Richard Dawkins w/ Stephen Fry

[00:00:00]Uh what struck my mind is it's very interesting that you have three English people sat here on the stage in what is quite possibly the least English place in the known universe. [laughter] We in England, we have Blackpool, we have Skg Ness, and you have Atlantic City and Las Vegas. And and there's an impression that Americans have of the British. Um, and the people you think of tends to be it tends to be Church Hill and the Royal Family and then the the cast of Downtown Abbey and Benny Hill and Are You Being Served? And that's Monty Python and that's Britain to you.

[00:00:43]But Britain is a Britain and England, these are countries with a deep history both of science and in the arts. It's it's the country of Sir Isaac Newton, of Charles Darwin, of of Faraday. And on the outside, it's the country of of Shakespeare, of the Bronte sisters, morely of Stanley Kubri, of the Rolling Stones, of of JK Rowling.

[00:01:06]And what we've got here are two of the mo most foremost people from our country in those two fields. In the field of science and in the field of the arts. On the one hand we have Richard Dawkins who as you know the premier evolutionary biologist of his time a science educator second to none.

[00:01:27]The former Oxford University professor for the public understanding of science.

[00:01:32]The author of such books that have changed lives as the selfish gene. blind watchmaker and the god delusion. And then we have Steven Fry who described earlier and I have never heard a person who fits this better of the Renaissance man, the actor on film, on TV, on stage, the author, the playwright, the radio host, the quiz show host, and if you have not watched QI, start watching QI. [applause] [cheering] The director of Norwich City Football Club.

[00:02:05]But more than that, this is a man who has educated us. A man who's educated us in humanism and in humanity. Who's educated us in history, in LGBT rights and those issues, in mental health concerns, and in the effortless superiority that comes with being English.

[00:02:28]And this is wonderful. And and I am privileged. My mother has said she will never speak to me again because I am sat here between these two gentlemen. So I'm going to pass this over to Dr. Dawkins now.

[00:02:40]>> That phrase effortless superiority. It actually you know where it really comes from. It comes from Baleo College Oxford. Oh um the effortless superiority that marks a bale man. Well um Steven is not a Baleo man. I happen to be. But [laughter] uh but um I did wor worry a little bit about the same thing Nick was talking about. This is going to be a terribly English party and I worry about about that. Not only uh are we both from Oxbridge but um all three of us I think.

[00:03:10]Um but um Steven and I both went to very similar schools as well. In fact neighboring schools. I was at you at Uppingham. These are rival schools. And um I I looked up Uppingham on the web and it's exactly like And depressingly [laughter] so and um you talk about it in your autobiography uh and it brought back horrible memories. Not that I was there but very similar uh memories. But I also got the feeling that you you look back on it even though you were expelled. Um you look back on it with a certain nostalgia.

[00:03:44]>> I do. I do. And and I pick up on a few things that Nick said and you mentioned also about Englishness. And yes, [clears throat] I am considered by many to be quintessentially English. It's a phrase that's often used. And and I find it interesting that two of the 20th centuries figures of whom you would most use that phrase are probably Winston Churchill and Agatha Christie who are absolutely typify everything it is to be English. And in both cases like me, they had foreign parents. They were only half English. Churchill was half American as you probably know. His mother was an American woman. Agatha Christie's father was an American.

[00:04:21]My parents my father's very English, but my mother's family was middle European Jewish on both sides. And I think sometimes not belonging to a culture, especially one as established and as naturally replete with its iconography of oak trees and Robin Hood and Shakespeare and cricket and castles and royalty and so on, but having a family who are embarrassingly foreign and swooped in from Israel and New York bearing presents and doing that thing that no Englishman can possibly abide which is talking about food and uh what should eat? WE SHOULD EAT WHAT YOU EAT.

[00:04:56]I DON'T TALK about eating. It's like talking about going to the lavatory. You can't possibly do that. Um, so I was filled with the embarrassment of the part of me that wanted to be totally English and and and say, you know, pretend that my foreign family didn't exist. And uh, a great self-consciousness about what it was to be English. And to move that onto our subject that begins, I was sent away to boarding school when I was seven. So it was like 200 miles from home which in English terms is the entire length of the country. Um uh so my parents seemed to send me away very early to to go and stay there and the day was marked out by religious services uh as they are in these schools and then it was in the public school after that again uh and and I became immensely interested and immensely moved by the music, the architecture, the liturgy and everything to do with religion. And I wanted to be a priest, an Anglican priest but high Anglican. I liked it. I like the music.

[00:05:55]I like the smells. I liked the ritual. I liked the feeling of belonging. I I loved everything about it. And it got to the stage where um I actually went to see the suffrican bishop of Lynn in Norfolk. I didn't quite know what a suffrican bishop is. It's one of those words that's only ever applied to bishop. You never meet a suffan teacher or a suffan [laughter] brain surgeon or something. But anyway, it was a suffan bishop. uh and he chatted to me and we talked about theology and so on and then and then he asked a question about God and I said, "Oh, well that's that's my one problem." [laughter] He said, he said, "Go on." I said, "You know, I I um I never been spoken to by God or spoken to God or have any real sense that there could be such a thing because the beauty of the church is it's made by man." The Anglican Church in particular was constructed in a very short time by Archbishop Kramer and and Henry VIII to some extent. Um, and I liked it. I liked what it stood for. I liked its breadth and uh, its sort of tolerance as a church. But the idea of there being a god just struck me as being preposterous. And [laughter] in in my excitement of of of fondness for for the Anglican church, I had forgotten that really believing in God was still a small in the case of Anglican but necessary part. Um and he advised me to come back when God had spoken to me and I'm still waiting for that moment. Um but uh but I I'm really I don't know how you feel about Richard.

[00:07:33]I know you're sometimes accused of not knowing enough about religion, which is nonsense because I know you do know a lot about the [snorts] history of of Christianity and and other religions.

[00:07:40]And uh and sometimes people have said to me, "But you love Bach's masses, the you know, you love his uh the B minor mass.

[00:07:50]You love the you love the St. Matthew and the St. John. Um you you love so much of his canatas, you love Mozart's recquum, you know, whatever. um you love Michelangelo and you love and I say yes well yes of course I do who doesn't um but there are a number of things you can say about that one is um obviously the church was the great employer in the time of the Renaissance and uh so they had artists had no one else to to paint for um but the other thing is that that the fact that religious art can be beautiful doesn't make religion true for example without slavery we would never have had what was called the negro spiritual or gospel music. But I don't think that means you have to believe in slavery. It's a it's just that sometimes, you know, there are certain ways of of mankind organizing themselves that can that artists will produce great art from. And and it is one of those peculiar ideas. I mean, after all, most Renaissance art after sort of 1520s was more likely to be based on Greek mythology. And you don't ask whether or not um you know Watau and uh and and other artists like that believed in Apollo. It it would be nonsensical, wouldn't it?

[00:09:06]>> That's right. Yes. Um talking of Greek mythology, of course, your your latest book, I think, is on on is mythos and and I I've just read it and greatly enjoyed it. Um >> do you take you don't take moral lessons from that, do you? No. It's very important like EOP's fables. It's >> they're not EOP's fables. I absolutely agree. I mean, there's no question that you can look at quite a lot of Greek myth and say that it has tropes what are known in the business as mymes, which will be a familiar form of words to you and uh uh which repeat both within Greek mythology and indeed in other mythologies. But particularly in Greek mythology again and again you have like the fat on myth you know who was the son of Apollo stroke Helios the son god who who demanded of his father who'd be an absent father um and felt guilty he he demanded that he be allowed to ride the chariot of the sun uh uh and having granted that him any wish and he he couldn't back off and fat gets on the chariot and of course he goes to to near the sun um and the the earth freezes at the poles Then he he plunges too deep and the the deserts get formed as he burns the earth. And then eventually Zeus sees that he's destroying the planet by moving the sun up and down. Uh and uh and he thunderbolts him out of existence. And and you probably know the story of Icarus, too. Of course, the son of Dedelus, the inventor who made the wings and and he told his son Icarus that he mustn't go too near the sea or he the wing tips would be caught in and be made soden and waterlogged and he'd be drowned or he mustn't fly too close to the sun because because the the feathers were held on with wax which would melt and he would plummet and of course he plummeted. Uh and there are there are lots of Greek myths along those lines which exhibit what you might call hubris uh uh people overstretching.

[00:11:00]Indeed the the Greek for stretching too far is Titanis and the Titans were were the race of uh the sort of second race of of of of divine beings. the Titans stretched too far. And and the Greeks, I think, were aware that they were the first civilization through all kinds of accidents, including the arrival of the alphabet and and and uh, you know, originally linear B and then the Greek alphabet. They were the first nation to believe in progress, to believe that, as it were, a father should outdo a son, a child should outdo a parent. And and that's why I think Greek myths are full of things like fat and and and the the young trying to to fly too close to the sun because the Greeks had as an example Egypt. You they looked across the Mediterranean and for 3 and a half thousand years the Egyptians hadn't invented anything new. 3 and a half thousand years an extremely prosperous civilization had basically stayed the same as had other civilizations as far as we know around the world. They had established themselves. This is how we build a pylon. This is how we do a lintil and an in tablete. This is how we worship. This is how we move food about.

[00:12:10]That's it.

[00:12:12]We now have a viable life. And it could last for 4,000 years. But the Greeks with incredible speed changed everything. Changed the way they ran their politics into deems or or city states. Um changed the way they used voting and and changed the way they had juries and a justice system. um mathematics and algebra and logic and and even Pythagorean rules about music and harmony. All these things appeared at incredible speed and the arrival of a a literature and um and and it was best put by Browning I think who to summon up this Greek this stretching out this constant feeling that there is more you can discover more it's all there to be discovered anagnorosis is the Greek word for that and they discover from within their own experience as human beings and through experiment with the world and Browning as Browning put it that a man's reach should exceed his grasp or what's a heaven for and I think Plato and the Greeks understood the idea of heaven although they talked about God and heaven they knew them exactly as a model as an idea there is an ideal to which we strive and the Greeks are constantly striving towards something better they don't believe you know the as as um Simon Raven the novelist put it the genius of the Greeks lay in this understanding ing of esquetology of of you know the idea of a life after death and it was put by Simon I think the Greek who said any single person who tells you that they know what happens to a human being after they have died is either a liar or a fool simple and obvious thing to say but the Greeks had that and it's mysterious to us because we tribally and for hundreds of years, almost a thousand and a half years, >> struggled to have such a simple, honest, open idea. Anybody who tells you what happens after you die is either a fool or a lie.

[00:14:17]>> I've read Stephen, I I've read you saying somewhere that we must believe there is no life after death.

[00:14:22]>> Oh yes.

[00:14:23]>> And and because we we will live a very bad life unless we do believe because if we think we're this is this is just a preparation.

[00:14:31]>> Absolutely. Yeah, I remember being shocked before he shocked us for other reasons by Mel Gibson. Um when I know there's all but he was being interviewed this is in the 80s at the very height of his young stardom when he was the coolest man on the planet virtually and I had no idea that he was belonged to this particularly severe Catholic sect in in Australia that his father was a was a member of. Um, but the interviewer said, "I believe I've read somewhere, Mel, that you're um you you believe in in life after death and in God." And and Mel Gibson said, "Well, I know I know one thing for a fact. There's got to be more to it than this." I thought, "What?

[00:15:16]What?" [laughter] Even if you were just an ordinary guy to say, "Oh, yeah, there's there's America, there's Australia, there's Europe, there's the Lake District, there's the poles, there's the deserts, there's the tropics, there's the bushes, there's >> there's the galaxy universe." But there's got to be more than that, surely. And but not only that, you are a star who can have as much sex as you can eat and and as much money as you could possibly demand and you feel it's somehow not enough, you know. And this idea that um and of course as we all kinds of obvious ways of knowing that religion, you know, uses uh uh uses the afterlife and the threat of something better as a way of allowing people or forcing people to put up with what they've got. But yes, I do believe that even on its own terms, if you believe in an afterlife, it it limits this life. It it's just, you know, the the you've got to, as Oscar Wild said, try the fruit of every tree of every orchard in the world. And some will be bitter and some will be too addictive and and so on.

[00:16:21][clears throat] But but if you and and so I often say to religious people I said um you know would say well suppose uh you know a Calvinist appears at the gates of heaven and uh St. Peter says so uh what did you make of um uh cannabis sativa the the plant there? Oh I never tried that. No. [laughter] Have you any idea how much effort went into making this very special plant? I'm not saying you should have nothing but you didn't even try it. [laughter] What about wine? Oh, no, no, no. Wine touch my lips, you Do you know?

[00:16:58][laughter] Do you know how complex the grape is?

[00:17:02]Unique of all fruits. You don't have to add sugar for it to turn into this remarkable drink. And you didn't even bother to try it. That's such an extraordinary idea. I mean, it you should on your deathbed, you should be going, "Damn it. I I never drank milk from the armpits of a Nepalese virgin or whatever it is that you know I never I don't know that wouldn't be my particular one but some people um you know I I never climbed Kilimanjaro. I never you know there's so much >> that's so beautifully put. Exactly [laughter] right.

[00:17:33]>> I once asked the professor of ancient history at Oxford whether the Greeks really believed in their gods and to my surprise he said yes.

[00:17:42]>> Um >> do you think they did? It's very interesting. I mean, there's the the gods are so colored. I mean, the the 12 Olympian gods and there were many others. I think they used the names of primal gods that had no personality. And they did believe in them as abstract words. Aristotle uses them a lot. Um the Greek words for necessity, cause and blame, for example. Necessity. uh um anank is very strong idea in Greek philosophy um and moorus doom um the the ones doom literally means it's not a word you use in English uh but it used to be used portion what is allotted to you >> um and they were the first we know of again because the first to have writing but to go in very sophisticated ways into the question of free will um which is a very hot issue at the moment as you probably know very few philosophers Now all scientists believe there is such a thing as free will and they kind of don't speak about it because it's a bit embarrassing because it uh you have to explain to people that that doesn't mean that there's no such thing as responsibility and it doesn't mean that we don't try and live a good virtuous life according to our lights and so on but that it's a a sort of intellectual point about it being fairly clear there is no such thing as free will or as Shopenhau put it we we we we can will what we do but we can't will what we will it's a very important point I think and the Greeks were very interested in that and so they they had this idea of fate and necessity uh your your portion which they gave a kind of divine permanence that these were things that were there that were outside our control and I think most of human history and most [snorts] of myth and religion is a has been a question of refining um our understanding of things we can't control. So when our ancestors were were really were alone and um without any building or farming yet as being an idea, we were hunter gatherers as the phrase is um their children looked at the mothers and fathers and they said why does what is it that pushes leaves out of trees? It's something that's beyond our control. I know if I pick a stone up the stone is picked up but how what is the power behind a leaf coming out of a tree? Happens every year. What is this fire that comes out of a mountain? What is the water that drops out of the sky? These are things over which we have no control. And so it's very natural that our ancestors gave them personality. It's the first thing we do. It's it's it's as much art and literature as it is religion to to to to make a story out of these forces. And so you you you name a god of the mountain that roars fire. You name a god of the clouds uh and the thunder. And you have a god of nature and of growth and the harvest and and one of decay. and you make rituals out of it and but then slowly you begin to understand them and each one that you understand the god disappears >> but this is what animisms do all and um uh and I I I get that but to believe that Zeus turned himself into an eagle in order to >> Oh, I don't I don't think Aristotle Plato believed those things.

[00:20:55]>> I'm sure they didn't. But did did the ordinary Athenian in the street believe that? And I suspect not. But >> I don't think they did. I think they they conveniently said much as we um you know much as children's fairy stories do that there was a time when men and women walked with pixies and fairies. We say you know uh and there was a time when men and women consorted with gods. The Greeks said when the gods would gods would come down in the form of an eagle or whatever or they would turn human beings into flowers. Um and a lot of these are eeological myths. They're myths described to describe the cause of things. Um uh and and and some of them are some of them are have profound insight and some of them are just sweet stories like for example when Zeus and Hera got married um uh Zeus had said that any any anyone who or anything any creature that could come up with the best food for the for the wedding u would be granted a wish. And uh so you imagine this kind of Gordon Ramsay situation when these you know TV chef things where all these trestle tables and all these different you know a young heron had created a little sort of uh jelly for them to eat and they try that and then all the other animals and they come to this tiny little pot uh and here tasting says this is delicious and Zeus tasted so this is very good what is it and the little creature called Melissa who has made it says if you please I've made It's a It's a very special process I've invented. I go from flower to flower and I collect um all all the little bits of nectar and I then put them together, but it takes a huge amount of effort. But anyway, I've made this pot of it. I call it honey. And Zeus and here say, "Well, you've won the prize. There's no question. Name your wish." And Melissa says, "Well, it takes so much effort and days and days and days to make the smallest amount of my honey." and and one swipe of a fox's um paw, one lick of a bear's tongue, and all my work can be undone. And you've given the scorpion a a weapon and the snake a venomous bite, but I don't have any weapon. So, can you give me a fatal sting so that anyone who tries to steal steal my honey, it's it's fatal. And Zeus is furious and there's a sound of thunder because he thinks it's such a selfish wish. And he says, "Very well."

[00:23:15]He says, "You will have a fatal sting."

[00:23:18]He squeaks in triumph. He says, "But but it will be fatal to you." And as you know, a wasp can sting you as many times as it likes, but a but a but a bee sting is barbed, a honey bee sting, which is Melissa's honeybee, of course. And and um and so they have to pull their own guts out after they've stung you and they kill themselves. And that was Zeus's punishment for her selfishness.

[00:23:39]But pleasingly as as Richard will know the um the order of uh to which bees and wasps belong is known as himonopta uh to to entomologists which means wedding wings which is very anyway so that's just a sweet story that's a typical mythic story but then there are um I think profound insights so I'm sure you've all heard of the muses the nine sisters who lived uh uh um and who represent each one of them one of the arts tepicare for dance and cleo for history and so on and so forth. But what's interesting is that their mother, their father was Zeus, of course, because he was profit with his seed. Um, but their mother was one of the original Titanesses, one of the first 12 of the Titans whose name is Nemos.

[00:24:24]Mosine is very, it's a difficult word to say. Um, and it's simply the Greek word for memory as in pneummonic. Um, and so there the Greeks are saying there what Joseph Campbell would he called myths.

[00:24:37]um um he called them public dreams uh which I think is rather rather uh you know Jung called them the collective unconscious but whatever it is whether it's the public dream of the Greek people or their collective unconscious they said the arts are all daughters of memory and I think that is extremely true it's a compressed poetic idea that artists reassemble uh put back together again learned experience, felt emotions, truthful recall of what it is to be alive and that therefore all artists are summoning that memory. Muses are the daughters of memory and that's an accident if you like of the beauty of human culture that a people can come up with a myth uh a way of personifying uh complex ideas, abstract ideas. But let me ask about this. Um, I've always been fascinated by where they come from.

[00:25:40]It's it's as though we've believe that somehow these things emerge from you called you talked about yogonscious or um, but somebody must actually have sat down and made it up in the first place. It doesn't just emerge.

[00:25:54]>> The same problem you have with jokes, isn't it? Where did the joke who who first told that joke? Um, and it's >> around a campfire or something. Somebody may >> one assumes around a fire. Yes. I have a um I have I'm because of one of my greatest is language as well. I I think it's very um I think it's you know it's clear that around a fire you know it's cold there are animals wolves are howling and the children can't get to sleep and full tummies and you want to tell stories and everything's mysterious and as I say you want to explain things.

[00:26:30]The Greeks had this advantage that all no other myths up until that time and many after didn't have. And that is that as I say they had they had settled down as a people, the Doric people, the Ionian people, the various different people of the of the of the of the peninsula of Greece and and so on. Um and writing had arrived. So Heiad and Homer were able to put down and so you could have pedigrees and family histories and chronologies of the gods which had never happened before. But who first came up with them and their names?

[00:27:03]Well, you can be, you know, you can be sure that they all came from further east. They follow the development of mankind and civilization as we currently understand it, which as you know really seem to spring up in what they call the fertile crescent. The Greek for between rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates.

[00:27:23]The Greek for between rivers is Mesopotamia. So it's that area that the that what is now Iraq. The huge irony being the very place where ISIS has pulled down so many of those archaeological reminders of where mankind first started to civilize itself in as much as we ever have, i.e. to settle and have roots and cities and so on. And and that that's where it began.

[00:27:47]the first of those gods as far as we can tell. And they then moved west from um Ty and the Lebanon um the Cadmas myth which comes from the beginning of the alphabet comes from there. It was the Phoenetians. It was Cadmus's brother Phoenix uh founded the Phoenician Empire. And I mean it's I know I mean you know we'll never really know because so much that we need to know comes before writing or even carving. Yes. Um but uh we can guess and it's >> let's move to the modern world now. Um you've said um in defense of the royal family um um u surprisingly you you've said that you're a monarchist of of of a sort of sort.

[00:28:32]>> And one of the points you made was that although the queen has no uh power officially, >> it's somehow good for the prime minister to have to go every week >> Yeah. and as it were explain herself.

[00:28:46]>> Yes.

[00:28:46]>> To the monarch. And if only Trump had to go to Uncle Sam.

[00:28:50]>> Yeah, that's right.

[00:28:52]>> Exactly. I uh I did a I wrote an an op-ed for for the New York Times which I said exactly that a couple of fourth of July ago. I said, you know, if there if Uncle Sam was a living person, this embodiment uh of the US, and it had only occurred to me when I was writing the article that Uncle Sam, his initials were US. Duh. So obvious. [laughter] But so there with his bony knees and his wispy beard and his stripey top hat and in his waist coat with the stripes and the stars and everything all over it.

[00:29:24]And and he is an embodiment, a personification of what America is supposed to be.

[00:29:30]barely a real human being at all, more an idea. And that's what a queen is.

[00:29:34]That's what a monarch is. Not I mean, of course, somewhere there's some real DNA, a real person who sits on a lavatory and all the rest of it, but the queen, as far as we're concerned, is an image and imgo a sort of um you know, a constant uh a constant embodiment of an idea, not a not a person. And that's why when people meet the the the queen and actually great friends of this festival and of of the great amazing Randy are are Penellet and Teller, you know, Pen and Teller who kind of own this town as magicians and great skeptics and rationalists and I I was um MCing of this is literally 20 years ago now. um because I'm doing the same thing in three days time for his 70th birthday, but it was the 50th birthday of the Prince of Wales and I was MCing the show we did at the London Paladium and Pen and Tella did some magic at it and after the curtain came down uh the Pen who was next to me said no hands down we got to meet the the prince upright and I said yeah he just comes along the stage and says hello to everybody and Pen said I got to call him your your majesty. I said, "Well, no, he's he's not the monarch. You technically it would be your royal highness if you wanted to call him anything, but don't bother. Just I haven't called you pen once since we've been chatting in the last. You don't call people by their name, do you, Nick?

[00:30:52]Do you, Richard?" You know, so just don't bother. Don't think about it cuz And do I have to bow? Cuz I'm American.

[00:30:58]We don't bow. [laughter] Of course, he knows you're American.

[00:31:02]He's heard your voice. He may not know that Teller's American because Tella doesn't speak, but he knows you're American. Honestly, it's fine. Well, as long as you going to get put in the Tower of London. Oh, for heaven's sake.

[00:31:14]I assure you it's fine. Anyway, Prince of W, lovely to see you. How did you do?

[00:31:19]Thank you for coming. Do appreciate it.

[00:31:22]Very nice indeed.

[00:31:24]>> Invitation by the way.

[00:31:25]>> And then he gets to Penn who falls. Your royal majesty, HIGHNESS, SIR. YES, SIR.

[00:31:30]MINUS. And he's absolutely [laughter] I mean frustrate over the ground. And the prince looks a little baffled, but he's used to it. It happens all the time. He moves along and he go and then of course pen turns me and said I betrayed my country. [laughter] Why did how do what power do they have?

[00:31:51]And and it is that power that exists and it's not the same as a pretend religious thing. It's something we understand in minor ways. We know what the power of a brand is in in the corporate world. and and in a much more concentrated and extraordinary and almost mystical way the power of a brand like a monarch is such that I have seen people who are furiously anti- monarchist who in the presence of the queen will melt slightly and if President Trump were not the head of state but were the servant of his people like a prime minister who has a head of state who would be uncle Sam and if like the prime minister has to every single week come what Prime Minister has to go to Buckingham Palace and have an audience with the queen. And you'll probably remember if you ever saw the series The Crown. When the Queen first ascended to the throne, her first prime minister happened to be Winston Churchill, who had to come in to her presence and stand, an old man, not that physically well, stand in her presence and explain himself to this young girl who was the symbol of her country. And she took the mantle on and has been doing it ever since. Now, if Trump had to do that, had to go to some colonial mansion on the hill where this this figure of Uncle Sam is well now.

[00:33:05]Well, now young young Mr. Trump, what have you been doing this week? And and Trump had to bow his head. And he's bowing his head not because he believes in monarchy or some trumped up nonsense to do with the divinity of kings, but because he is abasing himself in front of the idea of the country he is there to serve. I think that's immensely helpful and that's where I think myth, ritual, and ceremony have real place as long as you know what they are. Of course, if you actually believe there's a god or you know if you you know as long as you understand that at the most it's the wizard of oz operating the levers then nonetheless the power it has over us is that we are you know as e evolutionary um biology and and uh and so on which is as you know a hugely growing field we're beginning to understand a little more about how we evolved in terms of our feelings as well as our cognition and I'm sure many of you have read some of the popular books that have been around in the last dozen years dealing with this the subject of our the the contingency of our understanding of anything at exactly the time when the world is disintegrating and the power of the UN or the EU or other groups however flawed to bring people together everyone's being propelled against and even today I noticed Trump has got rid of the 1986 or 87 is it strategic arms uh treaty with Russia he just announced today he's he's terminating it he said so as all of this happens and uh as as less and less authority and understanding of uh in the world happens we are beginning to understand how little we actually know so that while skeptics and rationalists are very keen to remind people of how we should always examine the truth and look at the truth we are the first to understand thanks to Daniel Carnean and thanks to various others uh how little we know and how how how much our cognition and how much our understanding is colored and changed is is transmogrified by both what we wish and what we have experienced, what our body expects us to feel or our eyes expect us to see. And and we can't necessarily trust in in in everything.

[00:35:26]But that's an excitement. That doesn't mean we give up trying to know things.

[00:35:32]It means we try even harder to realize how you know just how how our emotions have a huge part to play in everything we do. We are immensely emotional and being skeptical and being rational is not denying that. It's understanding it.

[00:35:48]It's understanding the the part emotions have to play and and and ritual and ceremony and metaphor and symbol which are the substance of art and so on are also the substance of a lot of ways humans behave. I mean even you the comedy of me not knowing who was to take the um the the award that I was given. I I almost wanted to say, well, the one thing the church gets right is they rehearse [laughter] the the the bishop the bishop has told the alter well we don't know what he's told the alter boy um the but but the um you know there is a way you hold it here you put it down here this goes here and and I'm sure many humanists in the room have um have come across this issue of of of where we find the poetry and the the romance the ritual the glamour uh that the church has over the over hundreds of years has managed to find in order to send people away from the world. And I've yet to come to a really good humanist funeral or or wedding. Uh and some of them I've I was asked by a friend, a concert pianist, to to be the humanist preacher, as it were, at his wedding. And I did my best. Um and one can raid and ransack the ladder of of poetry and music that exists without having to aduce a creator for someone's wedding or someone's funeral. But um but we should learn from the fact that the church is damned.

[00:37:09]>> Obviously I was not present at that wedding, Stephen, but I absolutely know you did it a lot better than any vicar or suffan bishop.

[00:37:17]>> Oh, you're sweet >> because I mean and I think I'm going to disagree with you about funerals too. Um I've been to a number of humanist funerals and a number of religious and they've worked well, have they?

[00:37:27]>> No question about it. The religious ones are not tailored to the individual. They are a formula, >> an algorithm which is in the book of common prayer and they just read out as though it was anybody. The humanist ones are about the person who's died.

[00:37:42]>> Yes.

[00:37:42]>> The person who's died their favorite poetry, their favorite music. You got eulogies speaking about them. There's so much more.

[00:37:50]>> It's true. You're absolutely right. And and tailoring it and being personal rather than as you say being being general. On the other hand, it's it's a good mixture because if you are married in a traditional service and you get a really dramatic vicar or bishop and they say after the bride and groom have kissed, those whom God hath joined, let no man put a sunder. You think, wow, that's good. That is good. Um, you know, you really or similarly ashes to ashes, dust to dust. You think, wow, I am joining in with my community in that happening today. That's true. There there are a few good phrases that you've got to admit that they came up with some >> goodies. But we can we we can match them.

[00:38:32]>> Yeah.

[00:38:33]>> Shakespeare or or we we can do it.

[00:38:35]>> It's also it's a bit cultural, you know.

[00:38:36]I I just suddenly remembered I was doing a film in in northern Spain and uh uh they have this amazing tradition, the Basque, the the Choco, where the where the the the men cook and and and they have these male cooking clubs and all the wives and families and friends come and and and the men do this feeding outside often or if it's in winter inside. And we were invited to this and it was astonishing to see uh and a great thing to be a part of. And when it finished, people got up and started singing Basque songs. And there were about seven of us uh who were English on from in the film. David Sushe, who played Puarro so successfully, he was playing Napoleon. I was playing Wellington. Um and there a few of us and they turned to us and said, "So sing now." [laughter] And we suddenly thought, "What am I going to sing now?

[00:39:30]Am I going to sing? We all live in a yellow submarine or something. They've been singing these Basque songs of the mountains that are 300 years old. And I said, I don't know any English songs apart from pop songs. I mean, there is sort of early one morning just as the sun was rising or there are few. And maybe that's the problem. Maybe the problem with being English and Empire and everything like that is that we have no culture of our own. We've just stolen so many.

[00:39:54]>> We have the world's worst national anthem.

[00:39:55]>> Yeah, we do have a pretty gr pretty grim one of those, don't we?

[00:39:58]>> Yeah. Yeah. Um you've said Steven that um the catastrophe of Trump and Brexit is more less a triumph of the right as a failure of the left.

[00:40:08]>> Yes.

[00:40:08]>> Um do you recognize the phrase regressive left which I think was coined by Majid Nawaz?

[00:40:13]>> Yes, I've come across it.

[00:40:14]>> Yes. Do you have a view on on that?

[00:40:17]>> I I am there's a part of me um that just wants to be mischievous and say look you know this Grand Canyon close to where we are now. This Grand Canyon's opened up in America and really across the the the the world and certainly the developed world, the chattering world if you like.

[00:40:35]Um, and it's getting wider every day.

[00:40:37]And therefore, people on each side of the divide, they have to shout louder and justiculate more horribly to be heard by the other side. And they're not being heard by the other side. and they're just making noises and screaming and uh hating each other deeply and thinking the other vile and and destructive and uh inhuman. And I like to think of myself and rightthinking people as cowering in the ravine at the bottom, uh, unsure what to do because on the one hand, you have a nivist alt-right, um, uh, bringing up all kinds of nasty and unacceptable and horrifying racist thoughts and divisions. Uh but also you have a preposterous uh illiberal liberal left um shouting out these jargonistic nonsense uh from the universities. if I have to hear about the patriarchy and cisgendered white privilege again [snorts] I just it you know my heart has always been with the left and that makes it all the more difficult for me to think that I just cannot and I this is at the heart of I think all when we talk about being English you're talking about Shakespeare and JK Rowling and Isaac Newton and everything the one thing they all have in common is empiricism it's not about knowing anything it's not about having a point of view which is your strict view of things. It's about finding out, experimenting, and trying things out and seeing what works. And I think the left has a terrible problem in rhetoric and expresses itself in a way that is precisely, it seems, designed to alienate even softright people, even ordinary Republicans who uh are maddened by what they see as the nonsense of political correctness. Most left people are not, you know, prey to it. But unfortunately, the mouthpieces on either side are so loud and you're supposed to take a stand. I'm supposed to be on one side or the other. Well, I I just repudiate that. I won't be on either side. Neither means anything to me. Um and and so we have to um [applause] I I was thinking a lot about my friend Christopher Hitchens who's whose spirit is at occasions like this of course was much stronger than I was and his great hero as a political writer and thinker was George Orwell who was much stronger and more forceful about these things than as Christopher was more strong and more forceful about these things than I am. My hero really was uh probably Ian Foster who's better known as a novelist but as an essaist he had a lot to say.

[00:43:15]Um and um his attitude it's probably best summed up by one of his essays which is called two cheers for democracy. Um he was he I can't quite bring myself to to to sound three cheers he said but two cheers is about right.

[00:43:31]Um and he and his his friend Bertrand Russell, you know, made the point about how we live in the world that um uh those who are stupid are are so full of certainty and and those who are wise are so unsure. Uh uh WB Yates put it most famously in the uh you know the ceremony of innocence is drowned and um the best lack all conviction and the worst are full of passionate intensity >> and the center will not hold.

[00:43:58]>> The center will not hold. Exactly. And that's the problem being in the center which will not hold the best which you hope you're part of the best lack all conviction. We're not certain. We're not convinced. We're not sure how the world should go forward. Um but we we see we recognize ugliness when we see it. Uh and gracelessness and unkindness and brute force and and clamoring kind of binary tearing away of everything. So that you know this constant you're either with us or against us attitude. and and and stuck here in the middle people say, "Oh, well, you know, that's all very well, but that's you just being a liberal um you know, squashy soft, you know, there are people dying out there, they'll say, you know, and yes, there are." one does, you know, look at the Rohindas being massacred in uh [gasps] and and disrupted and destroyed in Burma and and and look at, you know, look at what's going on in um all all over the Yemen and uh and in Syria and places like that. There's all kinds of terrible things happening, but I don't I don't hear the the regressive left or the liberal liberals as I call them or the right making any fuss about that. Um and and I I'm desperate to know what to think. I really am unsure because part of me says yes of course all my life I fought for gay rights I fought for you know I not fought listen don't romanticize yourself Stephen I haven't fought at all I've sat at a desk and tapped at a keyboard and [laughter] occasionally done the odd interview on the subject of gay rights so I haven't fought at all but I have at least expressed an opinion and and you know my heart is with um you know with with people being given a a fair shake of the source bottle as Australians put it Um, you know, and a fair shake is it seems to be good. Um, um, but we now aren't allowed really much room for conversations of any nuance or any any doubt. You have to be on one side or the other. And and the world, I'm convinced of it. America, certainly Britain and Europe are crying out for something in between. And unfortunately what we've had in between in the past and it's too recent to be forgotten in America is Bill Clinton and in Britain was Tony Blair. um both of whom very impressive people in terms of their grasp of history and of the mechanics and process of power and all the rest of it but who are slightly kind of uh I don't know disreputable in our eyes in case of Britain in the case of Blair because he took us into an Iraq war which most of us think was a mistake in the case of Clinton all kinds of reasons of to do with his own behavior as well uh and and so that third way that they represented a very self-conscious third way um is um is treated with suspicion and my feeling is that a true satist and someone with true insider a Jonathan Swift would actually be saying to you all and I should be saying to myself don't look to blame politicians don't look to blame the the sloganers on either side of the culture wars it's not their fault it's your fault we are the ones who say oh look at politicians are always just disagreeing with each other and then the moment there's a third way politician You say, "Well, they're all the same."

[00:47:20]Well, well, you can't have it both ways.

[00:47:21]Do you want them all the same or do you want them all different? It's actually you are the problem. You and I are the problem. We want to drive around in cars and we want a green, clean world. Well, you can't have both. You can't square that circle. There are lots and lots of circles that can't be squared and squares that can't be circled. But we lay off all our guilt, all our own self-disgust at our greed and our repacity as creatures on this earth. We lay off that burden on politicians whom we pay to take our disgust and filth that should be aimed at us. [applause] And before we finish up and move over to the book signing, there was one question I wanted just to address to both of you on this. And and yesterday, unfortunately, you were stuck somewhere on Delta. I was >> when we heard Steven Pinker speak and very optimistic that we are, you know, the world is getting wealthier, poverty is going down, malnutrition is going down, uh the the economy is moving forward. Yet on the other hand, we see not just the political catastrophes that are happening, but also the potential environmental disasters that the UN is talking of unfolding. Are you both both short-term and long-term, are you optimistic? Are you pessimistic? Where are we going as a world?

[00:48:48]Well, Steven Pinker and uh Matt Ridley, both my friends, um are sort of the two optimists in the world at the moment. Um [laughter] and um they make they both make a persuasive case that um science can do all sorts of things and we may be in trouble in all sorts of ways, but science will will find a way. Uh and if you look at the broad sweep of history, things are getting better. I desperately want to believe them. Um I would like in to try to put the optimistic case say we we are in a temporary reversal at the at the moment. Things are not going well at the moment. Things are going extremely badly at the moment both in Britain and America. Um but if you do take the long view of of of history, I I think it's possible to be optimistic. So unrealistic as it sounds, I I'm I'm going to sort of slightly side with Pinker and Ridley.

[00:49:50]>> Yeah, that's very good. I I I agree with you, Richard. And um I think it, you know, a lot of human progress has been three steps forward, two back or two steps forward, one back or whatever. But it has been forward, but and this may be a step back moment where things are bad.

[00:50:05]But I think there's a lot to to to think about. I I do some work occasionally for the Bill [snorts] and Melinda Gates Foundation who are particularly uh strong on the uh SDGs as they're called the sustainable development goals. now is one of these dull bureaucratic phrases that it began with the millennial goals in the year 2000 where all the countries of the United Nations signed up to certain aims and these were refined in the year 2010 um into these sustainable goals. 27 of them a lot to do with female education for example uh and things that people know will transform the way that the the poorest and the most disease-ridden in the world those with the fewest opportunities in the world that can most be taken out of poverty. uh and the results there have been astounding. I mean truly amazing in that period 2000 to now which many people think of as the post 911 period the period of fear of terrorism and and so on which of course it has been but in that period 66 um uh uh 66% greater increase in in um women uh having education around the world 66% twothirds I mean that's pretty astonishing um and the results against HIV and and uh even the you know more resistive strains of TB and other diseases these are being controlled in ways that would have seemed impossible 15 years ago and so in that respect things are going very well um but I would agree the threat to the to to to the climate and to the world that's being offered is is a is a desperate one and also as I said at the lunch today um all this is ignoring the te technological transformations that are coming in the next 20 or 30 years with AI and biotech and biougmentation um and gene editing and stem cell work and I mean there's so much of it each one of these technologies on its own will be transformative but together they represent what I call a tsunami that is approaching us um and a lot of that will be helpful to health extraordinarily helpful to health will create great economies of scale the data which become the new currency rather than petrol or the dollar data is the currency will allow all kinds of medical advances. I'm convinced and I hope a more rational view of of um you know genetic modification of crops will allow for the immense promise they offer. um people are very superstitious about them as if they're somehow monstrous as if they're new even but um so I think there are all kinds of scientific possibilities that will help but we just have to be alert and it's this is what you know skepticism really means alertness being alive to an idea seeing an idea as a living thing and and in honor of my rival university Oxford from which you both come as a Cambridge man but as a great admirer of Oscar Wild I will end just by quoting I think this is what conventions like this do and should foster. Um, when Oscar wrote his letter to to his old lover Boosezie from prison, it's called Dep Profundes from the Depths. And he accuses him of a lot of betrayals and things, but he's also very complimentary to him. But he says when you were at Oxford, you didn't get a degree. That's perfectly understandable. Many fine brains have never managed to get their degree. But what I find inexcusable is that you never acquired what used to be called the Oxford Manor. He said, 'I know that sounds a terrible phrase, but I take it to mean this, the ability to play gracefully with ideas. Isn't that a wonderful thing? The ability to play gracefully with ideas. And I think it's very important that the skeptical, rationalist, um, uh, uh, secularist atheist movement remembers to be graceful. um remembers that playing with these ideas is what enliven us individually and fulfills us as humans as well as fulfilling I hope much more of the of of of the public culture that you know the understanding that ideas are to be embraced and hugged and played with and licked and enjoyed and have the juice sucked out of them and you know that there's pleasure in in this. It's not an earnest endeavor. It's not a a grim piece of work. It's a it's an excitement and I think that's that that will ensure the better future being alert and playing gracefully with ideas.

[00:54:23][applause] Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Mhm.