yes. The tidal bulge is
[13:22] in advance of the moon in its orbit.
[13:25] Yes.
[13:25] Okay. And that's Earth's rotation
[13:28] pushing the tides ahead of the moon. And
[13:30] it's that interaction that has
[13:32] remarkable consequences. The moon is
[13:34] slowing down Earth's rotation.
[13:36] And Earth already slowed down the moon's
[13:38] rotation. So, it's tidally locked to us.
[13:40] They'll one day be tidally locked.
[13:41] We'll be double tidally locked. And when
[13:43] that happens, then the tides will line
[13:45] up cuz we're not be pushing it ahead of
[13:47] the moon. So, that had to somebody had
[13:48] to figure all that out. So, that's
[13:50] another Darwin. Thank Thank you for your
[13:51] Darwins.
[13:54] New developments and discoveries are
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[15:54] all their features. All right. Let's get
[15:57] back to the show. You came up with the
[15:59] word meme. I know it was you. That was
[16:01] in the Selfish Gene.
[16:02] That was in the Selfish Gene. Yes. You
[16:04] invented the word and people long
[16:06] forgot. Tell me the authentic definition
[16:09] of meme cuz that's not how anybody's
[16:10] using it today.
[16:11] Units of cultural inheritance and the
[16:13] analog of the gene in in cultural
[16:15] inheritance. Okay, so this is this is
[16:18] communicated from one person to another
[16:20] Yes. and certain memes have higher
[16:24] communicability.
[16:25] I I really wanted to to say that because
[16:28] the whole book had been about the gene
[16:29] as the unit of selection. That's how I I
[16:31] described it to you when you asked me
[16:32] earlier.
[16:33] Um it didn't have to be genes. It could
[16:35] be anything that is self-replicating.
[16:38] And nowadays, I would have used a
[16:39] computer virus as as my Mm. analogy
[16:43] probably for the gene. Mhm. But in those
[16:45] days, computer viruses, well,
[16:48] maybe they'd been invented. I didn't
[16:49] know about them anyway.
[16:50] Um so, I used the units of cultural
[16:52] inheritance. It's something like a
[16:55] um So, M is M is for memory, so a memory
[16:58] gene. It's a portmanteau.
[16:59] it's it's
[17:00] it's it's that's right. It's it comes
[17:01] from the same root as as memory. Okay.
[17:05] So, if I say something, we have
[17:07] alligators in the New York City subway.
[17:09] Yes. If that spreads, if that if that
[17:12] spreads because it's a a repeatable lie
[17:15] or or or even might be true. Whatever it
[17:17] is. If if it spreads,
[17:18] Whatever it is, doesn't matter what it
[17:19] is.
[17:19] doesn't matter. If it spreads, then it's
[17:21] a successful meme.
[17:22] Because it's so interesting to me, I
[17:25] Yeah. have to tell someone else.
[17:26] Exactly. Exactly. We love to tell
[17:28] stories which surprise people or amuse
[17:31] people, whether or not they're true.
[17:34] So, nowadays, it's just an image of
[17:36] something kind of cool, you know.
[17:37] I'm really sorry about that.
[17:39] Yeah. No, no, no, that's not your fault.
[17:41] No. But it it's you've contributed to
[17:43] our culture. So, the best of the memes
[17:45] are the ones that are spread around the
[17:47] most. That's
[17:48] Yes. It's a meme of me doing this.
[17:50] Okay. Yes. Like I think what is it
[17:53] called?
[17:54] Watch out, you got a badass over here. I
[17:57] never said that. Okay. And there is a
[17:59] picture of me doing this.
[18:01] Uh
[18:02] But but it spreads.
[18:03] It spread and there are people in South
[18:07] America who saw me in the street. They
[18:10] were they were tourists. They said, "We
[18:12] know you from the meme." This is like 10
[18:14] years ago or something. I said,
[18:16] "The meme? Really? That's not even me.
[18:18] Why did that So, somehow that spread. I
[18:21] don't have any understanding of it. I'll
[18:23] tell you mine. John Cleese told me about
[18:25] that. He was What is that?
[18:26] Well, you you you do you remember the
[18:28] Fawlty Towers and and Yes.
[18:30] Yes. Okay. Well, there's there's an
[18:31] episode where the where some Germans
[18:33] visit visit the hotel.
[18:34] And and um
[18:36] Ba- Basil Fawlty is going, "Don't
[18:38] mention the war. Don't don't mention the
[18:40] war." And of course, he doesn't does
[18:41] mention it. Anyway, he was in I think it
[18:43] was Munich Airport
[18:45] and he was going up the escalator and
[18:46] there was a man way over there and going
[18:48] down the escalator
[18:49] ri- right across the hall and he
[18:51] recognized him and he shouted, "Don't
[18:53] mention the war!"
[18:56] Okay.
[18:57] So, that meme is spreading in Germany.
[19:00] So, that's the Selfish Gene. So, let's
[19:01] move ahead here. The Blind Watchmaker.
[19:04] Oh, that's that's my favorite book of
[19:07] yours, if I may.
[19:08] okay. Um well, the watchmaker comes from
[19:11] William Paley, who the theologian
[19:13] said that there must be a god because if
[19:15] you find a watch,
[19:17] you pick out you pick up the watch. He's
[19:19] crossing a heath, he said. You open it
[19:21] up.
[19:22] Great big pocket watch in those days.
[19:24] Pocket watches were watches in those
[19:25] days.
[19:26] And um
[19:27] uh and you see all the cogwheels and
[19:29] springs and things. It had to have a
[19:31] designer, of course it did. And so, how
[19:33] much more would you say that of an eye
[19:36] or a a knee joint or anything living.
[19:39] So, that that's the Paley watchmaker
[19:41] argument. Natural selection is the blind
[19:43] watchmaker.
[19:44] It produces results that are like
[19:46] watches. They're beautifully designed.
[19:48] Eyes are beautifully designed.
[19:50] Certain flaws, but they're are obviously
[19:52] designed.
[19:53] And they come about not through any
[19:54] design process, not through any
[19:56] deliberate design, but through the blind
[19:58] watchmaker, which is natural selection.
[20:00] So, it's a So, that's hard for people to
[20:02] accept, especially if they're deeply
[20:04] religious. Yes.
[20:05] Because they have they already have an
[20:06] account.
[20:06] Yes.
[20:07] Now, you're saying one of the acts of
[20:08] their God is some random force operating
[20:12] He didn't have to be there at all. He
[20:13] didn't have to be there at all.
[20:14] Yes. And I think where people get
[20:16] confused, and even some of our people
[20:19] have made this mistake. Uh Fred Hoyle,
[20:22] who was the architect of the steady
[20:24] state universe, who pejoratively
[20:29] invented the name Big Bang to describe
[20:32] the universe beginning in one point. He
[20:33] said that in a pejorative way. He wanted
[20:36] the universe to be a steady state. Um he
[20:39] did a calculation
[20:41] for how you would get an eye,
[20:44] a fully functioning eye, and how long
[20:46] that would take. And it was some
[20:47] impossibly,
[20:49] you know, 10 to the some very high power
[20:51] number of years, given the rate at which
[20:54] you have
[20:55] um a defects in a in a in a in a genome.
[20:59] And what Correct me if I'm wrong.
[21:02] The rebuttal to that is
[21:04] natural selection is not completely
[21:06] random.
[21:07] Well, no. That's right. It Actually, it
[21:09] wasn't an eye. It was a it was a
[21:10] hemoglobin molecule, but it's the it's
[21:12] the same argument anyways. What he
[21:14] overlooked was that it doesn't happen
[21:16] all in one go. He he imagined all the
[21:19] bits
[21:20] coming together
[21:21] at random. Um every
[21:23] And that's one case that doesn't work,
[21:25] and it has another random thing that
[21:26] doesn't work, and you do that forever.
[21:28] If you do that forever, of course you
[21:29] won't but what what you need is Let's
[21:32] Let's use the eye, even though he
[21:33] didn't. Um you need a slightly less good
[21:36] eye, and then a slightly less good eye,
[21:38] and a slightly less good eye. And you
[21:39] start with just a
[21:41] uh a sheet of
[21:43] light-sensitive cells, which just detect
[21:46] whether it's light or dark. That's
[21:48] useful. It's not like
[21:49] better than nothing. It's better than
[21:50] not having it. You can tell when when
[21:52] it's night or day, you can tell whether
[21:53] there's a predator flying overhead. And
[21:55] then, if you have a um
[21:58] a slightly cup-shaped If you if you if
[22:00] you bend that retina from a flat thing
[22:02] into a slight cup,
[22:04] then if it's coming from that direction,
[22:06] it hits that side of of the We are on
[22:08] video, aren't we? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[22:09] Uh-huh.
[22:10] Uh and so, you got It's not an image,
[22:12] but it but it gives a slight
[22:14] directionality.
[22:15] And then and you close up, and you start
[22:18] to get a pinhole camera.
[22:20] Um it's a very crude and out of focus,
[22:22] but it's sort of an image. And then, you
[22:24] need a little bit of
[22:26] transparent gunk in there. It's not a
[22:28] proper lens, but it does something like
[22:30] a lens. And all these stages,
[22:33] one by one, they step by step, they
[22:35] incrementally improve.
[22:37] And every improvement is the new
[22:39] starting place for the variations at
[22:41] that generation.
[22:42] right. And then and then you get
[22:43] improvement.
[22:43] Cuz every generation is not starting
[22:44] from zero.
[22:45] That's right. Yes.
[22:46] So, the blind watchmaker I I just
[22:47] thought that was brilliantly written,
[22:48] and
[22:50] it was my benchmark for
[22:53] if I were to ever write a book for the
[22:54] public, I want to be this articulate.
[22:57] Oh, wow. That's highly complimentary.
[22:59] Thank you for that.
[22:59] just want you to know I just want you to
[23:02] know that.
[23:03] Thank you for that.
[23:03] Okay. Let Let the record show.
[23:07] Climbing Mount Improbable. Well, that's
[23:08] what we've just been talking about. Um
[23:10] uh
[23:11] Mount Improbable is Just that metaphor.
[23:13] Describe it.
[23:13] a It's a metaphor where you've got a a
[23:15] mountain with a sheer cliff, a
[23:18] vertical cliff.
[23:19] And on the top of the cliff is an eye.
[23:22] And to produce the eye in the Fred Hoyle
[23:24] manner would be to leap from the bottom
[23:27] of the cliff to the top in one go.
[23:28] one go.
[23:29] You cannot do do it, but you go around
[23:31] the other side of the mountain, and you
[23:32] find a nice gentle slope. And so, you
[23:35] just climb.
[23:37] Step by step, and you and you get reach
[23:39] the summit. Okay. So, so if you think it
[23:43] got there in one fell swoop, there's no
[23:45] Of course, you're going to invent a God,
[23:47] cuz what what
[23:48] But not imagining that there's another
[23:50] way,
[23:51] Yes. you're stuck in one
[23:54] religious philosophy versus any other
[23:56] philosophy.
[23:57] Yes.
[23:57] Okay.
[23:58] All right. Got that. And uh this one
[24:02] much was written about Unweaving the
[24:03] Rainbow. So, tell me about that. Okay.
[24:06] Um That was what to 1998 now. That That
[24:08] comes from Keats.
[24:11] Uh I did not know that.
[24:12] Keats complained about Newton spoiling
[24:14] all the poetry of the rainbow by
[24:15] explaining it. And so, my my point was
[24:18] the point which you've made often enough
[24:19] that actually, there's far more poetry
[24:21] in really understanding the spectrum.
[24:24] So, I I Did I tell you this? Do you
[24:26] remember there was this It was on
[24:27] YouTube. There was this called Double
[24:29] Rainbow Guy. Have you ever seen this?
[24:31] No. Double rainbow. You got You should
[24:33] check it out. Okay, this is now back
[24:35] when social media was just people
[24:37] posting things. It wasn't the cesspool
[24:39] that it is today. So, he was hiking
[24:41] somewhere, there's some guy back when
[24:43] you had you needed a camcorder to take
[24:45] videos, not a cell phone. He's hiking in
[24:47] the What is it? Sierra Madre? I don't
[24:48] remember where.
[24:50] And he's You hear him sort of narrating
[24:53] his Oh, that's a nice cliff, huh? Then
[24:55] he turns a corner, and he says,
[24:58] Oh!
[24:59] A rainbow!
[25:01] Oh my gosh! What What could it mean? Oh,
[25:04] a double rainbow! Oh my gosh! And he's
[25:07] tearing You don't see him, but you can
[25:10] easily interpret just his emotions, his
[25:12] breath. And then he goes prostrate to
[25:14] the ground. Yes. And and he he can't
[25:17] contain himself.
[25:19] What does it mean? This is a sign. And
[25:22] so, I I felt bad doing this.
[25:25] You might be proud of me, but I felt bad
[25:27] doing this. I
[25:28] I tweeted. I put a link to this
[25:31] to this video, and I said, This is how
[25:35] you behave
[25:37] if you've never studied physics.
[25:39] Yes.
[25:41] But I thought that was kind of mean.
[25:43] He's having his moment. Well, in a way,
[25:45] that's what Keats was doing.
[25:47] To Newton. Yes, that's right. But
[25:49] anyway, I can capital story in the
[25:51] opposite direction. I read a story about
[25:52] a woman in California.
[25:55] She had a a lawn sprinkler,
[25:57] and she saw a rainbow in the lawn
[25:59] sprinkler, and she said, "What are they
[26:01] doing to our water supply?"
[26:06] That's funny.
[26:08] Oh my gosh! So, I did not know that that
[26:11] that Keats had that to say about Newton,
[26:13] cuz Newton
[26:14] yeah, he decoded the rainbow. And that
[26:16] was what That was his thing. One of his
[26:18] things. Uh by the way, you mentioned
[26:21] beautiful the eye is, even with some
[26:23] flaws. As an astrophysicist,
[26:26] when I would learn this very early, when
[26:27] I took classes here, actually, when I
[26:30] was in middle school at the Hayden
[26:32] Planetarium, uh that's when I learned
[26:34] about the entire electromagnetic
[26:36] spectrum.
[26:37] And
[26:38] that the visible part of the spectrum is
[26:40] tiny. It's not even a full octave That's
[26:44] right.
[26:44] of the of what's out there. And then, I
[26:48] was just disappointed with my sight. I
[26:50] said, "Is this the best nature can get?
[26:53] Is this You know, you know, let me go
[26:56] back in line and see what else is
[26:57] there." And later on in Star Trek: The
[26:59] Next Generation, there'd be a character
[27:01] called Geordi. He had a VISOR,
[27:04] V I S O R, which was an acronym, Visual
[27:07] Instrument
[27:09] Sight Organ Replacement. And so, early
[27:14] acronym days.
[27:15] [Music]
[27:16] So, yeah, I'd be intrigued by what the
[27:20] world would look like that way. For
[27:22] example, if you're Someone's calling you
[27:24] on your on your cell phone,
[27:26] that would be like radiant microwaves
[27:29] while that's happening. That'd be just
[27:30] kind of cool. You know, or if you go by
[27:32] the the countryside, and you see uh
[27:34] radio towers, they would be the
[27:36] brightest things on the horizon. And now
[27:38] they're just hunks of metal. And so,
[27:40] they get him to look at scenes that
[27:41] they're coming upon. What's high in
[27:43] x-rays, it's high in this, it's high in
[27:44] that. And then I worried that if you
[27:47] could see all bands of light, that would
[27:49] be very visually noisy, wouldn't it?
[27:51] Yes. I mean, if you see right through to
[27:54] radio waves, you wouldn't I mean, Well,
[27:56] then everything becomes transparent.
[27:57] wavelengths. Yes.
[27:58] Then then this There are no walls in
[28:00] this office.
[28:00] won't see things. That's right. You have
[28:03] coined this term, and we've even
[28:05] appeared on stage together under this
[28:07] title, The Poetry of Reality.
[28:09] And I'm all in.
[28:12] But if you're actually a poet, surely
[28:14] there are parts of reality that are best
[28:17] expressed by a poet. Would you agree? I
[28:19] suppose so. I've never quite understood
[28:21] I mean, I I I don't write verse.
[28:24] Um but
[28:25] I suppose, like you, I try to
[28:29] evoke emotion at the same time as
[28:32] science.
[28:33] Otherwise, it's just a Wiki page.
[28:34] Yes, that's right.
[28:35] And um I'm not not entirely clear what
[28:37] what what you mean by poetic. I sort of
[28:39] feel intuitively I know what it means,
[28:41] but I can't
[28:42] quite put it into words. Maybe that's no
[28:44] accident. Um but um
[28:47] Yes, I I
[28:50] defend in my own mind the idea that
[28:52] science is the poetry
[28:54] of of reality. It makes me feel poetic.
[28:57] And I think it makes you feel poetic.
[28:59] So, it might be self-serving on that
[29:00] level. The what would matter if others
[29:02] can be convinced of the same.
[29:05] Cuz otherwise, it's just a self-licking
[29:07] ice cream cone, That's right. And if But
[29:09] if you're if you're skilled in writing,
[29:11] I think you can bring others with you.
[29:14] For me,
[29:15] poetry, art more broadly,
[29:17] best serves us
[29:20] when it highlights something you might
[29:22] have otherwise missed, or never noticed.
[29:24] It's a good way to put it. My best
[29:26] example of that was July 21st, 22nd, was
[29:29] it? After we landed on the moon in 1969,
[29:32] The New York Times had a special
[29:34] section.
[29:35] People reacting to the fact that we
[29:37] walked on the moon. And there were these
[29:39] all these famous poets of the day.
[29:42] There was Archibald MacLeish, and you
[29:44] know, people who who who carried the
[29:47] soul of creative expression
[29:50] in the day.
[29:51] And I read these poems. They were awful.
[29:55] They're We have pierced the sky and
[29:57] touched the sky. And I'm thinking
[30:00] none of this
[30:01] is greater
[30:03] than the act of walking on the moon
[30:04] itself.
[30:06] So, maybe I don't need artists to
[30:08] interpret that for me. Maybe I need them
[30:10] to interpret the tree that I'm walking
[30:12] by. Then you get Joyce Kilmer's poem The
[30:16] Tree.
[30:17] I will never see something as lovely as
[30:19] a tree.
[30:20] It arms pressed to the sky. It There's
[30:23] that
[30:24] in American poetry, Henry Wadsworth
[30:27] Longfellow,
[30:28] uh who wrote The Midnight Ride of Paul
[30:30] Revere. That might not be heralded as
[30:32] great poetry, but we all know it here in
[30:34] America. And that's a poem about a guy
[30:38] who told other people that the enemy was
[30:41] coming.
[30:42] Is that an important person?
[30:45] No. Yet, we all know that person's name
[30:47] because it's a poem about him. You do
[30:49] not know that corresponding person for
[30:52] any other war that has ever been fought
[30:53] in the history of the world.
[30:55] The person who told other people that
[30:57] the enemy was coming. That is not a
[30:59] person, but for us it is cuz it was a
[31:00] poem about him.
[31:02] It was somebody who would otherwise go
[31:04] forgotten. So, for me, art is best when
[31:07] it captures that. I don't need I don't
[31:09] need artists saying, "Oh, I saw this
[31:10] Hubble photo. Here's my painting of that
[31:13] Hubble photo."
[31:15] I don't need that cuz I got the Hubble
[31:16] photo.
[31:17] Give me a point of view that science
[31:19] does not give me. Then we can hang out
[31:21] together in the sandbox. That's how I
[31:23] feel about it. The tree poem you
[31:25] mentioned, that was a religious poem. I
[31:27] I mean,
[31:28] only God could make a tree.
[31:28] at the end, but no, that come come The
[31:29] God
[31:31] was just in the culture. So, is it
[31:33] religious when you say goodbye when that
[31:36] draws from God be with you? It's just a
[31:37] cultural expression.
[31:39] Carl Sagan's chapter headings. They They
[31:42] inspire me. Just just every single one
[31:43] of his chapter headings.
[31:44] Yes. Um His widow, Yes.
[31:47] Adrienne,
[31:48] who is highly literate unto herself and
[31:50] co-author of all three Cosmoses, even
[31:53] the two that I Yes.
[31:55] have had the privilege of hosting. Um
[31:57] she was a major force in that poetic
[31:59] voice. I just want to give credit where
[32:01] that's due there. Across the backbone of
[32:03] night, I mean, that that is a poetic
[32:04] phrase. Um it immediately speaks to me.
[32:09] Um
[32:10] I see the Milky Way. I'm not sure I'm
[32:11] meant to. Um and and
[32:15] I guess I try to do something similar.
[32:17] Mhm. List in some of my books. Hey,
[32:19] StarTalk fans. I don't know if you know
[32:21] this, but the audio version of the
[32:25] podcast actually posts a week in advance
[32:28] of the video version. And you can get
[32:31] that in Spotify and Apple Podcast and
[32:34] most other podcast outlets that are out
[32:37] there. Multiple ways to ingest
[32:41] all that is cosmic on StarTalk.
[32:43] All right, I'm up to 2004. The
[32:45] Ancestor's Tale.
[32:47] That is a title that reminds me of the
[32:49] Sagan book Shadows of Forgotten
[32:51] Ancestors.
[32:52] Yes. It It kind of feels the same to me.
[32:55] So, in what happened in Ancestor's Tale?
[32:57] it's it's it's a reference to Chaucer.
[32:59] Um and the Canterbury Tales.
[33:02] Um And
[33:03] But one of his tales was not the
[33:04] ancestor.
[33:05] No, no, no.
[33:05] Oh, you just There's the Miller's Tale
[33:07] and now there's the Ancestor's Tale.
[33:08] It's a history of life.
[33:10] Um but it's going backwards. So, it's in
[33:12] it's the form of a pilgrimage,
[33:14] Chaucerian pilgrimage going backwards in
[33:15] time. We human pilgrims set off into the
[33:18] past and we're joined by the chimpanzee
[33:21] pilgrims and then the orangutan and then
[33:22] the gorilla pilgrims
[33:25] finally get back to the origin of life.
[33:27] Um so,
[33:28] it's a way of doing history of life, but
[33:30] do it backwards because if you do it
[33:31] forwards,
[33:33] then you end up with the idea that
[33:36] humans are kind of the the climax, which
[33:38] you don't want. I mean, that's that's
[33:40] not a good way of looking at it. So, if
[33:42] you go backwards,
[33:43] um then you start
[33:45] Okay, that's I'm
[33:46] I was getting on your case, but that's
[33:47] brilliant. Brilliant. Thanks for deliver
[33:49] I'm going to now read that, okay? Cuz
[33:52] that I missed that one. Uh here's one we
[33:54] all saw and know about whether or not we
[33:57] read it, The God Delusion. That put you
[34:00] on a plateau to be identified as one of
[34:03] the four horsemen. All right.
[34:05] Okay. Not not a phrase that that
[34:08] any of us actually
[34:09] It was bestowed upon you? Yes.
[34:11] Yeah, so it was Daniel Dennett,
[34:13] Christopher Hitchens Hitchens, Sam
[34:14] Harris. Um and both of them are past.
[34:17] Sam Harris and you. Yes. Okay. The four
[34:19] horsemen who have each been quite vocal
[34:22] about
[34:23] their atheism. Yes. And The God
[34:25] Delusion, if that's not atheist, I don't
[34:26] know what is.
[34:27] It is, yes.
[34:28] In the title. Yes. Right. So, we spoke
[34:30] about this book before. Didn't you say
[34:33] there were religious groups that wanted
[34:35] people to read it so that they know the
[34:38] face of their enemy? Was that I forget.
[34:41] It's quite possible. Um
[34:43] There are some people who say they were
[34:45] converted to religion by it.
[34:47] Really? I'm not quite sure how they
[34:49] managed to get that, but
[34:51] doesn't say much for my rhetorical
[34:52] skills.
[34:55] So, is this your single biggest selling
[34:57] book, The God Delusion?
[34:58] Uh yes, just about, yes. It was equal
[35:01] with The Selfish Gene, maybe. I've taken
[35:03] you to task on the very first day I met
[35:05] you, and it I think it's worth repeating
[35:07] here. The first day I ever knew you,
[35:09] again, I like I said, I'd read your
[35:11] books and yeah yeah I aspired to have
[35:13] the vocabulary the command of vocabulary
[35:15] that you that spills off your plate.
[35:18] I took you to task in the front of a
[35:20] group It was It was one of the uh what's
[35:23] the name of that conference? A Beyond
[35:24] Belief conference.
[35:25] Oh, yes. Which gathered Oh, yes. That's
[35:27] right. Which gathered scientists,
[35:28] biologists, theologians, philosophers.
[35:30] Yes. And it was to discuss are we in an
[35:32] era beyond where belief matters? Yes.
[35:35] Does belief still matter? So, it was
[35:37] quite the juxtaposition of points of
[35:39] view. You and I are up up on front in a
[35:42] panel. Two other people are there.
[35:45] And
[35:46] I heard you speak.
[35:48] I'd only ever read what you wrote. Then
[35:50] I heard you speak.
[35:52] It was more articulate and more barbed
[35:56] than anything I'd ever read that you had
[35:58] written. And I said, "Oh my gosh, I'm
[36:01] glad we're on the same side because
[36:04] because if you had spoke to me, I'd feel
[36:07] like a complete idiot. I would feel not
[36:11] worthy of life." And then I thought,
[36:14] "You are so potent.
[36:16] Is this
[36:18] turning people off because they reject
[36:20] it? Because you are not investing in how
[36:23] they think. Everybody has little
[36:25] receptors for receiving information. And
[36:27] if you're just going to say, 'I'm right
[36:29] and I know I'm right and you all are
[36:31] just wrong and you're idiots,'
[36:33] maybe that's not as effective as you can
[36:35] be. So, I
[36:37] challenged you to be a little more
[36:39] sensitive to people who are just trying
[36:42] to explore the world and that you could
[36:44] be more effective than you are. Do you
[36:46] remember your reply to me? I said,
[36:49] "I gratefully accept the rebuke." Yeah.
[36:51] By the way, in that moment, there was
[36:53] like 5 seconds of silence cuz I'm just
[36:55] some young whippersnapper and you're
[36:57] like storied, famous guy on stage.
[37:01] Nobody made a sound. In London, there
[37:03] was No no no no no no no. Just in that
[37:06] moment of silence, it's
[37:07] how is he going to react? It was one of
[37:09] these what's he going to say? In that
[37:11] moment, it was total silence. And then
[37:14] you broke the silence with "I gratefully
[37:16] accept the rebuke." And then people were
[37:19] people got were calmed after that. Yes,
[37:21] and you gave a worse example. What was
[37:23] it? Do you remember?
[37:25] The editor of
[37:25] yeah. The editor of New Scientist who
[37:27] who was asked,
[37:29] uh
[37:30] "What is your policy at New Scientist
[37:32] magazine?" And he said, "Our policy at
[37:34] New Scientist magazine is science is
[37:36] interesting. If you don't agree, you can
[37:38] off."
[37:40] So, so that was So, that's so we can
[37:42] feel better about you.
[37:45] The Greatest Show on Earth, 2009,
[37:48] subtitled The Evidence for Evolution.
[37:50] Was that motivated because around that
[37:52] time there was the rise of uh what they
[37:56] called intelligent design.
[37:57] Well, that had come before. I mean, this
[37:59] was um in a way, The Blind Watchmaker
[38:02] was a response to that.
[38:03] Yes, of course.
[38:04] Um but um now this was ready to set out
[38:06] the evidence for evolution, which which
[38:09] I hadn't really done before. Mhm. I just
[38:12] sort of assumed it. So, You assumed that
[38:14] everyone knew it. Well, not Well, not
[38:17] really. Well, yes, maybe. Yes, maybe.
[38:19] Okay.
[38:19] Yeah. There's a lot of misunderstanding
[38:21] I have found. People think that an
[38:22] organism adapts to its environment. And
[38:25] I say, "No, it either survives or dies."
[38:29] Yes, that's right. Right. I mean,
[38:31] there's And there's a great quote at the
[38:33] end of War of the Worlds, where as you
[38:36] remember, H. G. Wells, at the end,
[38:39] there's a recitation,
[38:41] and he says, I'm paraphrasing, he says,
[38:44] "These These creatures from another
[38:46] planet, they they were doomed, undone by
[38:49] the smallest creatures on Earth
[38:52] uh where for to whom to which we had
[38:56] developed immunity." Yes. And it ends
[38:58] with a very poetic phrase, "No man lives
[39:01] nor dies in vain."
[39:04] That
[39:05] through through the toll of a billion
[39:07] deaths, man has bought his birthright on
[39:10] this Earth, and it is his against all
[39:12] comers, and it would have still been his
[39:14] had the Martians been 10 times as mighty
[39:16] as they are, because no no no man lives
[39:20] nor dies in vain. And I And that I
[39:22] thought that was potent. He was, of
[39:24] course, scientifically literate, and he
[39:27] he's saying there generations that die
[39:30] because they didn't have they can't make
[39:31] it through this next stress to the
[39:34] environment.
[39:35] It's
[39:36] rather horrifying when you think that
[39:38] actually that's what happened to the
[39:40] native South Americans when the Spanish
[39:42] arrived, Um I mean that they were killed
[39:45] by by epidemics of things like measles
[39:47] which they had no no
[39:50] immunity.
[39:51] And in Europe built up an immunity to
[39:54] the to these diseases and But the better
[39:56] analogy would have been had the South
[39:58] Americans wanted to invade Europe. Yes.
[40:00] They would have then died by the
[40:01] European diseases. But that's not how
[40:04] Yes. European colonialism works.
[40:08] Just a couple more books here. I'm
[40:09] skipping over like a half a dozen with
[40:11] your permission.
[40:13] One that I delighted cuz not only cuz I
[40:15] received a book a copy of it in the mail
[40:17] from your publisher. It was just
[40:19] delightfully done. Flights of Fancy
[40:21] Defying Gravity by Design and Evolution.
[40:24] That was 2021. Beautiful book,
[40:26] illustrated. And who's the illustrator
[40:29] of that book?
[40:29] Yana Solova. She's Slovak.
[40:32] Just something that I think is under
[40:34] appreciated
[40:35] in in this world cuz we can't fly. So
[40:37] especially in the idea that we're at the
[40:39] top of the evolutionary scale and
[40:41] everything else is less than us. What
[40:42] does the condor say about that?
[40:46] Who flaps its wings once every 10
[40:48] minutes because it coasts the rest of
[40:49] the time. So just just a celebration of
[40:52] flight in the
[40:54] in evolution. I I was delighted by that.
[40:56] Thank you. That was sort of designed for
[40:58] young people. Started as a children's
[41:00] Well, that's why I liked it.
[41:03] That that accounted for its its
[41:04] accessibility. I mean it was just very
[41:06] fun to to see the illustrations and
[41:09] and and the like. And right now there's
[41:10] a book coming out called
[41:13] The Genetic Book of the Dead.
[41:14] Yes. A publisher actually let you use
[41:17] that title. Why wouldn't they?
[41:18] Cuz it's so it's like what? A Book of
[41:21] the Dead?
[41:21] worries me. Well, I don't know. I think
[41:23] it's rather an uplifting title. It it
[41:25] Genetic Book of the Dead.
[41:27] Yes. It doesn't mean human dead. What's
[41:29] it does it have a subtitle? What's the
[41:30] subtitle of it? It does have a subtitle.
[41:32] A Darwinian Reverie. So tell me about
[41:34] this book. I haven't read it yet. If you
[41:37] if you look at a
[41:39] highly camouflaged animal,
[41:41] a a desert lizard is one that I use.
[41:43] It's got pebbles and sand all over its
[41:45] back. It's
[41:46] just a a dummy
[41:48] painting of a desert on its back. Okay?
[41:51] So
[41:53] that is a description of the worlds in
[41:55] which its ancestors lived. You can read
[41:58] that animal as a book describing the
[42:01] desert world in which its ancestors
[42:03] lived. Now that's an easy example
[42:05] because it's got it painted on its back.
[42:08] But it must be true right the way
[42:11] through every bit of the every cell of
[42:12] the animal. Every molecule of the animal
[42:14] has got the same
[42:16] uh
[42:17] description written
[42:19] And some of it is baggage. Baggage as in
[42:22] burdensome rather than
[42:23] Yes, but We have an appendix that can
[42:26] burst.
[42:27] That's true.
[42:28] have a pinky toe. When's the last time
[42:29] you made good use of that?
[42:31] You'd be surprised.
[42:33] The the point is that natural selection
[42:37] is very very fussy. It's very very
[42:41] intricate in its in its choice.
[42:44] Far more than we we we even know about.
[42:47] We are poor judges of what's important
[42:49] for survival. And you think that
[42:52] the genes that survive going back to the
[42:54] selfish gene. The genes that survive
[42:56] have to survive through lots and lots of
[42:58] different individuals and through a huge
[43:00] amount of geological time. And so any
[43:03] statistical estimate that you and I make
[43:06] about the likelihood that your pinky
[43:09] will be of any use to you is a
[43:12] statistical mistake. Natural selection
[43:15] is a much better statistician than than
[43:17] we are. So I need to think harder about
[43:20] my pinky toe. Well, natural selection
[43:23] has
[43:24] millions of years in which to choose
[43:26] between successful toes and unsuccessful
[43:30] toes. Um
[43:32] JBS Haldane did a calculation.
[43:35] Uh JBS Haldane the great geneticist did
[43:37] great did did a calculation. He imagined
[43:41] a a feature like a toe. Some something
[43:44] that seems trivial to to to you. And he
[43:47] said let's allow that it's
[43:50] so trivial that for every thousand
[43:52] individuals who have it and survive, 999
[43:56] die. This feature toe whatever it is has
[44:00] been repeated
[44:03] thousands of times in lots of different
[44:04] individuals and through lots of
[44:06] different millions of of years.
[44:09] And it's got to survive through all
[44:10] those times. I'm explaining this very
[44:12] badly. The the the main point is that we
[44:15] are very bad estimators of what's
[44:18] important
[44:19] in natural selection is a is a much
[44:22] better estimator of that. Okay, how
[44:23] about male pattern baldness?
[44:26] Well,
[44:27] got that one. Well, that's that's a
[44:30] variable. I mean some people have it and
[44:32] some people don't. You you might take
[44:34] another example um
[44:37] maybe fingerprints. Um
[44:40] Why why do we have fingerprints? Well,
[44:42] the fact that they're different doesn't
[44:43] matter. But
[44:44] are they important for clinging onto the
[44:46] trees when we were
[44:47] you know had our boreal ancestors? That
[44:49] kind of thing.
[44:50] Um
[44:52] Oh, I see. So even if they're not useful
[44:54] now, they were useful to get us to where
[44:56] they are we are now.
[44:57] Hence the Genetic Book of the Dead. I
[44:58] mean we're talking about the talking
[45:00] about the past.
[45:01] Yeah, you're right. There it is.
[45:03] The Genetic Book of the Dead.
[45:05] Yes. Enabling us to get to where we are
[45:07] at all. Yes. We are we are a description
[45:10] of the worlds in which our dead
[45:12] ancestors survived until they until they
[45:14] died.
[45:16] Survived it long enough to reproduce.
[45:17] Because if we didn't survive, we'd go
[45:18] we'd be extinct and we wouldn't be here
[45:20] to talk about it in modern times. We
[45:22] well, I'm only here because our
[45:24] ancestors survived long enough to
[45:25] reproduce.
[45:26] Yes. And they survived because of the
[45:29] highly detailed features that that they
[45:30] had which their rivals didn't.
[45:31] think differently about my pinky toe.
[45:33] Because without the pinky toe, there
[45:34] might have been some
[45:36] dead ancestor that would have ended that
[45:40] branch of the tree of life. And we would
[45:42] have never been here.
[45:42] That's right. Yes. Yeah. Do you have
[45:44] hope for a civilization
[45:46] as it's currently manifested in the
[45:47] world? I think we have to have hope to
[45:53] to live our lives at all. It doesn't
[45:54] mean that at an intellectual level I
[45:56] necessarily have have but I I I I I live
[46:00] my life as though I have hope. Yes.
[46:02] I've come I I've become
[46:06] cynical's not the right word. I've
[46:08] become a practical cynic. It's
[46:11] There are people who think this way or
[46:13] feel that way or behave this other way.
[46:17] And I I've stopped trying to change
[46:21] them.
[46:22] What I try to do is
[46:23] offer a way of looking at the world that
[46:25] maybe they'll take, maybe they won't.
[46:28] Maybe as an educator it's my job to make
[46:31] this as tasty as possible so that hey,
[46:33] that's a good idea. I never thought
[46:35] about it that way.
[46:36] But otherwise, you know, I just gave a
[46:38] presentation to a Christian school.
[46:42] K through 12.
[46:44] I talked about
[46:46] optics.
[46:47] And at the end there was open Q&A and
[46:50] they were 11th graders.
[46:52] And they started grilling me on
[46:56] science versus the Bible.
[46:58] And
[46:59] I said I'm not here to stop you from
[47:01] being religious
[47:03] at all. Okay, we live in a country that
[47:05] protects your freedom
[47:07] to be religious. And you're in a private
[47:09] school. So the government is not going
[47:11] to come after you and say you have to
[47:13] get this out of the public coffers.
[47:16] I made that clear, but I didn't have the
[47:18] urge to try to
[47:20] convert them.
[47:22] And I get the sense that you you've had
[47:24] this urge your entire life
[47:27] to convert people
[47:29] with no less zeal than a religious
[47:33] person a religious
[47:35] um
[47:37] evangelical a religious person would
[47:39] have trying to convert people who are
[47:41] not that. Did I tell you I didn't tell
[47:43] you this? We have a Big Bang Theater
[47:44] here. Yes.
[47:45] back when we first opened here at the
[47:47] Hayden Planetarium, um there's a
[47:50] separate theater space where we just
[47:51] talk about the Big Bang. Someone came
[47:53] out of the Big Bang, saw me and said uh
[47:55] how come you didn't mention God in
[47:57] there?
[47:58] And
[47:59] then I realized okay, what am I going to
[48:00] do? I say, how about this? Why don't you
[48:02] go to our Hall of Human Evolution
[48:05] and then come back here.
[48:07] And when I tell them to do that, they
[48:08] never come back because that's way more
[48:11] offensive to them having you know
[48:13] monkeys and humans hold hands in the
[48:15] dioramas than anything we could ever say
[48:18] in the Big Bang here.
[48:19] thought they'd rather like Big Bang. I
[48:20] mean the Big Bang sounds pretty much
[48:21] like Genesis.
[48:22] Well, it's creation event. Yeah. Maybe
[48:24] that's why they thought we should have
[48:25] mentioned God and didn't. But I I just I
[48:28] don't I don't even have the
[48:29] conversation. I just send them over to
[48:31] your part of the museum.
[48:32] Yes. But I think you're being too
[48:33] pusillanimous. You you shouldn't duck
[48:35] those questions. And um
[48:37] Well, I don't duck it so much as
[48:39] sometimes I don't have the energy.
[48:41] Oh, that's different.
[48:43] I I I get that too. You feel that. I
[48:45] understand that.
[48:46] Um but in the in my field, there really
[48:49] is an absolute opposition.
[48:51] It's not something you Complete.
[48:52] Although the Catholic Church, they've
[48:54] met you in the middle. Yeah, yeah, they
[48:56] have.
[48:56] They said we have this branch of
[48:58] primates and then God breathed the soul
[49:01] into them and and they're humans.
[49:03] Allowing evolution all up to that point.
[49:05] yeah. That's You got You got to give
[49:07] give them some You got to knock.
[49:10] Not a step. Not a step.
[49:13] But the world is not that binary.
[49:15] It's not that binary.
[49:17] I don't see it that way.
[49:17] it is. There are religious people who
[49:19] are who where Jesus is their savior, but
[49:22] they're perfectly fine with a four and a
[49:25] half billion year old Earth.
[49:26] Yes, they are. Okay. They're not at the
[49:29] extreme. They don't don't see the
[49:30] contradiction. But but yes. So maybe the
[49:34] plurality of the world is a feature
[49:36] rather than a bug of the programming of
[49:38] what it is to be human.
[49:39] The truth is so much more grand and so
[49:42] much more elegant and so much more
[49:43] poetic and so much
[49:45] uh
[49:46] more beautiful. Why drag
[49:49] Jesus in
[49:50] And I would still claim you could get
[49:51] more of that across if people didn't
[49:54] feel stupid talking to you.
[49:55] yeah, that that's true. Uh so you're a
[49:57] professor at Oxford? Are you retired
[49:59] yet? Did you
[49:59] retired. You retired, okay. And you were
[50:01] professor of Public understanding of
[50:03] science.
[50:03] Yes, I remembered that. That was a a a a
[50:06] a post created by Charles Simonyi.
[50:10] To Charles Simonyi, yes.
[50:12] Uh and he he created multiples of those
[50:16] around the world. That wasn't the only
[50:17] one.
[50:18] he he he he wasn't it wasn't at the
[50:20] Princeton advanced Yeah, the Institute
[50:23] for Advanced Study, maybe? Okay.
[50:24] that's right. Yes. I think that was in a
[50:25] different field. I think that was Oh,
[50:27] okay. Okay, but I it's interesting He's
[50:29] a very generous Yeah, if you're wealthy
[50:31] and you want to make a change in the
[50:32] world, that's a way to sort of keep that
[50:34] going.
[50:34] Absolutely, yeah. And there's another
[50:36] professorship somewhere in the UK, a
[50:38] professorship of the public
[50:39] understanding of risk. That is That is a
[50:43] that's a professorship.
[50:45] And forgive me, I don't remember where,
[50:46] but I know that exists. And people have
[50:49] no way to judge or to think about that
[50:52] as a challenge in their lives.
[50:54] So
[50:54] is a fascinating subject. People get get
[50:57] so wrong.
[50:58] Yes, yes. Even smart people get that
[51:00] wrong. People who would otherwise think
[51:02] should be smart don't get it.
[51:04] Well, Richard has been a delight As
[51:07] always, thank you so much.
[51:07] have you here. Let me just end this with
[51:09] some brief reflections. Those among us
[51:12] who are educated
[51:15] on a level where you can't just hold it
[51:17] in,
[51:18] you have to sort of share the knowledge,
[51:20] wisdom, insights
[51:23] one gleans
[51:24] from having committed your life
[51:26] to studying a subject and its related
[51:29] components.
[51:30] And Richard Dawkins is an example of
[51:33] that.
[51:35] Carl Sagan used to say when you're in
[51:36] love,
[51:37] you want to tell the world.
[51:40] And
[51:42] whether the two dozen books on this list
[51:45] that I just read,
[51:47] uh this is Professor Dawkins
[51:50] can't can't contain his love.
[51:53] He's got to share it
[51:55] for all those
[51:57] who seek a deeper understanding
[52:00] of life,
[52:02] not only
[52:03] their own lives,
[52:05] the lives of everyone around them, and
[52:06] the lives
[52:08] of all that came before us, and the
[52:10] lives of all those
[52:12] yet to be born.
[52:14] But in there are messages of protecting
[52:16] our civilization
[52:18] because without it, there will be no
[52:20] future lives to be born.
[52:23] And then what of our branch in the tree
[52:25] of life?
[52:26] We can't let the roaches and the rats
[52:27] take over after us.
[52:29] Help us.
[52:32] That is a cosmic perspective.
[52:36] Neil deGrasse Tyson here, your personal
[52:37] astrophysicist. As always, I bid you
[52:40] to keep looking up.
[52:44] [Music]