Shadowing Practice: "Richard Dawkins & Sean Faircloth in Conversation" - Learn English Speaking with Video
Creating lesson...
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Because he's someone who, shall we say, is noteworthy in the media,
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it is sometimes forgotten his heritage as a pure scientist.
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I have an acquaintance at the University of Texas, a very prominent scientist in their own right,
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and they were doing some research before introducing our next guest, and he said that when he did research,
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he found that there was no other living scientist cited as much as Professor Richard Dawkins.
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So in addition to being a great explainer of science to citizens throughout the world, he is a true stellar scientist himself.
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So for our conversation, we welcome, without further ado, Professor Richard Dawkins.
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Thank you.
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I think I'm...
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Is this mic working okay?
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Folks in the back and above can hear me with this.
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So we're going to do a few minutes of questions between Professor Dawkins and myself, and then we're going to, after that's over, turn it over to audience questions,
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And then, as I mentioned, afterwards, we'll have the reception.
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So thank you, Professor Dawkins, for coming, first of all.
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Really, I personally appreciate it, and I know the people here do.
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I wanted to talk to you about a few things about science and about your book, your most recent book, or at least the first question has to do with your most recent book,
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Appetite for Wonder.
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And in that book, there was something, especially from the viewpoint of education in America, I was curious about.
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And you said, and I'm going to quote, you're talking about your education.
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You said, it was really only the tutorial system that educated me.
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And I must say, that was remarkable, given that you've had, I guess, a little bit of success in science.
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I want to know, you know, what was this mechanism?
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What was it about?
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I mean, I come from, I'm a lawyer, and from that background, we have the Socratic method, where the professor says, you know, Mr. Faircloth, what about the torts rule of what have you?
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And you have to be ready, stand ready to answer
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but I wasn't quite as familiar with the tutorial process and I'm curious,
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one, how that's different from other methods of education in the British system
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but then also you have a lot of experience both teaching
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and visiting here in America and how you'd compare and contrast
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that with American and maybe are there ways we might be able to institute something similar here.
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First, is this microphone working?
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Well, first of all, can I compliment you on that speech, Sean?
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I mean, that was absolutely a fabulous speech.
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And I just want to say how fully I support this initiative.
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I'm not American, but I love this country,
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and I think that everything that this campaign is working for is entirely what we should be, what the rest of the world,
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actually, will look to America to do.
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The constitution of this country is admired and envied envied around the world, and it is a secular constitution.
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And somehow, in recent years, it's gone astray from that, from the vision of the founding fathers.
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Quite recently, because as Sean said, even Barry Goldwater was a staunch,
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stout defender of the separation of church and state, and it's a very recent phenomenon, this getting astray from that.
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Now, the tutorial system, it's a very expensive, extravagant system.
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You have one student and one teacher for an hour together.
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It's now slightly becoming more like two students or even three.
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When I did it, it was nearly always just one -to -one.
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And it suited me hugely.
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I had the discipline of going into the library for a week with a reading list
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that I was given the previous week and learning up a subject,
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looking at the original research literature in the library and becoming, in effect, at the age of 19,
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whatever I was, a world authority on this extremely narrow...
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And so are my colleagues at the same time because we were the people who had most recently read up
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this whatever subject it was, and often very, very narrow subjects.
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It suited me very very well.
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I don't think it suits everybody.
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I don't want to advocate necessarily that you should adopt the system here.
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It's much too expensive anyway.
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Although you could make it cheaper by having graduate students who are actually very good because they have the enthusiasm of youth.
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But this is my autobiography and so I said what was good for me.
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And yeah, okay, that's probably enough on that.
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I know, when I heard that, I thought about the one -to -one that Mayor County and Senator McCoy are probably thinking, well, that sounds a little bit expensive.
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Well, another question I want to ask you is I saw you tweet recently where you said
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that for non -specialists my favorite book of yours
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that you've written is Climbing Mount Improbable and I believe you said that might have been the least selling of your books.
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Yes, I was rather annoyed about this because, I mean, some of my books have actually sold rather well and this particular one,
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Climbing Mount Improbable, I think has sold the least of all my books
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and I think it might be my favorite of my books.
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It's about natural selection, and it's an attempt to explain to people why natural selection is not a theory of chance,
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not a theory of random chance.
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You would be amazed how many people say something like, well, nobody's going to persuade me that I'm a random accident.
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Well, of course you're not a random accident, that's the whole point of natural selection.
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Natural selection is the most non -random process you could imagine.
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That's the whole point of it.
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That was what Darwin did.
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Darwin showed the only known alternative to random chance that we have,
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because creation is not really an alternative to random chance, because you've still got a great big random god that you've got to explain in the first place.
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There's never been any other theory to get away from random chance as the explanation for complicated illusion of design
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which living creatures show.
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Now, some of my other books do the same thing, but I think this one, Climbing Mount Improbable, is the one that does that most clearly.
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Okay, and then when you said for the, I think your phrase was for the non -specialist, that implied to me perhaps that there was another book for specialists that was particularly your favorite.
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Yes, my second book is called The Extended Phenotype, and that is designed for specialist biologists.
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I actually like to think it can be read by others as well, and some people have been good enough to say that it is,
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but that's why I had to qualify that, yes.
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Okay.
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Now, something I hear when we travel, we went on several speaking tours together, is I would hear the controversy come up about group selection,
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kin selection, and how this might relate to your explanation of altruistic behavior.
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And I want to, for the layperson, understand what is that debate, and who's on which side, and then maybe explain why I imagine your side is correct.
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Do you really want a tutorial?
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I mean, well, if that's what you want, I can do it.
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Yeah, well, I know if you can do it within the kind of time frame available here.
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Okay.
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There has been a controversy in biology about where altruism comes from.
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I wrote a book called The Selfish Gene.
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And The Selfish Gene is not actually much about selfishness.
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It's mostly about altruism.
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It's about how natural selection, working at the level of the gene, natural selection favors those genes which are best at surviving.
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Genes survive potentially through hundreds of millions of years or tens of millions of years.
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Genes which are good at surviving are the ones that we still see in the world.
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So every living creature around contains the genes of an unbroken line of successful ancestors where success means
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that not a single one of them died young you can look back at your ancestors
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and make the proud claim not a single one of my
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ancestors ever died young not a single one of my ancestors
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failed to achieve at least one heterosexual copulation plenty of other plenty of their contemporaries failed in both those respects
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but we all of us contain the genes for success in surviving
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and reproduction the genes that made our ancestors successful were the genes that were selfish at the level of the gene.
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Any gene that works for the survival of a rival gene is not going to be around for very long.
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However, a gene that makes it the individual bodies in
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which it finds itself work for the survival of other individual bodies can survive,
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for example, if those other bodies contain copies of the genes kin.
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So kinship is an enormously important mechanism for the evolution of altruism.
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Kinship is what explains everything about the social insects,
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ants, bees, wasps, termites, where you have sterile workers who have no hope of reproducing themselves.
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Instead, genes that make sterile workers care for their reproductive sisters
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or nieces or nephews or brothers Those genes survive because copies of the genes in the sterile worker are in the reproductives.
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And therefore, these genes are selfish genes looking after the reproduction of themselves, copies of themselves in other individuals.
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That's called kin selection.
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Now, the rival to kin selection historically was group selection.
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And group selection said that those groups of animals
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that contained altruistic individuals were more likely to survive and propagate themselves than rival groups which contained selfish individuals.
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And that's the wrong way up.
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That's the wrong way to look at it.
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That departs from the explanatory principle of gene survival.
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It's only genes that survive through countless generations.
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So group selection will only work if you can make it work at the genetic level.
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And I don't really think I'd want to, in this audience where we're supposed to be talking about secularism,
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get into quite the detail that it would require to say that.
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But you asked who's involved.
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Unfortunately, the great E .O.
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Wilson, who is by far the leading authority on social insects in the world,
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has just recently been seduced into talking about group selection and abandoning his earlier espousal of kin selection.
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And I think he's just not...
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I mustn't libel.
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Well, I like to hear you talk about science.
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I enjoy it, because that's where I learn it.
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Well, I love talking about science, but...
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Yes.
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Well, let me get to, because it's something, as people might have gathered from my remarks,
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and it really energized me returning here to the United States, was this tour in Turkey.
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And I promised folks in Turkey I would convey a message to you, so I'll just do it here in front of several hundred people.
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But in Turkey, for those of you who don't know, and I didn't know that much, I studied foreign policy and international relations in college, and I knew Turkey and some basic events.
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But I wasn't as familiar with the founding of the Turkish Republic.
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This is a country that's bigger in population than Great Britain, bigger in population than France.
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And the founder, a man named Ataturk, he wrote about evolution and required it in school.
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And this is coming from a nation that's 98%, 99 % Muslim
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and because he was such a successful military leader he had huge almost George Washington level sway over his society
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and he said we're going to mandate science, education and all forms of education we're going to separate religion from government we're going to let women,
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they elected women to public office earlier than many European nations
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so this was the founding of the Turkish Republic now under
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threat by this kind of Muslim extremist that's moved into the prime ministership But those people, they set out a plea,
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and admittedly, some of that plea is directly to you, because I was talking to scientists in Turkey,
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was they want help from the international community and the scientific community, because they feel like, unlike some of the more so -called Western nations,
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they are neglected in our media, and their struggles are kind of unknown.
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And I know that you've spoken often of issues of Islam, but is there a message I could carry back?
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I know the message they want is that you'll go to Turkey. But about
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that we can carry back to folks who are in these Muslim nations who are really looking for civil liberties
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and feel under stress.
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I am aware that Kamal Ataturk was a great secularist and founded the modern state of Turkey on secular principles, famously did so.
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I wasn't aware that he was such an enthusiast for evolution, and I'm very glad to hear that.
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Modern Turkey has a problem with a particular remarkably prolific and successful author.
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I'm not going to mention his name.
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I don't want to advertise it.
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But he has produced a series of books, creationist books...
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which are translated into goodness knows how many languages, and they're given away free to biology teachers all over the world in all sorts of different languages.
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You walk into any biology department, you walk into the office of any biology teacher,
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and you will find these thumping great books from Turkey.
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They're picture books, they're beautifully illustrated.
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By the way, I rather wonder whether the illustrations are violating copyright.
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And I know that copyright law is quite stringent on illustrations.
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So if there's any lawyer here who would like to look into this question, you could ruin this man,
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which would do the world a hell of a lot of good.
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The way the books are arranged is that there's beautiful, lavish colors.
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On the left -hand side, you have a fossil, and on the right -hand side, you have a modern animal.
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And in all cases, it says, look at this fossil, look at this modern animal, see, they're the same, therefore evolution hasn't happened.
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Page after page after page, you turn the pages.
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When you actually look at what these animals are, they're preposterous.
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For example, on one of these double pages, the fossil is an eel, the modern animal is a snake.
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In another case, the fossil animal is a caddis fly in amber.
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You know that insects can be very beautifully preserved in amber.
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However, the modern animal is a tidefly for catching trout made of feathers.
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It has a steel hook sticking out of its back end.
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Page after page of this lavishly,
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expensively produced book, distributed free to biology teachers around the world is filled not only with these preposterous mistakes,
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but the more general mistake of creationism.
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Now this is something that should resonate with American biology teachers, because in too many places in this country,
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the teaching of biology, the teaching of science, is being subverted by the interference of religion into science education.
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And this is not, I think, a thing that's been much mentioned by any of today's speakers.
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They've mentioned all sorts of other respects in which the interference of church into interstate is very important, and I agree with that.
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But my own field is education, science education.
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And I am deeply troubled by the stories that I get over
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and over and over again from American teachers whose science lessons are subverted by often parents,
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often school boards, often local politicians.
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When I was in America a few months ago,
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I met a teacher in Florida who told me that she was a biology teacher and she was teaching evolution.
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and one of her pupils complained to his parents that he was being taught evolution, which he didn't want to believe in.
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The parents went to the head teacher and complained.
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The head teacher summoned the biology teacher and instead of telling the biology teacher, good for you, keep doing it,
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reprimanded the biology teacher and forbade her from teaching evolution anymore,
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all on the strength of one parent complaining, which is a scandal.
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I mean, what it meant was that all the other pupils in the class were being deprived of a proper scientific education.
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However, this biology teacher was a woman of some initiative.
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She knew she wasn't allowed to teach evolution because the headteacher had told her not to.
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She went to the local university and asked a professor to come to her class, And he taught the time.
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I'm going to sneak in another science question, then I'll ask a secular one.
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Since the selfish gene, what do you consider to be the greatest advance in evolutionary science?
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We say that's major progress, really something new that's been revealed or a new way of looking at things advancing.
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Well, I think it really started quite a bit before The Self -Esteem, actually, because The Self -Esteem was published in 1976.
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The really, really big step was taken in 1953
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when Watson and Crick solved the structure of DNA and showed that DNA has exactly the properties necessary
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to be the genetic molecule and showed also, and this has now become a growing trend throughout biology ever since,
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modern genetics, modern molecular genetics is digital.
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I think with hindsight, we could say that it had to be digital.
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It wasn't understood at the time.
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If you look back into pre -Watson and Crick literature, you'll find all sorts of speculations about how genetics worked,
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which I think with hindsight, we now know that not only did they not work, they couldn't have worked.
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Modern genetics is digital.
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It's just like computer science.
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It's a branch of computer science.
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It's a branch of information technology.
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And it sort of had to be, because otherwise genes, genetic replication,
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would not have had the necessary high fidelity to mediate the evolutionary process.
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Now, ever since Watson and Crick, the molecular genetics revolution has been gathering pace.
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So, as you know, the Human Genome Project took about 10 years to sequence the complete human genome.
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It can now be done in a few weeks.
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There's an astonishing speed -up in progress in doing this kind of work, this kind of digital sequencing.
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The equivalent to the Chimpanzee Genome Project,
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the Dog Genome Project, all sorts of genome projects are now underway they're greatly speeded up by previous ones,
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because you can build on the experience of the past, greatly speeded up by modern computer technology.
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But in the field of evolution, what this means is that whereas Darwin, when doing his comparative anatomy,
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was limited to looking at bones and things like that, and comparing animals, comparing the hand of a man with the hand of a bat,
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and the hand of a dolphin, for example, and seeing, showing that they're all mammals, that they all have a common ancestor with a similar hand.
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Nowadays you can do that with literally billions of bits of information, nucleotides.
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Literally, it's like comparing two texts from the Bible, two texts of the book of Isaiah, where you actually compare letter by letter by letter.
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And that means that in principle it will be possible to work out the complete family tree of all life.
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It can't be done yet.
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There are lots of pitfalls and lots of difficulties.
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But this cornucopia of information, which was not available to Darwin, Darwin would have absolutely loved it.
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This is the most important thing that's been happening ever since 1953, and it's been happening ever faster,
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long after The Selfish Gene was published.
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Oddly enough, nothing in the molecular genetics revolution, I think, would cause me to revise the fundamental principle of the selfish gene.
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That's still true, although we now know hugely more about what genes are and how they work.
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Nevertheless, the principle I was talking about earlier of the immortal gene
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going on through generation after generation as the unit of natural selection, that actually remains intact.
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In a way, I'm slightly sorry to say that
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because scientists get kudos if they say they were wrong and change their mind, but in this particular case, I can't do it.
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Well, I'm going to ask one secular question, and I know there's many people who would like to ask questions at the microphone, and we'll do that.
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Just to reiterate the schedule from here is after I'll ask this question, then we'll turn to audience questions
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and then we're going to have I believe a book signing afterwards
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which if I'm correct is going to be upstairs
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and people can also purchase books if they wish
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while they're in the book signing line but they'll also
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if you filled out your form be able to attend the
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reception where I hope everyone will take a leadership role and that
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that leads me to my last question last time we saw
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each other I just made a presentation about the Secularity USA project
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and you sent me a nice email saying to break open the champagne about this project
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and I must say since then I've invested actually I must
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in order to get us where we are now several thousands of my own dollars in hopes
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that this can really be something where the folks here more
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so than than me take leadership in this project and I hope maybe as a closing message before the audience questions
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You might kind of tell them why you think this is a champagne opening worthy project
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and what its real potential is with Secularity USA.
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Well, as I said before, I think that the secular constitution of this country is the envy of the world.
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It's certainly the envy of Britain, where insofar as we have a constitution at all, we don't really have a written constitution, but insofar as we have a constitution, it is very far from secular.
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I mean, there are bishops in the House of Lords.
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There are non -elected people in Parliament who are there purely because they are religious leaders.
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So church interferes with state all the time.
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And I think that places like Britain do envy the United States Constitution
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and are sorry to see this departure from it that I mentioned earlier.
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I was very persuaded by what you said about Iowa serving as a kind of megaphone
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for anybody who comes here when the world's press is here.
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That seemed to me to be a politically, tactically very sound thing to do.
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And it was done by Jimmy Carter, as you said.
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It was done by Barack Obama, I think, as well.
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So it looks to me as though Iowa is the happening place.
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And so I...
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I can congratulate Sean and Alan and their team, and I hope that the team will grow bigger and
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that people will come flooding into Iowa to help with your local organizing committee
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and that you will achieve this really noble goal.
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Thank you very much, and I think will we switch to lights where people can go to the microphone for questions?
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What can I, as a student, do to make sure that I receive an adequate science education?
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What can you, as a student, do to see that you receive an adequate scientific education?
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I'm sorry if it's necessary for you to take the steps that your teachers ought to be taking to do that.
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If you've got good teachers, then you're fine
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if you've got teachers who are refusing to teach science properly
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then I suppose what you do is complain to you do exactly what
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that Florida child did in fact in the other the other way you yeah that's difficult for you
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because at you're at your age I think that that would
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that would be very difficult be open -minded be critical think for yourself ask yourself
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when you're taught anything is this the kind of thing
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which is probably known because of real evidence
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or is this the kind of thing that you're just being told
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because of authority something like that so
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if somebody tells you something about the real world you could
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ask yourself the question what kind of evidence would lead to this belief about about the about the real world
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and try to do a little bit of research ask around
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ask your parents find out whether there's real evidence for the thing
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that you're being told and mistrust it if it turns out that there isn't any evidence,
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but that this is just something which you're being told from authority.
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What would be a discovery that you would find fascinating, you would like to see discovered by science coming forward, or what particular advancement in science excites you?
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You're not asking me to actually say what that discovery would be, because if I could do that.
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Well, the origin of life would be very nice.
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I was saying earlier that the immortal gene is the key to natural selection.
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Natural selection can only get going when the immortal gene was born.
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So the origin of life had to be the origin of the very first self -replicating molecule, something like DNA,
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but it probably wasn't DNA because DNA requires too sophisticated an infrastructure in order to do its job of self -replicating.
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DNA needs protein in order to do its job of self -replicating, and protein needs DNA, so we have a catch -22.
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So the original self -replicating molecule probably wasn't DNA what it was nobody knows we may never know because it's
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shrouded in the past however the best hope would be if somebody produces a model a theory
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which is so good so elegant
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that everybody says yes of course it has to be
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that way because that's such an elegant theory that's the sort of thing physicists do all the time
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biologists usually don't have that that luxury um
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so i i have good hope that
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that may happen in my lifetime perhaps an even wilder hope
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would be to solve the problem of what is subjective consciousness
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and that's a much philosophically much more difficult there was a book
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that was published in I think it was Australia I won't advertise it
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but it pretty much said not only to kids
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but to their parents hey don't go get vaccinated for anything
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it was you know we've always had Christian scientists who are always completely against vaccinations and even seeing the doctor.
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So could you elaborate, I suppose, a bit on what we should, and what steps we should take to make sure
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that children don't die from not getting vaccinated and not from seeing the doctor?
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This is very serious because it's not just that if you don't vaccinate, if enough people don't vaccinate,
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then you don't push the herd above the threshold that's necessary to stop epidemics forming.
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The mathematical models of epidemiology have shown that if there are enough, there's a high enough percentage,
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and the percentage varies with different diseases, but whatever the critical percentage is, as long as that percentage is reached of people who are immune to the disease,
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you won't get an epidemic epidemic.
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If you drop below that critical percentage, then you're going to get an epidemic of measles or whooping cough or whatever it is.
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So, there's a social welfare aspect to this as well as just a private one.
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It's not just a private matter of, do I get vaccinated myself or do I vaccinate my children myself?
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You're actually damaging society as a whole if you don't vaccinate.
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And one can say with confidence that vaccination works.
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The evidence in favor of vaccination is overwhelming.
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And so it is a benighted view that you shouldn't have been...
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That every now and again scare stories arise that vaccinating a particular vaccine causes autism, whatever it might be.
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It's very understandable why parents would be scared of that.
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And I think part of the reason for that is that to vaccinate a child is to take a positive step.
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You actually pay a doctor to stick a needle in them.
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So that if you believe the story that it causes autism or causes something else, then the parent has a feeling of blame,
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self -blame, which is, so to speak, a sin of commission whereas if you fail to vaccinate
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and then the child gets the disease and maybe even dies,
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somehow in our psychology it doesn't feel like the same deed that you've done.
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Even I, when there was one of these scares, I think it was about whooping cough,
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and I was worried about whether to get my daughter vaccinated, went to my doctor and said,
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is it true that you can get bad side effects from whooping cough vaccine?
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And he got up and selected a book from his bookshelf and he said, well, it is true, but the danger from whooping cough itself is 3 ,000 times greater.
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So I said, right.
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Thank you.
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What was it like to meet someone like Bill O 'Reilly, especially someone in your field and intelligence?
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I've done Bill O 'Reilly three times now.
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I've been able to see two.
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The first time, he treated me with a certain measure of respect, I think.
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We had a moderately okay conversation.
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I think the second time was when I get, the tide goes in, the tide goes out,
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the tide isn't it and I lost respect for him
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and I think the third time
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that was down the line I wasn't actually in the studio
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and he was shouting at me so much
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that I eventually said will you stop shouting at me and listen and he did
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I slightly suspect from having met him Outside the studio before the microphones were switched on.
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He's not quite as stupid as he pretends to be He's playing to his audience Hi,
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um, whilst researching in Bristol this summer, whenever I met British students and they found out I was American
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One of the first things they would say
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and the professors as well was oh it must be awful to be a paleontologist in America
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It must be awful to be learning about evolutionary biology in America.
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And so that's obviously concerning.
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But I was wondering if you see that perspective in your colleagues as well and whether you think that could be damaging.
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I hear what you're saying.
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I don't, actually.
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I mean, I've traveled a lot in America, and I've always been, whenever I visited schools, visited universities, is,
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I think Liberty University is the only place I've ever visited where I've thought this place should really be closed down.
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But in general, I have been impressed.
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It may be that my hosts have been selective in who they take me to.
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I read the statistics.
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I'm aware that there is massive opposition to the teaching of our subject you're an evolutionist as well, yeah.
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There is massive opposition.
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I'm aware of this from opinion polls.
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I'm aware that Gallup polls suggest that 45 percent or
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so of the American population believes the world is less than 10 ,000 years old, which is, by the way, as I've often said before,
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equivalent to believing that the width of North America is eight yards
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but but I I never I met I never meet these people
381
and and and I don't really quite I can't marry it up to the the fact
382
that you use the word perception I mean I I have a perception I think
383
that I think the world has a perception
384
that this country United States of America is is beyond compare the leading scientific power in the world,
385
the leading scientific nation ever.
386
And so, in a way, it's all the more credit to those scientists like yourself who are doing proper science,
387
despite being held back by that 45%.
388
Just think what you could do if you didn't have that 45%.
389
Good evening, Doctor.
390
My question is kind of a different tack.
391
What in your definition is a species?
392
Okay.
393
Where you have sexual reproduction, and you do have sexual reproduction in most of the animals that we're familiar with.
394
A species is defined as a group of animals which can interbreed with each other under natural conditions.
395
Species that have drifted apart from each other so that they can no longer interbreed with each other have become separate species.
396
So the origin of species, to quote Darwin's title, is the moment when a species divides into two
397
and divides sufficiently far apart from each other that
398
if they meet again they can't interbreed it's a very very
399
important process there are there have been on this earth literally
400
billions of separate species they're all descended from a single common ancestor
401
so this process of branching so -called speciation branching
402
and then being sufficiently far apart
403
that they can no longer interbreed is what it's about it's a remarkable fact
404
which nobody can deny that if you follow your ancestry back sufficiently far
405
and you follow the ancestry back of any other animal you
406
like to mention let's take a snail you will eventually hit a common ancestor in the case of humans
407
and snails that common ancestor lived more than a billion years ago
408
but there was a time
409
when some ancestral species we don't know what it was was
410
accidentally probably accidentally split into two perhaps by some geographical barrier and
411
one side went off eventually to become vertebrates including us the
412
other side went off eventually to become most of the invertebrates including including snails
413
but there was a time when two siblings brother and sister sister sister
414
one of them was destined to give rise to us
415
and the other was destined to give rise to snails plus of course lots of other things Isn't that a wonderful thought?
416
Thank you, Mr. Dawkins, for taking my question.
417
In my friendly talks with the religious right,
418
some of them have been just simply dismissive of humanism as just a modern form of religion.
419
Would you remark on that?
420
Well, humanism is in one respect a kind of religion
421
because it aspires to take the place of religion with respect to things like ideals,
422
morals, principles to live by,
423
maybe meetings that you hold to foster some sense of solidarity.
424
So, quite a lot of the things that religion does can be done by humanists.
425
Humanists can be trained to conduct funerals, conduct weddings, and they do many of the things that clergy people do.
426
However, the word religion has come to be associated with a belief in something supernatural.
427
And that's the one thing that humanists, at least in the sense that I think you're meaning it, don't believe.
428
So it is a kind of atheistic way of living.
429
I don't always call myself a humanist.
430
I sometimes do.
431
But I think humanism is kind of the religious wing of atheism.
432
I am an artist at the Iowa State University
433
and I'm a big believer that the importance of evaluating the origin
434
or resource of an image or piece of work just as much as any scientific document
435
or literary work so I was wondering
436
if you had any words to say in regard to visual
437
literacy in society with regard to what sorry visual literacy visual literacy literacy visual literacy gosh
438
but most of the questions I got I've had before but
439
that one is totally new to me
440
which is wonderful I am not very visually literate I'm not the best person to answer
441
that question I have a bit of a blind spot where where art is concerned
442
so I don't think I I have to come back to
443
that I don't have an immediate answer to
444
that I'm sorry it's your subject
445
not mine I
446
spent my
447
life breeding plants for drought tolerance, and so I'm keenly aware of the dire implications of climate change.
448
And so as an evolutionary biologist, do you take a fated perspective that in the sense that most species become extinct,
449
and that's our fate, or do these selfish genes give us hope for the future?
450
It's true that most species have gone extinct, and therefore, statistically, we might fear
451
that the same will happen to us I think there are reasons to think
452
that we might be an exception to the rule we are exceptions in
453
so many ways we are a very very remarkable species we
454
are in this magnificent theater it's totally totally different environment from the environment
455
that our wild ancestors would have felt felt at home
456
and they would have been utterly bewildered by clothes by cars by computers by planes by refrigerators
457
and so I think that the kind of catastrophe
458
which leads to the extinction
459
which has historically led to the extinction of 99 % of all species
460
that have ever lived we have a very good chance
461
because of our technology of overcoming maybe even if the
462
if the worst fears of of of climate change profits come true
463
that will be a disaster for the world as a whole
464
and it'll be disaster for the great majority of humans
465
but I don't think it's necessarily true that we will go extinct
466
because we you could imagine
467
that humans would have technological ways of preserving even even something as disastrous as the one
468
that killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, when a meteorite hit the Earth with a force greater than
469
all the hydrogen bombs in the world put together hundreds of times over.
470
We might even survive that.
471
We might, by the way, be starting to think about ways of deflecting the next one that comes along, because there will be one.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This C1 speaking lesson is built on the video “"Richard Dawkins & Sean Faircloth in Conversation"”. This video has 471 sentences and 6337 words to shadow. The speech runs for 45:16. The speaker talks at a steady 140 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. 82% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| ancestor noun | /ˈæn.sɛs.tɚ/ | One from whom a person is descended, whether on the father's or mother's side, at any distance of time; a progenitor; a forefather; a forebear. |
| vaccinate verb | /ˈvæksɪneɪt/ | To treat (a person or an animal) with a vaccine to produce immunity against a disease. |
| genetics noun | /dʒəˈnɛt.ɪks/ | The branch of biology that deals with the transmission and variation of inherited characteristics, in particular chromosomes and DNA. |
| secular adjective | /ˈsɛkjʊlə/ | Not specifically religious; lay or civil, as opposed to clerical. |
| genome noun | /ˈd͡ʒiː.noʊm/ | The complete genetic information (either DNA or, in some viruses, RNA) of an organism. |
| envy noun | /ˈɛnvi/ | Resentful desire of something possessed by another or others (but not limited to material possessions). |
| literacy noun | /ˈlɪtəɹəsi/ | The ability to read and write. |
| interbreed verb | /ɪnteɹˈbɹid/ | To breed or reproduce within an isolated community. |
| whoop noun | /wuːp/ | A loud, eager cry, usually of joy. |
| replicate verb | /ˈɹɛplɪkeɪt/ | To make a copy (replica) of. |
| reproduction noun | /ˌɹiːpɹəˈdʌkʃən/ | The act of reproducing new individuals biologically. |
| tutorial noun | /ˌtjuːˈtɔːɹɪəl/ | A self-paced learning exercise; a lesson prepared so that a student can learn at their own speed or convenience. |
| evolutionary adjective | /ˌiː.vəˈluː.ʃən.ɛɹ.i/ | Of or relating to the biological theory of evolution. |
| cough verb | /kɔf/ | Sometimes followed by up: to force (something) out of the lungs or throat by pushing air from the lungs through the glottis (causing a short, explosive sound)… |
| fossil noun | /ˈfɑsl̩/ | The mineralized remains of an animal or plant. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| find out verb | To discover, as by asking or investigating. | |
| go off verb | To explode. | |
| speed up verb | /spiːdˈʌp/ | To accelerate; to increase speed. |
| ask around verb | To enquire of different people about something. | |
| close down verb | /kləʊzˈdaʊn/ | To stop trading as a business. |
| come along verb | To accompany. | |
| come forward verb | To offer help or information, especially about a crime. | |
| fill out verb | /fɪl ˈaʊt/ | To complete a form or questionnaire with requested information. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- I want to know, you know, what was this mechanism?
- Faircloth, what about the torts rule of what have you?
- Do you really want a tutorial?
- What in your definition is a species?
- Would you remark on that?
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | you've written · have actually sold · has sold |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | is sometimes forgotten · is admired · was given |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | people who had · students who are · genes which are |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 128 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, I'm, you're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: reproduction /ˌɹiːpɹəˈdʌkʃən/, evolutionary /ˌiː.vəˈluː.ʃən.ɛɹ.i/, sufficiently /səˈfɪʃəntli/, kinship /ˈkɪnʃɪp/, vaccination /ˌvæk.sɪˈneɪ.ʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: literacy /ˈlɪtəɹəsi/, reproduction /ˌɹiːpɹəˈdʌkʃən/, evolutionary /ˌiː.vəˈluː.ʃən.ɛɹ.i/, altruism /ˈæl.tɹu.ɪz.əm/, humanism /ˈhjumənɪz(ə)m/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Shadow it sentence by sentence at normal speed, repeating each one until your rhythm matches the speaker.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like ancestor, vaccinate, genetics.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.