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