00:02:06.460Let me let me start with the bad news so we can get past that.
00:02:12.000And so because I don't know the facts.
00:02:16.340So there was or was not a rape that occurred in 2024.
00:02:26.960The first complaint that was filed with the police said that everything was consensual.
00:02:35.060So we don't know if that was true or not then. And I'm willing to believe it may or may not have been true then. And there's some unknown aspects to me of how Cornell contacted the Ithaca Police Department.
00:02:57.600Did they share all the information they had or not? It's not clear to me. And the Ithaca Police Department decided that it wasn't a criminal case.
00:03:11.080So the case that we hear about now was essentially seven men were involved in raping a woman for seven hours.
00:03:23.960And there's a Snapchat picture of some of the talk that was going on during or next to.
00:03:36.680And it's not complimentary to anybody.
00:03:39.660and who knows who had that evidence when.
00:03:45.960So from what I hear, this is about the biggest story in the country now.
00:04:03.260And if people need to be punished, so be it.
00:04:07.820If people need to be exonerated, so be it. Just beforehand, there's no telling. Is it the woman
00:04:17.480or the man that's not telling the truth? Right. Okay. So that's the, of course, the dreadful0.98
00:04:25.820sort of gang rape accusation. But there are other wacky things happening at Cornell.
00:04:32.220We had Hassan Piker invited to Cornell. We had Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez. I call her Occasional Cortex. She's been invited to Cornell. Now, you and I have discussed previously because of our love and appreciation of Cornell, you're a professor there.
00:04:55.140I was a doctoral student there and a visiting professor, that, you know, Cornell has gone very much the way of many of the other elite prestigious universities becoming super woke.
00:05:06.720Is there something unique about Cornell in terms of it platforming these people?
00:05:13.940Or is this just part and parcel of the realities of the Ivy League?
00:05:19.220No, I think this is part and parcel of the realities of the Ivy League.
00:05:22.500and unfortunately and i went to see hassan piker right because i i think i have a different view
00:05:30.740than many people i think everybody has if somebody's invited to speak they can speak
00:05:39.460i'm a free speech absolutist in terms of that however i came to i came prepared to ask him a
00:05:47.280question based on his talk. And he didn't take questions from the audience, because that's where
00:05:53.960free speech begins to really matter when he says something and is ready to see if perhaps he's in
00:06:01.880error, which I believe his facts were completely wrong. And I would have liked to hear his
00:06:08.640explanation. What was, if you don't mind me asking, what was the thing that you were going to post?
00:06:14.040Yeah. So he talked about how hypocritical and how horrible and how, let me say, hypocritical and horrible the West is, and all the billionaires in the West, particularly.0.97
00:06:35.540And so I wanted to ask him, does he see Islam in the same fair light? Has Islam, did they peacefully take over Northern Africa and the Middle East and Europe? And are they continually to peacefully take over England, for example?0.96
00:07:01.500So is it a peaceful religion in that terms and not imperialistic, like he says Western culture is?
00:07:10.580Do the billionaires share their money and build schools in Gaza?
00:07:17.420Just so every criticism he had for the United States, I think you can make the same criticism in spades against Islam.0.94
00:07:26.660What would you have predicted would have been his answer?
00:07:29.060you know i didn't predict that he would be too cowardly to take questions right so um i guessed
00:07:39.080he would have just um brushed it aside brushed it aside yes thank you and um because i can't
00:07:47.800imagine i can't even imagine um what an answer could be an honest answer well i'm going to give
00:07:54.640you a few that he would likely say you're ready yes uh any manifestation of so-called violence
00:08:02.040that islam might be accused of it's only because they were taking a defensive strategy against
00:08:09.680you know american imperialism and therefore so for example october 7th itself from his
00:08:17.340perspective would have been perfectly justified because you've got these noble peaceful freedom
00:08:22.720fighters that have been under a open border open air prison where there's a daily genocide being
00:08:30.440committed against them and so is it not natural for them to then go and gang rape 1200 people and0.53
00:08:36.660chop off their heads because those babies ultimately are going to in the future be0.98
00:08:40.900you know evil zionists and so i think that there's almost no amount of evidence that you could have0.96
00:08:47.400offered in the prelude to your question that could have unshaken his belief that America bad,0.89
00:08:54.640Islam good. But maybe I'm wrong. Gee, you almost had me convinced.0.57
00:09:00.320Because I've had so much experience dealing with those dishonest interlocutors that I could almost
00:09:07.700predict with my eyes closed exactly what they're going to say. They truly are impenetrable to
00:09:14.420reason to evidence to to anything that we might call logical okay so and then did you did you get
00:09:19.860a chance to did you have the distinct pleasure to also hear the pontification of uh alexandra
00:09:26.460cortez no i did i i saw her on tv but i didn't go you didn't go to her rally hassan was enough
00:09:33.920for you you couldn't have plenty that's uh all right so let's let's so i want to tell people
00:09:40.180how we originally met uh you and i had been invited we had gone to uh stanford for a conference
00:09:48.920on academic freedom in 2022 and i think we were on a bus that would take us from the hotel to the
00:09:57.600venue we sat next to each other and we started talking about all kinds of things i think if i
00:10:02.000remember correctly we mentioned our mutual admiration for evil wilson is it okay there's
00:10:09.200some light? My light's on a timer. So let me, I can't control. Here we go. Oh, okay. All right.
00:10:17.800Yeah. So, so we, I think we spoke a bit about E.O. Wilson. We spoke maybe a bit about evolution
00:10:23.060in general, but, and maybe I think you had mentioned very briefly, I'm not sure if I
00:10:28.320understood all the intricacies about your specialization in, in, in your academic research.
00:10:34.640And you mentioned the very long specialization term. Let's see if I can remember, if I can get 100% on the exam, Professor Wayne. You are a biophysical plant cell biologist that I-
00:11:29.920I work on a single cell of CARA to study gravity,
00:11:37.040work on a single cell of Donaliella to study light,
00:11:41.560or a single cell of those are two algae, or fern spores.
00:11:48.060so um i try to reduce the complications by by starting with organisms actually that are single
00:11:56.860cells they're both organisms and single cells and the fact that the fact that you're studying
00:12:02.640gravity and light that's where the physics comes in you are going to now be applying
00:12:08.840physics-based principles to study these biological organisms is that roughly correct
00:12:14.120Yes. Actually, I can give an example of that. So inside plant cells, there's starch grains, the things that add weight to us. And those starch grains are thought to fall down when you turn a cell from horizontal to vertical. And when they hit the bottom of the cell, that causes the cell to say, okay, that's the bottom, and the other side must be the top.
00:12:42.180However, if you calculate the energy in a falling starch grain, there's not enough energy to actually do anything.
00:17:19.540But in fact, my proximal interest is working on the proximal causes, that the Gravi receptor senses a certain amount of tension on the top and compression on the bottom.
00:17:34.480And there's enough energy in that to open a calcium channel.
00:17:39.480But that's as far as we've gotten, essentially.
00:17:42.540Are you able to, and before I even ask my question, I don't mean to imply that for basic scientific research to have value, we have to somehow find an application to the human condition, but I'm someone who, as you know, thinks very synthetically, where can I build bridges?
00:18:03.460How can I create consilience, to use E.O. Wilson's famous term?
00:18:08.920Are you able to take, even if it's in the abstract, even though you may not have done
00:18:14.260it yet, are you able to take some of the insights based on, stemming from your basic research
00:18:20.420and say, here is a trajectory where I see this having some application to the human
00:25:30.140And so if you can isolate the two particles of matter and antimatter,
00:25:38.700which is just as difficult in space as isolating hydrogen and oxygen
00:25:43.920to have them fuse um but if you can do that you essentially have an endless source of
00:25:51.880very high and high powered energy or hence the power intergalactic travel i see yeah so the
00:25:59.580trouble is making enough matter and antimatter um that you can now let come together and um
00:26:06.940cause a force very interesting so as you were talking about the tension between what the
00:26:13.680physicists are using as their sort of three you know assumptions versus what you are describing
00:26:20.720in in the actual real world it reminds me of the tension say in economics where economists will
00:26:29.020build these theoretical models so the black box now the black box might descriptively be invalid
00:26:38.620In other words, it doesn't accurately describe human behavior. So, for example, homo economicus, the definition of what constitutes an axiom of rational choice that the classical economist says that we should be adhering to, is not adhered to, hence the work of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky.
00:27:00.400But then the economist will say, I don't care that the descriptive validity of the black box is wrong, because I simply care about being able to predict behavior at higher than random chance level.
00:27:15.360So is that the exact same tension that is happening with the physicist and what you're saying?
00:27:20.620He's saying, I want to achieve a theoretical parsimony, a coherent, elegant thing.
00:27:27.240I don't really care whether it is descriptively valid.
00:27:31.180It sounds to me like the two are analogous.
00:33:43.020And I'd say that's rotational energy because the photon is actually rotating.
00:33:49.260And that gives the exact same results as the warping of space-time.
00:33:55.980But you just have normal space and normal time. So when I started working on that, I actually got blacklisted from the archive that's founded here at Cornell. So I wrote to the two professors that oversee it. I say, I don't want to be wrong. So how about if I take you out for a cup of coffee and you tell me why I'm wrong?
00:34:17.820and they didn't answer. I wrote back one more time to be polite, just in case, you know,
00:34:25.040they were too busy when they got the email. But again, no answer. So actually, the relativity
00:34:31.280and quantum mechanics crowd is where I cut my teeth for learning about free speech.
00:34:38.000I was just going to say, actually, because as you're sort of describing this, I was going to
00:34:44.160ask you is this where you then suddenly realize oh there are some academic freedom issues here
00:34:51.580that i might want to get involved so that you just answered that question so so you started
00:34:56.840with the classic sort of semelweiss reflex and let me mention for those of you don't know semelweiss
00:35:03.020is some by the way our esteemed guest today is cited in suicidal empathy uh precisely because
00:35:12.700as you and I were geeking out over all kinds of topics
00:35:16.620when you kindly invited me to deliver some lectures at Cornell,
00:35:20.380we talked about Samuel Weiss, and then you mentioned, I think it was
00:35:40.880that new, you know, women who had just given birth, they were dying of this perperal fever
00:35:47.820was due to the fact that the physicians who were, you know, delivering the babies had previously
00:35:53.660worked on, you know, doing autopsies. And of course, all of the physicians said, how dare you,
00:36:00.240sir? How dare you question our God-like abilities in healing? Surely we can't be the culprits.
00:36:08.220And he was shunned, he was hated, and so on. And then eventually, it turns out that he was right. And so when you earlier said, I wash my hands of him, you're referring to that. So okay, so that was your original foray into the world that I have inhabited for a long time. But then did you extend it to broader issues beyond the academic debate stuff?
00:36:35.100I, you know, I grew up in Boston, and the American Revolution was just part of me. And all those things, I'm thrilled that this year is the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
00:36:51.860And liberty, freedom, the First Amendment, everything it means, discussions about how do you best serve freedom and prevent hurt at the same time, but in a legal way, consistent with the First Amendment and its interpretation.
00:37:42.940for you to talk about how what started off as a standard academic fight between competing camps
00:37:50.480led you down and you know the foray of the broader issues of freedom yes yes beautiful yes uh do you
00:38:00.700have hope i mean you and i have discussed you know certainly some of my work parasitic freedom
00:38:06.380So it's out of empathy and so on. Do you have hope that the universities can be purged of this nonsense and we can return to the edifices of reason? Or are you of sort of the more cataclysmic band? We need to nuke the rotting bodies and start afresh. Where do you stand on that debate?
00:38:27.220You know, the reason I have hope is the Cornell Library has actually let me research everything that I think about right down to the original document.
00:40:41.200So before the early 1900s, when Beatrix Potter made the Humblebee Goes Buzz and called it the bumblebee, it used to be called the Humblebee.
00:42:54.000He believed in compensation, that if you made, for example, a dog go faster, he wouldn't be so strong.
00:43:03.500Or if you made a dog stronger, like a bulldog compared to a greyhound, the fast one won't be strong and the strong one won't be fast.
00:43:12.980So he believed not in always improving, but compensation.
00:43:16.900conversation so um i asked my students so why was samuel wilberforce so interested in this
00:43:25.740it turns out his father was william wilberforce a member and i asked my students actually a week
00:43:32.060before the class does anybody know the name wilberforce a question my amy you know my wife
00:43:38.080amy great question amy asked me 15 years ago which got this whole lecture going wow so um
00:43:46.040No, nobody knows Wilberforce. Okay, so now I tell them about William Wilberforce was
00:43:53.640Samuel Wilberforce's father. He spent his whole life in Parliament to get two bills passed,
00:44:01.060one to abolish the slave trade, and the others to abolish slavery in the British Empire.
00:44:07.620So he decided he was going to do that when he realized he was just being like any other
00:44:13.220politician and not, you know, just taking the perks, that he really should do something
00:44:17.780important. And he remembered hearing John Newton speak when he was younger, and he went to see
00:44:26.700John Newton. So John Newton was a slave trader, a captain of a slave ship, and a very good one or
00:44:32.420a very bad one, depending on your outlook. But one day he thought all men are created in God's
00:44:38.960image. And if that's true, slavery is wrong. So he quit. He went back to England, became a pastor
00:44:45.160in the Anglican Church and wrote hymns. One hymn was about his own life. It's called Amazing Grace.
00:44:51.760I once was lost and now I'm found. And so as a matter of fact, I have the complete works of
00:45:01.000John Newton. Actually, I have him right here. I just gave that lecture. And I have my students
00:45:07.120read the hymn and it's the place goes silent it's just amazing although last year last spring i had
00:45:15.080a student no more hi no more if you're watching uh that sang an amazing grace as she was reading
00:45:22.280um so um i mean that speaks to your to the term that we mentioned briefly earlier consilience
00:45:32.660Right. Because you're you're taking all of these evolutionary principles, linking them to real historical phenomena, including slavery, linking it to a spiritual narrative and all of those bridges that you are building to to otherwise connect these disparate phenomena is exactly what the beauty of consilience is.
00:45:54.520right? Yes, yes. So let me connect it a little more. So I take my class to see, you know,
00:46:02.020the original origin of species and a number of other things that really are amazing.
00:46:08.340And there used to always be a bust of Abraham Lincoln right next to the room where we met.
00:46:14.400And one day it was missing. And I asked somebody, what happened to the bust of Abraham Lincoln?
00:46:20.800And that person said, someone complained, and it was gone.
00:47:40.980How did Cornell, what's the, do you know the genesis of why Cornell?
00:47:45.180got it so Ezra Cornell knows knew both Abraham Lincoln and went to one of the inaugurals I'm not
00:47:52.340sure and Vinnie Rehm and I believe um that in our founder's room the two sculptures of Ezra Cornell
00:48:01.580and his wife were also done by Vinnie Rehm amazing uh yes so it's beautiful so in this
00:48:09.040bust abraham lincoln sort of looking to the right um and down and it's whichever side you
00:48:16.220look at him there's a different feeling it is beautifully done and it's the same like i said
00:48:23.980same sitting that vinnie rehm did to make the lincoln statue in the rotunda of the capital
00:48:31.320incredible and there you can see what he's looking at with his right hand
00:48:37.660He's looking at the Emancipation Proclamation.
00:48:42.360And actually, the bust is more beautiful, I have to say, because you get to use your imagination.
00:48:47.860All the information isn't there for you.
00:48:50.440So because I made such a big stink about the Lincoln bust disappearing, and Fox News covered it, I became such a persona non grata in the library.
00:49:06.460So actually, I'm retiring at the end of the year when I was negotiating with the associate dean on retirement.
00:49:14.240I said, there's one thing that I really want to get done before I retire.
00:49:18.760I want a plaque to be set up next to the Lincoln bust that has either the last paragraph of the second inaugural or just the words, if they don't have that much room, with malice towards none and charity for all, which comes from that paragraph.
00:49:36.760So she just actually melted and thought that was a great idea.
00:49:40.740She went to the library and they said, oh, there's no way we could put a plaque on the wall.
00:49:44.860Believe me, there's plenty of plaques on the wall.
00:49:46.920And with, you know, Trump being president and we having to save so much money that's been cut, there's no possible way.
00:49:54.600So, well, I'm still going to try to get that plaque there.
00:50:04.160I actually wrote another essay. It's not easy being red, white and blue at Cornell to tell that story.
00:50:11.300It's very easy to be red, white and blue at Ole Miss. Let me tell you this. Yeah. Thank you. So I wasn't aware. I don't think you had shared with me privately that you were retiring at the end of this year.
00:50:23.000So, but now that you've shared it publicly, what are your plans post-retirement?
00:51:29.600And in the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Calvin Coolidge talked about the Declaration of Independence.
00:51:38.380He says, when it says, all men are created equal, that's final.0.84
00:51:43.040Well, I think actually the Seneca Declaration improved that a little bit by saying men and women, but I get his point. And I said, I teach science like things aren't final. There's still question. Science is never settled.0.52
00:51:58.960But Fauci explained to us that it is settled. So isn't he the ultimate benchmark of science?
00:52:09.980Fauci, you mentioned Calvin Coolidge. Are you aware of the real scientific term in evolutionary
00:52:18.540psychology coined as the Coolidge effect? Do you know what that is?
00:52:24.260Oh, so here's a story for you. So I'm sure this is a story that I discuss in this book right here in The Consuming Instinct. It refers to the penchant for sexual variety. I mean, which could apply to both men and women, but certainly the greater penchant of men for sexual variety and its evolutionary roots.
00:52:47.880Now, why is it called the Coolidge effect? Because, and forgive me if I slightly butchered the story, but the general point will be clear. So President Coolidge and his wife are going around some farm and the wife says, oh, who is sort of going with all of these hens?
00:53:13.680And they say, well, there's a there's a rooster, whatever. And then she so then she says, well, you know, hopefully you can tell that to President Coolidge so that he can raise his vigor.
00:53:24.220And then later, President Coolidge comes along and says, oh, or is it is the is the rooster sleeping with a single hen?
00:53:34.040He goes, no, no, no, with many hens. And then he goes, well, tell that to Mrs. Coolidge, meaning that sexual vigor is much more likely to be maintained if you introduce variety, which, by the way, the research has been done in zoology where you take, for example, a male rat.
00:53:55.940You introduce a female, he'll mate with her. You take her out, you introduce another female, he'll mate with her. And he will literally mate until he dies, as long as you keep introducing a new female rat. And so that became known as the Coolidge effect. So here you go, linking a story about an American president with a fundamental driver of human sexuality.
00:54:20.820Of course, what you're saying doesn't apply to you and me because our wives are so wonderful.
00:54:25.900That is absolutely true. Will Chamberlain was once told, to your point, he was purported to
00:54:37.040have slept with, I don't know, 20,000 women. And some guy said, you are such an amazing stud,
00:54:43.100whatever. And then Will Chamberlain stops and corrects him and he goes, it takes a lot more
00:54:48.660of a man to sleep with the same woman 20,000 times than to sleep with 20,000 women. Now,
00:54:55.200I think in your case and mine, we have such exemplary wives that it is hardly a feat to be
00:55:02.260with the same woman over and over again. And frankly, as someone who understands the evolutionary
00:55:08.180reasons why people would want to stray, nothing brings greater happiness to a person than to find
00:55:14.860that special person build a family build a life with them regrettably too few people in the west
00:55:20.420are doing so because we are falling way short of the replacement rate but inshallah people will
00:55:26.460start having sex again soon yes uh randy anything you want to promote uh before i could sit here and
00:55:34.960speak to you for hours but i know your time is valuable anything you want to promote some project0.92
00:55:39.200you're working on, a book, a post-retirement, this is your time to tell us about it.
00:55:44.680Oh, yeah. Let me say something. The 18 Cornell faculty put together the Future of the American
00:55:54.420University report. And I begged them for a year to say the mission of the university
00:56:02.400is the search for truth. And they just couldn't do it.