Spicy Ideas From Evolutionary Biology - Dr Jerry Coyne

1. 0:00 – 15:34

   Dr. Coyne’s Take On Evolution

   1. CWChris Williamson0:00

      How do you describe the central thread of your work over the years?

   2. JCDr Jerry Coyne0:06

      Well, I'm retired now, so the thread has sort of changed direction. But when I was a scientist, I call myself a superannuated scientist now, but when I was working in the lab, I worked on the problem of speciation or the origin of species, which is, of course, the title of Darwin's 1859 book. And it's a problem that Darwin didn't solve, (laughs) so that's why I took it up when I was a graduate student. I think we know a lot more now. We certainly... Darwin knew almost nothing about speciation, so to call his book the Origin of Species is a bit of a misnomer. He should call it the Origin of Adaptations-

   3. CWChris Williamson0:46

      Hmm.

   4. JCDr Jerry Coyne0:47

      ... which might be a natural selection. But in terms of species, there is a lumpiness of nature. The fact that creatures are not a spectrum, but they're discrete, more or less discrete. It's, these, that's a problem that Darwin didn't solve, and that's the problem I was working on.

   5. CWChris Williamson1:04

      Right. How do you... What's the layman's description of speciation?

   6. JCDr Jerry Coyne1:08

      Well, are you talking about them, how it happens or what, how I define it?

   7. CWChris Williamson1:13

      Give us both.

   8. JCDr Jerry Coyne1:14

      Well, the definition is simply the... Speciation is the origin of species, and if you look at nature, as I said, you don't find that it's a continuum all the way from bacteria to, you know, humans. It, but that's not a, a hierarchy, that's just what people perceive as a hierarchy. It's lumpy. So if you look at a bird out your window, you're gonna know what it is instantly. You're not gonna say, "I don't know. It looks like a half black bird and a half robin or whatever." No. They come in pretty discrete packages. And that is the problem of speciation. What on earth would make a continuous evolutionary process give rise to entities that are absolutely discontinuous? And that's the, that's really the problem of the origin of species-

   9. CWChris Williamson2:02

      Right.

   10. JCDr Jerry Coyne2:02

       ... that Darwin made almost no inroads on it whatsoever.

   11. CWChris Williamson2:07

       Why was it a difficult circle to square for him?

   12. JCDr Jerry Coyne2:10

       Well, because it, in order to attack the problem with speciation, you have to know what species are. And although we say nature is lumpy and these lumps are species, that, that's not really the problem. The question is, well, why do we get those lumps? And it was in about the 1930s that people realized that those lumps are kept separate by what we call reproductive isolated barriers. That is, barriers that keep the genes from one species from mixing with those of another species. For example, those barriers could be, um, that the hybrids are sterile or inviable, so even if they mate, you don't get any intermixing, or they, they couldn't like each other. I mean, w- like a lion and a tiger, they'll mate in the zoo and produce things like ligers or tiglons, uh, which they have, but where they co-occur or where they used to co-occur, in, let's say the Gir forests of India, they don't interbreed. And in nature there's a lot of animals that just simply don't like the way they look, they don't like the, um, mating behavior of the species, they don't like the pheromones of the other species, or in the case of plants, they produce pollen and eggs at different times. That's called temporal isolation. So there's all these barriers that keep members of different species apart. Now that immediately raises the problem that you wanna solve, which is how do these barriers come about to keep species separate in a continuous evolutionary process? So that's what I was working on.

   13. CWChris Williamson3:45

       I guess the, uh, Batman to your Bruce Wayne of, uh, work over the years has been advocating for evolution reviews, advocating for the evolutionary method overall, that this is something that is true and that people should believe in pushing back against anti-evolutionary positions. Is that a, a fair assessment?

   14. JCDr Jerry Coyne4:06

       Yeah, I spent a lot of my time, particularly when I was younger, arguing against creationists and creationism. And, um, it finally resulted in me having to write a book about it called Why Evolution Is True. Um, because when I taught my first evolution course, which was probably in about 1983, back in the Pleistocene, um-

   15. CWChris Williamson4:28

       (laughs)

   16. JCDr Jerry Coyne4:28

       ... the first thing any professor does when he or she writes a course is to see, well, you pick up the textbook (laughs) that's relevant to the course and you see how it's organized and you get ideas about how to write the course. Well, when I did that for evolution, I looked at the evolution textbooks and none of them had anything about the evidence for evolution in them. They just assumed that you assumed that evolution was true, and then you go into things like population genetics and speciation, et cetera. But they left behind all the stuff that was so prominent in the textbooks of the '20s and '30s, why evolution, why biologists believe evolution is true, and why it is a scientific fact, as we call it, provisional truth-

   17. CWChris Williamson5:13

       Mm-hmm.

   18. JCDr Jerry Coyne5:13

       ... and not just a mere speculation.

   19. CWChris Williamson5:16

       Is it interestingly ironic in some way that you're pretty well known for pushing back on right-wing anti-evolution reviews, and it was funny that in the past, left-wing people used to use evolution as a cudgel to beat their right-wing foes' cherished beliefs. And now the Right uses it for the same reason against their left-wing foes to cudgel their cherished belief. Like, in, in politics, it seems like, I don't know, a fact functions as a weapon that's laid out in the open and either side can pick it up, but you've got, uh, religious evolution deniers on the Right and evolutionary psychology deniers on the Left. You've got these two groups both arguing, but, but also sometimes, I guess, when it's convenient, certain members of certain groups using it to hit each other over the head with.

   20. JCDr Jerry Coyne6:05

       Yeah, I mean, there are... Well, evolutionary psychology is really only the- it's the purview of the right-wing cudgels. But in general, if you look at right versus left, at least in America, and I think that's probably true in the UK as well, um, far more people on the left accept evolution as a fact r- rather than the right. It's almost a touchstone of ignorance. And h- yeah, I'm, uh, here I'm sharing my political predilections, but it's a touchstone of ignorance to deny that evolution is a scientific fact. And again, as fact, in science, we don't have anything as a fact that's beyond acceptance. You know, we have things that y- are sort of somewhat acceptable, um, and then we have things that are so widely accepted that you would bet your fortune on them, like the formula of water is H2O.

   21. CWChris Williamson7:01

       Mm-hmm.

   22. JCDr Jerry Coyne7:02

       And so there's various degrees of factoid. Um, but in general, the left accepts factoid more than the right, but that, uh... In general, however, it's still both surprising and depressing how few Americans accept that evolution is true. If you look at the latest Gallup poll where they ask people just about the origin of humans, do humans evolve, um, were they created by God in the biblical manner, or did they sort of evolve but God tweaked the pathway here and there, maybe putting in consciousness or a big brain? And you find out that only about 23% of Americans accept the fully naturalistic view of evolution, the one that I teach, that it's purely a materialistic process without any supervision- supernatural intervention. And about 30% of Americans accept the fact that humans sort of evolved but God had a hand in it now and then. And about 40% of Americans ad- buy the biblical view. Humans were created in seven days and haven't changed since then, and all- in fact, all creatures have. And so basically, about 71% of Americans reject naturalistic evolution. So this is what we're up against. And those include, of course, both Democrats and Republicans-

   23. CWChris Williamson8:26

       Mm.

   24. JCDr Jerry Coyne8:27

       ... but, but, uh, the percentage is higher amongst the right.

   25. CWChris Williamson8:33

       On the scale of betting your entire finances on H2O to something that's a lot more spurious, where would you place evolutionary psychology as a field?

   26. JCDr Jerry Coyne8:43

       Well, that's problematic. I mean, I started off being a sort of a foe of evolutionary psychology because when it started off, there was a lot of just-so stories told. People would look at a human behavior, they'd make up a reason, not the best ones. I mean, people like David Buss or Touby and Cosmides would, you know, approach it scientifically and say, "Well, you know, I'm not just gonna make up a story, I'm gonna make up a testable story and make predictions." So to assess the field as a whole, all I can say is it's becoming less of a storytelling field and more of a scientifically mature field in which they make predictions. So-

   27. CWChris Williamson9:23

       Mm.

   28. JCDr Jerry Coyne9:25

       ... um, it still has its problems. For example, it's not nearly as, um, well-founded as, say, molecular evolutionary genetics is, where you can sequence the DNA and come to absolutely, to conclusions that everybody can verify. Evolutionary psychology has the problem that if you're trying to explain a human behavior, um, like for example, the sort of step- stepparent effect, that stepparents tend to kill their offspring or hurt them more than a natural-born parent, how do you test that? You know? I mean, if you make up a story, well, those people left more o- the stepparents that killed off or hurt or injured their stepchildren left more offspring than those that didn't because they left more of their own children, well, how do you verify that (laughs) ? There are predictions that you can make, however, about test stories like that. I'm not really, uh, familiar with that, but my own way to test it would be the, the pet theory. That is, if you h- have your own pet when you get married, then you tend to treat it really good. Where if you marry somebody and they've already have your own pet, it's the equivalent of a stepchild. So my prediction, which I don't think has been tested at all, is that you would treat the step-pet a lot worse than you would treat your own pet if you got married to somebody.

   29. CWChris Williamson10:48

       Ah, we need to ring David. David, this is the next-

   30. JCDr Jerry Coyne10:51

       (laughs)
2. 15:34 – 26:36

   The Impact Of Woke Culture On The Sciences

   1. JCDr Jerry Coyne15:34

      um-

   2. CWChris Williamson15:35

      What does progressive math consist of?

   3. JCDr Jerry Coyne15:37

      Uh, well, it's basically using examples that are... that instantiate, say, equity, or something like that, you know. It hasn't affected really mathematics so much except that there's one area in which people say that two plus two can equal five if you want it to. That's part of this sort of cer- science that's been infected by postmodernism at which each person has their own truth and there's no absolute truth but just a warring of powers. And the two plus two are five is sort of the exemplar of that. People have made arguments that, yeah, you can say that i- if you think about it the right way, but math has been less infected than biology because it's a self-contained system of axioms and deductions and stuff.

   4. CWChris Williamson16:29

      Mm-hmm.

   5. JCDr Jerry Coyne16:30

      But chemistry has, physics has. I mean, the word black hole is now ............................

   6. CWChris Williamson16:37

      (laughs)

   7. JCDr Jerry Coyne16:37

      Well, it has. It's just like, like, a brown bag lunch. You can't say that anymore, to refer to your paper bag lunch, because it's thought to be racist. So-

   8. CWChris Williamson16:45

      I- I saw there was a, a de-gendering, or a de- demasculinizing, um, of, uh, d- different, uh, terms, and one of them, manhole. The-

   9. JCDr Jerry Coyne17:00

      Oh, yeah. Uh-

   10. CWChris Williamson17:01

       That- that- that was up for the, for the chop.

   11. JCDr Jerry Coyne17:04

       Yep, yep. Yeah, there's any number of terms that you can't use, and I just... thank goodness I don't teach anymore because I know that if I were to say something that would get me in trouble, it would just blurt out 'cause almost anything could get you in trouble these days (laughs) .

   12. CWChris Williamson17:20

       Yeah, I guess it depends where you teach, and I would also guess that if someone's doing evolutionary biology now, you know, with the field being a bit more mature, especially if... If you're in an EP class and you're saying this is very judgmental, what, so you're saying that men are stronger than women? Like, it- you know, it's like, wh- what are you doing, what are you doing taking this course? Why are you taking this course, right? Like, if you're gonna come in and debate the fundamental foundation, which is you can see MRI scans of in utero developing babies after three months can tell sex differences in the brain, right? An- an fMRI is able to detect at age 10 with 90% accuracy the difference between a boy's brain and a girl's brain. By the way, that's about the same accuracy that humans have of detecting the difference between a man and a woman by looking at their face. So it's the same level of accuracy-ish. So, yep-Well, a- and this is all just socialization? How many times do we need to, like, rid us, like, wipe this slime off of us?

   13. JCDr Jerry Coyne18:24

       (laughs) Well, I think, I mean, at least this is a suggestion that why the Democrats didn't do well in the last presidential election, um, this kind of, we call it wokeness. I'm anti-woke, and yet I'm a left winger. I'm a classic Democrat, sort of liberal, towards the center but still on the left, and yet I can see our own party sabotaging itself by insisting, for example, that there is not two sexes, things... Or that there's no differences between males and females that aren't due to socialization. And anybody with two neurons to rub together knows that's true.

   14. CWChris Williamson19:02

       (laughs)

   15. JCDr Jerry Coyne19:02

       Yeah. So-

   16. CWChris Williamson19:05

       Uh, do you know s- do you know Steve Stewart-Williams? Do you know who that is?

   17. JCDr Jerry Coyne19:07

       Yes, I do.

   18. CWChris Williamson19:08

       Yeah.

   19. JCDr Jerry Coyne19:08

       He's in, uh, Southeast Asia, I think.

   20. CWChris Williamson19:10

       Singap- Singapore, maybe, University of Singapore, twinned with Nottingham. Obviously, the University of Singapore twinned with Nottingham. Um, his new book, I think... I can't remember the working ti- he's changed the title, like, five times. Um, but his new book is all about sex differences, and, um-

   21. JCDr Jerry Coyne19:29

       Oh.

   22. NANarrator19:29

       Not right now, so.

   23. CWChris Williamson19:30

       I... It's not, it's not out. I think he's currently... it's still in process, which is hence why he, he hasn't decided on a, on a title. So you mentioned, uh, that you did this paper. I also saw a talk of yours, uh, where you attempted to juggle at least a couple of hot potatoes, uh, with regards to biology. What are the areas of evolution, uh, evolutionary theory, the, a- and biology that ideology has sort of come in and tried to pervert the most?

   24. JCDr Jerry Coyne19:58

       Well, there were six. I mean, the two hottest potatoes were, and I'll, I'll give the sentences that people say that are wrong, very ideologically motivated. There are more than two sexes. That sex is a spectrum and not binary. That's one of them. The other one is that race... and this comes straight out of, uh, I think the, uh, the, an American medical journal, but it could have been The Lancet, which is also way woke, um, that, um, that race is a s- a human construct without any scientific basis whatsoever.

   25. CWChris Williamson20:34

       Yeah.

   26. JCDr Jerry Coyne20:34

       That's two of them. Males and females are not biologically different from one another. That's another third misguided statement. Um, that Indigenous science, that is the so-called way of knowing of Indigenous people like the Maori in New Zealand, is just as good as modern science. That's another one. Um, that people don't differ from one another in any meaningful genetic ways, that the differences between you see between people, not the way they look, 'cause y- obviously that's... has a genetic basis (laughs) , but the way they behave is not a genetic basis. I'm not... I can't remember the sixth one, but that's, that-

   27. CWChris Williamson21:18

       Oh, wow. So I didn't know that behavioral genetics had snuck in as well.

   28. JCDr Jerry Coyne21:21

       Oh, yeah.

   29. CWChris Williamson21:21

       So... Oh, right. Okay. Right. This really is like the six, the, uh, I don't know, Six Horsemen of the Apocalypse this time. Um-

   30. JCDr Jerry Coyne21:27

       Yeah. You know, this whole... The way we express behavioral genetics is a term called heritability, which is basically the proportion of a given behavior across members of a population that's due to differences in their genes. So for example, there's a heritability of, um, smoking, w- I mean, almost every human behavior has a nonzero genetic component to it.
3. 26:36 – 35:08

   How Humans Developed Into The Conscious Animals We Are Today

   1. JCDr Jerry Coyne26:36

      same path.

   2. CWChris Williamson26:37

      I was gonna say, how long... So, we split off from the African plains how long ago? 30,000 years ago? 40,000 years ago?

   3. JCDr Jerry Coyne26:46

      I don't know. People usually give the date of about 50, 60,000 years ago was the big migration out of Eur- out of the Africa that spread throughout the world.

   4. CWChris Williamson26:57

      Mm-hmm.

   5. JCDr Jerry Coyne26:57

      So we're actually fairly young. That's the-

   6. CWChris Williamson26:59

      Right. How- how long do you... H- how long do you think that would have had to have, uh, kept going for without re-globalization for, uh, speciation to have occurred within humans?

   7. JCDr Jerry Coyne27:09

      Oh, that's a good question. I have a book too called Speciation, which is what I wrote as my technical book, my fir- my real first book. And so-

   8. CWChris Williamson27:17

      I'm not- I'm not smart enough to understand that one, so I'll get you to explain it to me.

   9. JCDr Jerry Coyne27:20

      Oh, yeah. A couple of friends of mine who say, "Oh, you wrote this book. It's so great. Can I read it?" And I say, "No, you don't wanna read it. It's for graduate students." They buy it anyway and pay 50 bucks and they say, "I can't understand it." But it was an attempt, and I think a very good attempt because nobody's ever tried to duplicate it, to explain what we know about how species come about and how they're defined and stuff. I can't remember... Oh, how long would it take, you were asking? And so, well, we don't know in primates... Well, I mean, we know that chimpanzees and humans, which are definitely two different species, but we know that because the experiment has been done of interbreeding them (laughs) without success. They're, uh, about seven to eight million years separate. So we know that at least at the outside, that's what it takes to make a species in primates.

   10. CWChris Williamson28:09

       Mm-hmm.

   11. JCDr Jerry Coyne28:09

       We're only 60,000 years separated. So, I mean, that's only two figures. It varies. We did a study in fruit flies, Drosophila, seeing how long it takes to make a species if they're separated, and it's something like one to two million years. So-

   12. CWChris Williamson28:26

       So is it... It- it surely it's not based on time. It would be based on generations, right? 'Cause the mechanism that this is working on is genetic mutation, I have to imagine.

   13. JCDr Jerry Coyne28:33

       Yeah, but there's the thing called the molecular clock, which runs on absolute time, not generation time. And so you can-

   14. CWChris Williamson28:41

       Okay. What's the m- I- I've never heard of this. What is it?

   15. JCDr Jerry Coyne28:43

       Yeah, so the molecular clock is a way of calibrating how old a pair of species is by looking at the differences in their DNA. And it turns out, for reasons that I won't go into because they're rather arcane, that the clock ticks with absolute time and not generation time. And it has to do with neutral mutation rates and population size and stuff. But at any rate, you can get a pretty accurate estimate of how old two species are by simply looking at the divergence between their DNA. So what we did was take Drosophila in all stages of speciation, different populations, species that could still interbreed but didn't like to, and then fully isolated species that couldn't produce hybrids, and we looked at the, uh, at the genetic dif- differences between those groups. And that way, we could get a curve of reproductive isolation over time.

   16. CWChris Williamson29:38

       Mm-hmm.

   17. JCDr Jerry Coyne29:39

       Nobody had ever done that before because the data didn't exist for any group except for fruit flies. And it's still my most cited paper.

   18. CWChris Williamson29:46

       Congratulations.

   19. JCDr Jerry Coyne29:46

       And the conclusion was that if you're geographically isolated, it's about a million to two million years until you get to the point where-

   20. CWChris Williamson29:54

       We had- we had bags of time. We could have spent ages bringing the modern world around and we would have still been okay.

   21. JCDr Jerry Coyne30:00

       Yeah.

   22. CWChris Williamson30:01

       Do we- do we know if, uh, the offspring of Homo sapiens and Neanderthals, if you- if those two mated, do we know if they were viable?

   23. JCDr Jerry Coyne30:12

       Not only were they viable, they were fertile. And we know that because we all carry... well, not all of us, but most of us carry Neanderthal genes.

   24. CWChris Williamson30:21

       Right. Of course. Of course, of course.

   25. JCDr Jerry Coyne30:22

       Genes that- that- that are Homo sapiens- sapiens and a Homo sapiens Neanderthalensis. I consider them the same species, although there's a big argument about it. I consider them the same species because they mated with each other and some of the genes of those hybrids got back into Homo sapiens sapiens, and we carry them around. And that is an evolutionary remnant of the fact that yes, we interbred with them-... if Neanderthals were still around, I have little doubt that they would be carrying genes from Homo sapien sapiens. That's-

   26. CWChris Williamson30:54

       A- an- an evolutionary artifact of the, uh, the fact that people like to have sex.

   27. JCDr Jerry Coyne31:00

       Yeah.

   28. CWChris Williamson31:00

       And that if it looks about right-

   29. JCDr Jerry Coyne31:02

       (laughs)

   30. CWChris Williamson31:03

       ... we'll-
4. 35:08 – 48:03

   Why Human Adaptations Vary Around The World

   1. JCDr Jerry Coyne35:08

      come by.

   2. CWChris Williamson35:09

      When it comes to ethnic groups, have you looked at why it is, uh, Asians, East Asians, uh, Africans, uh, Caucasians... What is the reason for the- the main differences that we see either in the way that they present, uh, in the sort of, uh, shape, I don't know what that's called, morphology or whatever, uh, the shape of their bodies, um, do you know the adaptive explanation for why different groups became that way?

   3. JCDr Jerry Coyne35:41

      Well, for some traits, yeah, we think so. I mean, the most obvious one is skin pigmentation because you can draw a map of the world and look at the average degree of pigmentation, and you can see that in the hottest areas or the sunniest areas, you get darker skin, which is probably a protection against melanoma. And the, the other side of the coin is, well, why do you get light skin when you leave that area? 'Cause you can still get melanomas from the sun and it's because you want to get vitamin D from the sun, and you don't have to worry about, you know... For them, the importance of getting vitamin D is- is more important than getting melanomas when you're in an area where there's not so much sun.

   4. CWChris Williamson36:26

      Mm-hmm.

   5. JCDr Jerry Coyne36:27

      So that's the explanation. That's just one trait, though. There are many, many differences between humans. The shape of the hair, whether it's curly or straight, eye color, um...

   6. CWChris Williamson36:38

      Are those adaptive? Is it, uh... Green eyes adaptive compared with brown?

   7. JCDr Jerry Coyne36:41

      No idea. I mean-

   8. CWChris Williamson36:42

      (laughs) Good. See? They-

   9. JCDr Jerry Coyne36:45

      Uh-

   10. CWChris Williamson36:45

       For all of the people that say, "Evolutionary scientists, they never say, 'I don't know,'" here we are, evolutionary scientists saying, "I don't know."

   11. JCDr Jerry Coyne36:51

       Well, it would be a pretty pathetic scientist that never admitted ignorance when he or she didn't (laughs) know the answer. There's a lot of things we don't... And even physicists, why is there dark matter, you know, or- (laughs) and dark energy, they- they have to say they don't know.Um, is string theory right? We don't know. Um, you know, but there are some traits that we do know. For example, the Tibetans have a higher... Have a, have a, um, genetic basis to, to hang on to oxygen more in their hemoglobin and clearly that's adaptive because they live in an oxygen-poor environment ... So that's a trait where we know, and there's probably about a dozen traits where we... But they're not the kind of things that interest people. We want to know, you know, why people have curly hair. Or another one that's probably true is that, um, people who live in cold climates, like the Inuits in Alaska or, um, Canada tend to be short and stocky, and that, that's a general rule in the animal kingdom because limbs and protruding parts tend to be heat re- heat reservoirs, giving off heat. So you don't want to have long arms or... You want to have a short stocky body to prevent heat loss. So that's probably another trait for which we think is probably due to natural selection because it's also true in other animals.

   12. CWChris Williamson38:17

       Mm-hmm.

   13. JCDr Jerry Coyne38:17

       Other animals that... I mean, I think it's called Allen's Rule, that's what it is, that as you go to colder climates, the protruding parts, which include the ears of jackrabbits... I mean, if you look at an Arctic rabbit, its ear is like this. If you look at a jackrabbit in the desert where they need to radiate heat, their ears are huge. So that's an example. Um, and that's probably a case in humans as well. But, you know, with things like hair color, eye color, um... I can't remember the politically correct word for the... Oh, the San pygmies, they used to be called, the San and the Bushmen. Why they're small? I'm not sure. I mean, they live in a hard environment, but they're small and we don't know the ex- explanation for that. It would be hard to test that, so.

   14. CWChris Williamson39:05

       I, uh, I was told the other day, this may be just a story. Again, I've got my bro science cap on. Um, the reason that Irish and Scottish and English people, uh, get rosacea... So rosacea, this sort of ruddy cheeks, reddening of the face, is the next step up in, uh, vitamin D production. So it's even... It's kind of beyond pale. So if you go from dark-skinned, to light-skinned, to slightly red-skinned, it's a, a supposed, I think, um, an indication that your body is able to generate its own vitamin D more effectively, and this comes from Shokhar, a place that I'm... I was born in, uh, which is pretty dark a lot of the time. Uh, pretty low on sunlight, a lot of cloud cover, a lot of rain, et cetera, and, uh, yeah, that was the, the proposed explanation for that that a, a friend told me about a couple of weeks ago.

   15. JCDr Jerry Coyne40:06

       Well, I would look into that. It sounds a bit dubious to me because it would lead to the prediction that, for example, the Inuit or the Siberians would all have rosacea because they-

   16. CWChris Williamson40:18

       Ah, they're gonna be in darkness for three months of the year.

   17. JCDr Jerry Coyne40:21

       Yeah, that's true. Well, I just never heard that before. I mean, my explanation would be that they drink too much. (laughs)

   18. CWChris Williamson40:29

       No. Well-

   19. JCDr Jerry Coyne40:32

       That's a-

   20. CWChris Williamson40:33

       Either, either, either might work. Um-

   21. JCDr Jerry Coyne40:34

       That's

   22. NANarrator40:35

       ... but it is true that people who drink a lot tend to have their capillaries broken in their faces, and, um... No, I, I've never heard that one before.

   23. CWChris Williamson40:45

       Going back to the state of academia, do you think science communicators have become too afraid of backlash to speak sort of plainly about their subject areas and, and data as well? What's the state of it now?

   24. JCDr Jerry Coyne41:01

       Oh, ab- Absolutely. I mean, there's self-censorship all over the media. Um, one example of that, I suppose, uh, is that... And this is in the UK, I think, that guy who... Was it in Liverpool? Who drove his van into a crowd.

   25. CWChris Williamson41:17

       Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

   26. JCDr Jerry Coyne41:18

       So he was identified in The Times... I think it was in The, The Telegraph. I call it the Torygraph. He was identified as a 52-year-old White man, but the British newspapers never give ethnicity when they give a suspect. Now, why does, why is that? You know, even if the person's on the lam, hasn't been caught, they're not gonna say that, "Well, this is a Black man." Or, "This is a Hispanic man." Or whatever, because it's considered racist to do that, and so that's the most obvious example of how the media has been, you know, has been censored, self-censored. Also, when... If you read in the New York Time... Sorry, in The New York Times, you'll see that the word white is in small letters when describing somebody's ethnicity and Black is in... The B ca- Has a capital B, which is a way of valorizing a minority group. I find that sort of inconsistent. The Washington Post, by the way, uses, um... I think it's either big letters for both or small letters for both. Either way, it should be consistent. So these are just the most obvious things that stand out. I don't think that answers your question, no. I think you're asking more about science than journalism, or-

   27. CWChris Williamson42:36

       I honestly don't mind at all. I... One thing that I want to bring in here. Do you know what gamma bias is?

   28. JCDr Jerry Coyne42:42

       No.

   29. CWChris Williamson42:44

       So good. So this is, uh, Dr. John Barry from the Center for Male Psychology. Uh, so there's alpha bias, which is exaggerating or magnifying gender differences. There's beta bias, which is ignoring or minimizing gender differences. And then there's gamma bias, which is a combination of the two, but it's sexed. So if a female is in active mode and does good-... then it's a celebration. If a female is in active mode, uh, uh, a male is in active mode and does harm, then it's perpetration. So, for instance, if you have a, um, a, a... If domestic violence happens against women, it's highlighted as a gender issue. If domestic violence happens against men, it's played down or completely ignored. Men make up the majority of victims of suicide. The issues aren't highlighted or portrayed as gender issues. So there's the minimization of gender if men are the victims, and there's the minimization, uh, there's the maximization of gender if men are the perpetrators. There's the maximization of gender if women are the successful perpetrators, if they're doing good, and there's the minimization of gender if women are the perpetrators and they're doing harm. It's like a, a, an interesting, um, uh, new dynamic.

   30. JCDr Jerry Coyne43:57

       Yeah. We call that virtue signaling in America. (laughs)
5. 48:03 – 1:04:55

   Sex, Gender & What The Science Actually Says

   1. JCDr Jerry Coyne48:03

      thought.

   2. CWChris Williamson48:03

      Well, I, it's, I'm, I'm kind of torn, right? I, on the show, have spoken about a variety of topics pertaining to evolution, behavioral genetics, psychology, sex differences, and I, I kind of like... It feels a little bit like, uh, high-wire walking, right? To sort of do, play the game appropriately to be able to get across what you mean but to not step on too many landmines that cause you to get completely blown up. Maybe you could lose a toe, but that's ex- that's an acceptable cost of war or whatever. But even I find myself, you know, when we start talking about, like, what is a woman? You know, the, the question that, uh, often gets put against people that think gender is about, sex is a social construct. They say gender is a social construct, but s- they push it into sex as well. And even I find myself going like, "Ugh." I, I know that it's a useful rhetorical tool. I know it might even be a useful, uh, biological teaching tool to ask this question to sort of al- allow people, encourage people to arrive at this sort of non-sequitur recursive loop thing that they're in. But I find myself going like, "Uh, I don't really wanna use..."... that, because it's- it's sort of become so captured by a group of people who really want to use it, again, as a cudgel to sort of beat down and- and creep out what it is that they mean. They don't just mean this, they mean, "And what are your beliefs about marriage? And what are your beliefs about reproduction? And what are your beliefs-" You know, it sort of starts to get into this kind of icky world because good arguments are very, very good. The- the- the, like, uh, evolution of the meme I suppose, but this is like an academic meme or an intellectually useful meme, and it propagates. And I find myself, I'm like, "Well, how..." Having this conversation in a way that is persuasive, that is accurate, that is, uh, I- I- I don't wanna say the word sensitive but, um, uh, speaks to the cultural temperature in a manner that allows people to get on board without getting their defenses up too mu- You know? Like, it- I find myself tiptoeing through this in a little bit of a way. Uh, it- for instance, if I ever wanna talk about the issues that are facing boys and men, there's this weird social land acknowledgement that I need to do beforehand where I say, "Well, we must remember that women have had it- w- women and girls have had it bad for a long time and I'm not minimizing the issues that are faced. We must remember that domestic violence, and what about the subjects of and after I've done this thing, like, you know, I've prostrated myself-

   3. JCDr Jerry Coyne50:44

      You kinda just speak the truth. (laughs)

   4. CWChris Williamson50:45

      Y- yeah. And now I'm allowed to actually say the thing that I wanted to say and unfortunately there's no- there's no disclaimer. You know, um, research peptides and- and stuff that people can buy on the internet. It says, like, these are not for human use, or, like, this website is for entertainment purposes only, whatever. There's, like, one disclaimer that says that. Unfortunately in the world of communication on the internet, like this kind of communication, you need to do that disclaimer every single time. You're like an Australian plane coming into land, that every time you land, the first thing you say, "We must remember that we're here on the ground of the Heebie Jeebie tribe, that w- this was, uh, ancestral land and that blah, blah, blah." A- but it needs to happen every single time and I... Especially around the- the- in the conversation around men and boys, disparity, socioeconomic status, men and boys falling behind, suicidality, domestic violence all of this stuff, it really gets to me because I'm like, "For fuck's sake. Like, if I've gotta do this weird rain dance, I've gotta, like, wave sage around myself in order to-"

   5. JCDr Jerry Coyne51:47

      Well, if that's is what you're doing, um, my answer would be, no, you don't have to do that. All you have to do is be civil and speak the truth. I mean, the whole purpose of college, in America at least, as stated by the American Association of University Professors is to- to allow people to have disagreements about factual matters without feeling offended by them, you know? So, uh, you know, a long time- a long time ago, with- with one exception that I'll mention, I've given up putting these disclaimers in, um, about, you know. In my paper that I wrote about these things, like, I- I will put a disclaimer, for example, when I'm talking about the two sexes. I will say, "Well, just because there are two sexes doesn't mean that people that feel that they're male when they're biologically female, there's something wrong with them." Okay? It's important to show that the- what I call the reverse naturalistic fallacy-

   6. CWChris Williamson52:46

      Mm-hmm.

   7. JCDr Jerry Coyne52:47

      ... that nature is what you want it to be, is wrong. But when every time you mouth these disclaimers, you're sort of buying into that mindset that, "Yeah, you know, I have to satisfy the other side before I can speak the truth." And so I, you know, I've just given that up more or less, and the way I deal with it is just to be civil and polite, and, you know, not heated because the whole point is to- to have a difference of opinion and try to persuade the other person if you think you're right of your viewpoint. So, I used to do that when I would, on my website, I would cite in a paper like The Telegraph, which is, I think, considered right wing in England, although not as right wing as it would be in America, or the Daily News in America, the equivalent, or the Wall Street Journal opinion section, right wing. And I would say, "Well, you know, this comes from the Wall Street Journal op-eds but it speaks the truth anyway."

   8. CWChris Williamson53:43

      (laughs)

   9. JCDr Jerry Coyne53:43

      And then I real- as long as... Just buying into that mentality-

   10. CWChris Williamson53:47

       Yeah.

   11. JCDr Jerry Coyne53:48

       ... that you have to qualify the truth if it's said by the wrong people. (laughs)

   12. CWChris Williamson53:53

       Yeah. Wow, that's... And you've called that the reverse naturalistic fallacy.

   13. JCDr Jerry Coyne53:57

       The reverse naturalistic fallacy, which underlies all of the six examples that I gave you for, is the idea of ideologue that nature is how you want it to be. So for example, if you feel like you're a transsexual or if you feel like you waver between the- the sexes, I guess gender-fluid is the word for that, then it must be true that there are not two sexes. So I mean, that's one- that's an example of that. Or if you think that humans are infinitely malleable in their behavior, then you have to say that there are no such things as biological differences between man and women, or ideological groups, because nature has to conform to your political sensibilities. That's the object- that's the reverse of the naturalist- the- the naturalistic fallacy which is-

   14. CWChris Williamson54:46

       Mm-hmm.

   15. JCDr Jerry Coyne54:46

       ... what is in nature is what is good.

   16. CWChris Williamson54:48

       Mm-hmm.

   17. JCDr Jerry Coyne54:49

       I've just reversed that and said, "Well, what is good is what you must see in nature." And that's the reason for the whole ideological erosion of science these days.

   18. CWChris Williamson55:00

       Mm.

   19. JCDr Jerry Coyne55:01

       Making... And it comes from postmodernism, I think. The idea that, uh... There's a Pluckrose and Lindsay wrote a book about this, I can't remember the title, it was quite good, um, where they pin it all on postmodernism and its idea that, uh-There is no absolute truth, there are only personal truths in different groups, and who wins is based on how much power they have. And that's sort of the, what, you know, the thing behind this view that nature conforms to what you want it to be. (laughs)

   20. CWChris Williamson55:32

       Mm-hmm.

   21. JCDr Jerry Coyne55:33

       It isn't. If you're a scientist, you have to believe there's an external reality, and you have to believe, because it ha- I mean, it works. We don't have to believe that. It didn't come about because this, you know, we had an ideology that there is a good external world that we can find out about. It just happens to be that there is, and that, you know, COVID is caused by a small viral particle, and we can attack it this way, and here's its DNA sequence. That happens to be the truth, you know? It's not a personal truth. It happens to be a truth that scientists of any stripe can agree on. So, so, uh, you know, the whole... I mean, this is what's happened to the whole world in the last 15 years or so, is that ideology has taken over almost every discipline. Fortunately, it hasn't completely consumed science, but it's, it's starting to, you know? (laughs)

   22. CWChris Williamson56:29

       I, I don't know how I... I don't know where my position is on this now, because, uh, I got, not embroiled, but I certainly got interested in this world, this slow march through the institutions, this sort of progressive overreach that I think was doing a lot of damage to a lot of academia, and that maybe reached fever pitch in 2020, 2021, something like that. And now, I don't, I don't quite know what's going on. I think when the right are in power in America, there is much less of an impetus to talk about, uh, the sort of the crazy overreaches of the left, because the right feel like they've already won. They're kind of still inside of the tent pissing out, as we would say in the UK. And I don't know whether this, also, that fever pitch that reached in 2020, is that a genuine pullback? Is that, uh, this march has been slowed? Is it, uh, we've kind of realized that some of this stuff was a little bit kooky and people kind of went along with the social contagion idea thing that made them seem cool or seem trendy, and now the trend seems to have swung in another direction a little bit or whatever? Is it that this is a genuine pullback, or is it that there is a smarter game afoot from the people who are trying to encroach on science with ideology, where they're doing it in a much smarter way that doesn't get as many headlines? They're continuing to try and repur- repurpose maths, repurpose chemistry, repurpose biology. Um, I'm not really too sure, but I certainly see fewer and fewer of those crazy woke lunatic story thing. I also think I certainly had a ton of news fatigue. Like how many right-wing articles and stories and videos do I need to see about the excesses of wokeness? And they always seem justified, right? They always seemed by, by the, the people that are, are trying to push back against them. "This is the over- This shows the overreach that we've said was always going on." So, and there's this Cassandra complex. "We told you about this before. This is gonna go..." But I'm not seeing as much anymore, and I wonder what that indicates.

   23. JCDr Jerry Coyne58:51

       Well, it could be that, you know, they're winning. I mean, you're asking me to predict the future, and I don't really know, but I think, uh, a bellwether for that is the loss of Kamala Harris in the United States in the election. Um, she was a real virtue signaler to the point where she... that's all she did. She never said anything true or anything rational or anything like that. I was not a fan of hers. Now, I did vote Democratic, but I wasn't happy about it, and she lost pretty big time, you know? And at least some of that came from her rejection of the sex binary. I mean, that's... you can, you can find that out by asking in the polls. So I don't think the right is winning because they're smarter. I think the right is winning, and I don't think that the pendulum has started swinging the other way. I think the right is winning simply because something happened to the left, and it may be the death of George Floyd. I don't know. That was about five years ago. That make... that instilled us with a deep sense of guilt for being responsible for treating every marginalized group very badly, and so we're hesitant to fight against this kind of wokeness because it makes us look like we're right-wingers too. So when I say s- I mean, I, sex is a binary. I will swear to that, you know what I mean? When you look at lions or you look at kangaroos, you don't say, "Well, there's a male kangaroo. There's a female kangaroo. That kangaroo looks like he's gender fluid to me." I mean, it's only in humans that you see this kind of stuff, which gives you a clue that it has something to do with human psychology rather than biological reality. But, uh... crikey, I've forgotten that question. (laughs)

   24. CWChris Williamson1:00:53

       (laughs) Okay. I guess-

   25. JCDr Jerry Coyne1:00:55

       There's s- Oh, but yeah, about where, where wokeness is going. Yeah, so for some reason, the left has been deeply imbued with, um, a sense of guilt. And of course, the marginalized groups, I mean, they want that to happen because it means more stuff for them. Um, and to some extent it's true. I mean, they were treated horribly. Um, Na- um, Native Americans were treated horribly. Blacks were made slaves. And, you know, I, when I was a kid, I still remember when I arrived at college.... there were two men's rooms and two women's rooms in the bus station when I took the... And I said, "Well, why is that?" I was from Northern Virginia, I went to Southern Virginia. (laughs) And then I realized that one was for Black people and one was for white people. So yeah-

   26. CWChris Williamson1:01:39

       Yeah.

   27. JCDr Jerry Coyne1:01:39

       ... they were treated badly. But I think that people realized that, and they're trying to make amends for it. The problem is they're going too far in the other direction now, to valorize people that don't deserve to be valorized or to give unwarranted advantages to members of different groups, equity it's called, where my view is that everybody should have equal opportunity to achieve from birth. But that's almost impossible to achieve. I mean, imagine a, a United States in which every person had the same resources, had two parents, had good schools, so they all had started out at the same point. I can't imagine that. It would take so much money to do that, and yet that, I think, is the ultimate solution. You don't solve the problem by after the groups become different in different ways, largely due to culture, by trying to make them equal by giving equal representation in groups. So, but I, I guess we've gone far off the topic now. (laughs)

   28. CWChris Williamson1:02:43

       No, not at all. I, I'm interested in what you've learned about human nature from, uh, engaging with critics of your work.

   29. JCDr Jerry Coyne1:02:51

       Well, about the reverse naturalistic fallacy that people really don't... aren't deeply wedded to what's true about the world. I guess people... You know, it's always been known that that's true, that people... Like religion to me. I mean, I'm an atheist. I'm... I have no problems with admitting that and I don't believe in God because there's no evidence for God. I've never seen anything supernatural or any sign of divinity, and yet the vast majority of the world believes in God. I think 85% of Americans do. Not so many Brits 'cause they're more sensible, I guess. Or/and religion is almost vanished in Scandinavia and Iceland. Um, but that shows an example of how people will believe something is true about the universe when there's not a wit of evidence for it. So, uh, I'm only now, as I speak to you, coming to realize that this is not just something that's unique to (laughs) science or to American society since the death of George Floyd, that people always believe what makes them feel good, what gives them consolation. I think Karl Marx said that, right? What was his famous statement? Uh, "Religion is the opium of the people."

   30. CWChris Williamson1:04:07

       Of the masses. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
6. 1:04:55 – 1:16:07

   How To Deal With Controversial Topics In Science

   1. CWChris Williamson1:04:55

      So, what would you say... Given that we're, you know, an hour deep now, we can talk about whatever we want. Uh, the only people left are the reasonable ones. Um, what would you say is a theory that you believe in and stand behind but is currently the most publicly inflammatory or cantankerous? I've, I've got one, uh, but I'm, I'm interested in hearing yours as well.

   2. JCDr Jerry Coyne1:05:21

      Oh, yeah, but I wanna hear yours too.

   3. CWChris Williamson1:05:23

      Okay.

   4. JCDr Jerry Coyne1:05:23

      Well, a theory or a fact?

   5. CWChris Williamson1:05:28

      You can pick. You can pick between the two.

   6. JCDr Jerry Coyne1:05:30

      Well, the one that's got me in the most trouble lately is my assertion that there's two sexes and no more.

   7. CWChris Williamson1:05:36

      Hmm.

   8. JCDr Jerry Coyne1:05:36

      I mean, you know, to me that's an indubitable fact because it... And not only is it indubitable but it's explanatory. First of all, it's universal because every animal and plant, vascular plant species, has two reproductive systems. But it's not only... The reason I wanna tout it is not just because I'm trying to force that down the throat of people that are gender dysphoric, it's because it's explanatory. It explains the notion of sexual selection, why males and females behave differently, why males compete for the attention of females, which explains so much in the animal kingdom, from the larger sizes of gorillas, to the tail of the peacock, to the fact that when one sex is usually ornamented or brightly colored it's almost always the male. I mean, it was Darwin in 1871 who raised that theory. So, that's one reason why it behooves us to believe what the truth is because it's... You know, I guess some people don't get this feeling of wonder when they finally realize, "By God, that is the explanation." (laughs) Now, certainly Darwin did but he was reluctant to publish it. I mean, it was in the 1830s or early 1840s when he hit on natural selection, but he didn't publish it until 1859 'cause he was so worried about being damned for that. But, uh, you know, scientists... And we become scientists because of this sense of wonder, wonder at the truth of what really is out there in the universe, and we can understand it. But some people... I mean, I g- I guess it just doesn't move some people. Y- you know, they'd rather have their own personal truth even if there's no evidence for it because it makes them feel good. Um...

   9. CWChris Williamson1:07:25

      All right. Okay, let me give you... Let me give you mine.

   10. JCDr Jerry Coyne1:07:27

       Yeah.

   11. CWChris Williamson1:07:28

       Let me give you mine. So you mentioned... Earlier on, you mentioned John Tooby.

   12. JCDr Jerry Coyne1:07:31

       Yeah.

   13. CWChris Williamson1:07:31

       Uh, I, I very fortunately got to me- got to meet him at HBES a couple years ago. Um, I was...... you say, I was the least credentialed person in the room, uh, speaking at a (laughs) yeah, uh, speaking at a- a part of a symposium. Uh, and he came up afterward and he said some really lovely things about the show, uh, which was- was super nice to meet him, and, you know, it was only a few months later that he passed away.

   14. JCDr Jerry Coyne1:07:58

       Yeah.

   15. CWChris Williamson1:07:58

       Um, he's got his theory, I think it's the dysgenic theory of gene erosion with regards to mutational load.

   16. JCDr Jerry Coyne1:08:07

       That I don't know, so... (laughs)

   17. CWChris Williamson1:08:08

       Oh- okay. So this is d- this is one of those min- this is me doing a high-wire act, okay? Are you ready? You, okay, let me, let me do th- let me do this dance in front of you, Jerry. So, all species, but we're talking about humans, accumulate mutational loads as- as you go generation to generation. S- st- stop me when I get the technicalities wrong, but the principle is correct. Mutations occur. Many of these mutations are junk, make the- the species less effective, make the- the, uh, next generation less effective. They're less adapted to their environment, and when you have heavy selection pressures, small changes in the animal are selected out if they're suboptimal. If they're not as good, you're less likely to survive and reproduce and pass on your genes. The issue in the modern world is that we have removed a lot of the selection pressures with healthcare. So the m- there are a lot of, uh, examples. The one that's the least controversial that I can see you suffer with would be myopia or some sort of eye issue. Now, ancestrally, uh, a mild blurring of the eyes maybe, you know, you wouldn't be able to read the grains of sand on your hand, probably not that big of a deal, but as you start to push it a bit, I would guess, and even the grains of sand, I'm gonna guess it's not that adaptive. I'm gonna guess that over time people who couldn't see quite as well would be less likely to survive and reproduce than people who could see well. But now we have glasses, so people who can't see particularly well have had the selection pressure on their eyesight removed to- to a degree which means I don't m- may... Some people find glasses sexy. Maybe that's even... Maybe it's even an advantage for you to wear glasses. Maybe it frames the face in a manner. Maybe it s- makes you seem a little bit more intellectual and academic and- and considered or something. Um, but what that means is that you are accumulating a load, uh, genetic mutations, that makes further eye degeneration more likely over time. And it was his belief that this occurs across everything because we have life support systems and asthma inhalers and- and- and wheelchairs and all sorts of things, and that if you remove the selection pressure, you will start to accumulate dysgenic mutational load, which means that the crumbling genome, I think as it's- as it's referred to, uh, starts to, uh, get worse over time. And when he first proposed this, I think this was before genetic engineering was, uh, that likely. Could this be fixed by some, uh, gene therapies assisted by AI and- and- and advanced t- technologies at some point over the next 200 years? Uh, I would guess that seems p- probably at least partly likely. Um, you're smiling.

   18. JCDr Jerry Coyne1:11:04

       The problem is that many conditions like heart disease and general decrepitudes as you get older are caused by many, many genes, so you'd have to fix each one of them-

   19. CWChris Williamson1:11:14

       Mm-hmm.

   20. JCDr Jerry Coyne1:11:15

       ... and you'd have to fix them in the- your mother's DNA, not in your own DNA, because you can't fix... you can't edit every cell in your own body.

   21. CWChris Williamson1:11:24

       Mm-hmm.

   22. JCDr Jerry Coyne1:11:24

       But I think what you're saying is indubitably true with the caveat that a lot of the conditions like wheelchairs and stuff did not obtain early in human evolution because we never got that old, uh, to be able to show these symptoms. So, the decrepitude was probably built in, a lot of it, um, before by... because, you know, we didn't live that long.

   23. CWChris Williamson1:11:48

       Yeah.

   24. JCDr Jerry Coyne1:11:48

       So

   25. NANarrator1:11:49

       what happens

   26. CWChris Williamson1:11:49

       So we'll see... You also need to have a... Uh, there is early onset decrepitude in a- a variety of different ways, right? And- and that, you know, you could say people at 30 are the way that they, uh, in 500 years time, are the way that people at 60 would have been in 2025, let's say, something like that, because we... well, we've just got all of this technology to support them and we can continue to keep them living and so on and so forth. Uh, so unless you intervene in that regard, uh, maybe that is... Uh, but I mean that is... you're getting perilously close to the E word of eugenics when you start talking about this, which is a topic... Actually that- th- th- that actually gets us to probably like the, uh, whatever, the point of no return of the black hole when it comes to talking about anything in, uh, uh, in this r- realm.

   27. JCDr Jerry Coyne1:12:38

       Yeah, we didn't even mention that. Um, there's a lot of things to say about it, but I haven't studied eugenics in much. Um, certainly in the UK, eugenics was always... It wasn't like the Nazis practiced and it wasn't like in the US where people were involuntarily sterilized. The Brits just wanted to up the reproduction of the upper classes, you know. That was their form of eugenics and, you know, um, I don't believe in certain people should be rewarded for having kids and others penalized but what happened in Britain is different from what happened in the- in Nazi Germany and what happened in the UK.

   28. CWChris Williamson1:13:18

       Mm-hmm.

   29. JCDr Jerry Coyne1:13:18

       But getting back to what you said, yeah, I think you're absolutely right. There's no penalty now pre-reproductively for mutations that can be fixed medically. Now this of course only applies to humans because animals and other species don't have the- w- w- you know, the workarounds to fix...... you know, mutation.

   30. CWChris Williamson1:13:37

       Well, you know, so interestingly here, uh, one other, uh, animal group that I think you could say you're observing this, although this was more to do with selective breeding, would be dogs. You know, you look at, uh, English, uh, British Bulldogs, the shortening of the nose. "We're gonna make them cuter. We're gonna make the hind legs shorter. We're gonna do the whatever, like," look at the shape of an Alsatian over the last 100 years due to selective breeding, and you have these weird spinal problems. Dachshunds have got progressively lower and longer, um, and they end up snapping their own spines because they can't support them because, "Oh, it's so cute. He's exactly like a hot dog." And, um, obviously that's being done selectively-
7. 1:16:07 – 1:18:30

   Learn More About Dr Coyne

   1. JCDr Jerry Coyne1:16:07

   2. CWChris Williamson1:16:07

      Hmm. Jerry Coyne, ladies and gentlemen. Jerry, you're awesome. I've really enjoyed today. Today's been so much fun. Uh, where should b- You actually might be the most prolific blogger that I know. It is terrifying the amount of words that you put out on the internet. So where, where should people go if they want to keep up to date with your work?

   3. JCDr Jerry Coyne1:16:25

      Yeah. So, the name of the website is Why Evolution Is True, which is the title of my first book. And I'd still recommend it because I really, really like that book. I don't think I could write it again. Why Evolution Is True. But if you wanna come to the website, you just string all those together into one word, www.whyevolutionistrue.com. And you can see the website. It's very eclectic. I write about biology, but I also write about what... It started out as a way to publicize the book, the eponymous book that it's named after. My agent said, "Well, you know, um, maybe you should do what Neil Shubin did." He wrote an awesome book called The- Your Inner Fish, about how we show the remnants of our fishy ancestry. And he started a website to publicize that. And so my agent said, "Why don't you do that too?" I did it, and that was a monster. I discovered that I liked writing that. I o- I envisioned it as every couple weeks I'd put up a piece of evidence for evolution. Well, now I discovered it's been become a chronicle of my existence and of my thoughts, and, and it's, yeah, I put three or four pieces a day maybe. And it's a big time sink, but I've gotten a lot more out of it than I have putting into it, 'cause I get feedback from readers. I've made friends all over the world. Even, I've even had two views from North Korea, although I don't know who would have the internet in North Korea to look at my website. But, um, yeah, it's a, it's a good thing, and I have not yet grown tired of it, so.

   4. CWChris Williamson1:17:59

      Well, long may you continue doing it, Jerry. You're great. And we didn't even talk about why evolution's true. We need, we can do an entire nother episode on, on all of the, all of the stuff around that. But for now-

   5. JCDr Jerry Coyne1:18:08

      Or you could buy the book.

   6. CWChris Williamson1:18:10

      Or you can, and y- you can buy the book now, and then when we do the next episode, you'll be a, a few steps ahead, and you'll understand what we're talking about.

   7. JCDr Jerry Coyne1:18:16

      Well, thanks for having me on.

   8. CWChris Williamson1:18:18

      I appreciate you. Thank you.

   9. JCDr Jerry Coyne1:18:19

      Sure.

   10. CWChris Williamson1:18:20

       Congratulations, you made it to the end of the episode. And if you want more, well, why don't you press right here? Come on.

Episode duration: 1:18:30