The Infinite Monkey’s Guide to... Being Human

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Hello, I'm Brian Cox.

I'm Robin Ince, and this is the Infinite Monkeys Guide to...

Today is a very important episode, and it's especially for Brian because it's the Infinite Monkeys Guide to Being Human.

Now, this is something that has fascinated Brian for many, many years, ever since he discovered that he only ever dreams about electric sheep.

What makes a human being different from other beings?

Is it because we place being after the word human because there's something we experience in terms of knowing that we exist?

Because we don't say the giraffe being or the daffodil being or the haddock being.

We say the human being.

Does a daffodil dream of

electric bees?

Yeah.

Electric bees.

That's a lovely idea, isn't it?

Anyway, so there we go.

That's Brian's new book.

Do daffodils dream of electric bees and another 99 philosophical quandaries

strawberries we dealt with strawberries strawberries are done mate so i suppose the first thing we should look at is for a long time human beings were just oh we're homo sapiens and maybe maybe a very occasional human being has a little bit of neander toll this is the problem with those series like who do you think you are

because they don't go far enough back yeah i don't want to know about some some scullery maid who's who had a sad life or some kind of top hat maker who ended up with syphilis in my family tree.

No, everyone should be the same answer.

The end of every single episode of Who Do You Think You Are?

Luca.

Yeah, that would be great.

Yeah, the last universal common ancestor by definition.

The trouble for that is that then, when you have a wedding, you have to invite so many people, and not just people.

You've got to invite the giraffes, you've got to invite the daffodils, you've got to invite the whole thing.

Yeah, and a lot of slime.

And that's terrible to go down the aisle when the aisle's slimy.

Everyone in the congregation.

You are related at a fundamental level to single-celled organisms in the font.

That's what you can say.

Yeah, which is the same thing.

Again, I've found most of the weddings that you have actually led as a humanist celebrant have ended very quickly in divorce.

There's something very bleak about your messy font.

It's not bleak.

Isn't it magnificent that every living thing on the planet is related to every other living thing on the planet?

Well, I don't know because we've all got some relatives we'd rather we weren't related to.

Anyway, we're going to go off now to somewhere totally different in terms of our human beingness, and that is the fact that rather than being total Homo sapiens, which for a long time was the belief that we're Homo sapiens, and maybe, maybe, maybe just occasionally there is a little bit of Neanderthal information within an occasional human being.

Well, all of that changed less than 20 years ago.

Here is anthropologist Alice Roberts with comedian Dave Gorman and writer Andy Hamilton talking about our Neanderthal heritage.

In 2010, we had the publication of the Neanderthal genome, and suddenly we saw in the DNA that there was this clear evidence for interbreeding with Neanderthals.

So I'm about 2.7% Neanderthal.

You all have quite a bit of Neanderthal in you.

Everyone's got a bit of Neanderthal in them.

And then there's other species, we don't really know what they look like.

There's ones called the Denisovans, we just know them from a couple of teeth and a finger bone.

But we've got a whole genome, so they're another population, and again, we interbred with them, and they interbred with some other archaic hominins.

So, there was just we just really weren't clear about the level of shenanigans that went on in human evolution,

and now we are.

Did we know that different species coexisted and we just thought they hadn't interbred?

Yeah, we did, yeah.

Because that seems to me to be proves you don't know my mate Barry.

Because the minute you go, yeah, but they were all around at the same time, I'm assuming as a layperson, and they were obviously getting it on because some blokes will anything.

Well, I think the thing is that this

I tell you it's just blokes, though.

Well, no,

obviously.

But the weird thing is that this kind of came as a bit of a revelation, and I think maybe we're just all a bit prudish about human evolution, but it came as a revelation for humans.

And then, surprise, surprise, every single other species that we've looked at in this way, where we've been able to look across the whole genome and go, right, did you interbreed with anything else along the way?

They all did.

So, dogs interbred with wolves, apples, apples interbred with crab apples so badly that they're more crab apple than original apple now.

Oh, you've ruined cider, haven't you?

What I love is the way this is kind of demolishing the model I grew up with, which was the model was that Homo sapiens had been this sort of cheeky chappy ducker and diver, and we had out-competed the Neanderthals,

possibly by murdering them, which is textbook out-competing.

But it now looks like presumably what we're saying is that there was a kind of absorption of populations.

There was a lot of interbreeding, possibly in the face of a lot of parental objection.

A lot of, you know, your father doesn't want you going out with a Neanderthal.

He says they're grunters.

But that is what we're talking about, isn't it?

And it means

there's no such thing, you know, all those people who get so angry out there about racial purity.

You know, in a way, what this is illustrating is there is no purity.

Everything's a mashup.

I'm probably fooling myself.

they'll probably get more angry won't they they'll probably go marching around saying there are people in this country walking our streets who aren't even our species that's probably what will happen We always hope that the show can teach you skills that will be really useful in the field, whether that field is full of strawberry bushes or electromagnetism or both.

So get ready to écute épete as we offer you a special language course and not just the kind of humdrum some human language from somewhere else in the world.

We're going to teach you a little bit of chimpanzee with primatologists Kat Hobeta and Jane Goodall and comedian Bill Bailey.

What I've spent most of my work studying is their gestures, their non-verbal communication.

And the reason that I find that so fascinating is that for me a lot of the vocalizations are about this sort of broadcast emotion.

I'm hungry, I'm frightened, hello,

broadcasting of emotion.

But what they do with their gestures, with these ways in which they move their body, is all of the little subtleties of the day-to-day.

It's asking for something.

It's saying, come here, groom me, let's go, let's be friends, or get lost, go away, stop stealing my food.

All of these

silverbacks told me not.

It's just so wonderful for

the radio listeners.

There's a sign language

conversation going on between Jane and Kat now, which is fabulous.

I'd like to do an impression.

Somebody teach me how to do a good impression.

That's where I really want to do it.

Like that.

What's

Bill, why don't you give us what you've got

your best pant hint so far?

Like, that's me sort of saying, hello.

But would it be.

Right, so Jane, are you able to pick up on where Bill's getting it right and where he's getting it left?

Again, for the radio listeners, that was still Bill.

The loud.

speaker.

Do you know what?

It really was still Bill.

Even the radio listeners go, that's definitely the sound of Bill.

That's still Bill.

Right, now let's get the translation.

Jane, what do you interpret Bill was doing?

Well, I think at this point, I need to say that every chimpanzee has a different voice.

So we'll let Bill.

communicate in Bill's way.

It doesn't mean we have to necessarily understand it.

Yes, thanks, Jane.

This is like it's a great news for the comedy clubs, there, isn't it?

We didn't have a clue what Bill was doing it, but we allowed him to do the show anyway.

It was fun doing a cover with a new material.

Could you perhaps teach Bill a greeting or a phrase or

an authentic, a more authentic sound?

Well, I mean, the close-up greeting is very, very easy, and it's just

that's right, like a pant, yeah.

And then the one we did before,

go away, get lost.

Don't do that, yeah, go away.

And what about good e, hello, good evening, or hello, what's a greeting?

Well, I did the greeting.

I started the greeting, didn't I?

Oh, yeah.

Like,

people always forget that they mustn't take a breath.

It's all one breath.

Okay, I'll try again.

I'm sort of getting there.

You see, look, it's responding.

All the audience are responding in the chimp.

I've got to say, that is one of my favourite clips of all time.

I've just enjoyed one to have someone like Jane Goodall on the show, someone who has changed so much of our understanding of what it is to be a chimpanzee and what it is to be a human being.

But the excitement of just watching her explain to bill where he was going wrong and just there was so i have to say of all the shows we've done that was one you know one of those ones we just go wow there's a huge amount of love here in terms of the scientific ideas that have been explored and their possibilities it's the wreathian ideal writ large isn't it bill bailey being taught chimpanzee by jane goodall we need to follow up and see if he's remembered all those lessons yeah ask brian about the brains of comedians and he'll say they're all broken but i think that's just based on the anecdotal evidence of the fact that he's had to work with me yes for about 15 years thank you for that yes brian anyway here is conan o'brien on the theory of his own mind conan this this shows about our brain and how it changes through our lives and you've got this tremendously diverse life.

I mean, your dad was a well-known scientist at Harvard, mum's an attorney, studied history of literature at Harvard, then went into comedy writing, wrote for The Simpsons, Saturday Night Live now, talk shows.

Do you feel, and this is not meant to sound as insulting as it does when I read it back, actually, but do you feel your brain has changed throughout your life whenever people preface anything with I don't mean this to sound as insulting it does

it's time to leave the podcast

I'm not implying there's been a downhill trajectory no no no no no of course we all know that people only get better with age Brian everything gets better yes I can smell the synapses rotting.

I can smell my reaction time slowing occasionally, but I will say that many things have

stayed the same throughout my life.

And my father once observed, he looked at me, and he said this not intending to be funny, but he looked, and this is after I'd had a very successful career.

He said, I see what you're doing.

You're making a career off of something that should probably be treated.

And he was sincere.

And

it hurt my feelings terribly, but then I realized I think he's got a point.

My synapses make connections, I think, that I think it's a mistake.

I think there's something wrong with me sometimes and that produces an effect where other people giggle and then I realize there's something probably wrong with me.

I don't think I could have survived in any other time or place, but it's lucrative.

Now there are those that complain that there are parts of the human body that are badly designed.

They're not because they weren't designed.

So stop complaining.

Yeah, it's an interesting thing, is that when you actually look at natural selection, that it it's not perfect and if it was perfect then that would actually bring in probably more issues about the problems of nature.

I like the idea of people complaining about it.

Dear BBC, I wish to complain about natural selection.

My eye is far too squishy.

I'm very, very angry about it.

I have a blind spot.

Who is responsible for that?

Also, the other day I was hurdling and I managed to land with my legs either side of the hurdle.

And I can tell you now, they should have been put somewhere else.

It was very painful.

And now, with the new guidelines, we have to reply going, Thank you for your complaint.

That rather than the previous

despite natural selection seeming to seek out the least worst option.

Seeming is very important there because there's no teleology in natural selection anyway.

I just want to caveat this.

What I love is the way

you really read the bold font when it's there, don't you?

Seeming.

It's written, but I don't like the way it's written, but I'm going to read it anyway.

Despite natural selection, seeming

to seek out the least worst option rather than the best.

Geneticist Adam Rutherford still feels that nature could have done a better job, as he explained to David Bediel.

I'm Adam Rutherford and I'm a geneticist.

And I think that the most remarkable thing about evolution is just how bad it is at designing, well, humans.

You know, 97% of all species are already extinct.

That is not a good track record.

And we have back pain, our retina's the wrong way round.

Childbirth really hurts,

I understand.

I know I'm not supposed to interject immediately, immediately, but I don't agree with the bit about retinas being the wrong way around because I read that there was, because an octopus is the other way around, of course.

But I read that it was

likely that the blood supply to our retina

being wired allegedly the wrong way around, so we have a blind spot, actually allows us to recover from our

night vision when we get bright lights and things like that.

This is exactly what my PhD was actually in.

Is that not correct?

Anyway, well, you can do it.

Let's move up to not really.

Let them connect.

We fade the mics down.

It's absolutely fine.

The blood supply actually ends up.

And our other guests are while they continue talking.

Because once they get onto retinas and octopi, you'll find that Brian just won't shut up.

Sasha, I've got a thought about eyes.

We'll introduce you all.

We don't know who you are yet.

I'm David Bedil.

I'm a comedian and writer.

I know you haven't spoken.

Do you want to speak?

Maybe

change the order.

It's not a problem.

On this programme.

So Sasha warned me that this programme could be a little chaotic.

I didn't think it would go off script before we finished introducing everybody, but anyway.

The trouble is, you need to be on a script before you can go off it.

Now, this is the mistake we made.

Okay, so I'm Aoifa McCleiset, and I'm a professor in genetics in Trinity College Dublin, where I work in molecular evolution.

And the thing that I find most fascinating about human evolution is how we have evolved the ability to have complex communication.

So we can do things like this, and we can develop ideas over generations and generations.

Things that are difficult difficult and tricky, like evolution.

Hello, I'm David Pateel,

and I'm a comedian and writer.

And

the most remarkable, I would say, and perhaps the best feature of human evolution is that it has proved conclusively that apes are our cousins, and yet we still don't have to have them over at Christmas.

Yes, of course.

No, no, no, no.

Now we've removed your sense of structure.

Yeah, can I say something about the eye?

Because that's interesting.

The eye is very structured.

Well, because whenever you see creationists banging on about how evolution versus intelligent design, blah, blah, blah, they always bring up the eye, don't they?

They always say, oh, the eye, the human eye, is so extraordinary.

It could never have developed without intelligent design.

And what I always want to put to them when they say that is glasses.

Right?

The all-powerful creator had to rely on the divine intervention of spec savers.

So it feels to me like the eye clearly wasn't designed to be the best thing it could possibly be.

At the end of every episode, we've always asked our studio audience for their opinion.

Big mistake.

Well, let's find out how much of a mistake it was because there were many, many answers to the question, what trait would you most like humans to evolve?

And here is one of them.

This goes to the heart of our evolution at the moment and our response to technology.

I like this.

An eye on the base of the chin so we can look at our phones while pretending to pay attention to it.

The Infinite Monkey Cage episodes we took all of these clips from are available on BBC Sands and the Infinite Monkey Cage back catalogue.

Next week, it's an Infinite Monkeys Guide to Infinity.

It's going to go on for ages, that

oh, yeah, but however long it goes on for, there is another possibility of an infinite one that could have gone on for even longer.

In the infinite monkey cage,

Hi, I'm Helen Lewis, and I want to tell you about a podcast I've made for BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds.

It's called The New Gurus, and it's about how everywhere you look on the internet, people are giving advice.

Advice they claim will transform your life.

Advice that gets them thousands, no, millions of devoted followers.

These online prophets are telling us how to eat, how to think, how to get rich, how to find love, how to manage our time.

These are the new gurus.

Just as people will say the Protestant Reformation and the printing press went hand in hand, so too did this birth of the new internet culture really give rise to this new religious landscape.

Subscribe now to the new gurus on BBC Sounds.

Suffs, the new musical has made Tony award-winning history on Broadway.

We demand to be home.

Winner, best score.

We demand to be seen.

Winner, best book.

We demand to be quality.

It's a theatrical masterpiece that's thrilling, inspiring, dazzlingly entertaining, and unquestionably the most emotionally stirring musical this season.

Suffs.

Playing the Orpheum Theater October 22nd 22nd through November 9th.

Tickets at BroadwaySF.com.