TDS Time Machine | Conversations with Authors - Pt. 2

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I mean I got started on this book because in my last book when I outliers and I was spending a lot of time talking to sort of very successful people and I was always struck by how often when they accounted for what they had achieved they began with the difficulties not with the obvious advantages and so much of how of their sense of themselves was something that grew out of some in some case it was some terrible blow that had happened to them that they had managed somehow to navigate. right. so there's a chapter here on parental loss. right. the striking fact that very large numbers of American presidents and British prime ministers have lost lost a parent in childhood way higher than would be expected from the from the normal population really. and that's you know that's something that that's just about the worst thing that can happen to a human being. no kidding. so you're saying if my son wants to be president oh boy. I mean here's the thing I shut the lights and I close my eyes around this kid. good look you know Bill Clinton right Obama these are two people who have who have but the list is actually extraordinarily long and what you understand is that these are what one of the things that distinguishes these people is that they have some there's something about them that took that devastating experience right and found a way to come out strong or are we is it a chicken in the is is there some way of determining if there is an inherent personality type that is able to translate these types of devastating blows into a positive outcome or whether or not the positive outcome influence I mean the the blow influences the outcome. don't know I mean it's it's what you mean you don't know. I know there's so much I don't know I mean these books always raise more questions and they resolve and that's what they're supposed to do right they're supposed to kind of start I mean it would be really fascinating I didn't do it now I think I should have to sit down next to Bill Clinton and ask him that question right I mean here's a guy who had who had the the furthest thing from us over spoon in his mouth. right no question I just don't know if you would share his story with you I mean he's very reticent. he's not someone who's not going to open up he's very shy you might get a couple of minutes but yeah it would be like I don't get the books too big. well it's interesting stuff it does raise tons of questions and I think is a nice way to look at the you know kind of that old adage the lemons and the lemonade and all that sort of thing David and Goliath be David why not Malcolm Gladwell everybody on the book shelves now. I'm going to get tonight a best selling offer. Her new book is called Gulp adventures on the elementary canal please welcome back to the program Mary Roach. I like your books. All right funny thank you John this one's called this one called Gulp it answers all the questions of what happens when we we eat food and then obviously the post food whole shoot the whole shoot you answer many interesting questions why doesn't the stomach digest itself which brings up an interesting point that I would like to ask you why doesn't the stomach digest itself. It's a very good question because you can eat haggis which is stomach yes and your own stomach will go yeah no problem I can take that pick the part pass it on but yet your own stomach and the answer are you ready yes okay because it does trick it does it does it does it does but it's also your stomach is very good at rebuilding your stomach lining so it does digest it but then it builds it back up and every I love this every three days you have a new stomach lining really I do and I do too no no no I don't know about you I have a new stomach lining so it's a constant pitched battle it's just exhausted people rebuilding stomach your poor stomach it never stops working on your behalf unbelievable talk to me about the beginning of the process which would be the mass education the saliva oral processing thank you yes that's true I'm talking yes oral processing okay this is this is something I went to this university in the Netherlands where there's not a whole lot of people who go into the field of oral processing sure yeah you have to go to a little yeah you have to go to a you have to go to an institute you have to go to institute in the Netherlands yeah is that what they call it in the Netherlands so what it's all about in there is a bolus formation bolus formation you are first of all you're taking your food apart you're grinding it up taking a part and then you need to reassemble it in the swallowable state which is a cylindrical bolus which is one of my favorite words bolus bolus I think oral processing bolus is now one of my favorite words but but how do you so you're you're breaking apart your food to allow I guess this alive to work on it but then how do you reformulate it into a cylinder because I've never thought about this before but now that I am there's no way I'm ever going to be able to make a cylinder again just wow I'm just going to be making like trapezoids like I don't know how does the body do that there's a certain amount of intraoral bolus rolling that goes on glad this is on late at night the tongue yeah the wonderful tongue and it does it without us thinking about it if you if you try to think about it if you try to pay attention it's very very I tried because I this is what I was doing for two years I was like trying to pay attention to my bolus formation it's very hard because you get to creeped out and so if you eat cylindrical food does your mouth go like oh good day for us easy day like like Cheetos are cylindrical why do you think they do hot dogs hot dog eating conscious in the hot the competitive eaters it's always the bolus shaped so just straight down yes that's why hot dogs are shaped that way so so you you put it what was so so I mean the beautiful part about it is it is a bolus going down and and if things are going right a bolus on the way out you are so good thank you I read yes is that are there but in the stomach it is non bolus the stomach it is a right it's more like a slurry a slurry yes time time now what is time is the slurry it's the time that's just that's like saying too many words like the bowl which is the Navasaw the time is the time is yeah it's broken down in kind of a slurry it can be passed on easily through the sphincter there at the bottom of the stomach sure and the sphincter is doing the the bolus work turning it back into something more cylindrical well because the intestines are cylindrical that's a tube yeah yeah so it's a natural the bolus the cylinder is a natural right shape for the interior of the well listen hold hold on one second just want to tell my kids goodnight guys so we stick around there's more more that one go up his other bookshelves now it's wonderful as every Mary Roach book is you should get it Mary Roach everybody ready to launch your business get started with the commerce platform made for entrepreneurs Shopify especially designed to help you start run and grow your business with easy customizable themes that let you build your brand marketing tools that get your products out there integrated shipping solutions that actually save you time from startups to scale ups online in person and on the go Shopify is made for entrepreneurs like you sign up for your one dollar a month trial at Shopify.com slash setup everybody good night a best selling author his new book is called Flash Boys a Wall Street revolt please welcome back to the program Michael Lewis sir welcome first off let me just say this you write pretty this this book is so good it first of all we'll back right this is about this thing called HFT high frequency trading what what is that very fast computerized trading on the stock market so to get an advantage that you get an advantage right so the stock exchanges in this country they're 13 public stock exchanges sell the right to advance information to high frequency traders and they they do this by selling them the right to locate their computers they're trading the high frequency trading computers right next to the stock exchange computers so that so it's a question of milliseconds it's the yes I mean the difference between the the the the information that a high frequency trader sees and what most investors see is a couple of milliseconds yes and what it basically does it's a computer that's enough for a computer it's a computer so that's a not a couple of milliseconds is a lot of time for a computer so there's enough time for the computer to react to what you do so the computer finds out you place an order for stock yeah the q to computer jumps in and says oh you're buying that stock let me jump in buy that stock and sell it right back to you more you know that'll do that is what they do as it you know but that will do yes they insert themselves as a middleman in a transaction they have no business being in many ways yes that's exactly right it's it's and they it's as they're trading as if they know the prices before you do so if you come in to buy they may know that they can buy it cheaper because the prices move but you don't know that's they buy cheaper and they sell it to you so yes it's it's totally unnecessary wall street intermediations or like sitting standing putting themselves in the middle of the market where they're not needed now there is something called front running that is illegal that if you do it with just information if you find out information about something and it allows you an advantage to to buy it before someone else does that's called front running and that's illegal yes this is because it's a computer it's okay oh so this is a but front running front running as a person is illegal right but as a computer no I think this is like more generally a problem is people will do things with computers they were never do as people I mean why are you looking at me why are you looking at me when I'm no but that so this book but here's what's great so this book isn't just about this world high frequency trading what I didn't expect from this book is a kind of group of heroes to emerge and that's really what this is about this group of individuals that got together to do something about it's it's it's that's it's such a strange story because it really it's about a group of people who are actually on Wall Street who figure out kind of around 2008 that the stock market is all of a sudden something funny is happening and it's not just the financial crisis all of a sudden they look at their screens and the stock market says it's you know you can buy 50,000 shares of Microsoft and 20 dollars a share they go to buy it and it goes away it goes away and the stock price goes up and it's as if the market knows what they're going to do before they do it so it's one character is a Canadian a guy named Brad Katzayama who runs the stock market department the Royal Bank of Canada because he's Canadian he he has a sense of decency and and and and and and he's not like some radical I mean he's a he's a Wall Street guy he's not even really that much of a Wall Street guy he's kind of a Canadian guy he's like you know he's he's I mean it's odd that he's in this situation because he's conformist even by Canadian standards I mean he's just like all he wants to do is be like doing good work at his Wall Street firm right but all of a sudden the market looks rigged and he starts to ask how is it rigged right and the story is the story of him starting to start turning over rocks and finding something nefarious under every rock until he's assembled a picture of the stock market which no one really is assembled and he go and then instead of taking advantage of it to make money for the Royal Bank of Canada or himself he just goes and tells investors about it which is also kind of another Canadian thing to do right yeah and so I mean there's a Canadian dimension this story that Rick comes through right so I don't want to say the name Dudley do right but yeah you know hard not to see the comparisons yeah so uh... the the uh... the disadvantage the story has is the heroes Canadian because everybody got to go Canadian yeah uh... but the the he he assembles like a rag tag well right over 11 yeah exactly right yeah yeah I mean he's getting people to pitch the movie for you yeah well that's that it's been done they get together um... and they start their own stock exchange that runs things right well they go to investors like every people who are running the savings of this country and say and say look this is basically what's happened and the the investors you would think the investors would know what's going on the stock market and they kind of do they all kind of know something's wrong uh... they go to the hedge fund manager Bill Ackman who put you know he was always buying companies and selling companies he thought he thought that he had a leak like insider trading leak he said the market was so able to anticipate what he did in the market he got someone inside a shop was like leaking information about what he was doing which would be legal which would be legal but if a computer does it it's okay especially if it's America especially but it's uh... but it's uh... but but the uh... so so he goes on this he educates people right and they say to him you know create a fair place for us to trade uh... I mean I think that so so in a way he was answering a call right uh... and they and they do it and people go after them in incredibly vicious ways trying to ruin them try and break them and and they create this ix and it and it and it so it's working it's still going on though i mean that yes that so the problem is yeah do we have time here well now you know here's what we'll do when i come back i want to talk about so these guys did that i want to talk about the financial news networks and their responsibility in this and why they abdicated and why they're attacking you like crazy for just writing this story so when we come back we'll talk about that we'll be right back with more from michael Lewis we're talking about uh... this group of of ex bangers and hedgemen guys and Wall Street guys that formed their own uh... stock exchange because these high frequency traders were rigging the market what what what is the banks role in this high frequency trading you know scam for right so you're back away from the whole thing i mean it looks like there's an ecosystem that's built a stuff around high frequency traders making you know skimming profits scouting people in the market they pay the exchanges for special access for in special information that ordinary investors don't have uh... they pay the brokers the people who handle stock market orders for your order so when you when you place an order uh... you pay a commission to to trade the stock but the information about what you want to do gets sold to some high frequency trader and the right to exit to trade against you gets sold uh... it's called payment for or for i mean that in itself i mean why would someone pay to execute your stock market order you would think someone asked that question uh... but and they do because and they do the trader gets a a volume they they make a lot of the he gets the the high frequency trader gets a chance to trade against you at old price at the old price uh... and you don't know he's there and you have not invited him in you have not invited him in uh... but but so there was serious there different kinds of predatory activities that the high frequency traders are engaged in but basically none of them are really good like not good for us right i mean they're not good for the the their tax on investors well that's so here now we get to the second part of which is so you write this and immediately see on the c fox businesses they all jump up to defend this as no this helps us this is adding liquidity uh... it's uh... there's nothing wrong with it it's actually great even though it to my mind completely deteriorates any faith you would have in the fairness of that system and is not american and not even capitalism this is it's cheating they're attacking him to it's amazing to be because all he really went to do was figure out how the stock market work and it was a breathtakingly complicated question and it became complicated so you wouldn't understand yes and so all he's trying to do is like rectify that problem he deconsructed and the mere fact of doing it was a rattle was a radical act and the reason people are so upset is if you back if you're going to be back away from it so high-friculty traders are essentially making money for the whole wall street system they're paying exchanges they're paying banks uh... so anybody who's you know livelihood is dependent on wall street profits which i partly includes the sec since they people quit the sec to go work for wall street uh... is is is sort of invested in this and it i think a lot of it's it sounds like conspiracy right when you look at how it lays out now it looks like a conspiracy exists to keep invest buyers of stock away from sellers of stock so these people can insert themselves artificially in between but it's a it was largely accidental but then the money started getting made and the conspiracy is preventing the change i mean i think they they function on volume and volatility what i don't understand is so ix comes in and they establish a a parameter for trading speed they give you a set you cannot jump there faster they become faster than all the people in the exchange they slow down the high-frequency traders correct right why doesn't why isn't there a standard you can't buy less than a share right they've said a standard for that you can't buy like a hundred of a share right so if there's a standard for share buying why isn't there a standard for frequency of trading that is just the standard so everybody's on the same field you know that would be in a sane world right right that's that's what you would do that it would you would just say you would say that you know nobody's going to get the information about prices faster be able to trade faster than everybody else right you should have high speed you wouldn't make it like you have a hat so that's what they've done like you get yeah you make it fast yeah you make it really fast so it's they make it really fast it's all imperceptible the speeds we're talking about are imperceptible to human beings it all seems instantaneous so that's what you would do in a sane world that's how it would be structured we don't live in that world we live in a different world and what's cool about this and what makes it so neat is they have created the place where it's fair it's it's the one place is one stock exchange it's not run by intermediaries not run by Wall Street people it's run by it's four investors so and they figured it out so there is no need for these middlemen they are unnecessary to the system they don't provide liquidity they're unnecessary the liquidity is provided by the investors right this is absolutely true so now we have a choice for the first time in this modern stock market this is a choice why isn't my order going to this exchange where I won't get scelt and that's going to force our you allow to get that information now is that information available to the investor are they allowed to say tell me who my order went to they're being told no but yes and there is the ix actually said by website call i'm investor dot org where you can learn your rights as an investor you can demand that you were to be handled in a certain i'm gonna go on that site is there also porn because i also like if i because i like to have a little time extra when i go on a site i don't know if there's like it well i could win in x-box if i click on something we're gonna come up you're staying with me and we're gonna go to the web because i do want to ask you these financial news networks that are complicit in this is driving me insane flash boys it's on the bookshelf now it's it's about an incredibly intricate and interesting topics but so well written it's beautiful narrative michael who's got to get this tremendous thank you so all right the village show my guest tonight a world we're now in the best selling author his new book is called knife meditations after an attempted murder please welcome to the program salman russian so nice to see you nice to see you first question obviously how how are you this was obviously a traumatic experience how are you feeling i'm okay you know i mean surprisingly yes but sometimes there are good surprises this was one i'm pretty much recovered i have to say and i know this it's it sounds peculiar to say this because of the the traumatic experience that you endured i love this book i think it's it's it's a beautiful work of introspection i feel like i know now how your mind works you know i've read other of your books but you really do a wonderful job of taking us through how you think yeah it's weird how i think i have this kind of free associating mind which goes from the moon to a movie to a book to a piece of mythology to a joke i had to read this book with another book next to me to get just some of the references it's but it's it it allows you you know sometimes you read an author's memoir and there's a certain self-consciousness to it but maybe because this is about a traumatic incident i feel like your defenses were down and it was very revelatory yeah i mean there's there's a subject right i mean it's what i felt is that it's it starts off there's a love story which turns into a murder story which turns back into a love story yes the love story by the way is with his wonderful wife Eliza who is really the hero maybe of the book yeah now i mean she she did a huge amount and i wouldn't be here in good shape without her and plus she's an amazing writer right there's that too i i i say with a certain amount of grit and teeth yes is there competition in in writerly families not really actually the one of the nice things about this is there isn't real enormously supportive of each other's work i thought a really interesting part of the book is spoiler alert at the end when you go back to shatakwa shatakwa is the famed community in upstate new york where they bring in speakers and where this unfortunate event happened yeah and you go back to revisit the scene of it but also the jail yeah where they are holding this person that that attacked you yeah it was a last minute decision we were actually on the plane flying up to because i i had this desire to go and revisit the scene of the crime and show myself that i was standing up where i fell down right you know sort of important for me but then on and the flight up there i thought jatokwa is a really small town and if he's in the county jail how far is that from the institution and to turn that it was like five minutes drive so i thought well let's go to the jail i just it blows my and but you didn't have a desire necessarily to see this individual no i just wanted to see the jail but i just you get that it's a it's a really boring jail it's it's a little cell block at a wall with some bar wire but i thought you know he's in there i'm out here i feel as good you win and what happened is a weird thing happened my feet started dancing you were dancing no my feet were dancing what does that look like it's just just shivering but the body stayed well and my Eliza while I said stop doing that i can imagine this gentleman just glancing out the window for no apparent reason going is that the guy like yeah he's dodzing at the cop-ock you you know you talk a lot about your thoughts about this gentleman and whether you wanted to confront him there's actually a really wonderful section of it almost like a socratic litigation that you do in four parts yeah i make him up you make him up but you don't make him defenseless no the the litigation that you and the dialogue that you have with him is challenging yeah well i thought you you know you've got to give the enemy an even break you know if you're going to have a serious conversation then it's it can't just be me yada get him telling him what a bad person he is which i think yes but he wasn't it makes you wonder about you know you spent since 1989 this this fatwa is put upon you and it's these fundamentalists and these are religious extremists who have decided they're going to punish you for whatever their reasoning was you write though that this gentleman is sort of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of that 24 he wasn't even born right when this thing happened and he by his own account had read nothing i'd written and yet he was willing to commit murder i mean that's stupid yes but it's i wonder if you think of it does it strike you as a change in fundamentalism you know you you say he was radicalized by emon utubi yeah that he watched youtube videos and do you think this attack had more to do with like john lenan's attack or with a religious attack well i think it's i think in some ways it's a very american attack right he spent four years in a basement playing video games and watching videos and it kind of messed with his head and also you know i mean he's born in brighter new jersey slow down i think i know where this is going well that you know your head of it but you know we live in an america where people kill each other every five minutes right you know and i think maybe in his new jersey brain that is how we describe it as well by the way i get that new jersey brain do you think that there is a shift you know we think of fundamentalism as primarily a religious artifact have the algorithms made fundamentalism something different from that i think maybe they have i mean i'm too i'm too old to know really because i don't algorithms don't know what to do with me right give them a chance no i i do but they don't know what to do so so i'm not algorithmically influenced right but people are people are all the time and yeah i mean i think he was something happened in him which made it possible for him to decide to murder a total stranger right and that has to be brainwashing of some kind right what whatever you want to call it but i call it brainwashing yeah as i read the story i started thinking you know we're so used to this idea that of violence with a cause this idea that these you know there is something deep inside them that can almost be noble or understandable this is not that it struck me more as more in common with the school shootings we see or or the other things that you were just this thing he saw i don't know what's so strange about it is first of all he must have known that he was messing up his own life as well right you know not just mine at 24 at 24 and you know the last thing he did before he got on the bus from Fairview New Jersey to Chautauqua last thing he did he cancelled his gym membership because he knew that he was ready to have weights he wasn't coming back and why should he keep his standing order going wow so he's got he's going through it and going like i don't need serious radio anymore i don't so this what's he suicidal or was he i don't know i mean maybe we'll find out if whenever if this trial happens we might find out more about him but do you dread something like that is that something that still visits you no i mean i think you know if i i mean they've if they need me to testify i'll go testify and i'll be in the courtroom with him but my view is he should be scared about being in the courtroom with me absolutely absolutely do you wonder sometimes you know and this is not not not to get but you and i are both getting getting older and you write a lot in the book about you feel so friends sound of that i was just on jury duty by the way i don't ever saw a picture of my doppelganger but there is there's more talent you you you write about martin amus and paul also and people that you've lost even during the writing of this book lost to esophageal cancer you had a cancer scare i did in the middle of rehabilitation yeah in the middle of all this repair work suddenly apparently i might have prostate cancer i thought that's not fair no well you're right he writes he goes to the doctor or you you can tell i mean i i read the doctor and they be examining your prostate is not fun again speak for yourself it's it depends on if you have a jersey brain anyway the first examination they they thought they found a bump on the prostate and then i had to have an MRI scan an MRI scan you know it grids from one to five and five is really bad and i came out as four right it said cancer probable and then it turned out that it was not probable that it was had this bump on the had been caused by some other infection and and a medicine that they had actually given you yeah exactly and just then a second doctor the first doctor's boss also exiled my prostate more thoroughly they lined up down the hallway what are we doing here no this was very thorough and also he was an Indian doctor and he was a fan of my tooth so nothing more uncomfortable than that extra thorough yes and he said no i think this might be caused by this other infection and so that to go back and have another MRI scan and it said it went to five one no cancer so i had cancer for two months and then i didn't it's so incredible because you face this as you write in the book this 27 seconds yeah it was just 27 seconds and yet can't do you think about and pardon the question but do you think it does it matter how you die as you watched your friends and you thought about your fate and your brush with mortality and then to have this cancer scare did it make you think it mattered how you die i prefer not to i've got some bad news coming for all of us news for all of us yes but i mean i don't know i my wife Eliza and i've decided we're planning our hundredth birthday party my hundredth birthday has to be a dance party yes so we try just your feet though not the whole body to be clear to decide who should DJ and he i'll pick somebody but it strikes me because you whether you've wanted this mantle or not and i'm assuming you don't you represent something you represent a courage and a freedom of artistic expression of the importance of artistic expression and of the danger that artistic expression often visits upon the people yeah who do it it's a it's a noble shield to carry but not an easy one i don't imagine not in a way there's bits of me that would prefer to be well known for being you know good writer well i i have to tell you i'm pretty sure that's in there too is that in there but it used to be when i started out as a writer when people would write about my books they would mention that they were funny and then after the attack on the satanic verses everybody stopped saying i was funny really and it's because that book is satirical it's yeah and it's and people who read it i get i get two reactions to leap to read it now one is where's the dirty bit because we can't find it yeah and the second is who knew it was funny and i say people who read it but it's you know with that on you do you feel there's an idea that you have to wear that heroism i don't know what the heroism but i think i have to be part of the fight right no i mean i mean there is a fight about free expression in america too at the moment and i'm i'm i feel like i'm in that fight i have a dog in that fight what what do you think that how the the nature of fundamentalism has changed and how that affects artistic expression like even now when we see all the protests you know up at Columbia University some students protest as others think that's going too far and they're threatening people and we're crossing all those difficult lines you spoke at the pen banquet yes yeah last year which is a consortium of writers and poets and a lot of people truly defenders of free speech yeah i just got a text today they've cancelled they've cancelled the prize giving because there are people attacking them for not being sufficiently anti-Israeli or pro-Palestinian or something right i mean everybody's so angry right now right that nobody can listen or talk to anybody else so people have shouted each other listen there was a critic and this is going to sound like a joke a critic of Taylor Swift's new music album the torture poses i they had to remove the critic's name from the critique because of death threats because he didn't like the record i didn't read it because i love the record yeah cool i don't want to hear any negativity though that's so do i job but but it's it speaks to in 1989 there was an aitola and a fatwa and a group of religious marketing mucks who delivered the law from high above and now it's we're all fundamentalists everybody's an expert everybody's got an opinion and a hostility and hostility the level of anger is it's crazy right now do you think of you know you have a dog in the fight in that creative how do we and i think about this a lot how do we manage that and is that just a function of the algorithm i might make i think to an extent it is yeah i mean i don't know frankly i don't i'm glad you asked me because i'm the answer have the answer to the world's problems it's actually on page if i would it's like but you were thoughtful enough and you've been through it enough that i know you have an opinion yeah i mean i just think people have to get drawn i'd stop having such thin skins you know at the moment we're all very easily offended and what's more is we also believe that being offended is a sufficient reason for attacking something right but actually everything offends somebody always always i mean occasionally you what how dare you sir i am offended you see and then if you go down that road then we can't talk to each other anymore right you know but having groups always had a way of policing language or behavior i i think i'm trying to think has my perspective changed on it or has the dynamic changed i think what's happened is the temperature has got risen right no i mean yes of course people have always disagreed and people have always said you can't say that you've got to say this that that's not new what's new is the the volume and the heat right no and so what do we do about taking down the volume and taking down the heat that's the question i mean and again not to make you the avatar of this but this is coming from a man who because of threats from fundamentalists had to basically alter your entire life well it did certainly have an impact yeah yeah i mean what what is sad is that i actually got my life back really i mean i've been living in New York City for getting on for 25 years right and you had made a decision i'm going to come out of this and make myself available and for 23 years it was fine right you know i mean i you know i mean i was doing everything that writers do book tours readings lectures you know oh i know i'm a writer don't stop i've been there with the coffee clutches yeah and opera yeah well i haven't been with opera none of us have not let anyway so it was a shock when this thing out of a quarter of a century ago more than that 30 years ago sort of came out of a crowd at me you know it was i really was very surprised do you find yourself now freed of that fear or is there still that PTSD like what where's your what is that due to you well i mean it does you know nothing good but but it's now been what 20 months or something i think i'm pretty much back to myself at this point do you feel like you're you're in that writing rhythm again does your has your mind started to dream again finish this don't and by the way let me tell you something and i and and we don't have people on where i don't either you know read it or or take a look it's such a beautiful and incredibly interesting and revelatory book i really thank you for writing it because you had to endure something awful but your insight into that experience is is really a remarkable gift to give to other people and i really do appreciate it's got funny bits a couple of funny bids now yeah for a writer not for a writer but it really is thank you fantastic piece of work and i and i thank you for doing it the book is called knife it is available as we speak some unrushity we're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back after this my dear tonight the best-selling author of the god delusion his new book is a memoir called an appetite for wonder the making of a scientist please welcome to the program richer dockens so thank you for joining us uh i uh the book is called an appetite for wonder and look at you look at you with the mop top and uh that was uh you could have been in a band with that that's what i call the grinning idiot picture the um no the british one has the ruptured brook picture which is the the sideways poetic look oh really you have both of those on you do you all right fair enough i have a uh so there's a very liberal uh presbyterian pastor in my audience we get to this and when i say liberal here's how liberal he is he's Jewish so for better or for worse you seem to be the avatar for uh uh the dividing line of the incompatibility of uh religious belief and scientific belief somehow you have through maybe your words yeah i'll take that yeah so his question was can you let richer dockens know now that there are uh religious individuals with a strong belief in god who also believe quite strongly in the scientific method it does that seem incongruous to you now i'm aware of that and i quite often he says he says asking if he's aware of that and i go i'm pretty sure he's aware of that yeah it's a point i often make and i often join forces with bishops and other friends to combat the anti-scientific tendency of fundamentalist religion it's one of the great fallacies among fundamentalists that they think all religious people are like them and they're not that that's exactly right there's a certain rigidity to it now you here here's my my uh here's my proposal for the question for the discussion time do you believe that the end of our civilization will be through religious strife or scientific advancement what do you think will in the long term be more damaging to our prospects as a human race the astronomer royal mountain reese and present to the royal society it gives humanity a 50 percent chance of surviving through the 21st century and wait hold on i gotta do some math oh and one line and one and one and one of the reasons is he fears that the fruits of scientific advance the bad fruits things like dirty bombs things like um biological warfare could get into the hands of religious fanatics uh who um who unlike all other terrorists actually want to die mean they want to go to paradise at a martyr's death and so um when you the the question you ask the answer is probably both that that science provides in the form of technology um weapons which hitherto have been only available to um reasonably responsible governments will become or will elected it become available to not cases who believe that that that their god requires them to wreak havoc and destruction doesn't it though let scientists off the hook to some extent to suggest that their work could only be misused by those who are whose minds are boggled by religious fanaticism when in fact isn't there a strong probability that we are not necessarily in control of the unintended consequences of our scientific advancement that's i'm not suggesting to ever stop it but don't you think it's it's even possibly more likely that that we will create something that the unintended consequence of it is worldwide catastrophe that is possible and um it's something we have to worry about the precautionary principle i think is is very important um science is the most powerful way to do whatever it is you want to do and if you want to do good it's the most powerful way of doing good yes you want to do evil it's the most powerful way to do to do evil and it seems to provide us for every scientific event there is i guess it would be the what is the third love of a firm for every equal action there's an opposite reaction that's what you can yes so you have nuclear energy you split an atom you go this way and you can light the world you go this way and you can blow up the world and it seems like we always try this part first well um there is a suggestion that one of the reasons why we don't detect extraterrestrial civilizations is that when a when a civilization reaches the point where it's capable of broadcasting radio waves that we could pick up there's only a brief window before it blows itself up that there's a that there's a a brief window between discovering the advanced technology to communicate by radio which we could then pick up and producing the horrific technology which then gets out of control right so it may be that all over the universe there are little civilizations winking into action briefly flashing into action for a few centuries and then killing themselves and so why do you think it only takes them a few centuries and does that make us oh no that's just a speculation um so you feel like we are low achieving when it comes to no no no no no no no no no not at all the point the point is that it takes many billions of years for evolution to reach the point where technology takes out takes off right but once technology takes off it's then an eye blink by the standards of geological time I see um before according to this rather pessimistic speculation I'm not I'm not forwarding it myself at this point the only speculation I've heard from you is somewhat pessimistic I have yet to say pessimistic we are but I guess that's the the point is I think that it's very easy to look at the dark side of fundamentalism and the damage that it can do sometimes I think we have to challenge ourselves and look at the dark side of achievement and the dark side of because I believe that the final words man utters on this earth will be it worked you know what I mean like it'll be an experiment that isn't misused yes but will be a rolling catastrophe yeah it's it's a possibility and and I can't do it I can't deny it um what do they do I'm more optimistic than that about science yes yes in terms of its its ability to control it's you know curiosity killed the cat and the cat never saw it coming that's can you stick around yeah yeah beautiful uh the uh an appetite for wonder is on the bookshelves now Richard Dawkins explore more shows from the Daily Show Podcast universe by searching the Daily Show wherever you get your podcasts watch the Daily Show weekdights at 11 10 Central on Comedy Central and stream full episodes anytime on Paramount Plus this has been a Comedy Central Podcast