Welcome to the Making Sense podcast. This is Sam Harris. Just a note to say that if you're hearing this, you're not currently on our subscriber feed, and we'll only be hearing the first part of this conversation. In order to access full episodes of the Making Sense podcast, you'll need to subscribe at samherris.org. There you'll also find our scholarship program, where we offer free accounts to anyone who can't afford one. We don't run ads on the podcast,
and therefore it's made possible entirely through the support of our subscribers. So if you enjoy what we're doing here, please consider becoming one. Well, today's guest needs no introduction. Often one says that and then just gives the introduction anyway, but no. Richard Dawkins actually needs no introduction on this podcast, except to say that he has a new book, which is titled The Genetic Book of the Dead, which we speak about
in the first part of the podcast, where we talk about the genome as a kind of palimpsest, what scientists of the future may be able to do with our genetic information, genotypes and phenotypes, embryology and epigenetics, why the Lamarkey and Theory of Acquired Characteristics
just couldn't be true. How environmental selection pressure actually works, why evolution is so hard to think about, human dependence on material culture, the future genetic enhancement of human beings, viral DNA, symbiotic bacteria, AI and the future of intellectual life, the prospect of resurrecting
extinct species, and then we pivot to politics. We talk about the problem of free speech in the UK, which has reached surprising proportions, as well as the problem of political Islam and anti-Semitism, and then we close with some reflections on our friend Dan Dennett, and now I bring you the one and only Richard Dawkins. I am here with Richard Dawkins. Richard, thanks for joining me again. Great pleasure, Sam. Thank you. So you have a new book, which I'm sorry to say I have not read
in this entirety because I can only spend so much time reading a PDF that gets into me. I do not have the physical book yet, but I have read enough to declare that it is fascinating and that people should go out and buy it. So we'll talk a little bit about it, but there are a few other things I want to talk to you about. Yes. But first, how are you and what is your life like these days? I think you and I had to lunch about a couple of months ago, but we're traveling or what's happened?
Yes, well, I'm doing a tour of North America at the moment, and then it carries on in Britain and Europe. And I've said it's my final tour, and it's part of to promote the book. In fact, I suppose it's most of the time I've been doing it. And how long are you on the road for? Five weeks in North America, and then indefinite, well, a couple of weeks in Britain and Europe. Mm-hmm. Nice. Well, Neil said, I hope it's not your final tour, or I hope that doesn't say anything about
your longevity. Yeah, I hope so too. My last tour might have been my final tour too, so you never know. So, let's touch on the book. The title is the... The genetic book of the dead. The genetic book of the dead, yeah. And it's a reference which you disavow early on, and it produces an echo which you disavow early on. It's an echo to the Egyptian books of the dead. And the Tibetan, I would point out that it's also a Tibetan book. Yes, and the Tibetan,
it's just a kind of poetic illusion, really. It doesn't really discuss those books. And there's a kind of vague relevance in that I talk about genes as being immortal. In the sense that they go on for generation after generation whereas bodies are cast aside and die.
Mm-hmm. And so the genes are a kind of set of instructions to the body as to how to not proceed to the afterlife as it would be in the Egyptian books of the dead, but how to hand the genes on to the afterlife, which is the next generation and the next and the next and so on. Right. So, if we were going to take the analogy literally and you're also drawing an analogy, a similar analogy to a palimpsest which you might describe what that is, but these are both
analogies to books. Well, tell our listeners or remind them not to be too pedantic. What a palimpsest is. Okay. A palimpsest is a piece of writing which is partially or wholly erased that you can write again on the same medium. So in the days when there wasn't a abandonability of paper, people would reuse the same parchment and they would erase what was already there and then write over what
over it. And I had a dear friend Bill Hamilton, a very distinguished evolutionist who wrote postcards where he would economize by writing in blue horizontally and then he would turn it to a right angle and write in red carrying on the message and you could read it by deciphering the coding red blue and which way it was pointing. You provide an example in the book which I must say I found difficult to read. I mean, that seemed like a provocation to one's friends to be said in the
book. Actually, I didn't manage to decipher. I think it's the red I forget which color it was. It's really rather dramatic. It's something to do with somebody getting his bike rammed or something like that. It was a, I didn't really read too much of it, but the point is that the genetic book of the dead is a description in the genes and in the body of an animal of all its ancestral worlds, all the worlds in which its ancestors lived because natural selection
has shaped it, has shaped the genes to survive in those worlds. But of course, since its ancestors lived in so many different worlds, very old, slightly old and so on until relatively recent. And then now it is a palimpsest of writings from all these different ages where they've been partially erased and then written over and then partially erased and written over again. Yeah, I want to go over that statement again just because it's beautiful. I don't want people to
miss the import of it. So to come at it from the other side, if we could read the genetic book of the dead, what would we read there? In the case of any of a human or any mammal, we would read old writings about the sea when our ancestors before the Devonian era lived in the sea. Then we would read writings about the emergence onto the land. We would read writings about subsequent
history and so on. In the case of primates going up into the trees, some animals went back into the water, which is remarkable, being sort of got all tooled up to come onto the land, should then go back into the water. And I've got a subchapter where turtles and tortoises actually came back for the third time. So they came out of the water onto the land, back to the water. So there were land tortoises in the Triassic era, back to the water as sea
turtles where some of them remain. And then back to the land again as modern land tortoises. So that's a double, double doubling back. And what do you imagine future biologists will be able to do with the genome? Okay, I have a sort of recurrent fantasy about a zoologist of the future. Scientists of the future, I make her female and I call her soft as scientist of the future. And I believe that scientists of the future will be able to read the book, which is the animal
and its genes and piece together the entire palimpsest of its ancestral history. It's something we can't do at the moment. And the part of the book is the parts of the book are about the little preliminary fumbling steps, nursery slopes steps, which we can make towards that end. Given a, given a, an unspecified genome, how close are we to being able to predict the phenotype of the, the animal? Not very close. And that of course would be a big problem for the genetic book
of the dead. And much of the book actually is not about genes at all. It's about using the phenotype of, of an animal to reconstruct the book, which is its set set of ancestral histories. Soft in the future will be able to do it with the genes. And we can't really do that now. You, you, there is no decoding process whereby you can get a genotype and say what the ancestral worlds of this animal were. I think Richard, we should probably remind people of just, we should
define our terms here. What's the difference between a genotype and a phenotype? Well, a genotype is the set of genes in the animal. And the phenotype is what the genes manifest themselves out. So the phenotype is the body, its behavior, everything that we actually see of the animal. So what I asked you, given the genome, the series of, of base pairs, the code that's in the nucleus of almost every cell in an animal's body, yes. Could we predict what that animal would look
like? No. Are we, are we close at all to your knowledge? I mean, this is like, really. What, what you can, what you can do is to say exactly what proteins would be programmed by that animal's genome. But the problem then is that the, that the, the animal itself is produced by the processes of embryonic development, which are masterminded by genes via the proteins, but the actual process itself is such that unless you know a lot about the animal already, you can't really tell.
If you're given a whole new animal, it's been found in the seas, sorry, a whole new genome that's been found. And you have no idea what kind of animal it is, then you couldn't reconstruct it. But if you could say, oh, yes, well, this, this evidently is a species of kangaroo, because it looks like a, the existing kangaroos, then you, then you could, then you, you're a way, and then you
could do something with it. But if you don't, if you know nothing about it, the only way to really find out what that animal would develop as would be to put the genome into a, well, into, into a female with the animal of the species concerned and let it develop. Yeah, you, you, you actually have a very seditious sentence at some point early in the book, which I think you say something like, yeah, I forgive me for putting dangerous words into your mouth, but they were, they were dangerous
on the page. He said something like the, like the best machine for translating genotype into a phenotype that we know of is a woman or something like that. Yes, that's right. Yes, yeah. I could have said any, any female. Yes, right. Yeah. Well, perhaps we'll return to that combustible topic. Yes. So what is meant by the word epigenetics and, and where does that concept come into play here?
Epigenetics is, I think, a much misused word. It's really just a word for everyology. The thing is that every cell in your body, every cell in our bodies has the same genome, the same diploid set of genes. And yet the cells are all different. So live a cell to different kidney cells, different muscle cells and so on. And the reason is epigenetics. The reason is that some genes are turned on in liver cells and different genes are turned on in kidneys, all different genes are
turned on in nerve cells and so on. That's epigenetics. Now, there has very recently been a suggestion that some of these turning on, turning on of genes can get passed on to the next generation. And this has been shown for a few cases. And the word epigenetics has come to be dubbed onto that process of passing on to the next generation. And that's unfortunate because it's become a kind
of vogue word of great popularity, suggesting a kind of major revolution. Some people even thought that it looks like Lamarkey an inheritance of acquired characteristics, which it really isn't. Well, let's just circle on that concept for a second again, just to capture everybody's understanding. What was the Lamarkey in thesis? And to what degree does the the heritability of some epigenetic settings cash out that thesis? Okay. Lamarke lived before Darwin and he had a the only the only
other theory for how evolution could work. And it was a bit mystical. He had this idea that animals kind of strive to change their way of life. And they stretched the giraffe by striving to reach fire and higher leaves. That's right. It stretches its neck. And then he had two main principles, the principle of use and disuse. The more you use a bit of your body, the bigger it gets. So the more you use certain muscles, the bigger they get. That's why you go to training. And as
the giraffe stretches its neck, everything about the next stretches. So that's the principle of use and disuse. Then he had the principle of inheritance of acquired characteristics. An animal inherits from its parents, those changes which could occur during the parents own lifetime. So the giraffe's babies inherit a slightly longer neck because the parents stretch their necks. Right. If you exercise your muscles with weight lifting, then your children are born
with a slightly bigger muscles. That would be the principle of inheritance of acquired characteristics. Plus use and disuse. And it's all false. It doesn't happen. You and use and disuse happens. But acquired characteristics are not inherited. Now, the modern vogue for what they call epigenetics, where certain genes get turned on, which they do during embryology, those genes that get turned on, if that turning on gets passed on to the next generation, then that is a kind of inheritance
of an acquired characteristic. But it's very different from the giraffe's neck. It doesn't have the same adaptive potential. It doesn't have the potential to pass on to the next generation, the improved capacity to survive, which the principle of use and disuse would. That's one reason why it's not the market. Another reason is that it doesn't go on to subsequent generations. It works only for the next generation, not for the indefinite future, which it would have to
in order to be evolution really relevant. Yeah. So let's clarify that point. So let's give an example of what we think actually could be transmitted from generation to generation by way of epigenetics. I mean, what is, I forgive me, I'm not close to this literature at all, but I believe I've consumed somewhere the idea that various environmental stresses, let's say the the subjection of one population to a near genocide. I mean, some generational trauma
needed. Starvation. Starvation could do something to the epigenetic settings of people. Yeah, it could change the physiology of the children in some way. But it would not go forward to the grandchildren or the great grandchildren or the great, great grandchildren. Because it doesn't change the germline of the... Exactly. It doesn't change the germline. It changes which members of the germline got switched on. But I don't think it's interesting
because it's at least not evolutionary. It's quite interesting. Sometimes it's not evolutionally interesting because it doesn't go on to the indefinite future. It would have to go on to the indefinite future to be evolutionarily interesting. By the way, I mean, I think it's quite important, quite interesting to think about why the Lamarkeian theory doesn't work. I mean, even if it were true that acquired characteristics were inherited. Even if the giraffe's neck was
in... it was inherited. It would not be good enough. It would not be a powerful enough theory to explain almost everything about evolution. If you take something like an eye where eyes get progressively better at focusing, better... better more clarity, more detail, more precision, that doesn't happen by just use and disuse. It doesn't... it's not the case that the more you use an eye, the more acute the vision becomes. Darwin's principle, Darwin actually
used the phrase, nature is daily and hourly scrutinizing every detail. That's one of the main themes of the genetic book of the dead that daily and hourly, any tiny detail inside the animal buried however deeply within the animal which improves the animal's chance of surviving, then that survives and that can go on to the next generation and the next and the next and the next.
Actually, perhaps you can discuss an example of that. I know you go through many in the book, but the one that I recall is with camouflage, with respect to lizards and flops. Yes, okay. So the thing I want you to illustrate is the point you're making about the daily and hourly scrutiny of the environment. Yes, that's a lovely phrase of Darwin, by the way. The first picture in the book, I think, is this lizard. It lives in the desert and all over its back,
it's got pictures of sand and stones and pebbles. It looks as though it's got a desert painted on its back and this is camouflage, of course. And there are many other examples, beautiful examples of camouflage where in every case you can say that the animals, rather the environment of the ancestors is painted on the animals back. Well, those are the very spectacular examples. But the thesis of
the genetic book of the dead is that it's more than just skin deep. Exactly the same attention to detail must pervade every tiny scrap of detail all the way through the animals, not just the skin, it's more than skin deep. It goes right through the animal. The daily and hourly scrutinizing produces the picture of a desert on the lizards back, but it also produces every little tiny mode of detail inside the animal, which assists its survival. Anything that assists survival and passing one of
genes is fair game for natural selection. That just doesn't be the principle of use and disuse and inheritance of a craft, how to do that. Because it doesn't have this sort of power to adjust to every single detail that Darwinism does because if it assists survival, it gets through to the next generation and therefore into the future. Explain how this could be so incremental. I mean, so you have a moth that looks now exactly like the bark of the tree that it is,
it's a bit of a stopping point. But obviously, no moth could have evolved fully in one generation. Quite. To look that way. So how is each increment justified and solidified by the attention of the daily and hourly attention of the environment? You have to start from an ancestor which looked hardly anything like the bark of a tree or think of a stick caterpillar, which is another beautiful example where a modern stick caterpillar looks uncanonally like a stick.
He's got little leafs, buds, scars and everything looks like a stick. Well, originally the ancestor would hardly have looked like a stick at all. It would have just been a vaguely long shaped thing, which most caterpillars are. So why, how did the, you're asking the question, how did the incremental process proceed step by step by step to go from a very crude ancestral resemblance to a stick?
Right up to a modern extreme perfection of resemblance to a stick. And the answer I think is that the final perfecting stages were provided by full frontal vision by a predator in a good light with full attention playing on the object. Whereas the early stages might have been predators who were just sort of might have caught sight of this thing by the corner of their eye while flashing past.
Or maybe in a poor light. Well, under those bad or from a long distance away. So from a long distance away in a poor light and out of the corner of your eye, even a very crude resemblance to a stick will escape the attention, escape the notice of the predator. And that provides the selection
pressure to slightly improve the resemblance to a stick. So just the slightest change in the probability of being of not surviving there is because you know, now you're dealing with just the all those occasions where you were barely in the field of view of the predator. Just that slight modification is enough to encourage that differential success of that exactly. And then, and then the gradient goes steadily upwards because you've got a whole gradient,
a whole spectrum of improved seeing conditions. I mean, if the very poor resemblance is good enough to fool a predator at a hundred yards away, then at 90 yards away, it's got to be slightly better in order to and there are going to be predators that are seeing caterpillars at all those distances. And under poor seeing conditions, the selection pressure produces the first stages
in the gradient of improvement to the mimicry. And then the last stage is provided by predators that are looking straight at the caterpillar in a good light and are still fooled by it because the resemblance is so perfect. Yeah, it's really just an amazingly beautiful process to think about
in that regard. Yes. Why is it so hard to understand this intuitively? I mean, or perhaps another way of asking the question is, what do you think the barriers are for just a wide spread in two to understand in of the reality of evolution? I suppose partly it's that the timescale involved is so huge and we're not equipped to deal with millions of years, let alone hundreds of millions of years. That's one thing.
Isn't the timescale sometimes surprisingly compressed? Sure, it is indeed. That's right. And that's perfectly true. And in the case of the evolution of of mimicry, it could it could be quite fast, but sort of either present their own impediment because if it's too short, it just seems like there's not enough time to have accomplished that miracle. And if it's too long, it's very hard to think about. That's right. Yeah. There's no sweet spot.
Well, maybe there is a sweet spot. But it'll vary in the different. 100,000 years. That's the sweet spot. Yeah. Well, it depends. I mean, it might be for some for some cases and it might be a million years in others. But it probably is surprisingly fast. Another thing I think is that people don't realize that a very, very slight advantage is enough to exert evolutionary change. So when you think about the, can it really be a good,
can it really matter whether you've got to say eyebrows? I've no idea why we have eyebrows, but suppose it's just stopped and sweat trickling into our eyes. I don't think it is, but just imagine that we have that. I've noticed it does not do a perfect job. Yes. It could just be my problem. Okay. Well, you might say, oh, well, why does it matter
of sweat trickled into your eyes? And does that really affect survival? Well, it might, because you might not see the saber tooth approaching quite so soon, if your eyes are all gummed up with sweat. Especially if there's sunblock mingled in with the sweat. Especially if there's sunblock mingled in with the sweat. And the point is that because we're dealing with genes, the statistical frequencies of genes, as they change in frequency over generations, any gene that tends to make eyebrows
stop the sweat trickling into your, into your eyes. It's not just the one occasion. It's all those thousands of occasions, a different individuals where the same gene has its beneficial effect. Not only the same individuals at the same time, but through, through different times. So, statistically, a gene can have a very small beneficial effect, but that beneficial effect is kind of multiplied up over all the different individuals that it influences over a
large stretch of time where it does its influence seeing. And because of that, those genes which are good at helping individuals to survive are the ones that we see, the ones that actually come through the generations. So, even a very slight advantage like stopping sweat trickling into your eyes is enough to do the trick, even though that's counterintuitive. And you ask the question, how wise it's intuitively so hard to understand. I think that's another reason.
What do you make of the fact that human beings seem so imperfectly selected to survive without material culture? Right? I mean, so like, actually, David Deutsch, who I know you know, at least by reputation, if not personally, over their Oxford. Very smart man. He's made the point
that the Earth already is essentially a spaceship for us. So, if you just leave him out exposed, even to an Oxford night without the benefit of shelter or clothing or fire, or you know, he's, you know, for at least many nights of the year, he's likely to die of hypothermia. So, it's like, we're just not, we're these naked apes that are not great at survival apart from being in tribal bands who have produced a monochrome of material culture and an ability to pass on that
culture to subsequent generations. But in and of themselves, you know, each representative of the species devoid of culture, you know, put on a desert island is liable to die and, you know, over the course of 72 hours or a week because of just being fundamentally unable to survive when slammed up against raw nature. What do you make of the difference between human beings and
basically everything else we see in the living world? I suppose if you were to go back to our time when we lived for a such a long time in Africa, in the savannah, we would have been a lot better at surviving as individuals than even then we would have needed culture, but nothing likes as much as we do today. I mean, now we have supermarkets, we get our food prepared for us, we don't have to go and get it, we don't have to go and find it or hunt it or kill it or gather
it. We just go into a shop and buy it and we are molecularly by electricity and central heating and all that kind of thing. If you were to take not a modern American or Englishman and put him out on the exposing to the elements, you might die, but if you were to do the same with a kung sam from the Kalahari desert, they are a lot better at surviving in the Kalahari desert. Yes, or Australian, a native Australian in the Australian outback, they do pretty well.
I think we've co-evolved culturally and genetically and when we've gradually emancipated ourselves, I mean, our genes have gradually moved us on into a world in which we, because we are surrounded by culture and culture has been gradually evolving at the same time, well much faster. Then we have
become dependent upon the culture which has been evolving at this very rapid rate. Things like wearing clothes, things like taming fire and going on to central heating and cooperative living such that we have farmers who grow food for us so we don't have to grow it ourselves, etc. I think it's not that difficult to understand how it's happened. This co-evolution with culture and technology. What are you expecting us to do with our increasing power to actually
engineer changes within our own genomes? If you had a time machine and you could glimpse what we're up to on that front, 50 years from now or 100 years from now, what would you expect? We've been changing the genomes of domestic animals and plants for thousands of years, very rarely radically. So are the sort of domestic animals that we keep like cattle and horses and pigs, chickens and pets like dogs are incredibly different from their wild ancestors. That's been
achieved not by manipulation of the genes directly but by artificial selection. If you think that of pecanese and a chihuahua are actually genetically wolves that have been modified by differential selection by humans, you're now asking the question about the other part of the Darwinian equation which is mutation. We've shown we can modify animals by selection. We've never done that
with humans and the Nazis tried and thank goodness they didn't succeed. But I mean you could have bred one could imagine in thousands of years time if totalitarian regimes started selecting humans the way we've selected dogs and cabbages. You could produce all sorts of monstrous humans analogous to producing chihuahua from wolves. Yeah, but obviously it was much more quickly. Yes, it's much quicker. But you don't know what you're doing coming back to your earlier question.
We don't actually know very much about how to do that. If you wanted to produce a not just as a human say say you want to produce an animal take one that hasn't been domesticated like say a hedgehog. You want to produce a hedgehog which could do the high jump and jump impressively high fences. In principle you could do it. You could do it by selective breeding. Take a while but there's no risk why you couldn't gradually improve the jumping ability of a hedgehog until it could
jump a foot and then two feet and so on. Just the way you be bred dogs to change from wolves into into pomeranians and spaniels. But to go into the genome of a hedgehog and say let's change the genes to make it into a high jumper. That's it principle possible but would take a lot more knowledge than we have at present. How to how to do that same with humans. But I would think that if we just keep making progress we will eventually have the the understanding of of the relevant genomes
and the technology by which to intrude into our own genomes. Essentially we already have crisper and presumably that's only going to get better and better and better understood in terms of its the implications of making any change. At a certain point I mean we already see an appetite for body modification and general strangeness among humans. We see people who tattoo their entire bodies. We see bodybuilders who develop their their musculature to the absolute maximum capacity with the aid
of a pharmacology that compromises their physical health. And this also happens among athletes. So there's clearly an appetite for extreme performance and extreme aesthetics that you know completely divorced from performance of any kind. You know even degraded performance you know that that allows for extreme aesthetics. There's an appetite for that. So once we get the ability to let's say modify the tendons and ligaments and muscles in such a way as to make make a person
you know analogously strong to you know to a gorilla or a chimpanzee. Do you have any doubt that people are going to start doing that the moment that technology becomes remotely democratized? No, if you're asking me about whether I have doubt whether people would take advantage of the opportunity I don't have any doubt was people do the most extraordinary things yes I think they would. I sort of I sometimes say say well we haven't changed humans by selection and where we've changed
dogs. So why would we change them by genetic manipulation? But of course there is an important difference which is that selection is something that takes many generations. And it could be done by totalitarian regime. Now the question what you could do to yourself as a representative of the
self is another matter because because that could be much quicker. And yes I suppose that's true because bodybuilders already I mean some if you look at some of the pictures of extreme bodybuilders they are well I don't like I was going to say grotesque perhaps that's not unkind but it shows what can be done by very sorts of manipulation and genetic manipulation could be even more powerful
than that. So yes I could imagine that whether we're just be physical I mean maybe you could even produce musical geniuses make it make another Mozart or another Bach by this means isn't a tantalizing thought. I guess I'm I spend very little time thinking about this you know the far future or even the the near far future with respect to this but I'm I spend much more time thinking about the implications of artificial intelligence with respect to this kind of time horizon
but when you think of genetic engineering it's very it's very hard for me to imagine what would prevent us from going some significant distance down this path right I mean I obviously we there are concerns about synthetic biology and the engineered pandemics and and all of that and
also their ethical concerns of the sort that you you reference with respect to eugenics and you know totalitarian control of populations but when you just imagine the technology becoming more and more available to the to the individual user and the in the way that you know by
analogy in the way that drugs illegal and otherwise are legal and otherwise are available to people now you know the anabolic steroids being the example we're we're using with respect to bodybuilding I just it's very hard to imagine us avoid culturally you know perfectly collaborating to avoid
extreme outcomes on a global level I mean I just don't see how yes I think I'll write we avoid it yeah I quite agree okay well is there anything else on the book that you want to draw the listeners attention to in terms of it just to give your focus in writing it or what you
was what was most interesting to you and research there is a sort of sting in the tail I suppose in the in the last chapter which you weren't have got to yet where I make the suggestion that we should regard all our own genes what we call our own genes as symbiotic viruses a gigantic colony of
symbiotic viruses and that's not as radical as it sounds it it doesn't it doesn't mean that a whole lot of independent viruses sort of like the flu virus and covid virus and so on came together you know as it doesn't mean that it's rather that I make a distinction we're looking at
parasites or looking at symbionts like like viruses or bacteria between those that get to a new victim by passing through the gametes passing through the sperms and eggs of the present victim so imagine a bit of bacteria more of a or a virus whose method of getting from human to human is by eggs or
or sperms then if you all think about what they want of their of the body in which they sit what they want is exactly the same as what the bodies own genes want they want the animal to reproduce they want it to survive therefore in order to reproduce they want it to be sexually
attractive they want it to be a good parent they want it to rear its young because that's their ticket to the future so every one of our own genes cooperates with the with the other genes in our own genome all the genes in our body cooperate to produce a body because that's their hope for
the future that's the only way they're going to get into the future and that's what natural selection all about selfish genes are being selected for their capacity to go into the distant future now a virus whose method of getting into the next generation is also via eggs or sperms
has the identical interests at heart so to speak as your own genes do and whereas a virus that has a different method of egress from the present body like being sneezed out and then breathed in by the next one or coughed out or coming out as dire rare and getting into the water supply and getting drunk by the next victim those viruses or bacteria have not the same interest at heart they might want the body to stay alive just long enough to proc to get to have the next sneeze but they're
not if you make if you make a list of all the desiderata all the things that they want their body to do it does not include surviving to reproduce it does not include being sexually attractive it does not include all the other things I mentioned it might include being sexually attractive if the
parasite gets passed on by it's if it's sexually transmitted disease that would be a special case which is which kind of proves the rule so if you want to look at all our own genes they're just like viruses that are that have the same interest at heart and that's what I mean when I say that
all our own genes can be thought of as a gigantic colony of viruses which cooperate with each other because they all have the only one the only hope of getting into the future is to pass through the same exit route the same little vessels which are the sperms or eggs and so why make a distinction
between viruses which get passed on by that route and our own genes that it they might as well you might as well call them all viruses or call them all genes that's the that's the sort of sting in the tail in the book anyway it's a provocative analogy what what is it are we aware
of any viruses yes yes and I think it's something like 8% of our of what we think of as our genome really did come in if you'd like to continue listening to this conversation you'll need to subscribe at samherris.org once you do you'll get access to all full length episodes of the
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