Richard Dawkins

[0] Welcome, welcome, welcome to armchair expert, experts on expert.

[1] I'm Dak Shepard.

[2] I'm joined by expert, Monica, Padman, Padman.

[3] We have a very exciting guest, somebody I've kind of had an intellectual boner for since college.

[4] Yeah, one of your heroes.

[5] Yeah, I'm the Mount Rushmore of science and atheism.

[6] But give it a shot if you're religious.

[7] Yeah.

[8] I think we're fair in this.

[9] But Richard Dawkins famously wrote The Selfish Gene.

[10] That's how I was introduced to him, a book he wrote in 1976, which was a real paradigm shift.

[11] We'll get into that.

[12] He's also an English ethologist, evolutionary biologist, an author.

[13] He's an emeritus fellow of New College Oxford and was the University of Oxford's professor for public understanding of science from 1995 until 2008.

[14] He's written the greatest show on earth, the god delusion, the ancestor's tale, the blind watchmaker, the extended phenotype.

[15] And of course, the selfish gene, as I said, he has a new book called Outgrowing God, a Beginners, guide.

[16] We also talk about his foundation a bunch, and it's just a very fun, thrilling chat with a hero of mine.

[17] So please enjoy Richard Dawkins.

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[21] first and foremost i just want to say richard i don't think i've been this nervous to interview somebody i've never owned a copy of someone's book for 20 years and then brought it to the interview to be signed this is a first for me so i just want to say you know you're almost for me a mythical figure and i've enjoyed listening to you over the years because you also are quite funny last night i thought Oh, I'll revisit one of the Sam and Richard live podcasts, and you're so funny.

[22] And if you don't mind, I'd like to first make you a human before we talk about all your accomplished work and your viewpoints on everything.

[23] I see you are a human in front of me. Well, calling me a mythical figure makes me feel rather inhuman.

[24] Okay.

[25] You're right.

[26] Those are kind of antithetical.

[27] Do you watch TV shows?

[28] Do you have favorite TV shows?

[29] I watch the recordings on Netflix and things like that.

[30] Yeah, yeah.

[31] Same.

[32] Do you bin shows?

[33] Yes.

[34] I binged Stephen Fry because I was giving him a thing called the Richard Dawkins Award which we give every year and this year I binged Ricky Jervais for exactly the same reason and I love them both almost opposite to each other I mean Stephen Fry's urbane and cultivated Ricky is kind of beyond the pale in many respects equally funny I did not see the Fry one but we loved the Jervais one and obviously Obviously, he is a brother -in -arms in the kind of atheist movement as well, yeah.

[35] He does a very good job of being honest, stating his point of view, and then putting a real nice comedic spin on it so it's kind of digestible.

[36] It's the spoonful of sugar approach.

[37] Precisely right, that's exactly what he does.

[38] Okay, good.

[39] So you watch television.

[40] Also, you have a very unique childhood in that you were born in Kenya.

[41] Do I have that correct?

[42] Yes, it's not so unique for British people of my age, actually.

[43] It was pretty common in when I went to school.

[44] It seemed like about half the boys were either born in Africa or India.

[45] Oh, really?

[46] Yes.

[47] For the younger listeners, and myself truly, that only exists, the kind of colonial Africa, that only exists in Hemingway books or, you know, it's kind of a bygone era.

[48] Yes, and it went gone very suddenly as well.

[49] It disappeared very, very quickly.

[50] Oh, really?

[51] Kind of overnight.

[52] Now, what precipitated that?

[53] I think just a change of what Harold McMillan called the wind of change.

[54] It was just a very, very swift political movement.

[55] I mean, rather analogous to the way the gay movement in this country was very, very swiftly transformed things, turn things upside down.

[56] Yeah, in the historical view, it happened in one second.

[57] Yes.

[58] Right?

[59] That's what we're hoping to do with atheism.

[60] I mean, because at present, atheists are not able to enjoy a full membership of society, really.

[61] I mean, they can't get it, theoretically they can get elected, but it's very difficult for them to get elected.

[62] And what we're hoping is that we can emulate what the gay community, did and almost overnight of historical terms transform things.

[63] One hurdle I can immediately imagine is that there is a built -in sympathy for a group that is so obviously excommunicated and it comes with such a price tag on the familial relationships and same with the civil rights movements.

[64] I've never seen atheists blast in the streets with fire hoses.

[65] So do we lack a little bit of sympathy?

[66] Does that get in our way?

[67] Well, it would be nice to think we get sympathy.

[68] I think we would get sympathy, but for the extraordinary bizarre idea that you need to believe in a higher power in order to be good.

[69] And this rather dramatically shows itself in the fact that they don't mind whether it's the wrong God.

[70] Right.

[71] As long as any God will do to give you morality.

[72] Yeah, when you think of anyone who currently is spending a great deal time in church or dedicating a big portion of their life to their chosen religion, all of them currently would look back on the Greeks and just laugh at the notion of Zeus and someone taking a chariot and rising the sun.

[73] And that becomes very laughable and dismissable.

[74] And yet that same lens can't really be applied to their own.

[75] That's right.

[76] I've sometimes asked ancient historians in my college at Oxford whether the Greeks really did believe in their gods.

[77] And the answer seems to be yes, or at least they would sacrifice to them and they would pray to them and they would attribute misfortune or fortune to them.

[78] Whether they really believe there was a god called Helios who actually got up in the morning and drove his chariot across the sky, I find that actually pretty hard to believe.

[79] Well, especially when you consider that simultaneous to that, you're seeing the birth of democracy, the birth of geometry, you're seeing like enormous leaps forward.

[80] and the foundation of what is now science, yeah?

[81] Yes, I mean, whether Plato and Aristotle really believed in that, I mean, they talked about the gods, but I suspect it may have been somewhat in the same sort of way as Einstein.

[82] Yeah.

[83] Einstein didn't believe in God, but he used God language as a kind of metaphor for that which we don't understand.

[84] And so when Socrates said something like, do morals come from the gods or do the gods come from the moral, whatever it was, I'm not sure he really meant the gods, whether he was just using a kind of language that his audience would understand.

[85] Yeah, I completely agree with that.

[86] It is funny because you'll see people co -opt Einstein quotes to serve whatever ends they have, right?

[87] I would like to go back and shake Einstein and say, why did you do that?

[88] I mean, you're handing people on a plate.

[89] Yeah.

[90] They desperately wanted to hear.

[91] But do you think he just maybe had a broader global view of like, that's not the thing I need to disrupt right now?

[92] That's not the hill I'm going to die on.

[93] So I'm just going to kind of placate or patronize the masses.

[94] I haven't read enough to know.

[95] I think maybe times were different and maybe didn't actually occur to him that it wouldn't matter.

[96] Although he did get very annoyed at times when he would say, I do not believe in a personal god.

[97] And I've said so over and over again.

[98] I mean, he did actually get quite irritated sometimes, but I think he only had himself to blame.

[99] Yeah.

[100] Now, back to Africa.

[101] Growing up there, were you in a city or what kind of, environment were you in?

[102] Not in a city.

[103] There hardly were any cities.

[104] It was fairly primitive in some respects.

[105] We have no electric light.

[106] We had no indoor plumbing.

[107] On the other hand, we had lots of servants.

[108] Okay.

[109] And so it was a sort of curious mixture.

[110] I suppose it was like going back a hundred years.

[111] Yeah.

[112] So are your memories mostly just like going to school and playing?

[113] Going to school, catching butterflies, beautiful flowers.

[114] Yeah.

[115] But I didn't see elephants or lions or anything like that.

[116] Right.

[117] For me, I just go, oh, if a guy grows up in Africa, not shocking to me that he ends up with an interest in zoology and evolution.

[118] It would be nice to think that.

[119] I don't think that's, unfortunately, the truth.

[120] My father was a biologist, so I think later on when we'd moved to England, I think he taught me to think like a scientist and think like a biologist.

[121] But, no, the African childhood was just itself and didn't really feed in, I think, to watch.

[122] I later became in a big way.

[123] And did you have any awareness that you were an expat or living in a country that of not your origin?

[124] Was that something you were conscious of?

[125] I left when I was seven, so I'm not sure that unless I was very precocious, I would have thought in those terms.

[126] Right, because your reality is your reality, right?

[127] You kind of take it at face value when you're young.

[128] Yes.

[129] Yeah, so you moved to England at seven or eight, depending on whether I believe you or what's written about you.

[130] No, I had my eighth birthday on the ship.

[131] Oh, no kidding.

[132] So they're both true, really.

[133] And so your father had served in World War II, and then he inherited in a state.

[134] That's right.

[135] In 1946, he actually inherited it, but assumed that he would never actually live there.

[136] It was tenanted, and the lady who was the tenant died actually while we were on the ship.

[137] I may, perhaps on your birthday.

[138] Possibly, yes.

[139] And my parents were greeted with a new that she had died and they then had to make a decision whether to go back to Africa, which they wanted to do originally.

[140] Agonizingly, I think they decided they would stay.

[141] My mother had suffered very badly from malaria and almost died and I think that was another reason for not going back.

[142] Yeah.

[143] But the family lawyer and both their parents, both my sets of grandparents, strongly advised them to go back to Africa and they didn't take that advice.

[144] They actually farmed the place.

[145] It hadn't been found for a long time properly.

[146] Yeah.

[147] And my father They've made quite a success of it as a proper commercial farm.

[148] But a lot of these estates get passed down, and a lot of people live quite poor in these amazing estates, and just everything is spent on maintaining them, and it can be a real burden to inherit these things.

[149] Well, that's true.

[150] I mean, the word estate would rather give a false impression.

[151] It's not a big estate like Duke of Bedford or something.

[152] I've got down to an abbey playing in my head, just to be honest with you.

[153] That's all wrong.

[154] no it's only about 250 acres and uh in the home wasn't outrageous there's a bigish house which was a burden actually the family lawyer advised us to pull that down right and my parents didn't they actually turned it into flats apartments oh and um they specialized in english people british people coming back on leave from the colonial service so it was constantly filled with people from africa and india and burma and places it's like a decompression chamber and entry back into England.

[155] Yes, yes.

[156] They had to have been intoxicated with the notion of being out.

[157] That's like people who went west early here or anything else, right?

[158] It's a very adventurous lifestyle.

[159] I suppose, yes.

[160] But of course, it was very much government regulated.

[161] They were not pioneers in that sense.

[162] The earlier people went out to farm the settlers.

[163] They were quite different.

[164] They were more like pioneers.

[165] But my parents were not.

[166] They were government servants.

[167] and the people they mixed with were government servants.

[168] Right.

[169] So they were not part of the sort of happy valley crowd, though they knew some of that crowd.

[170] Ah.

[171] And you were raised Christian in the conventional sense?

[172] I went to Christian schools.

[173] It was difficult not to.

[174] Right.

[175] But it was Anglican.

[176] And I would imagine in part because father was into science and biology, and did you have a good relationship with him?

[177] Did you want him to be proud of you?

[178] Yes, I had a very good relationship with him.

[179] He was a botanist, so he knew all about wildflowers.

[180] He knew the Latin names.

[181] My sister and I both loved to hear the Latin names of all the flowers.

[182] We didn't remember them necessarily.

[183] Yeah.

[184] I think children like to hear long words.

[185] They don't know the meaning of.

[186] I may be wrong about that.

[187] Oh, absolutely.

[188] Well, think, Expeelodosius.

[189] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[190] Super califrat.

[191] Everyone loves that word.

[192] That means nothing, but it's so long.

[193] Now, I would imagine when you were being educated, you were probably, you knew Latin or you were you taught in Latin?

[194] I did Latin for years.

[195] It doesn't mean I knew it.

[196] Okay.

[197] Do you think it's good or bad that they've abandoned that?

[198] I think it's good to learn languages.

[199] Time would be probably better spent learning French and German.

[200] Somewhere you could go use it, yeah?

[201] Yes.

[202] I mean, people say that Latin is good for learning all romance languages, and no doubt it is, but I suspect that any romance language would serve that purpose.

[203] I mean, Spanish would be good for learning Italian and French, and French would be good for learning Italian and Spanish and so on.

[204] Yeah.

[205] So a romance language would be a very good idea.

[206] A Germanic language would be a very good idea.

[207] I am ashamed of the British and actually American.

[208] I mean, we Anglos, we English speakers, are so bad at languages.

[209] Oh, yeah, yeah.

[210] And when I go to places like Holland and Scandinavia and, you know, even bus drivers and bartenders speak perfect English.

[211] Yeah, well, I'll get real judgmental of us, and I'll feel pretty bad about the whole ordeal.

[212] And then another side of my brain goes, that's just the privilege of the hegemonic society.

[213] If Germans were the hegemonic society, they probably wouldn't know any other language.

[214] Do you think maybe...

[215] Some people are forced.

[216] To be true, I think that is true.

[217] I don't think we're shittier people in general.

[218] I don't think that shows itself, though, in our arrogance, saying, well, you don't need to learn.

[219] I had a colleague when I said I was trying to learn German, he said, oh, you don't want to do that.

[220] It only encourages them.

[221] I never brought into that.

[222] But what I do think is that the hegemonic effect you described shows itself in the fact that people in Holland and Scan Scandinavia are fed a diet of American and British films, for example, which they watch all the time, and they don't have a dubbing culture.

[223] They have a subtitle culture.

[224] Right.

[225] And then music, too.

[226] Yes, music too.

[227] And so they're constantly exposed to English.

[228] Yeah.

[229] Whereas in Britain, when there's an election in France, say, and we get on the news, the candidates making speeches, we get about two words of their speech, which is faded out.

[230] and then we get the voice of an interpreter.

[231] Oh, okay.

[232] It's not subtitles.

[233] So we never hear, it's not subtitles.

[234] So we never hear the other language.

[235] In the same week, I happened to meet socially, the head of the BBC and the head of Channel 4, which is one of our major independent broadcasting channels.

[236] And I made this point to both of them, why don't we subtitle news for this reason?

[237] Yeah.

[238] And both of them said the same thing.

[239] They said, oh, we never thought of that.

[240] but they still didn't do anything about it.

[241] It's not true dubbing.

[242] It's not lip synced.

[243] It's just a voiceover.

[244] Yes.

[245] This kind of parallels perfectly.

[246] Latin, that obsession with maintaining that language, you know, this reverie we have for it.

[247] It does coincide, too, with the Bible, right?

[248] Something happens in humans.

[249] We start really holding old text and old things.

[250] We put it on a pedestal.

[251] And you see it now politically here in our country with the Constitution.

[252] Here's a document that was specifically designed to be changed as new evidence and new problems arose, and yet there's this revere for it and this worship of it that now it's becoming canonized or something.

[253] It's becoming like the Bible.

[254] That's a very good point, yes.

[255] I appreciate the Bible as literature.

[256] Like I appreciate Shakespeare.

[257] And I think it's true that you can't really hold your own as a high -level cultivating.

[258] English speaker, unless you can take your allusions to things like the Bible and Shakespeare.

[259] I appreciate that.

[260] But your point about the Constitution is interesting.

[261] It does seem to have, I'm not an American, but I just talk carefully here, it does seem to have acquired the sort of status of holy writ.

[262] Or even the founding fathers.

[263] When people say the founding fathers, it's almost as if they were a different species of human that existed, and that we don't possibly within 300 million people have 40 equally intelligent humans here that could...

[264] Yes.

[265] On the other hand, we now have a Supreme Court, which seems to do the opposite.

[266] I mean, they pay lip service to the Constitution, but they seem to rather...

[267] If fears of the newest additions to the Supreme Court realized, they do seem to have an ability to interpret it in ways that probably would have the founding father spinning in their graves.

[268] But again, I think that is a problem of worshipping this document.

[269] why does it require interpretation by somebody?

[270] Why does someone in modern times have to tell me what that document really meant when it said to bear arms?

[271] And that is the same thing with religion.

[272] And one of the many things I've been confused about religion is, you guys have a book.

[273] There's no mystery.

[274] There's no secret door.

[275] So if there is a text that everyone can read, why is a guy in a robe have a better understanding of that text than me?

[276] It's a physical thing we could all read, right?

[277] And my question about scripture, biblical scripture, is rather more, do you realize who wrote it.

[278] I mean, there's no particular reason to think that they were anything other than simple goat herds and camel herders.

[279] There's no reason to think they had any knowledge or wisdom.

[280] Or photographic memory of sorts.

[281] Yes.

[282] I regularly say that the people were having a conversation, let's say there's eight of us gathered and we would talk for two hours.

[283] And I say, now imagine, in 30 minutes, you're asked to recite everything we talked about for two hours.

[284] What was your best guest of what percentage you would get accurate?

[285] You know, and now you're talking about someone memorizing these chapters.

[286] Yes, in the New Testament, which is relatively recent, I mean, the oldest gospel, which is Mark, was not written until 35 or 40 years after Jesus' death.

[287] And all that time, it's done by word of mouth.

[288] Yeah, so it's an 40 -year game of telephone.

[289] Exactly.

[290] I mean, I make that exact analogy in my latest book.

[291] Largely, I won't argue with people anymore because I'm 44.

[292] I have two kids and I don't have time.

[293] But with that said, there are layers, right?

[294] So sometimes I'll go, I can accept that you believe in God.

[295] If you feel something in your heart, I'm not going to try to challenge that.

[296] That's a waste of my energy.

[297] There's no reason for me to do that.

[298] But at least acknowledge that this thing you believe in did go through a human filter.

[299] You must at least acknowledge that Jesus Christ did not sit down with a quill and write out the Bible.

[300] I think that might be one of the most powerful ways of getting at them.

[301] I don't know what they think, who they think actually wrote.

[302] that it would be different books of the Bible, but there was nothing special about it.

[303] Yeah.

[304] And if they knew that Mark is the oldest gospel, and Mark actually doesn't mention many of the most precious things like the Christmas story, the resurrection, that sort of thing.

[305] And it's patently obvious that these things are just made up.

[306] It'd be like retelling the plot of Jurassic Park and leaving out the dinosaurs.

[307] Yes, yes, right.

[308] There's an amusement park, some people go there.

[309] Yes, yes.

[310] Whereas my attitude to Jurassic Park is they should have left out the humans.

[311] Yes, yes.

[312] Well, interestingly, I heard when you were talking to Sam that you're anti -eradicating mosquitoes but pro -bringing back dinosaurs.

[313] So I love that you're kind of on both sides of the argument, wouldn't you?

[314] I love them.

[315] I love to bring back dinosaurs.

[316] Me too.

[317] Well, I'm more interested in bringing back woolly mammoths for whatever reason.

[318] Well, it's just more plausible.

[319] I mean, there's actually a sporting chance of doing that.

[320] Yes.

[321] I doubt it could never bring back dinosaurs.

[322] Yes.

[323] Well, birds are dinosaurs, of course.

[324] you have to remember.

[325] Yes, and that's a new thing.

[326] When I was a kid, of course, all my National Geographic books had them in a kind of a reptilian, scaly.

[327] And now I'm looking at newer books for my children and they're feathered.

[328] And that happened in my lifetime.

[329] Yes, that's true.

[330] But quite apart from whether dinosaurs were feathered, birds are closer to some dinosaurs than those dinosaurs are to other dinosaurs.

[331] And so they simply are dinosaurs.

[332] Right.

[333] They spring from the middle of the dinosaurs, in other words.

[334] Right.

[335] So do you think, because you're saying if you approach with, so who wrote this, that's a very logical approach.

[336] Do you think they care?

[337] Because they're operating in a very emotional headspace when they're dealing with their religion and God and morals and all of these things.

[338] It's not logical.

[339] I think you're right.

[340] And what worries me more is that that antilogical point of view is becoming respectable.

[341] And academics are even saying things like what, feels right to you is your kind of truth, and there's no sort of thing as objective truth.

[342] And that, I think, is very pernicious indeed.

[343] Yeah, dangerous, yeah.

[344] To that point, even you as someone who committed yourself to empirical data, objective analysis, replicatable things, do you also recognize that there's an anatomical truth to what happens in this room right now?

[345] But none of the eight of us here will have that same truth an hour from now.

[346] This conversation has a reality to it, and it's known if there was an anatomical record of this, right, that was recording ones and zeros of this whole exchange.

[347] That would be reality.

[348] But at some point, it has to be observed and taken in by you and I, a human.

[349] Do you mean just mean everybody will have a different memory of it?

[350] Yes, well, they'll have a different memory of it.

[351] You're recording it.

[352] Well, right, but even when someone listens to it.

[353] Yeah, so the recording is objective, and that is real and that is true.

[354] It'll then go through this filter, the human ear, for the listener.

[355] And it will really, before it gets to any part of the brain where they can store it as fact, it can't not go through these filters, right, these cultural filters.

[356] This conversation sounds different in Ireland than it does in Madrid for many reasons, right?

[357] Do you recognize that there are facts and there is truth, but that there isn't anyone on earth to observe that fact and truth without it going through their filter.

[358] One of the most interesting talks we've just listened to at the Saigon conference, which is a conference that the CFI, the Center for Inquiry, runs every year in Las Vegas, was by Jeff Hawkins, the inventor of the Palm Pilot.

[359] And Jeff Hawkins made a point which I've long believed, which is that what we actually see and hear and feel is a model in the head.

[360] We construct our own model in the head.

[361] And what comes in from the senses, sense data, adjusts and alters, updates the model.

[362] Okay.

[363] So the model is continually updated so that it does conform to reality.

[364] But nevertheless, your model will be different from mine.

[365] Everybody in this room will have their own model of reality.

[366] And the most persuasive evidence for this point of view, I think, is visual illusions, things like the Nekker Cube and the devil's tuning fork, where there are two alternative ways of seeing the reality.

[367] And the brain, as it were, pulls out of its filing cabinet each of the two internal models that fit the data and alternates between them.

[368] And that's just evidence for the fact that we are seeing and hearing and feeling a model of the world.

[369] And our model of the world is a rather visual one.

[370] A bat's model of the world is updated by echoes.

[371] But I suspect actually that it may actually be the model may be rather similar to our visual model.

[372] Or a dog's olfactory, right?

[373] Or the dog's olfactory one.

[374] Even though the bat's auditory model is updated by echoes, our visual model is updated by light.

[375] But the model is fashioned by Darwinian natural selection to be the most useful sort of model to have in order to navigate the world.

[376] To survive and pass on your genes.

[377] And that model will be probably rather the same for a bat as it is for us or for a swallow, say, which is doing the similar thing to a bat, but by day instead of by night.

[378] So I find this very plausible, this idea that what we see or here is a model of reality, and it may be different for all of us in this room.

[379] Yeah, because here's the thing to bring it into kind of a more concrete current example, where I find myself straddling the line.

[380] So modern liberals at times seem to really value facts.

[381] And there will be quick to point out that the right is using alternative facts or these many catchphrases that we have for what Trump says.

[382] Fake news.

[383] Fake news, all these things.

[384] And I am caught between, yes, I am someone who studied science and loves it.

[385] And I'm also someone who's married and has children and recognizes there is this whole other truth, which is the emotional experience on planet Earth.

[386] And I just imagine even the most objective person still has this layer of software that is emotional and very valuable.

[387] And that often when I watch these debates on the left and the right, I believe, well, both sides are actually making valid points.

[388] One's making an emotional point.

[389] One's making a logical point.

[390] And I don't think it's great to dismiss either of those.

[391] So let's just take for a concrete example, you know, the Mexicans are overrunning America.

[392] Well, we have a ton of data on the left that we could say, well, no, the net migrations down.

[393] That's not of interest to people.

[394] We could say they're not staying, they're returning home.

[395] We could say they commit less crimes than natural -born citizens.

[396] That has no effect.

[397] What we're not addressing is like these people, this contingency has a fear.

[398] It's a real fear.

[399] It's a fear that needs addressing and it's not probably going to be addressed by this data we keep throwing at them.

[400] I'm regularly fighting against the binary opposition between, no, no, there's just reality and facts and science versus their, you know, no, it's just if it feels right, it is right.

[401] I don't agree with that either.

[402] But so often all these choices feel very binary.

[403] When I think, in fact, it's quite often like nature and nurture.

[404] At best, you're looking at what percentage it is.

[405] Yes.

[406] Well, another of the talks at the Center for Inquiry conference, which has been to, made a fascinating distinction.

[407] It's I think relates to what you're saying.

[408] Two ways in which we can get false ideas, and obviously we're bombarded with false ideas at the moment in this country.

[409] He called them the good lawyer and the bad philosopher, and the good lawyer knows the conclusion he wants to come to.

[410] Well, in the case of a lawyer, he's paid for that.

[411] He's paid to be a prosecutor or a defender.

[412] But the good lawyer applies to anybody who, for tribal reasons, for reasons of loyalty to Democrat or Republic, whatever it is.

[413] knows the conclusion he wants to come to.

[414] This isn't conscious, but you have a conclusion you want, you intend to come to.

[415] Confirmation bias, right?

[416] Confirmation bias.

[417] You force the facts to fit the conclusion that you, for ideological reasons, kind of know is true.

[418] So that's what he calls the good lawyer method of getting to a fallacy.

[419] The bad philosopher is, he had a cartoon of Homer Simpson for this, the bad philosopher is somebody who sincerely wants to get at the truth, but is a poor thinker, a poor reasoner, and so gets to the falsehood by almost the opposite direction from the good lawyer.

[420] I found that a very illuminating talk.

[421] Yes.

[422] You must be familiar with Jonathan Heights's work.

[423] Exactly.

[424] I was going to go to mention that, yes.

[425] Yeah, because when I listened to him, I feel like I've really believed him, and I might be simplifying his point of view, but he was saying in general, as I remember it, that we as individuals are just horrendously subjective.

[426] We're really not good at discovering any truths because to your point we all suffer from confirmation bias you run these morality experiments about the brother and sister having sex on a vacation and people just can't they just keep lobbying another reason it might be amoral at it and what he says is that although we can't be very objective we can design systems that are quite objective and i tend to really agree with that i do too the scientific method is designed to wash out the subjective biases and sometimes sort of kicking and screaming, we're forced to agree with something because the science shows that it's the case.

[427] Peer review, replication of experiments, double -blind trials, all that sort of thing, which are specifically designed to remove subjective confirmation bias.

[428] Yes.

[429] I accept everything you know and you believe in and you've studied, but are you curious why you even studied that?

[430] Is that a question that you ask yourself?

[431] Have you ever asked yourself, why was I drawn to evolutionary biology?

[432] What was going to be comforting about that for me?

[433] I'm not sure about comforting.

[434] I sometimes think to myself how different my life would have been, if anything had been, any tiny little thing had changed.

[435] Uh -huh.

[436] Or would there be some kind of magnetic pull back to the course that I eventually took?

[437] Robert Frost's famous poem The Path Not Taken, I'm inclined to think that the slightest change in one's past, not anything like big like if you hadn't met a certain person who later became your wife something really important like that but just if you didn't happen to sneeze at a certain moment your life would be totally different and I dramatize this by saying if a particular dinosaur had not sneezed at a certain moment in the Cretaceous period none of us would be here because he sneezed he failed to eat the ancestor of all of us a sneeze is a good way to dramatize it because it's such a trivial event yes if adolf hitler's father had happened to sneeze i mean at a moment when some ancestor of adolf hitler was about to be conceived uh -huh and therefore a different sperm got into the egg sure sure we would never have had hitler but or if mrs hitler sneezed on the first date mr hitler wasn't interested in her any longer that that kind of thing yes yeah stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare What's up, guys, it's your girl Kiki, and my podcast is back with a new season.

[438] And let me tell you, it's too good.

[439] And I'm diving into the brains of entertainment's best and brightest, okay?

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[455] You have had critics in the past that have suggested the selfish gene.

[456] You wrote that in an era of Thatcherism and Reaganism.

[457] which was a very individual first kind of culture at the time, that that in some way could be a part of the context by which you pursued that path.

[458] Do you think that's possible?

[459] It's certainly true that I was accused.

[460] I mean, there was a left -wing scientist called Stephen Rose in Britain who more or less accused John Maynard Smith and me of causing Mrs. Thatcher.

[461] John Maynard Smith said, what should we have done?

[462] falsified the equations.

[463] actually most of the critics along those lines criticized the book having read it by title only they didn't have actually read the book Yeah selfish is a very triggering word for people Isn't it?

[464] Yeah, that's the thing we all universally are You know, we're terrified to acknowledge it The point about the book actually is that Selfish genes give rise to altruistic individuals So it's just the opposite of that accusation Right and you said on Sam's podcast That in retrospect you wish you had titled the book Well I've often suggested maybe the immortal gene The immortal gene.

[465] Yes.

[466] But that would have been less triggering for people.

[467] Less triggering and also more poetic.

[468] I mean, it probably would have been better, I think.

[469] The editor of Act Doxford University Press was Adam, and it had to be the selfish gene.

[470] And he still says that.

[471] Uh -huh.

[472] Now, I wouldn't have suggested Thatcher Reagan, but what I would have suggested is you, after achieving a master's and a doctor in philosophy and starting to do tons of research on zoology and evolutionary biology, You took a professorship at UC Berkeley, yeah, 67 to 69?

[473] Well, yes, I mean, they called it a professorship.

[474] I was only about 26 at the time.

[475] I wouldn't call that a professorship, but I was a very young assistant professor, yes.

[476] Yeah, and at that time, it was the height of the anti -war movement for Vietnam.

[477] And you were at the apex or epicenter of that movement, probably at Berkeley.

[478] Yes.

[479] Well, I mean, I joined in all the demonstrations.

[480] Yeah, you went in and you protested and you were involved in that.

[481] that actually would be more telling than the other thing in that you were witnessing the real downside of group think, group reaction, group fear.

[482] Yes, that's totally true.

[483] Yeah.

[484] First of all, I love your book.

[485] I'm a disciple of the book to use a bad term.

[486] Is it possible, though?

[487] Do you ever think, oh, yeah, I'm just a human too, and I too am subject to some confirmation by it?

[488] And perhaps the path I set on intentionally or unintentionally, probably was informed a bit by this context.

[489] There was the Vietnam War and there was these things that had happened in your life.

[490] I don't think the selfish gene was triggered by that interest in what was then left -wing politics.

[491] I think it was triggered by the love of truth, actually, and the fact that there were, at the time, several popular science books, which were deeply misconceived because they thought that Darwinian natural selection worked at the level of the group.

[492] Right.

[493] So Conrad Lawrence, for example, in his book on aggression, he explained the fact that animal aggression is more restrained than it might otherwise be because groups of animals that had aggressive individuals were more likely to go extinct.

[494] Now that's just plain wrong.

[495] That's an undarwinian idea.

[496] He didn't understand Darwinism.

[497] his Nobel Prize winning biologist totally misunderstood Darwinian natural selection.

[498] So my motivation of writing the self -reaching was to correct people like him and he wasn't the only one.

[499] In general, we think of evolution as being you have a hundred animals and one's born with a mutation and that mutation is blue eyes, let's say, and the rest have dark eyes.

[500] And for whatever reason, the predator can see the dark eyes better.

[501] So the one with blue eyes is going to probably reproduce more often than the ones that are being killed.

[502] So that's going to slowly change the ratio in the population of animals favoring the blue eyes, right?

[503] It doesn't happen immediately.

[504] I mean, it's more that sexual reproduction distributes genes around among the population.

[505] So there's constantly a shuffling of genes going on, but because of sex.

[506] And some are surviving better than others.

[507] Mutation is the sort of original source that feeds variation in, that feeds new genes into the population.

[508] Sex then distributes them around.

[509] looked at the level of the individual and he was vaguely aware that there was something like heredity he would call it heredity he was vaguely aware that like begets like but there was no conception then of genes as particulate entities that an animal either has or doesn't have Mendel who was a contemporary of Darwin roughly introduced the idea that genes are all or none things you either have one or you don't have one right so any particular gene in you came from one and only one of your parents, one and only one of your grandparents, one and only one of your great -grandparents.

[510] So each one of us is like a deck of cards that's been shuffled in each generation, and every one of those cards can be traced to a particular ancestor.

[511] Any number of generations back, it comes from one particular ancestor, which is a remarkable thought in a way.

[512] So genes are potentially immortal, because they come down the generations.

[513] And what I introduced was the kind of poetic language that immortal genes, cooperatively with each other, construct bodies which are temporary, mortal, what I call survival machines for the genes that built them.

[514] So what really matters in natural selection, this is what I was responsible for promulgating, what really matters in natural selection is the survival.

[515] of genes versus other genes down many, many generations and bodies are merely throw away survival machines, temporary vehicles which the genes build for themselves as houses to live in, to carry them around, and if the body dies, the body is eaten by a lion, all the genes inside it perish.

[516] And so any gene that makes an antelope, say, ever so slightly more likely to escape from lions, run faster, have sharper sense organs, anything like that.

[517] On average, over many generations, statistically, the genes that come down through the generations will be the genes that make antelopes good at getting away from lions.

[518] On the other hand, in the lion gene pool, there'll be the genes that make lions good at catching antelopes.

[519] And in the case of altruism, it's a particular case, which I dealt with rather fully in the selfish gene, genes that make bodies care for other bodies that are likely to contain the same genes survive because copies of themselves survive in the bodies that they help save.

[520] Right.

[521] So in a pop, let's say a hundred -member population of some species, presumably a ton of them are sharing tons of the same genes, right?

[522] Yes.

[523] Yes.

[524] Yeah, because it was kind of a paradox for people doing ethologies on animals, right?

[525] They would see this behavior, be it a chimpanzee that would do the holler for, you know, leopard puts him or herself in jeopardy of being discovered by the leopard, but then the whole group gets to a state.

[526] That's right.

[527] That kind of thing is one of the sort of test cases.

[528] In the case of, say, a bird giving an alarm call because they see a hawk.

[529] Well, if the birds are feeding as a flock on the ground, they are a flock for a good reason.

[530] You stay in a flock for a good reason, which is safety in numbers.

[531] the bigger the flock you're in, the less likely it is that when the predator comes, you'll be the one he catches.

[532] So you want to stay in the flock.

[533] And in the center, hopefully, right?

[534] That's right, exactly.

[535] The selfish hurt.

[536] Yes.

[537] On the other hand, you'll be better off up in a tree than down on the ground.

[538] You want to move up into the tree, but you don't want to be the only one that moves up into the tree because then you're out of the flock, and he picks on you because you're the odd one out.

[539] What you want is to get into the tree, but make sure everyone else does too.

[540] Uh -huh.

[541] So the alarm call, on the one head, it's an altruistic act.

[542] You could call it an altruistic act.

[543] It's also a selfish act because you're trying to make, you're trying to manipulate the entire flock.

[544] Into surrounding you.

[545] Into keep surrounding you and yet get up into the tree.

[546] Yeah.

[547] So that's the kind of logic which we were using at that time and still do use to explain things like alarm calls.

[548] Conrad Lawrence would probably have said a species that has altruistic individuals that give alarm calls is less likely to go extinct.

[549] And that's just wrong, as I said.

[550] That's not what it's about.

[551] Natural selection is about differential survival within a species, not between species.

[552] Right.

[553] And what was new about it, as you're saying, is looking at the genes and not the individual.

[554] And then other evolutionary biologists have considered observing a pocket of human beings on planet Earth and how they proliferated and then trying to...

[555] But you in general are, or maybe not even in general, general you were blatantly you don't believe in group evolution do you mean Darwin did on the whole stick to the level of the individual there is a place in the dissent of man where he talks about group survival and that's okay I mean group survival may be important yeah but it's not the main driving force that makes animals the shape that they are it might occasionally be important yeah and generally right when even these examples you're giving mostly they exhibit themselves among insects and then in humans yeah are those kind of the two pockets where most needs explaining like honeybees and yes the extremes of social behavior we see in certain insects in the hymenoptera and in the termites in the ants bees and wasps which are hymenoptera and termites which are not and humans yes and have you by chance red sapiens or do you like you vol her i have yes yeah and so you know i don't have a horse in any race so I'm free to like just entertain all these thoughts and it's not against any position I have but the thing that does seem compelling is that if a group of humans all believed in this concept of money they could then meet each other and commingle peacefully because they both believe in this myth and they have some incentive to get along and that that in turn could have upped your survival or could it, your fitness, yeah?

[556] I think, I think, I see Harari's idea more as a sociological thing, not as a Darwinian idea.

[557] I got you.

[558] I think it's important.

[559] I think it's probably true.

[560] Yeah.

[561] And you could apply it to religion as well.

[562] You can say that a group of people, all of whom believe in the same God, have a certain coherence, a social unity which benefits the whole society.

[563] And the society as a whole might well conquer, might well, actually, survive better than another society, either with no God or with a different kind of God.

[564] That's not really a Darwinian theory, but it could be important nevertheless.

[565] Yeah, because I think where I'm going with this is we have come to recognize a lot of things that served us well for a long period of time that no longer serve us.

[566] The simplest example is we should eat as much fruit on a tree in bloom as we can, because that's a temporary condition and we should load up on calories.

[567] Well, now there's a 7 -Eleven, a mile from everyone's house.

[568] We probably shouldn't load up on the calories every time.

[569] You know, there's all kinds of things that we should attempt to transcend.

[570] And I guess I'm of the opinion that I'm okay acknowledging that religion may have been part of our evolution and that we might even have some predisposition to believe in that.

[571] I don't mind acknowledging that and then saying, and then now we must transcend it in the same way we can't eat as much food as we want and we can't have sex.

[572] You know, there's a bunch of things we have.

[573] Very good way of putting it.

[574] I mean, yes, I think that's quite right.

[575] Yeah, so what is it about us that makes us so susceptible to it, you know?

[576] Is it that past that, you know, is it where we selected at any level to be predisposed to buy into that?

[577] Because it seems pretty universal people buy into that.

[578] Yes, I think you would give a psychological sort of explanation and say that people naturally want to explain their origins.

[579] So they invent an origin myth or somebody does, it becomes part of the story that they gets told around the camphar and often it's an origin myth about their own tribe and all the rest of the world somehow don't count yeah yeah yeah they're the one truth yes it's a bit different from a darwinian theory one would want to say something like natural selection favored individuals who had some kind of psychological predisposition which manifested itself as religion under the right cultural conditions so something like a bit of a tendency to obey orders to Well, it also seems like an extension of us being social animals that have a hierarchy.

[580] So something like obeying the king.

[581] Yeah, like we're kind of designed to respect an alpha.

[582] Yes.

[583] And this thing becomes the ultimate alpha that maybe you're hoping will exert justice on this one you have to deal with.

[584] Yes.

[585] I think there are all sorts of reasons why natural selection might have favored in our wild ancestors a tendency to say, it's a good idea to obey the authority of the tribal elders, maybe especially if you're a child where you're vulnerable and adults, parents, etc., have a wisdom which may save your life.

[586] Yeah, the ones who may be listened to God got selected, you know?

[587] That's right.

[588] I mean, if you disobey her, if you disbelieve what your parents tell you, then you may die.

[589] You may fall over a cliff or beaten by a lion or something.

[590] Eat those berries they told you were poisonous.

[591] Exactly, exactly.

[592] So, I mean, you could say something like if the wild ancestors of the equivalent of the Centre for Inquiry said, no, I don't, I want to test that.

[593] I don't always just believe you.

[594] I don't try eating those berries.

[595] Yeah.

[596] They die.

[597] Uh -huh.

[598] And so being gullible in that sense probably did have survival value, and then that translated itself into being gullible about gods and superstitious rituals.

[599] And the child brain would not have any means of distinguishing the sensible advice, like don't eat those berries.

[600] Mm -hmm.

[601] from the stupid advice, how could the child know?

[602] If the child knew, there'd be no reason to have the rule that says, listen to your parents.

[603] Also, they've built a track record, and now this is the 12th thing they tell you, and they've got a pretty good track record.

[604] Yeah, you shouldn't climb up high and listen to that.

[605] And then it gets passed down from generation to generation, because you believe what your parents tell you.

[606] They believe what their parents, namely your grandparents, tell you.

[607] They believe what their parents tell you and so on.

[608] It's very hard to break that cycle.

[609] One of the things I'm most keen on doing is trying to break that, daisy chain effect from parent to child to grandchild, if only we could somehow stop this cycle of inheritance, non -genetic inheritance.

[610] Actually, look at the reason people believe what they do, the religion they believe.

[611] It's almost always the religion of their parents and grandparents.

[612] And they know perfectly well that if they lived in Pakistan, they'd have a completely different set of Yes.

[613] And yet they still go on believing in their own, as in this country, maybe a Christian religion, because childhood indoctrination is an immensely powerful force.

[614] One of my great ambitions is to try to persuade people to stop indoctrinating children in that way.

[615] So, Brett Weinstein was in here, and he was talking about, he has a term for that, right, where this flawed thinking does have a beneficial result.

[616] And those are sometimes the hardest paradigms to break, because even though there may be steeped in error, they have this outcome that appears to confirm the theory.

[617] I forget the name he gave that.

[618] But those seem to be particularly hard things to break.

[619] The result people are getting is the desired result, even though it's not due to the thing they think it's due to.

[620] Does that make sense?

[621] Yes.

[622] You have the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science.

[623] And so why is it important?

[624] What are the stakes that we currently...

[625] You think back through time, of course, you have their crusades, which are insane, and you have putting Galileo in jail.

[626] There's all these measurable ways that religion has slowed down science or imprisoned or resulted in so many deaths and so many wars.

[627] But what currently are the stakes?

[628] And why is it imperative?

[629] Okay, I mean, maybe I could answer that best by saying, I mean, we've just merged with the Center for Inquiry.

[630] Richard Dawkins Foundation has merged.

[631] Okay.

[632] The Center for Inquiry.

[633] And so if I told you about some of the things that we're doing.

[634] I would love to hear that.

[635] I mean, one that's dear to my heart is Teacher Institute for Evolutionary Science, which is teaching teachers how to teach evolution.

[636] This is very important because middle school teachers especially are not well equipped to fend off the hostility that they get from parents, from school boards, from head teachers sometimes, from children even, who have been brainwashed into not believing in evolution.

[637] who actually stop up their ears when evolution comes up in science class.

[638] So we have this program called TIE's teaching Institute for Evolution in Science, which is holding workshops for middle school teachers all over the country.

[639] We've now doing it in all 50 states to teach them how to teach evolution.

[640] That's one that's very close to my heart.

[641] And another of the things we're doing is the translation project, which again is dear to my heart.

[642] this is translating science books and actually the god delusion several of my books into the languages of Islam Arabic, Urdu Farsi and Indonesian so we're translating my books into those languages for downloadable PDFs these are free so I'm waving all rights to royalties or that kind of thing and what we're hoping is that we can use the internet to educate people in countries like Pakistan where their education system is wholly Islam -dominated and get in there and teach about science and about atheism actually.

[643] And so that's another project which is going great at the moment and I think about four or five of my books have already been translated and there'll be more and we hope to get other authors.

[644] Well, for as much as we rag on the internet here and talk about the destruction that social media is doing, there's stories like that, which is traditionally for you to get a book or thousands of books into a theocracy is going to be nearly impossible.

[645] Let me tell you, not thousands, millions.

[646] Before we even started the project, the thing that inspired us was the fact that somebody produced a bootleg translation of the God delusion into Arabic, which has been downloaded 13 million times.

[647] Arabic translation downloaded 13 million times.

[648] Wow.

[649] And that inspired us to set up the God.

[650] translation project.

[651] Is that a scary proposition?

[652] The notion that someone's going to translate that, is there a bit of you that's like, there's just no way it's going to be the exact thing I said?

[653] Do you have any anxiety over that?

[654] I do, and I've got horror stories about other...

[655] Mistranslations.

[656] Yes.

[657] But I try to think of ways of circumventing that.

[658] So that's another one.

[659] Another project we have is called secular rescue, again, largely in the Islamic world.

[660] There are people in the world I think it's all in Islamic countries actually where to be an atheist is a sentence of death, to be a public atheist, to be a, say, a blogger in places like Pakistan, in places like Bangladesh, they have literally been killed for no worse a crime than being an atheist and saying so on the internet.

[661] So secular rescue is a sort of underground railroad for rescuing people whose lives are threatened with mobs of machete -wielding zealots.

[662] And so we do things like get visas for them, pay their airfares, get them safe passage to asylum.

[663] And large numbers of such people have so far been saved.

[664] And that's another very important.

[665] I would have to imagine for you, just on a personal level, that has to be one of the most rewarding aspects to meet someone who you've helped get to safety.

[666] Is that unbelievably rewarding?

[667] That's very true.

[668] That's very true.

[669] I also feel immensely rewarded when people tell me that my books have changed their life.

[670] I get an really enormously gratifying number of those.

[671] Yeah.

[672] And now is there the correlation I would assume there is between education level, standard of living and all that?

[673] Does that map and correlate?

[674] Is this a country gets more?

[675] It does.

[676] Wealth.

[677] Does it become more and more secular?

[678] There's various research on this, including that of Gregory Paul.

[679] You might have him on, actually.

[680] Oh, okay.

[681] He's looked at comparing countries and comparing states within the United States, looking at a correlation between religiosity and social welfare in the general sense.

[682] Basic needs being met.

[683] Needs being met, health care, looking after the elderly, and that kind of thing.

[684] And the more social welfare there is, as in, say, the Scandinavian countries, the less religion there is.

[685] Yes.

[686] And vice versa.

[687] Yes.

[688] So I can see the angle you're taking, which is fantastic.

[689] And I also see another angle being, you know, in every way possible, elevating those areas in a direction that makes them more open to that.

[690] Yes.

[691] Yeah.

[692] Okay.

[693] So I'm just a full -blown atheist.

[694] I'm very comfortable with not knowing the many mysteries that we don't know.

[695] I'm okay with that.

[696] I'm okay that we don't know a ton of stuff.

[697] I've never been too spun out about where did we come from because any answer I get leads me to okay well where the big bang what was before the big bang i'm definitely limited in how i comprehend everything in a life death cycle none of that still has caused me to even be persuaded to embrace god as an answer because then i have the same question where'd he come from or she come from the one recently that has me a little spun out i just want to know what your take is death i'm actually more curious, why is it that no animal has ever mutated to stay alive forever?

[698] If mitosis can make a perfect replicate of itself, it is, in theory, possible that some animal at midlife just makes perfect copies forever and lives forever and passes on its genes.

[699] There's trees that live 10 ,000 years.

[700] Why is it we have no example of a mutation that led to?

[701] so make very extended longevity.

[702] The idea of a survival machine for genes, imagine a gene that makes you live forever, like you say.

[703] That's actually pretty inconceivable, but imagine a gene which makes you more likely to survive when you're young, say, makes you swift or makes you sexually attractive when you're young and makes you less attractive or less likely to survive when you're old.

[704] And to begin with, they're not talking about aging, we're just talking about the fact that the longer you live than more likely you are to be hit by a truck or something.

[705] Right.

[706] Now, let's stick to sexually attractive because that's easy to deal with.

[707] The gene that makes you sexually attractive when you're young, like a peacock, inevitably makes you more likely to die.

[708] Because the predators can, yeah.

[709] Yes, but it doesn't matter because the genes that make you sexually attractive get passed on.

[710] Now, a rival gene that makes you unattractive but live a long time doesn't have the same chances of getting passed on to future generations.

[711] There's a sex difference there.

[712] Well, I was going to say yes, in females, unless they again were somehow arrested at 23 and stayed fertile forever would not be incentivized to but a male...

[713] Okay, well you've probably noticed that pea hens are less brightly colored than peacocks.

[714] Peahens are built for survival.

[715] Peacocks are built To get a mate.

[716] To get a mate and leave tons of genes behind and then die.

[717] There are some animals that literally do die as soon as they've reproduced.

[718] And that's in one way a very sensible thing to do because it means that they're putting absolutely everything into one great big explosive blast of reproduction.

[719] Other animals do it a different way.

[720] Other animals do indeed put more effort into surviving and reproducing year after year after year.

[721] But still the same forces are operating.

[722] The same forces are saying Anything you can do to survive When you're young Infertile Let me put that another way Why do we die of old age Genes that make you die Take cancer A gene that makes you get cancer When you're 10 Will never get reproduced A gene that gives you cancer when you're 20 Will get reproduced somewhat A few years Yes A gene that gives you cancer When you're 80 will get reproduced like crazy.

[723] I mean, we've probably all descended from people who got cancer when they were 80.

[724] Yeah.

[725] We are all descended from people who did not get cancer before they reproduced.

[726] Yes.

[727] And similarly, didn't get eaten by a lion and didn't die for all sorts of other reasons.

[728] We are all descended from ancestors who survived long enough to reproduce.

[729] And surviving for a very long time is, we may occasionally have had an ancestor who reproduced at the age of, 80.

[730] Yeah, I think Clint Eastwoods, will he be in our outliers.

[731] Yeah, that's right.

[732] Mostly we're descended from...

[733] Well, that's the big part of that then is the sexual selection, right?

[734] Well, I chose that.

[735] That's a very vivid example.

[736] Yes, yes.

[737] Actually surviving long enough to reproduce, but the older you are, the more the chances are you've reproduced already, and then you can die.

[738] Right.

[739] To get to talk with you is incredible.

[740] I've been following you on Twitter and defending you in some of your wars over the years.

[741] And you're just an amazing human being.

[742] And I love the work you're doing.

[743] That's very gracious.

[744] Thank you very much.

[745] Yes.

[746] I hope we talk again soon.

[747] Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare.

[748] And now my favorite part of the show, the fact check with my soulmate Monica Padman.

[749] Oh, man, Rob just shit the bad.

[750] we had a really interesting conversation and no one's going to hear it both about a t -shirt about glasses about contacts yeah and it's all flushed down the turlet it's all gone that's the wrist with these podcasts well not when you have a policy of a br which rob knows inside and out in fact i'm going to make you tattoo that on your wrist this year as a new year's resolution but the sequence is usually intro sponsors fact check yeah but it seemed obvious we were in a fact check mode yeah we were really connecting and shit was flying.

[751] I haven't seen...

[752] Headphones on them.

[753] My headphones have been on.

[754] Now you need visual clues.

[755] Jesus.

[756] Yeah, stop blaming everyone else.

[757] Anyways, Wabiwob, if I can try to recreate the magic, is wearing spectacles today, which you really took me by surprise.

[758] And then to come to find out Wabiwob wears contacts, which I didn't know.

[759] And you said you knew.

[760] Yeah, I said I assumed.

[761] Which is an interesting assumption.

[762] Then you told me everyone wears contacts.

[763] Most people.

[764] Most people are wearing Contacts I need some stats on that Most people's eyes deteriorate Yeah but you're 32 and Rob's 12 I mean I expect them to go downhill But maybe they go down hill No a lot of people get contacts and glasses In high school is when you find it Fifth grade Oh geez wobb Well remember my blind friend Callie Yeah Yeah who you argued was legally blind in both eyes Legally blind friend Callie, she got them when she was three.

[765] Oh, my good.

[766] I think little kids in glasses is so cute.

[767] More importantly, the headline is you've got a super cute shirt on it.

[768] Oh, yes.

[769] You got in Nashville this weekend.

[770] Yeah, and it has a nudie lady on it.

[771] That's why you like it.

[772] Well, it's from the world famous nudie's honky tonk bar.

[773] It's very cool.

[774] It's in black and gold, which are my official colors.

[775] I really, I mean, subconsciously, I obviously was thinking of you when I bought this because there's a naked lady on it.

[776] And it's black and gold.

[777] And it's black and gold.

[778] I urge everyone to have an official color scheme.

[779] Do you have one?

[780] Oh, no. You don't?

[781] I don't think so, no. Okay.

[782] Well, I have one black and gold we just talked about it.

[783] And I'm trying to accumulate more things than black and gold.

[784] Okay.

[785] I have black and gold Jordans.

[786] Lincoln's black and gold.

[787] Yeah.

[788] My 06, Ducati Sport 1 ,000, Black and Gold.

[789] Mishinaola Watch, Black and Gold.

[790] Okay.

[791] Anyways, great black and gold shirt.

[792] You look great.

[793] Thank you.

[794] When did you get diagnosed with bad eyes?

[795] I was in high school.

[796] When they turned.

[797] I think.

[798] But they only turned a tiny bit.

[799] There were 30, 20.

[800] That's basically normal.

[801] Yeah.

[802] But remember I told you?

[803] Because then I got glasses and I was like, ew, I don't like the way anything looks now.

[804] Uh -huh.

[805] Too sharp.

[806] Too sharp.

[807] You could see all the freckles.

[808] So I took them off.

[809] Right.

[810] And I tried contacts, but they were too hard for me to do.

[811] Yeah.

[812] They're painful, right?

[813] I wore them once for a movie for six hours, and I said, I can't do this.

[814] We've got to figure out.

[815] Yeah, I thought they were uncomfortable, and they were hard for me to get in physically.

[816] I couldn't do it.

[817] And then I didn't really wear them ever again.

[818] Oh, that's the whole thing.

[819] And then you'll wear them in the evening if you've been drinking and you have to drive home.

[820] Well, not if I've been drinking.

[821] It's just if it's dark out.

[822] And every now and then I'll wear it if I need to read a menu or something.

[823] Right.

[824] Sometimes you'll wear them when we watch TV.

[825] But you're missing so much stuff because Bell and I'll point things out.

[826] They're pretty obvious.

[827] And then you're like, what?

[828] I know.

[829] The person has what?

[830] They have a wine stain all over the front of their shirt.

[831] But remember, I like that I don't notice all these people's imperfections.

[832] You think it's one of the things.

[833] It's one of my great qualities.

[834] You think it's like a part of your character.

[835] But I'd argue it's just a physical limitation.

[836] You can't really take credit for it as a character.

[837] Yes, I can't.

[838] It's not really the eyes.

[839] Like when you're talking about people's tongues being too big.

[840] It's not because my eyes, I can't see.

[841] see their big tongue.

[842] Oh, okay.

[843] Like when you point it out, I'm like, okay, I guess you're right, but who cares?

[844] Well, obviously, who cares?

[845] Good for them.

[846] More tongue, more whatever.

[847] But I'm just, it's just an observation.

[848] Yeah.

[849] Why is it different?

[850] Let me ask you this.

[851] Why is it different to point out if someone is six foot nine in a show?

[852] That's just their height versus their tongue seems to be 18, 20 inches long.

[853] These are just, we're just commenting on large body things, right?

[854] No. Why?

[855] Because one thing you're.

[856] pointing out because it's like, oh, that's weird.

[857] Well, I'm pointing out because it's anomalous or not, I don't want to say not normal because that's not what I mean.

[858] It's, it's new.

[859] It's, it peaked to your interest.

[860] If someone's six foot eight on a reality show, you go, my goodness, that, look at that.

[861] But are you laughing?

[862] No, I'm not laughing at the tongue either.

[863] Yes, you are.

[864] No. You think I was laughing?

[865] You were.

[866] I went, oh my God, that's a big tongue.

[867] And then you would laugh at it.

[868] No, I didn't laugh.

[869] I said he's having a hard time keeping it in his mouth.

[870] exactly that's not laughing that's making fun of him though that's the same way as if the six foot eight guy walked through a door frame and I go he's having a hard time getting through that door frame why is it different tell me it is different because one thing you wouldn't want for yourself the other thing's like sure fine well but who's to say some people are six eight and I think they love it and then I think there's some people that are six eight that hate it sure you know you know there's a difference I mean you're just trying to No, I mean, well, here's what I don't think there's a difference in.

[871] Pointing out that someone's really taller, someone has a big tongue.

[872] They're both the same observation.

[873] This is something that far exceeds like one standard deviation we're used to seeing.

[874] It's the same thing that's being triggered.

[875] But one thing you're saying, I don't like that.

[876] That's the implication.

[877] You didn't say it out loud that that is the implication.

[878] You put that on there.

[879] Don't act.

[880] You're acting so self -righteous.

[881] That's not true.

[882] You want to have a huge tongue in your mouth where you can't really talk.

[883] Well, hold on now.

[884] The person was communicating proficiently.

[885] Well, you said it's hard for him to talk.

[886] I think it requires more effort, yeah, for the person.

[887] I think they're more conscious of keeping it in their mouth.

[888] And you want that?

[889] No. Right.

[890] Ask me if I want to be 6 '8.

[891] Do you want to be 6 '8?

[892] No, I don't.

[893] I wouldn't want to be anything over 6 '4.

[894] You're never mentioning something that's just like, oh, okay, that person's tall.

[895] You're not, you're always putting.

[896] crazy.

[897] When we watch Succession, all I do is talk about everyone's height.

[898] We talk about one person's hype being very short.

[899] No, and one of the gales being tall and one of the guys being tall.

[900] Well, in relation to the short guy.

[901] No. The cousin who worked at, he is inordinately tall.

[902] He is really tall.

[903] And I've commented on that.

[904] Okay.

[905] But you're not saying it in a way that's like, oh, you can't get through a door frame.

[906] He's so tall.

[907] Ew.

[908] Okay.

[909] Okay.

[910] All right.

[911] You're saying I was saying I was.

[912] saying ooh and gross.

[913] That's the subtext.

[914] Well, that's what you've interpreted as the subtext.

[915] Am I wrong?

[916] Yes.

[917] I'm not going, ooh, gross.

[918] I enjoy it.

[919] I'm, I'm more delighted to see something different than I am to see the same old status quo.

[920] I wish you'd just be honest about this.

[921] Is it possible that you've misinterpreted my, um, it's not.

[922] I don't think it is.

[923] I don't think it is.

[924] Because it's not just the tongue You guys note things constantly And it's never about something You're never like Well actually that's not true You guys notice things you like on people as well But even more to my point Round feature So Even more to my point that When you like something It's not the same tone As when you're talking about the tongue Okay When you're talking about someone's beautiful eyes Yes.

[925] Yes, you're right.

[926] When I look at when I'm talking about their beautiful eyes, yes, I would like to have those eyes.

[927] But this is the only point I'm making.

[928] When I'm pointing out that the cousin Brad is six foot six, I don't want six foot six.

[929] And you're not bothered by that.

[930] So that's all I'm saying is when I'm pointing out things that are abnormally large, butts, boobs, height, tongue, ears, nose, whatever.

[931] To me, it's all the same thing as height.

[932] So I guess maybe all I'm asking you to do is get mad when I point out someone's tall just to keep it consistent.

[933] Okay.

[934] I will.

[935] I can also stop vocalizing my observations.

[936] You don't have to.

[937] I am not offended by it.

[938] But you want me to admit my motivation.

[939] I do want you to.

[940] I do want you to.

[941] It's not that your intention is malicious, but when you say it, it's not out of, oh, that's interesting.

[942] That's not.

[943] Not the tone.

[944] Oh, because that's what I'm feeling.

[945] That's what you think you're feeling.

[946] I'll deliver it more on tone of what I mean.

[947] You can keep doing what you're doing, and I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing, which is not noticing.

[948] Okay, you're right.

[949] Okay.

[950] We can keep doing what we do.

[951] How was the podcast you just did?

[952] Fun, I just did a fun podcast called NatchBute.

[953] And it's not about fat naturals.

[954] No, you wanted it to be about fat naturals.

[955] Of course.

[956] But it wasn't.

[957] It wasn't.

[958] It's about beauty.

[959] skin care, makeup, but we went on tangents.

[960] You did.

[961] Did you tell them about your volcanic soap?

[962] I didn't even get there.

[963] We only scratched the surface.

[964] Oh, of all your beauty tips.

[965] I had so much to say.

[966] I didn't get to say very much.

[967] You do know a lot about products.

[968] I love products.

[969] Yeah, should you have a product review cast?

[970] Well, that's what she said.

[971] That's what she has, right?

[972] Oh, she is a cast.

[973] She was saying I should talk about it on my Instagram.

[974] Oh, yeah.

[975] She said, well, you said recently that my Instagram is mysterious.

[976] Oh, she did.

[977] Yeah.

[978] That's kind of neat.

[979] I like to have that.

[980] Yeah.

[981] I did, you know, I felt to embarrass because we talked about one product that I just purchased.

[982] Uh -huh.

[983] Uh -oh.

[984] That's too expensive.

[985] Yeah.

[986] Oh, did she call you out for it being really expensive?

[987] No. No. She didn't.

[988] I mean, she knew.

[989] She knew.

[990] She knew.

[991] We were talking about that.

[992] I mean, she's in the product world.

[993] So she has that product as well.

[994] But it's been gifted to her.

[995] Okay.

[996] And you purchased it.

[997] And I purchased it.

[998] What kind of product is it?

[999] It's a hyaloronic serum.

[1000] Oh, serum.

[1001] And it's $300.

[1002] Oh, my God.

[1003] And how long will it last?

[1004] A couple weeks?

[1005] You only, no, no. I mean, I hope, I hope six years.

[1006] No, do you think it'll last a year then?

[1007] I think it will probably last six months.

[1008] Okay.

[1009] So.

[1010] In just honesty.

[1011] Roughly two bucks a day.

[1012] Well, look, some people are spending six bucks a day smoking cigarettes, which makes their skin look terrible.

[1013] Or getting Starbucks.

[1014] Yeah.

[1015] So if you're spending two bucks a day, make your skin look great.

[1016] I don't, there should be no guilt about that.

[1017] That was fast math.

[1018] Well, and it's rough because it's 365 and only 300, but it's a little less.

[1019] You're spending a little less than, yeah, you probably spend like a buck 80 a day.

[1020] I do like a fancy product.

[1021] Yeah.

[1022] We had a heck of a flight back last night.

[1023] Kristen was not with us on the way home.

[1024] She bounced to Canada post Nashville.

[1025] Something happened on the plane at the end of our flight.

[1026] Yeah, tell people what happened.

[1027] Well, okay.

[1028] So let me just back up that we were first.

[1029] to get in front of the boarding thing.

[1030] Like we were waiting for them to say, getting on the plane.

[1031] Yeah, getting on the plane.

[1032] Clearly, the five of us, you two kids and wabiwob.

[1033] And then they called it.

[1034] And a man literally sprinted in front of us.

[1035] He cut in front of us to go, which I was like, whatever, kind of a turkey move or whatever.

[1036] But I clocked it, right?

[1037] Sure.

[1038] And then it's just so happened that we were all seated directly behind him.

[1039] Me particularly, I was directly behind him.

[1040] Yeah.

[1041] Right when we landed, it woke Lincoln up and she had to go pee really bad.

[1042] Yes.

[1043] She had to pee and then we had to wait on the tarmac for another 10 minutes before she could pee.

[1044] Close to pee in her pants.

[1045] Yes, she really had to go.

[1046] So when we got to the gate, you and Lincoln immediately bolted for the bathroom.

[1047] Yeah.

[1048] And walked in front of the guy.

[1049] Yes.

[1050] The guy in question.

[1051] Mind you, we were in row two.

[1052] He was in row one.

[1053] Yeah.

[1054] So you guys walked past him.

[1055] And I wish I could remember his exact comment.

[1056] Do you remember it?

[1057] To me, he said like, whoa, okay.

[1058] Yeah, just running and get off first or something.

[1059] I didn't.

[1060] Oh, go ahead or something like that.

[1061] Yeah.

[1062] And he did it loud.

[1063] And it was to everyone in the cabin, basically.

[1064] He was trying to shame you guys.

[1065] Right.

[1066] But I could not conceivably take that as shame because I was like, oh, he's joking.

[1067] How could anyone be mad about a kid doing anything?

[1068] Yeah.

[1069] So he was and he said something.

[1070] And then I said, she's just going to the bathroom.

[1071] And then I bent down to get, like, my bag and shit.

[1072] And I said, get over yourself, buddy.

[1073] I wasn't even looking at his face.

[1074] I just was like, oh, fucking get over yourself, right?

[1075] Right, right, right.

[1076] And he goes, oh, oh, get over myself.

[1077] And then I look right at him.

[1078] I go, yeah, get over yourself.

[1079] She's fucking six.

[1080] Yeah.

[1081] And he goes, oh, you want to do this?

[1082] And I go, yeah, motherfucker, let's do this.

[1083] Yeah.

[1084] You want to fucking get in a fight about you being an asshole and yelling a six -year -old?

[1085] I know.

[1086] And then he goes, oh, okay.

[1087] Yeah, let's do it.

[1088] And I'll get the cops.

[1089] And then I stood up right in his face.

[1090] And I go, yeah, you'll get the cops because you're a fucking pussy.

[1091] I shouldn't say pussy.

[1092] We don't say pussy anymore.

[1093] But in that moment, I got mad.

[1094] Well, the reason that we don't say it is because, like, that guy doesn't deserve to be called a pussy.

[1095] Like that's not.

[1096] He did.

[1097] He did.

[1098] I shouldn't use the word pussy.

[1099] I should call him a fucking coward.

[1100] That's what I should call them.

[1101] Like, he's picking a fight.

[1102] Of course.

[1103] He's picking a fight with me. Yeah.

[1104] And then he amy, like, I'm going to call the cops.

[1105] That's a fucking punk move.

[1106] But that's my, I should call him a punk.

[1107] Yes.

[1108] Because my point.

[1109] is a pussy, that's not fair to girls.

[1110] I know.

[1111] That you're putting that guy in.

[1112] In your category.

[1113] That's not fair.

[1114] Yes.

[1115] And also Brunei Brown, or we already debated it.

[1116] Now, my defense of it is, is we can say pussy because we're still saying dick.

[1117] And so we've associated with the male genitalia of a fucking jerk, which sucks for male genitalia, but big deal.

[1118] I get it.

[1119] That's what people are.

[1120] They're a dick.

[1121] And so we've associated pussy with being a coward.

[1122] With being weak.

[1123] No, for me, coward.

[1124] Okay.

[1125] All that's similar, yeah.

[1126] Not great, nor is calling people dick.

[1127] But women have never earned that.

[1128] Women aren't even stereotypically cowards.

[1129] I'm sorry to break your bubble.

[1130] Men haven't fucking earned that we're asshole jerks.

[1131] Our dicks haven't earned us were asshole jerks.

[1132] Our anatomy is synonymous with asshole and jerk.

[1133] No. You either have it both ways or you don't.

[1134] Well, I don't think that's true.

[1135] Neither represents anything, which is my position on.

[1136] it.

[1137] Neither is representing anything.

[1138] A penis isn't an asshole or a jerk.

[1139] But when we call someone a dick, we know exactly what it means they're a jerk and an asshole.

[1140] Pussy does not mean weak or cowardly.

[1141] But when we say pussy, that's what it means.

[1142] So my only argument is, okay, we won't say pussy and then we can't say dick.

[1143] Okay.

[1144] But she said, no, we're going to not say pussy and we're still going to say dick, which I applaud.

[1145] And that's your position as well.

[1146] We'll keep saying dick, but we won't say pussy.

[1147] But you can't make a logical in a courtroom argument.

[1148] Well, I'm trying.

[1149] You're not letting me. Oh, please then.

[1150] Go ahead.

[1151] I'm just saying that the reason people are using it is because when men are jerky, it's a very bravado, masculine way.

[1152] No. See, that's what I reject.

[1153] Masculinity has nothing to a jerk.

[1154] And this is what I don't agree with you.

[1155] I don't want you making those synonymous.

[1156] I'm not.

[1157] Well, you just did.

[1158] No, I'm saying when you're acting like a jerk and you're a guy and you're using the bravado of it that is not something women do yes it is no because i've seen a million women act like complete assholes and yell at people in public yeah but it's not with the same do you think it's the same i call women dicks okay so you're doing then what i'm saying you're taking the quality of being like super in your face is a dick move is a dick move which means asshole or jerk.

[1159] Right.

[1160] It doesn't to me mean masculine.

[1161] But don't you think stereotypically the masculine quality lends itself to that kind of bravado?

[1162] No, I don't think masculinity is synonymous with jerk or asshole or aggression.

[1163] Do you think masculinity lends itself to bravado, not being an asshole or a jerk, but a...

[1164] Well, is bravado bravery?

[1165] It's a lot of things.

[1166] It's an in -your -face big confidence.

[1167] Confidence, you could say?

[1168] I don't think that's male or female.

[1169] I think I've been yelled at by as many women as I have men, probably more women than I have men.

[1170] Okay.

[1171] I mean, that's just how I really don't, unless I'm misunderstanding your point, I think your point is we say dick because it's representative of masculinity and that that aggressive behavior is a masculine trait.

[1172] Yes, aggression.

[1173] And stereotypically, aggression is associated with men more than women.

[1174] And I don't believe that.

[1175] I think women are just as aggressive.

[1176] They're aggressive on the road.

[1177] They're fucking flipping me off.

[1178] They're shaking their head when they drive the guy.

[1179] I don't think either gender has a monopoly.

[1180] If that's true, then that women are just as aggressive, then pussy should never, ever, ever be associated with coward.

[1181] If everything's the same.

[1182] I don't think pussy should.

[1183] I'm not defending that pussy should represent cowardliness.

[1184] What I'm saying is that these two words have come to mean two things.

[1185] One, dick means asshole, jerk, pussy means coward.

[1186] I don't think either of those explain the body part in any way or are actually any kind of window onto what's going on with the body part.

[1187] I think they've been arbitrarily assigned.

[1188] And I think neither has any real meaning.

[1189] But I understand women are going, no, you can't just associate our genitalia with being weak.

[1190] Which is totally fair.

[1191] You're right.

[1192] And also, you shouldn't associate male genitalia with being an asshole or a jerk.

[1193] So if you want to use one, I think you've got to use both.

[1194] That's my position.

[1195] I think it's actually more just testosterone -based, more than gender.

[1196] But I think the more testosterone you have, the more aggressive you are.

[1197] Let's go even deeper.

[1198] It was about my kid.

[1199] So if it had just been about Rob or you, I probably said something smart because I am protective of you.

[1200] So it's a double whammy.

[1201] but I think any woman who just watch their six -year -old daughter get called something by an adult would have also said something.

[1202] I would have said something.

[1203] I think all women would have who were the mother of the child.

[1204] Sure.

[1205] I would have said something to him if I knew what was going on, but I wouldn't have done it the way you did it.

[1206] Well, the escalation part, right.

[1207] Yes.

[1208] It was like very, again, I don't see the point in trying to assign whether that's male or female.

[1209] I think there's something more specific.

[1210] specific going on, which is just like I would do that.

[1211] Aaron Weekly would do that.

[1212] Ryan Hansen wouldn't do that.

[1213] That guy was trying to pick a fight though, too.

[1214] I believe that.

[1215] Yeah, obviously.

[1216] And he found the right guy because I love to get into it.

[1217] So I think I just, I guess what I'm saying is why would we even try to assign my, my response and behavior to being male?

[1218] When in fact, I think it's more the result of me being second born, bunch of stepdad, all these things.

[1219] finding a group where you you demonstrate your love for one another by fighting and sticking up for each other.

[1220] Like those things are so much more relevant than me being male.

[1221] Okay.

[1222] I think.

[1223] You just normally, that's normally my side of the argument.

[1224] It is.

[1225] Is it fun to flip?

[1226] Is it fun for you?

[1227] Yeah.

[1228] Okay.

[1229] I believe what I'm saying to you.

[1230] Right.

[1231] But I just, it feels like.

[1232] Like sometimes it's when it's convenient.

[1233] Yeah.

[1234] In my opinion, I see more of a connection to when people are called dixies because they're being aggressive.

[1235] And I do tend to associate aggression more with men.

[1236] Really more with an abundance of testosterone.

[1237] I definitely associate physical violence more with men.

[1238] Totally agree with you.

[1239] Thousand percent.

[1240] I don't associate people arguing and being shitty to each other in public with being male or female.

[1241] I just, in my own life experience, it seems pretty even.

[1242] Yeah.

[1243] Well, definitely arguing and being mean and being an asshole for sure is not gendered.

[1244] Everyone does that.

[1245] I just generally associate saying he was being a dick to someone who is being aggressive.

[1246] I think that is why that word is associated because men tend to be a little bit more aggressive.

[1247] Look, and maybe there's also like pussy women societally have been told to, be submissive and all of those things.

[1248] So that's also probably true to an extent as well.

[1249] The bottom line is there's nothing weak about a pussy.

[1250] It doesn't make any sense.

[1251] You know what I'm saying?

[1252] There's nothing cowardly about a pussy.

[1253] Right.

[1254] A fucking baby comes out of it somehow.

[1255] And then it rebounds.

[1256] That's incredible.

[1257] I pushed a baby through my penis.

[1258] It would never be the same.

[1259] No. But yeah, I think it's a way to call a guy girl.

[1260] It is.

[1261] It's not about the actual organ.

[1262] And it's not, and it's also not about the actual dick, penis.

[1263] It's about what it represents, which is aggression and entitlement.

[1264] Yeah, yeah.

[1265] But anyway.

[1266] But we got really bogged down.

[1267] Anyways, the point is it really got dicey on the flight at the last minute.

[1268] And it was 1 a .m. Nashville time, which had been daylight savings times.

[1269] It was really 2 a .m. Nashville time.

[1270] Right.

[1271] So I doubt anyone was at their best.

[1272] Sure.

[1273] were.

[1274] That's true.

[1275] We still friends?

[1276] Yeah.

[1277] Okay, good.

[1278] What a great conversation to be having on Dawkins.

[1279] Is this Dawkins?

[1280] Mm -hmm.

[1281] Because for one reason, it's so lowbrow.

[1282] I don't think it is.

[1283] Maybe our highest brow guess, but at the same time, there is all this weird evolutionary stuff happening.

[1284] Yeah.

[1285] Yeah.

[1286] Well, let's say some fun things, though.

[1287] But in the middle of it, there was a lot of fuck yous and you're, this and that.

[1288] And in the middle of it, he goes, I was, I was yelling at your wife.

[1289] referring to you.

[1290] He's like, your wife shoved me or something.

[1291] Oh, my God.

[1292] Which give me a break like you've shoved anyone at any ever.

[1293] Yeah.

[1294] And I go, well, it's very flattering.

[1295] You think she's my wife or she's not.

[1296] And then he goes, oh, then you're nanny.

[1297] And I go, well, no, she's my business partner.

[1298] Like, I had this real moment of conversation in the middle of all that.

[1299] It was like, I'll scream with you and we can fight and everything, but also hear the facts of what's going on.

[1300] She's not my wife and she's not my nanny.

[1301] She's my business partner.

[1302] That's so funny.

[1303] He called the girl's sweet at one point.

[1304] Oh, yeah.

[1305] He called Delta Suite.

[1306] He said I was talking real loud the whole flight, which didn't happen at all.

[1307] I know.

[1308] I mean, we were talking a little bit.

[1309] At the very end, we talked about a poop story.

[1310] And I can see where he was upset about that.

[1311] But he had headphones on.

[1312] And he was asleep.

[1313] Oh, my God.

[1314] He was clutching at straws.

[1315] He was like losing ground really quickly.

[1316] Yeah.

[1317] Yeah.

[1318] Oh, man. Okay, Richard.

[1319] So we didn't have him for very long.

[1320] No. And I will say, in retrospect, I was embarrassed post interview.

[1321] I carried around for a few hours because I wanted to get to his foundation.

[1322] And I thought, oh, we have two hours.

[1323] I'm going to give him a good 35 minutes of foundation at the end.

[1324] But I was kind of, I wanted to talk about selfish gene.

[1325] I want to talk about that.

[1326] I mean, that's such a profound book and I really enjoyed it.

[1327] I know.

[1328] And then I realized from his publicist that we were like, it's time to wrap it up.

[1329] And I still haven't talked about his foundation.

[1330] So I'm like, oh, they must have left like, that guy has an asshole.

[1331] He didn't even do what we were there to do.

[1332] You talked about it a little bit at the end.

[1333] Well, I shifted gears really quickly.

[1334] I still had, I would have like three other things I wanted to talk to him about before we got to the foundation.

[1335] Yeah, that's fine.

[1336] Everything's fine.

[1337] We wish we could have talked to him longer, but you shouldn't feel any guilt about anything.

[1338] I felt like they felt like the exchange wasn't worthwhile because he doesn't do many interviews.

[1339] The guy's flown in from England.

[1340] He's older.

[1341] He's 80 something.

[1342] Yeah.

[1343] You know, so time is valuable.

[1344] This was a religion heavy -ish.

[1345] Right, because he has an atheist foundation promoting atheism.

[1346] Yeah.

[1347] But I weirdly thought, you know, I was waiting to get some pushback from him when I was basically saying, like, I don't care if people believe in God, you know, like I'm not trying to prove to someone there's no God.

[1348] I was ready for him to go, no, we have to prove that to people because it's getting in the way of science.

[1349] It's getting a way of people's health.

[1350] It's getting in the way of, which is all true.

[1351] There's a price tag that comes with religion.

[1352] Now, I'm not one to say whether ultimately it's in the black or the wrong.

[1353] red.

[1354] I don't really care.

[1355] Yeah.

[1356] But there is an objective price tag being paid for a lot of religion.

[1357] Yeah.

[1358] I've been thinking about this since we had Tony on.

[1359] Uh -huh.

[1360] Yeah.

[1361] Because he's definitely the nice side of.

[1362] Oh my God.

[1363] And the Hansen.

[1364] That's what I'm saying.

[1365] So I was thinking about it after Tony left and I was like, hmm, the Christians I know currently.

[1366] Yeah.

[1367] I think they're wonderful.

[1368] Yeah.

[1369] They're thriving.

[1370] They're doing great in their lives.

[1371] And they're really trying to spread love, but not, like, spread the word of God.

[1372] Like, none of these people - They're not proselytizing.

[1373] No one's proselytizing.

[1374] Yeah, I'm kind of anti -prostalitizing.

[1375] I like owning your own truth and sharing your own truth.

[1376] I love that.

[1377] Yeah.

[1378] I don't like proselytizing anything.

[1379] Mm -hmm.

[1380] So.

[1381] So you don't like an atheism organization.

[1382] I don't.

[1383] Yeah.

[1384] I mean, I don't know how...

[1385] No, you can have that opinion.

[1386] Because I see the virtue in sending a loud signal that, hey, if you don't believe in that God, and you're fearful that that means you won't have a moral compass, I'm here, this group of people is here to say that you cannot believe in a higher power and still find your way to a moral footing in this world.

[1387] That's true.

[1388] And that's worthwhile because no one, he is also right, like there will not be an atheist president in the near future.

[1389] I tell you that right now.

[1390] There'll be many other kinds of minority groups occupying White House before an open atheist will.

[1391] So in that way, you go, yeah, this is a group that really kind of has limited access to certain things because people are nervous of atheists.

[1392] I agree.

[1393] And I think it's silly to be nervous of an atheist, obviously.

[1394] But I just don't think telling people what they believed for so long is wrong is that.

[1395] effective personally.

[1396] I agree.

[1397] I think it's just effective to say what you believe in.

[1398] Yeah.

[1399] Oh, when Tony was on, I was singing about this and I was like, I like that all these people believe in those things.

[1400] I think it really makes them better.

[1401] So even though there's an objective price tag, person to person, there's a subjective gain.

[1402] Yeah, but what about, I mean, Prop 8 here in California, which was what, uh, legally forbid any gay marriage was a hundred percent funded by the Mormon church.

[1403] I know.

[1404] So it's like you got to make peace with that.

[1405] And of course, you probably would know many of those Mormons who are beautiful, nice people and getting a lot of their religion.

[1406] But they also did that.

[1407] Yeah.

[1408] They do have causes.

[1409] They do.

[1410] And they're very well organized and mobilized.

[1411] And they're effective.

[1412] I mean, the moral majority, the Christian majority that's gotten presidents elected.

[1413] And, you know, they're a powerful group.

[1414] Definitely.

[1415] It is antithetical to a lot of the Enlightenment ideals, which I certainly hold to be true.

[1416] Yeah.

[1417] It's almost like you just want all these groups to like, go ahead and exist.

[1418] No one's going to try to throw each other.

[1419] But stay the fuck out of everything.

[1420] Right.

[1421] You know?

[1422] Yeah.

[1423] I generally really don't like religion.

[1424] But then when I look at the details of the people, I know, I think, oh, that's just really good for them.

[1425] Mm -hmm.

[1426] Yeah.

[1427] So it's hard for me to also say.

[1428] Everyone's got to totally denounce.

[1429] Like, I don't know what kind of price tag that would come with.

[1430] We don't know.

[1431] We've never lived in a world where nobody believed in God.

[1432] Who knows what that world would look like?

[1433] Well, it looked like Denmark, I think.

[1434] I think a lot of those Western New York people are very largely atheists.

[1435] And even their leaders are outspokenly atheists.

[1436] we're still inordinately religious for a Western industrialized superpower.

[1437] Yeah.

[1438] So, oh, you were talking about how everything objective goes through a human filter making it then unobjective, basically is what you were saying, which is like first -hand accounts, why first -hand accounts aren't reliable at all.

[1439] Right.

[1440] I remember, so two of my friends got held up.

[1441] at gum point.

[1442] Mm -hmm.

[1443] Well, and they were with two other friends.

[1444] So four people.

[1445] Four people total.

[1446] They got held up at gunpoint.

[1447] One person ran away.

[1448] The other person was sort of trying to talk the person down.

[1449] And they all have very different opinions of what happens.

[1450] Oh, fascinating.

[1451] And they were all, it was all happening to them at once.

[1452] Their memories are different.

[1453] What's the range of memories on it?

[1454] I mean, nothing too crazy, but just like what they remember.

[1455] Like, did they all agree the person was the same color?

[1456] They all agree the person was the same size.

[1457] They all agree the person was...

[1458] I think the same color, yes.

[1459] I don't know about size.

[1460] But yeah, there's just discrepancies.

[1461] And when they were talking to the police, the police said that.

[1462] Like, yeah, these first -hand accounts are really not all that helpful because everyone has a different opinion in the moment.

[1463] I mean, your brain isn't such a fight or flight.

[1464] Yeah, I wonder if a fifth person or now a sixth person, because we have the gunmen in the mix.

[1465] If there was a sixth person safely across the street observing the whole thing, I wonder if that account would be pretty good.

[1466] I wonder also, though, I think it just comes with seeing things that are heightened.

[1467] Like, your heart, like everything in your body also changes.

[1468] Yes.

[1469] All the instruments by which you're taking on data have altered themselves.

[1470] You know, and it's true.

[1471] And if you're the sixth person across the street watching this thing, here's the variation that could have.

[1472] exist.

[1473] You're either someone who already thinks downtown Detroit is a shithole and it's been taken over by fucking gangsters and scumbags.

[1474] And then you see that and you're like, yep, this place is a piece of shit.

[1475] I knew it.

[1476] And it was ruined by so and so.

[1477] Like it goes directly into whatever prestanding theory you had the decay of the city.

[1478] Yeah.

[1479] Now, if you're, you love downtown Detroit, you're like, this is such a fun, great place.

[1480] And you see that and you go, Oh, bummer.

[1481] That person's probably really struggling and needs something.

[1482] Yeah.

[1483] And this is the situation we've put them in.

[1484] Right there, you have two dramatically different reeds of the whole thing.

[1485] Yeah, I know.

[1486] Yeah, we're useless.

[1487] Yeah.

[1488] That's where AI is going to kick in.

[1489] AI will just spit out a prognosis.

[1490] They'll go like, nope, this is exactly what happened.

[1491] But where?

[1492] The robots are going to have to just be everywhere watching.

[1493] Well, there'll be video cameras everywhere.

[1494] And then they'll be like, you know, interpreting what happened.

[1495] Oh, my God.

[1496] Isn't that a weird possible reality where the truth is known?

[1497] No one would want to accept it.

[1498] There'll be no human judgment of it.

[1499] But there'll also be no emotional truth.

[1500] And emotional truth is real.

[1501] That's what the point I was trying to make that I didn't do a good job of, which is like, reality is from reality.

[1502] Yeah.

[1503] It's going to enter this brain, which is not reality.

[1504] So who cares?

[1505] So what's the point of, I know, I know.

[1506] A little bit of it is like you got to acknowledge that.

[1507] We're not a computer taken on the data and we're not AI.

[1508] So there's something else happening we need to correct for.

[1509] Yeah.

[1510] Acknowledge.

[1511] Yes.

[1512] When I was reading on this eyewitness stuff, so this one article said, the uncritical acceptance of eyewitness accounts may stem from a popular misconception of how memory works.

[1513] Many people believe that human memory works like a video recorder.

[1514] The mind records events and then on cue plays back an exact replica of them.

[1515] On the contrary, psychologists have found that memories are reconstructed rather than played back each time we recall them.

[1516] The act of remembering is more akin to putting puzzle pieces together than retrieving a video recording.

[1517] It really goes to show, I think, this is dangerous because there is a reality.

[1518] And facts are facts.

[1519] They are, yeah.

[1520] So I don't want to diminish that.

[1521] But I will say it's a good thing to think about because your life is your memory of your life.

[1522] Your life is the story you're telling.

[1523] Your life is the puzzle pieces you've decided to hold on to and assemble.

[1524] Yeah.

[1525] So as you move through life, your actual attitude will become the puzzle pieces you have for the rest of your life to build your story.

[1526] Yeah.

[1527] So it's like if you're innately positive or you put a lot of time into trying to be positive and trying to see good, that's going to be the puzzle pieces you end up with.

[1528] That's what you'll store.

[1529] Yeah.

[1530] And if you're only putting garbage in, if everything sucks and everything's negative, well, what else could you build?

[1531] You know, you can build a, bake a cake with spoiled eggs.

[1532] Can't do it.

[1533] It's going to be a shitty cake, I assume.

[1534] Maybe they're delicious.

[1535] It's going to make you sick.

[1536] Yeah.

[1537] So you said Clint Eastwood reproduced when he was 80.

[1538] So he has a 22 -year -old and he's 89.

[1539] He has a, I think he has a younger child than that.

[1540] I looked up his kids.

[1541] I didn't see anyone younger.

[1542] Could that have been 18 years ago?

[1543] I knew he had a 3 -year -old.

[1544] Anyways, so he's got a 22 -year -old kid.

[1545] How old is he?

[1546] He's 89.

[1547] Okay.

[1548] So, 67.

[1549] There's also that Italian.

[1550] That's still old.

[1551] That's old as old.

[1552] Oh, so you said Brett Weinstein had a name for the theory where it's hard to break cycles because if it has its desired effect, even if the logic is skewed behind it.

[1553] Oh, right.

[1554] Then why would you break the pattern?

[1555] I emailed him to find out what the name of that was and he hasn't responded yet.

[1556] Oh, I wish I had brought my computer because I bet I was in my own notes because I asked him.

[1557] about it when we remember them.

[1558] Oh, you did?

[1559] Yeah.

[1560] Dang it.

[1561] Dang it.

[1562] So if it, maybe it's in our episode with him.

[1563] Maybe people already know.

[1564] Oh, it is.

[1565] I believe.

[1566] But we'll punt this and I'll look in my notes and I'll be able to tell us.

[1567] Okay.

[1568] Unless he responds.

[1569] You might respond.

[1570] You might.

[1571] Um, I thought it was really sweet that you wanted him to sign your book.

[1572] That was cute.

[1573] You were a fan.

[1574] Oh, yeah.

[1575] Big, big, big, big fan.

[1576] Yeah.

[1577] Yeah.

[1578] Yeah.

[1579] Oh, yeah.

[1580] One of the, one of the few guys.

[1581] I guess I was actually like shitting a brick before we talked to.

[1582] Yeah.

[1583] Like, oh my God, I'm going to be so dumb.

[1584] If you're going to study the way that these people have studied and come up with theories that are so breakthrough.

[1585] Yeah.

[1586] I find that to be like.

[1587] It is insane.

[1588] It's insane.

[1589] It is.

[1590] And I recognize it's a level that is like 29 stops ahead of what I can do.

[1591] That's true.

[1592] But also then with that knowledge is like, okay, so he's operating on that level.

[1593] Like, I'm not, if I make a mistake in front of.

[1594] him.

[1595] I'm like, who cares?

[1596] Right.

[1597] If I make a mistake in front of Mike, sure.

[1598] I would really care.

[1599] Yeah, I guess that's about, yeah, how you want to be.

[1600] Yeah, how I want that person to think of me. Like, he's not ever going to think of anyone who has a normal brain, even a brain operating at a high level like yours.

[1601] He's never going to be like, that guy's so genius.

[1602] Yeah, he's just not because I don't even think he has that capacity.

[1603] You're right.

[1604] And yeah, ultimately, that's what I want.

[1605] Exactly.

[1606] I want him to walk out of here shaking his head and going like, God, we lost a good one.

[1607] He should have gone into science.

[1608] I know.

[1609] I know.

[1610] I know you want.

[1611] And I don't blame you for wanting that at all.

[1612] But it's like even if you created the theory of relativity in the room in front of him, he's not even probably going to be able to take that in the moment as something profound.

[1613] Okay, right.

[1614] So that's maybe another regret of mine and a little embarrassment.

[1615] I got to say, I was very proud of myself that I didn't try to make Sam Harris think I was smart.

[1616] Yeah.

[1617] But I do think I tried to.

[1618] to make Dawkins think I was smart a little bit.

[1619] I don't think I bullseied that I would say I was off by about 30%.

[1620] You're just a little boy.

[1621] I got it.

[1622] Yeah, I got a fanboy.

[1623] Yeah, that's cute.

[1624] I think that's so cute.

[1625] I had him sign my fucking book.

[1626] You're right?

[1627] I know.

[1628] I love that.

[1629] I just think that is so sweet.

[1630] Do you have any more facts about Richard?

[1631] Oh, no, I don't.

[1632] Oh, okay.

[1633] I just noticed your keyboard was closed.

[1634] Yeah, but it was exciting to get him and I'm happy that you got to talk to one of your heroes.

[1635] And I hope that you don't feel bad about that interview.

[1636] You really shouldn't.

[1637] Okay.

[1638] You did sound smart because you are smart.

[1639] You need to remember that.

[1640] I don't understand why you keep forgetting.

[1641] I know, I know.

[1642] It's so silly.

[1643] You're so stupid.

[1644] You're so dumb.

[1645] That's why.

[1646] All right, I love you.

[1647] I love you.

[1648] Follow armchair expert.

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