John Maynard Smith interview

John Maynard SmithAll of this stuff about Robert Wright and Daniel Dennett led me to meaningoflife.tv, a collection of interviews by Robert Wright with scientists, historians, philosophers and others. Wright doesn’t pretend to be a professional interviewer, but that doesn’t matter very much. I just watched the complete interview with the late John Maynard Smith (pictured here), probably the greatest evolutionary biologist of the 20th century. The interview runs just under an hour, and ranges from the application of game theory to evolution, to Marxism, to computers and consciousness, and death. Highly recommended. I hope the rest are as good.

Wonderful web site on evolution

A casual question from a colleague about spam prompted me to search the web for a quotation from Richard Dawkins on co-evolutionary “arms races”. What I found was this wonderful site associated with Mark Ridley’s magnum opus Evolution. The site includes a video gallery with clips featuring Dawkins, Dennett, Maynard Smith, and others. Highly recommended.
And yes, the “arms race” quote (and QuickTime video clip) is here.