E.O. Wilson’s Life and Legacy with Biographer Richard Rhodes

Monica (3s): Hi, I’m Monica Olson.

Jennifer (5s): And I’m Jennifer Walsh. 

Monica (7s): And you’re listening to the Biophilic Solutions podcast where every other week we sit down with experts and thought leaders across industries in order to explore the innate connection between humans and nature and why we need nature to thrive. 

Jennifer (18s): We truly believe that in order to tackle the global environmental problems we’re facing, we as humans must reconnect to the natural world and come to a better understanding of how we fit in and how we’re so interconnected. So in every episode, we’ll interview new guests to help us uncover and highlight nature based solutions to get us on a path to greater health, tackling climate change, and ultimately getting outside and connecting with nature. 

Monica (41s): So let’s get into today’s episode. 

Monica (47s): Hey Jennifer.

Jennifer (48s): Hey Monica. 

Monica (49s): So excited to be back with you and be back to ur regular podcast schedule and I’m beyond excited for our interview today because we're talking with Richard Rhodes, a Pulitzer prize winning author of more than 26 books whose latest book is Scientist: EO Wilson, A Life in Nature.

Jennifer (1m 4s): I know I speak for both of us when I say we were absolutely captivated by this book, which delves into EO’s life, his groundbreaking work, studying ants and cataloging species, and his deep fascination with the natural world and our place in it. We should know that we recorded this interview with Richard a few weeks before Wilson passed away on December 26th, 2021. At the age of 92, moving behind such a rich legacy for future generations. 

Monica (1m 30s): We feel so honored to kick off the podcast with this interview because not only do we get to begin the new year, discussing the life and legacy of EO Wilson, and the way he popularized this notion of biophilia, but we also get to dive into Richard's perspective on all these things and more. Richard was an absolute delight to interview and also offers his own outlook on the importance of nature in our lives. 

Jennifer (1m 54s): So let's get to our interview with Richard Rhodes.

Richard. Thank you so much for joining us today. We are so honored to have you on our show.

Richard (2m 3s): Thank you very much.

Jennifer (2m 4s): I know there's a lot to get to, right Monica?

Monica (2m 5s): Oh, my gosh, your book, Scientist has just had me mesmerized and what's been a lot of fun is beyond the book, Scientist: EO Wilson: Life in Nature, I've gone back and listened to some podcast interviews of yours on some of your prior books. Cause you've been very prolific.

Jennifer (2m 25s): Yes.

Monica (2m 26s): Specifically, I think the one right before this was called energy, which, I haven't read the book, but the interview was wonderful. This was in 2018 with a gentleman. It was so interesting, the history of energy and what the importance it is to us. So I'm sure we'll get in there as well as you won the Pulitzer for the making of the atomic bomb in the mid eighties. And so I just love how you've brought Oppenheimer And a few other people into this book as well. It's interesting how these things converge.

Richard (2m 55s): Yes. It's funny, my actual subject matter over the years, with some exceptions, has really been human violence. My brother and I, when we were just pre adolescent, spent a couple of years with a step mother out of Grimm's fairy tales.

Monica (3m 14s): Oh, no.

Richard (3m 15s): Fortunately, he had the courage at the age of 13 to go to the police. Fortunately, even though it was 1949 and there was not much in the way of social welfare in this country, they recognized that we were starved and sent us to an absolutely wonderful boys' home, outside independence, Missouri, where we learned to farm it, learn how to be  empowered every day with something. So. I radically, considering the variety of subjects, there's a common theme, of course, because that is looking at the destruction of the natural world.

Monica (3m 56s): Yeah. And I think his work, the thing that struck me very much and I actually just listened to interview of Ed Wilson on Box that just happened a couple of weeks ago. And what struck me in the book and also, with the interview is, we, and I'll speak for Jennifer and ourselves and our world, that is very focused on biophilia, kind of place maybe that on EO Wilson a little bit more than he even speaks of it. I was fascinated that that is very much, an aspect that he cares about the love of nature and the belief that that might be genetically encoded in us, but really his work is, and I knew there was the ants in biology, but it's so much broader. And so your book put that into context for me personally and so I really appreciated the much deeper and more layered storytelling of, him versus us as the father of biophilia if you will.

Jennifer (4m 54s): I'm so glad you said that Monica, before you say anything else, Richard, because I thought I knew of EO Wilson, I mean everything we've read and we've studied, but your book really. So many more attributes to what an individual he was and how deep his interest in love for life, it was so profound to me. So I'm so glad you brought that up, Monica, because it really was, your book really kind of put so much out there for me to really dive deeper into.

Richard (5m 24s): Well, I think, I only gradually came to understand the depth of challenge that there is in the world today to salvage the species that are rapidly going extinct. But before that, and as part of that awakening in him from being pretty much a pure scientist to someone who had a larger, Jane Goodall, like range of, I think it would in particular, because they're very similar in some ways. Biophilia was a part of that, was belief that it's ingrained in us even genetically to be attached to this. Well, of course, because we're part of nature, however much we surrounded ourselves with artificial constructions. We're still natural beings. Find that out when we're ill or when we're confronted with an epidemic. Suddenly, it kind of comes back into context, but Ed was particularly interested in reminding people how rich and deep and beautiful the natural world is, scary too, of course.

But it’s as if we never lost that ancient sense, a pre-ancient sense, we live in a world, surrounded by other beings like ourselves. He did bring biophilia into the center of his work. It's just that as he came more and more to realize what urgency there was to saving the species that are left in the world, when he discovered, as I know, you know, that the estimate that had been common that we were losing is one species a year was false, and in fact we’re losing one species a day.

Monica (7m 20s): Yeah, And I think that's worth noting. And repeating, that we tend to not understand what we can't see. I really have been taken by his idea and he obviously he spoke of it in this recent interview, but all along his path of how do we catalog and how do we go out and find this species, and his multiple attempts at that. And I liked that he had gone from, I think in your book, it says something about, scientists can be voices crying in the wilderness. Which I enjoyed versus how he took it to a more activist stance.

Richard (7m 49s): Well, you know, he tried in the nineties to get government support for the education of 50,000 field biologists a year and sprawling along and then somebody in Congress decided this was a waste of good money and killed it.

Richard (8m 14s): That's at that point that he began thinking, how else can we get at this and realized that there were millions of species in the world, particularly the little ones, the little creatures really make the world that have never even been identified, studied. and out of that, get came his idea that we needed to finish the work that Linnaeus began in the 18th century of simply cataloging everything. And that became something that everyone could take part in. It wouldn't just get a government grant that was precarious.

Jennifer (8m 48s): And he never gave up. Right. It's just like, it's so interesting to me that no matter what, he knew what he wanted to do, he didn't know exactly how it was going to turn out, but the fact that you never gave up decade after decade after decade, knowing that why would we go to another planet if we don't even know all the species on our own. And that just rang through me. Like, I'm like exactly like how can we even consider going somewhere else if we don't even know all the species on our own planet. It's, it's kind of absurd in my own mind.

Richard (9m 18s): I think at one point he points out that if a Martian arrived on earth, the first thing it would do is catalog the species and we haven't even done yet. Right. so he sees that then as something and out of that came one of the most remarkable productions of his work, which is the encyclopedia of life

Monica (9m 44s): Yeah.

Richard (9m 46s): For everyone to see, everyone to participate in. And there is one page, as it were often with extensions that go to other sources for each species that's been identified, including human beings, giving the Latin name, giving their characteristics and so forth. So that has been building over the years since around the year 2000. And if anyone wants to check it out, there'll be dazzled by what's there. All these different creatures presented in their various ways.

Monica (10m 14s): Well, and I think that we think of, if we can educate people that, we are innately drawn to nature and give them a bit of the why, and then get them out there. It's the beginning of saving it, cataloging it, discovering it, but just even, Jennifer does so much work on mental health and nature, how do you give people the why. And I think they need that, and I think, unfortunately they need to know it's personal, whether that impacts their mental health, or for a corporation it impacts their bottom line because their employees are healthy and happier. Sometimes we have to talk in economics, um, and health benefits, in order to save these precious species. It’s an interesting way in how do you bring people into the conversation?

Richard (11m): Jennifer. It's really interesting that you move people into the outdoors. I think some of the worst human beings in the world are those who have no connection to the natural world at all. We were all in their places and counting their money. 

Jennifer (11m 17s): Yes. Being here in New York City let me tell you, it's not always easy to get people outside. They just, and especially in the months where it's colder and they just say, why would I want to go outside? And I said, how can you not, how can you not?

Richard (11m 30s): This absolutely wonderful park through all the pressure to put buildings on it and put various things on it. In the best of intentions on the part of donors has managed to keep this space. It's very meaningful that it's there. And I think it's very meaningful to the people who go there.

Jennifer (11m 52s): Yes, exactly. 

Richard (11m 54s): It was a friend of mine. And one of the things that he really was frustrated by is that because of his celebrity, he couldn't go outside and take a jog. He had to have a pedal bicycle at his apartment in New York where he could work out for 45 minutes. He'd come out of that room in his bathrobe, just soaked in sweat. He'd watched the news and all but it frustrated the hell out of him that he couldn't go out into the park anymore. One of the reasons why he lived in Connecticut most of the time. 

Monica (12m 25s): Right, right and he did move. That is a point that somehow we’ve created nature as an “other” and unfortunately our society then, hones in on these celebrities and wants to know what they're doing instead of really letting them just live their lives and walk the park.

I do think that it was interesting that his work on sociobiology, I was fascinated, not really knowing much about it. And obviously there was like a lot of controversy around it because he was proposing that our behavior could be genetic, which I think is really interesting and obviously came up against some backlash from anthropologists but I really enjoyed that part of the book, the different people that came to his defense, including, I thought it was fun, is Shagnon who was a professor of mine at Santa Barbara. This is a gentleman, professor, Jennifer, who studied, tried the Yanomamo in the Amazon and he was, Shannon was just like so amazing. And it was like a class to take and he was this wash, buckling, field biologist. But I thought it was interesting that he sprang to EO Wilson’s defense. 

Richard (15m 29s): Well, when Ed was attacked by the anthropologists, as well as some Marxist biologists, basically who didn't like the humans had any limitations because Marx had to transform everything and couldn’t do that. If we were dragged down, as it were by our genetic heritage. They didn't like it at all. And they really worked on that. But Shagnon after all was someone else who'd been attacked for the radical side of his views and saw in Ed’s, someone in the literature said Ed Wilson was something of a bomb thrower.

Jennifer (16m 9s): I can see that.

Richard (16m 12s): I think that they meant he’s willing to step into and proposing new ways of thinking about things based and anchored in enormous research. He's working right now in his early nineties, on a very rich, large complex sort of synthesis of ecology. Human aspects in its natural, in its other creaturely aspects and he told me the first thing he did was pull out every article he found Intuit, the leading world science journals, nature and science for the past 10 years that have any relation whatsoever to the subject of ecology. The interrelation of species and within species ecology. So he's going to do an overall synthesis of all of this, and I'm sure he's going to step on toes, but it's an aspect of the richness of his work that he has kept growing and growing and widening and widening his range as time goes on.

Jennifer (17m 20s): I think it's so interesting you're saying that because I loved also about your book was also the fact that you highlighted that he's also not only so deep in his research and so profound in his love of what he's doing, but he sounds like he's really, really funny. Like, I, I don't know, for some reason I never thought EO as someone, but your book really kind of honed in this like little had a funny, didn't he name it Ant after was it called Harrison Ford or something?

Richard (17m 40s): Ford, I think it’s funny too, so he named ants that he first identified after Harrison Ford. He does things like that. The funniest story he tells, and I won't tell it at length, but, just quickly was when he realized that when aunts die within a colony, they're usually left the body is just left where it stopped for two or three days. It's fantastic. All of these have workers who spend all their time cleaning up the place, it puzzled him why. So he, looked into it a bit and realized that the problem was that because they have rigid exoskeletons, the odors of decay, weren't exiting their bodies until enough pressure built up to get through all the little cracks, But once he got going and he worked all that out

Jennifer (18m 27s): Oh wow.

Richard (18m 40s): But once he got going and he worked all that out, he started taking some of this, juice of decay from and putting it on a live ant. And then the workers would come running over, pick up the live ant, run it out of the colony and throw it in the trash. Generally sort of look puzzled for a while and he'd go back in, but it wasn't sufficiently clean. So the worker ants would pick it up and throw in another pile again, three days before the poor thing could find like, this is science as comedy. It's real. And there's more than a little of that in hidden in the stories he tells. I mean, let's face it. He's been out in the natural world over and over again. And you would counter things. That's what getting out is about. Really. My wife loves to walk every morning and she's now got three crows that follow her around.

Jennifer (19m 27s): Oh my gosh.

Richard (19m 28s): Crows are very smart and they're curious, what is this, this large pipe that's making crow noises, so she's got a little coterie of crows that walked around with her.

Jennifer (19m 44s): Okay. That's delightful.

Monica (19m 57s): Yeah, I think the relationships with the birds have you, are you aware of Richard Louv who wrote Last Child in the Woods?

Richard (19m 56): No, I don't know.

Monica (20m): Oh, so he, you would, you two would really enjoy each other. Richard, started a foundation, that's Children in Nature Network and he coined the term nature deficit disorder, which you may have heard.

Richard (20m 10s): Wonderful.

Monica (20m 11s): Yeah, he's phenomenal. We'll have to introduce you guys. And he, his most recent book is about animals and the connection that we have to animals. and the importance of that and so I know Jennifer over the pandemic befriended a couple of pigeons, right. Or they were where they doves?

Jennifer (20m 28s): Doves. They were doves, Barbara and Sue and Margaret and Roberta. I call them the ladies of the sill. My window sill. 

Monica (20m 36s): But I think that's biophilia. Right, everybody's got dogs and cats. Why is it, you know, that just it. Why did everybody suddenly wake up to nature during the pandemic? They knew it was healthy for them. Why are homes with views more valuable it's because of nature. All of that, I believe ties back to biophilia. And, EO Wilson and his work is just incredible. Tell us a little bit about how did you find him, like with all

Jennifer (21m 4s): It was the ants wasn’t it?

Monica (21m 6s): Was it the ants? How did you find him as a topic?

Richard (21m 10s): Actually it wasn't. I was writing an article. I did a lot of magazine writing before I got full-time writing books. And I was writing an article for a magazine on the question. Why do men rape? And I was puzzled if there was any genetic component, there was any genetic advantage to this behavior. I no longer think so but at the time, I wanted to talk to someone in Ed's book, Consociate biology, it's just been published and I had read it with great interest. So I called him up, went to Harvard to visit him, we hit it off because we have somewhat similar childhoods and somewhat- not abused, certainly, but neglected. And it led him in his case, out into the woods. I was living in a city. So it led me to the city junkyard where I got interested in technology because that's what junkyards are full up. So in a funny way, we had a connection and we ended up very quickly. One of the things he did was to take me in and show me Kinsey, Alfred Kinsey's collection of beetles. He collected beetles, symbiotic collection of 4 million beetles, little pins that are in drawer after drawer, after drawer. 

That was just down the aisle, down the hall from Ed's office in the Harvard museum of natural history. So we found an affinity and stayed in touch over the years. And I finally found a publisher interested in publishing a biography of him. And really just in time, I realized he was not the youngest guy in the world. No word of life that matters. And if we were going to do a biography together, we'd better get it done. I want to jump to something else though, because it's part of what we're talking about. His conflict with Tim Watson, with James Watson, co-discoverer the structure of DNA and its application to the genetic code. There is a classic example of what we're talking about, Watson in the thrill of the discovery. And it was a profound discovery. Wilson always gives him full credit for one of the deepest discoveries in the history of biology, he and his partner, Francis Crick. But when Watson came to Harvard the same year Ed did, Watson was convinced that they could just get rid of all of these field biologists. He called them stamp collectors. He said we don't need them. And the field biology part of the Harvard department was a little dated. Professor had his creature and he organized his lectures and everything around that creature.

When in fact there are all sorts of longitudinal structures that need to be followed through what's similar to what, how are ants related to beetles, our ants related to humans. And so, so.

Watson basically just mistreated everybody all around him. He was just a total bastard. And at one point called him to Caligula biology because Ed understood and truly believed that on the one hand, certainly field biology could use some more mathematically structured, scientific work. But on the other hand, there are things that you discover about a whole living organism. If you discover just by structure against DNA, they're at a different level of complexity and they're separate in a way. So he fought Watson and Watson fought him, for about 10 years until kind of the way religions do when there's a theological difference between them. They split into two departments. The Quakers got up to about 30 or 40 different branches because nobody would give in on their basic principles. Of course.

So eventually they reconciled and they became good friends. Watson is still living, but I don't think he's in particularly good health. And he's made some stupid statements lately that have gotten him roundly condemned. Talking about women and they're not as bright as men. I mean, 19th century comments. Yeah. So but we all get old and say stupid things. 

Monica (25m 33s): Yeah. So First of all, I love that you, the book title, just scientist. How are you feeling about the impact of the book since it's come out? You know, you had a wonderful, you know, covered by the New York Times, but like, how is it being received personally for you? Like, do you feel like people are coming to this awareness, one? And then two, I just wanted to just dive in on scientists in general in science and where they stand in the world today. 

Richard (25m 58s): I haven't seen any visible action on the part of my book whatsoever. And I think that's because as with many other books whose fault it was delayed for weeks, it couldn't get any paper for the photo inserts. So published about three weeks later than it was supposed to be. And that means it missed a lot of book review deadlines. So we only had a few reviews so far when normally you've got reviews all over the country and in every newspaper.

So it hasn't had much impact yet. Among friends, of course, and people who have read it, people seem to be delighted with it. And I'm happy to see that. I mean, at this point, it's my 26th book, if I haven't learned how to write a book by now, that’s my line of work.

Monica (26m 45s): Well, I know we have a wonderful bookstore at Serenbe called Hills and Hamlets, which is an independent and Josh is the owner. When I went to go pick it up there, he said, it's been selling quite well. Like he, I had picked it up and knowing that he admired EO but, didn't really know, expected to sell, but it’s doing really well in our community. 

Richard (27m 10s): I think it will because people do know who he is and a dazzling cover with that wonderful..

Monica (27m 12): Oh, it's wonderful, I’ll formally invite you to come do a book signing at some point in the new year if you’re down this way ever. Well I guess you’re in Seattle now, right?

Richard (27m 28s): Yes. Yeah.

Monica (27m 32s): But we can talk about that if you’re traveling to Atlanta or the Southeast, I mean, it would be so fun to have you and host you.

Richard (27m 37s): Well you know we have Zoom so we could do this,

Monica (27m 40s): We do have Zoom. We could do that too. We could do a whole book club.

Monica (27m 42s): And then the other side of it is scientist, I think, the idea of science and truth and people doing field work and work in the lab is so important. Do you think that scientists have been forgotten? Or not held up anymore?

Richard (28m 1s): I think that science is really taking a hit from this whole bizarre movement against rationalism in this country. And then other countries too. It's like, I don't know where this is going, but it's not a happy development. When I hear people saying I don't need to be vaccinated because it's a government plot or whatever. We've got two or 300 years of history of

vaccination. And there's no question that it's one of the most important developments in science. People don't remember, I guess what it was like, I do what it was like when polio would emerge and we would be told to stay home. Don't go to the community swimming pool. Don't go to the movies. Don't meet with your friends.

And someone you knew would suddenly be in an iron lung and paralyzed and die. It was a horrible, horrible experience. That was just one of, all of the horrible sources of natural disease, organized depth in the world. It's been a huge, huge transformation. And I think it's only because of that transformation that people have, if you will, the cockeyed privilege of saying, well, you don't need to vaccinate our children. And sadly, of course, this is a potentially lethal disease, 93%. I think the number is of people who are dying of COVID or people who aren't vaccinated. You should think that would be enough evidence. So, but science has always been somewhat paradoxical in that, on the one hand, it brings us miracles. Well, as we used to think of them. And on the other hand, as one of the great physicists once said, it participates in the gradual removal of our prejudices and he means things like the belief that the earth was at the center of the universe. Uh, one of the first things that happened with Galileo, the belief that we're separate creation, something that happened with Darwin, that gave way with everyone, but it's still controversial in religious one by one, science has taught us not how we'd like the world to be, but how it actually is. And that has brought us great. benefits. 

But at the same time, it's kind of reminded us that we're creatures among the other creatures, some celestial transformation that is different from all the rest of us. Ed says at the end of one of his, what I think is probably his best book for general readers on human nature. He says when we solve all our problems, when we've cured all the diseases. When we’ve got control of violence and war, we're going to wake up one day and realize that we have no purpose as Ed sees beyond the reproduction of our unkind, just all the other species. That's going to be a spiritual crisis. There's this paradox that I think people who are afraid of science, afraid of government are participating in. That's very open in fact, which is while you're doing a lot for us today, but, why are we here? What are we for? We don't like your answers. They're not as grandiose as we want them to be. We don't want to be like the little creatures to the world. We are, fortunately, this is the other side of it. I'd like to say the natural world is fractal, fractal. It's a term from geometry, that things that have more than one, level of organization. And what that basically means to me is. The natural world is equally complex at every level, it's so rich and wonderful to be a part of, to get outdoors with because there's always something new to see. There's always a surprise to see, those crows following my wife down the street, this was just a total, Who are these little guys, what are they doing? What does that tell you about them, what does it tell you about me? What's going on here? New friends.

So it's as always with anything. I think in the world, I sometimes think of writing history is mostly is about writing about the unintended consequence. So, building a bomb that would end world war two, a weapon that ended all world scale war, but it made it possible to destroy the whole world. So that's the kind of surprise at me.

Jennifer (32m 46s): I think it was interesting too, when you brought up that I would've never have known the fact that when I think about scientists or data or research, I think like you brought up in the book that it was always kind of, no, it's mine. I'm not going to share it. You can't have it. I'm not going to share with you. And here comes EO Wilson saying I'm going to create the encyclopedia of life and it's going to be. Everyone. Everyone should know. And I just thought, how profound is that statement? Talk about like throwing a bomb out there when everyone else is saying no, no, no. It's mine and EO Wilson wants to share his discoveries with the world. I mean, what a beautiful statement and sentiment to who is.

Richard (33m 18s): That's lovely. I hadn't thought about it that way, but yes, you’re right. He's kind of, let's face it like most academic fields, science has guarded itself with complex language and also a little tricks and locks latches, so that it's hard to– you’re not one of the cognoscenti who's been initiated properly. I noticed, for example, the scientists who are popular risers are usually put down for popularizing, that was Sagan that's even been true to some degree, yeah. That he's had, he's been opening up science to the rest of us. 

Monica (34m 2s): Yes. Right. I think that's the way to go, right. Is saying, it's for everybody, but, you know, in thinking more of an abundance mindset than a, um,

Jennifer (34m 11s): Fear-based or

Monica (34m 12s): Yeah, fear-based or narrow. And I, felt like there was a lot of optimism in this book and is that just part of your nature, Richard? Is that, is that genetically encoded in you, your optimism?

Richard (34m 27s): No, it hasn't always been my perspective, but as you get older, it seems to me, you have two choices. One is that you become the guy who says get off my lawn. Or take a more optimistic perspective and realize that you were young and optimistic once. And why should you give it that up because you're old and facing death. He really does think, I mean, he's already made the leap. That's what I mean, this quote I gave you about down the road after we've solved all these problems, what the public discussion is today that the world's about to end. I believe that he thinks we'll get past this, particular catch in, the development of our lives and of our relationship to the world, it will require work.

It will require change. He's in that in every way he can think of, but at the same time he sees us as moving on from there. And I do too. If we've managed to keep our bombs in the basement for as long as we have, that’s a good start, it's been eighty years now. And the people who built them thought that we would blow them up by 1950 and destroy the world because what else would we do? That's what we'd always done. So he's optimistic and I am too. I mean, after all I have grandchildren in their twenties and they're just the most marvelous people my Lord. I adore that they're so bright. They're so well-educated, they're so excited. So going forward, they’re all sitting, looking at us,

Monica (36m 8s): Yeah. And I think that it's how do you expose the ideas to people so that they can make decisions and be thoughtful about it without being dogmatic, and I think that that is always a challenge is dogma. Right. how we're sorting everything out. And I, recall, and I think it may be one of the later chapters. I don't know if it was a quote or you had said it, that one of the scientists was EO saying. Listen, whether we go into authoritarianism or, this person wins an election or, we get to Mars or not, or whatever, like those, all things will kind of work themselves out. If we don't save the species they're gone, the other things could be cyclical or, be managed. If the species are gone, they're gone. There's no bringing those back.

Richard (36m 58s): That is why he settled. So specifically on identifying and thereby serving what we have, because as you're saying, even if we had a horrible dictator in our country, seems to me, we almost did, but that's another topic. 

Monica (37m 8s): That’s another podcast.

Richard (37m 15s): In a hundred years that things will change, but a species takes a million years or more to evolve to what it is. And you say, when they're gone, they're gone.That's why he's so, so vividly determined the way he's moved into this particular area of concern, because there are plenty of others saving the rainforest but again, those things could be recycled if you will. You can’t recycle a particular species or creature. 

Jennifer (37m 44s): Can I ask a question too, because I'm reading the book and learning about all the letters that he and Irene, so did he have all these letters from Irene all this time? Or like, how would you get all the information? Did he have lots of books because I was just so fascinated by everything that you shared in the book. It was so interesting.

Richard (38m 5s): Ed told me at some point in the past that he'd kept every letter that– they were just about to get married, but he got this fabulous opportunity to spend nine months wandering across the south Pacific collecting ants in places where they've never been collected before. Little islands in the middle of the south Pacific and so on and Australia as well. So he had to think of a way to keep Irene attached, if you will and I’m sure she was equally concerned about his staying attached, maidens and so forth. So they made a pledge that they would write each other every day. And by and large, they did. And I knew that about those letters and I thought, I thought I've got to have those letters and it's immensely private about his personal life, The View, and the New Yorker criticized me for not writing it about his family life. After those early years with the letters. He wouldn't tell me anything about his life.

Monica (39m 02s): Interesting.

Richard (39m 04s): I told him I want to do your biography, but I can't do it unless you give me those letters and let me quote from them. And so one day this envelope arrived in the mail. I live in the west coast, he lives on the east coast and in it all wadded up and bent around, you know, how an old– there were all the letters. 

Jennifer (39m 29s): Wow.

Richard (39m 30s): I copied them all. I had them transcribed and they, not only the story of this wonderful love, which lasted all of their lives. Irene just died about 2 months ago.

Monica (39m 36s): Oh

Richard (39m 40s): They're all the way back to the early 19- she lived a long life and they were always together throughout that life. But so I had them transcribed and there was that story, but there also was this journal day by day of his travels of his discoveries of the people he met and he was in one island and he met the French couple who were the model for the planter in the middle-

Monica (40m 16s): Oh yeah. That was so interesting. 

Jennifer (40m 17s): That was so neat. 

Richard (40m 18s): –who lived on an island nearby. Because James Michener, who wrote that story had been posted there as a naval officer during world war two and had done the same thing. So that was the kind of wonderful story that came through from these letters. I wish there had been more or, I wish I'd known more about the rest of their lives together, but there wasn't available.

Monica (40m 45s): Yeah, no, I, really enjoyed it and it drew me in to have that personal, it's almost this romance story that drew me in and then all of the relationships that he had over the years and the intersection and who he admired and, just the time he lived, or is living, but lived through is just incredible. I mean, Margaret Mead took him to dinner and, he was, you know, new again, we, you know,

Richard (41m 5s): He was being attacked by

Monica (41m 6s): Yes, yes.

Richard (41m 8s): Walked into the room, she was carrying a six foot post that was her cane. Put it on the floor and said, are we about to vote to sensor a work of science? What sort of people are we? And everyone was shaken up. That had never happened. So great stories. 

Monica (41m 29s): Yeah. Great story well and–

Richard (41m 36s): I've written about have been people who have collected together their life stories that I've told them many times, they're always wonderful that even if there's sometimes a little polished around the edges in ways that it didn't happen. But these things that Ed told us did happen and they're in the book. 

Monica (41m 52s): Absolutely wonderful. So, Richard, what’s next for you?. Are you working on another subject?

Richard (41m 59s): I am. And it's really very exciting. I'm writing a book about the largest machine in the world.

Jennifer (42m 6s): Wow.

Richard (42m 7s): Which is called the Large Hadron Collider. 

Monica (42m 13s): Oh, yes.

Richard (42m 14s): A particle accelerator ring seven miles in circumference.

Jennifer (42m 21s): Wow.

Richard (42m 22s): It goes underground, across the border between Switzerland and France and which is the machine that was used to discover what, I guess, one of the scientists called the God particle, which is sort of, but the Higgs boson, which was the particle that gives matter its mass, it's weight, special particle these giant machines and they get bigger every year. The company, the scientific organization that built the LHC, the Large Hadron Collider is now going to build one hundred miles around

Monica (42m 57s): Wow.

Richard (42m 58s): The LHC is just going to be one of the starter rings because they used their old ones. They built them up from small to larger, to larger each time getting more energy and therefore finding more new particles. Is going to be just ring to get things going there or have those already. And then it will be pumped into this vacuum tube, a hundred miles around–

Jennifer (43m 25s): That’s wild.

Richard (43m 26s): Faster and faster and faster while they’re already managing to reproduce the energy. Within 1 trillionth of a second of the big bang that started the universe. So if this one is going to be what, five times bigger, they're going to be able to get to a fraction of a trillionth, almost back to the big bang.

Jennifer (43m 50s): Wow.

Richard (43m 51s): This is what I mean about science.

Jennifer (43m 52s): Yeah.

Richard (43m 54s): The whole universe, as we know it, started with one infinitesimally small particle that blew up one day. Nobody quite knows what happened, where that came from. But with it came time, with it came gravity, with all the forces and then as it kept expanding, it made constellations and galaxies, mars, and us. The whole kit and caboodle, if you will.

Monica (44m 22s): Yeah.

Richard (44m 23s): So it's not a surprise– this is of course, a very expensive business.

Monica (44m 27s): Yes.

Richard (44m 29s): The Large Hadron Collider was a $20 billion project.

Monica (44m 39s): Right. 

Richard (44m 40s): The other particle they were looking for, it's basically done. Of course it can still be used to do a great deal of science. For that original goal, it's done its job. So I have to build a bigger one. It seems so odd I think to people who aren't in science. And yet, if there's anything we certainly, as creatures, want to know it's who we are, what we're made of, where we are. Here's the answer to that. I have to throw in one other thing because every time I think, but it knocks me out. There is some theory that has some support that this original particle. just came out of a vacuum because of some very complicated quantum physics that exist or existed on a potentially and one day tend to exist. And then to cough, that would mean that we came from nowhere. If you will. We started out, I loved that, this little thing, this infinitesimally small thing, packed with all the, all the future of. All of our lives. That's so beautiful. And I mean, show me a religion that can keep up with that. That's the way I feel about it. Religions are wonderful and there are a hundred thousand of them in the world as there are.

Monica (45m 56s): Yep.

Richard (45m 57s): If I have a religion, it's science.

Monica (45m 59s): Yeah. And we really talk about nature as our–

Jennifer (46m): Religion

Monica (46m 1s): You know, and I think, that's a whole nother podcast and you touch on that in the book as well about, codifying, you know, social rules. And I had listened to another podcast recently about philosophy in the making of the state and how the state then suppresses violence because we have an organization that can, the government or the state can then mediate between the people to then lessen the violence, and so it's sort of a whole nother fascinating thing, but I think that, Wilson and Chagnon talk about that of like again in ecology and biology, where does that tendency come from? And then how does it get organized?

Richard (46m 47s): Yeah, well, of course the usual argument is, it's this, the middle-class arose. It didn't want to have to spend its time looking over their shoulder all the time to carry a knife. You want to do business. And the deal was the king got the tax money from them and he supplied them with safety. I've got both the deals with that subject called Why They Kill, but I described the decline in violence in the west in the Middle Ages when the homicide rate in rural England was like 54, 54 per hundred thousand, which is about the same as inner city Detroit violent world. And it declined over the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries until today in the United States where we think we're living in the midst of enormous violence, we're not really, our homicide rate in the United States today is 5.4 per hundred thousand.

Monica (47m 39s): 5.4 per hundred thousand

Richard (47m 40s): Whereas in a country like Papua New Guinea back before they had any kind of government, when it was all just small tribes, their homicide rate was at a thousand per a hundred thousand.

Monica (47m 56s): Wow, that’s mind blowing

Richard (48m): You could see just how much control over violence, mostly because of access to courts of law.

Monica (48m 2s): Right, right, and so those courts of law, the Australians, I think came in.

Richard (48m 4s): They neighbor you, you see them. If they see you in the suit, they pay you. 

Monica (48m 10s): Right.

Richard (48m 11s): Much nicer.

Monica (48m 12s): Much nicer, much nicer. Well, Richard, thank you so much for your time. Thank you for saying yes to us. 

Jennifer (48m 20s): Yes.

Richard (48m 21s): My pleasure, just a delight.

Jennifer (48m 23s): We can do this for another few hours, but you know, we need to be around all day just to chat more, but maybe that’s in the future. We can all get together. 

Richard (48m 33s): Well, it would be fun to talk about this violence thing because 

Monica (48m 36s): I think that'd be very interesting.

Richard (48m 38s): –American society who has definitively figured out how you make people violent.

Jennifer (48m 44s): Wow.

Richard (48m 45s): And how therefore you could help them not be violent.

Monica (48m 47s): Interesting. Okay. For another time.

Jennifer (48m 53s): Yes. Thank you, Richard, thank you for your time

Monica (48m 51s): Have a wonderful day, thank you.

All I can say is, wow. 

Jennifer (49m): I know. I just absolutely loved our conversation. And I feel like we've barely scratched the surface of all things we could have talked about with Richard. 

Monica (49m 8s): Absolutely. And to that point, there are a couple of things that really stood out to me. The first is the idea that Ed Wilson really was kind of a rule breaker and someone who had a willingness to ruffle feathers. And I also liked the idea that he wasn't proprietary about his work and the way he transitioned from what we think of as a true scientist in the field, studying ants to becoming both a scientist and a true advocate for the natural world. And I'd say the last thing was that Richard says something to the effect of science doesn't show us what we want the world to be, it shows us what it is. 

Jennifer (49m 40s): I also love that, especially in the context of science coming under threat in the current political climate. But I have to say that Richard's optimism for the future is something that we really both share. So on the flip side, even though it can feel really challenging and discouraging, his optimism really resonated. 

Monica (50m): It did with me too. And I really think being optimistic, but realistic is key to moving forward with his work and really honoring his legacy. So whether you're like us and biophilia resonates with you every day, or you're a young student of biology, Ed Wilson is a towering figure whose life and contributions can not be minimized.

Jennifer (50m 16s): I completely agree. And I think Richard is such a wonderful person to help tell that story. 

Monica (50m 28s): So we highly encourage our listeners to head to our show notes, grab a copy of Richard's book, Scientist: EO Wilson: A Life in Nature. It's absolutely fascinating. Truly has themes that speak to everyone, whether you're passionate about science, history, or the environment.

Jennifer (50m 37s): Exactly. And we'll be back in a couple of weeks. 

Monica (50m 41s): All right. Talk to you later, Jennifer. 

Jennifer (50m 42s): Bye.