kinds of awards. documentaries on public television. it helps. just things that. why are you still doing all this? it takes 20 to $30 to do. my smart answer is, trying to figure out how to do it. the real answer is there is this worse looseness. >> are you able to drive? >> i still farm. i was on my tractor the other day. >> what was your role point. >> professor of agricultural education. prior to that was a county extension agent. i moved to madison. my newspaper work. i have been freelance writing. freelance columnist for ten years. >> how many polio survivors are they? >> thousands. >> it is tricky. i have polio. not very much. we are all going to be dead. >> is there polio in the world today? >> yes. pakistan, afghanistan, nigeria. the aids foundation. you have provided guy is of dollars for free vaccinations. unfortunately they see that is a problem. it is still there in the world. that is another reason why it is important here. like ebola. just because we don't have it here doesn't mean it can't come here. >> as. >> that is another way of doing it. >> our kids getting vaccinations? >> exactly right. unfortunately in my biased opinion is terrible. >> what was the pain like? >> like something i have never had before. it was unbearable pain. >> awful. >> when did you write limping through life? is that the 1st time people at the university learned? >> i don't know if they were surprised. i tried to act like everybody else. my army friends. >> professor emeritus. the farm boys polio memoir. book tv on c-span2. >> good evening, everybody. i would like to talk about housekeeping items. if you could turn off or silence your cell phones it would be greatly appreciated. step up to one of the two microphones. we are being filmed this evening. and lastly it would be a great help if you could fall of your chairs. with that out of the way i am a bookseller here at politics and prose and i would like to welcome you all to tonight's event. so much to offer. started thinking about books for the holiday season. it is an excellent present for the avid reader in your life. simply tell us the literary interests, favorite authors, genres, and once a month they will receive a book that has been carefully selected. you can even check out the reviews that have come in. onto the main event. very excited to introduce a graduate of oxford university. american editor with the economist. his previous book so livered 10 million copies. he is also a member of the house of lords. an ingenious study. the times call that a compelling argument and evidence that the pages flyby. the most important work. the ideas tackle in his book , natural selection and evolution still dominates humanity minded me of the debate i had with a friend of mine a few years ago, in firm control of everything, bodies and effectively ended influence and i was kind of astounded. i remember that we debated for quite a while. the very 1st thought was, i wish i had this back in. put so much profound thought in a don't think he would have won the actual debate. [applause] >> thank you very much indeed. three or four nights ago in toronto. and we -- it is on the web. and we just wiped the floor. that is not really true. they start of the 71 percent and end of the 74 percent. the 1st time i have done a formal debate. as michael said, some of my previous books have been about evolution. evolution of virtue. i have been dancing around the topic on and off throughout my career. this time the living standards, two thirds reduction in child mortality , one 3rd increase comeau where that is coming from and why it is happening. it was all about innovation comes from the recombining. very like the way we recombine genes to a new species and biology. i began to get more and more interested in the idea that human society evolves. changes inexorably, gradually, incrementally and moves under its own steam without anybody being in charge and produces outcomes that are quite complex and sophisticated. it is a bit procrustean, this book. every aspect of human behavior. darwinian evolution is one of the great ideas of all time. still very difficult, particularly because it produces a fit between form and function. when we look at the human eye it is designed in some purposeful suspense. and yet the purpose and plan was never in anyone's mind beforehand. it has emerged as a thing. so if that is the case, could that be the case for social structure, the things that we have in the human world by the way we organize society and technology changes. when we have designed systems of politics or audi that they have emerged in the same way and have sophisticated and a good fit between form and function. i take that as far as i can go. i got this from a friend. einstein's special theory of relativity. any information system will produce evolutionary change. and the crucial ingredient really is trial and error. that is a different word for natural selection. you don't come up with one solution to come up with lots. and i think that that is vital. and ingredient of human culture. if you look at the designs of early airplanes you find that are an enormous number of designs being charged. it is not the case to go from one designed to the next. and if i am right spontaneous order and complexity can emerge in this way than perhaps we are all making a bit of a creationist mistake but we look at human society. see order and assume there was an intelligent design. do we look at it and assume someone has to be in charge? in fact we let the solutions emerge. a wonderful phrase. it is a hook that you attached to the sky in order to build a building from the top down. immensely convenient, and the phrase originated about a pilot who was told that an airplane to stay up there and replied that it is not fitted with sky hooks. that is the origin. so obviously it is not imaginary device. from the bottom up, not the top down which is what i come back to throughout the book that try and make the case. quite often it is designed top-down. let me give you a couple of examples. music, we tend to say so-and-so invented a new genre. it shows very clear dissent. each genre, you can see his parentage. you can also see where the to come together and hybridize to produce a 3rd consequently show. they start off as vengeful and petty tyrants. and then they gradually become disembodied benevolent spirits of a singular nature. and you could trace the evolutionary progress. governments involved. piece in society. and you can see this happening in prison gates today, an example. prison life is emerging. it is quite common for terrorist movements. >> particular features. what kind of things they get to the ratios, the measurements in the cities. very predictable. but of course that is not because someone is imposing. in the natural order of things. the result of human action but not human design. the whether outside is neither. but there is a category of things that are the result of human action but not human design. we don't have a word for it. but think about the english language, for example. it is man-made, but it is not the result of human design. or that anyone is in charge of it. the central committee. and you can see the history buried within it. i reached to get inspiration for the origin. it was through his wonderful book that i started understand. around the time of caesar and cicero. apparently he died made stands up. and it is such an extraordinary thing. the spirits of god's. the same kind of material as nonliving things. we now know it is an incredibly accurate description. what can produce different forms. and he gets very close. showing that this was suppressed for many centuries. the german monastic library became an enormous influence for me the person who begins his adam smith. he writes a book exactly a century before dawn, morality is something we work out between ourselves. from the reactions of others we learn what is right and what is wrong, what you can get away with what you can't and he is essentially saying morality is not decided by priests and handed down. and goes on to make the same argument about the economy. the system by which we all supply and demand products is an unplanned spontaneous system which produces spontaneous order and therefore there are 10 million people that have to be fed every day. it would be a disaster. >> completely discharged from duty. innumerable delusions, no human wisdom or knowledge could ever be sufficient. directing toward those most suitable for the interest of society.fá i think there is really quite a direct analogy here between biologicalñr evolution and economicw3 or social evolution. the tropical0rain forestxd with every species having its own nr!rq is like a languageç that has grown organically.çc'ko one or two reviewersçw3 in order toç help the progress of societyñrç we should assist biological evolution.ñrok we should do this by telling people what i can i can. and even by killing them. of course this led to eugenics and the holocaust. no. we are not interested in biological evolution. that is a slow process of no significance. there is a very sophisticated theory developed which i talked to the book. they used to be thought this is the main idea. the particles of culture so that they can compete with other particles of culture. but they have argued instead that it does not matter if there are not discrete units of culture. some degree of error at some degree of selection and you will inevitably get an evolutionary result. it is a slightly subversive book, a bit anti- elitist. i can assure you, it is a powerless institution. a little bit of hypocrisy. i am down on the great man theory of history. then are women changing history whereas the opposite argument is that history produces great men. lord acton said great men i usually bad men. and of course this leads me to particularly when thinking about the evolution of technology which shows this pattern of dissent with modification pedigrees and gradual inexorable change that leads me to say that perhaps we don't need a great theory of invention. pretty well every inventor or discoverer is dispensed. edison came up with a lightbulb. twenty-three people came up with the idea independently. joseph swan. and no one is wrong, everyone is right. ready to be discovered. they just needed one or two people to put them together. the same is true of more recent things. the search engine, one of the more useful inventions of my lifetime, google gets the credit but there were about 20 on the market. we would not use the word as a verb if it had not existed but we would still have the calm set. even einstein was the only man to come up the social relativity. if you go back and read it is pretty clear they would have gotten there quickly. indeed, as is documented in his book, we know of six different inventors of the thermometer, three of the hypodermic needle, five of the electric telegraph, three of logarithms, five of the steamboat, six of the railroad. .. the more developed in the 1960s for describing based on very little data, describing the rate of improvement of computing power. and he said it's very regular and questioning -- going at this direction you. hdz think we could jump ahead and say, by 2000 we should be there. so let's get there now. you can't. we're actually still on track, 40 years later, improving computer at the same rate, despite the fact we know we could do it at this rate and you would think we could learn how to work faster. the biggest and most obvious example of an evolutionary system in our lifetimes, has come into existence in most our lifetime, is the internet. it's ridiculous to say that somebody invent the internet. it came from lots of different places and lots of different people, and even when you identify the people who get credit for part of it, whether it's -- someone, actually they only played very, very small parts, and most of the protocols we use without knowing it when we use the internet actually come from anonymous people. from ordinary people. they come from peer to peer networks, often sharing for no financial gain, as steven berlin-johnson puts it, the internet is not a bottom-up. it has no bottom or top, just a network. it's something that has simply grown. this is a hem to ordinary people as the source of most innovation if you like. where is it going next? i don't know. nobody knows. but i have a sort of suspicion that block change is the technology to keep your eye on next. this is the technology behind bitcoin and it is a essentially a method of self-verification, an open-source ledger that enables you to prove you are who youor and you have the val our you think you've got in something. imgetting a hand wave but i don't fully understand it. i'm not sure anybody does. the beautiful thing about this, the thing i love about lock chain, is that we still don't know the name of the man who launched it on the world. he is called nakamoto, a german web address, uses british english, he uses east coast american -- probably in california. we're pretty sure we know who he is by now but he is still denying it. i think that's rather beautiful. the reason he is denying it because if you invent a potential rival currency, they don't like and it they come after you. he thinks it's worth retaining his anonymity, and good luck to him i say. the point is, he just started the ball rolling. there's lots of people working on block chain now. and taking it in directions nobody expected, disenter mediating things like law so we won't need lawyers in the future. what a shame. and so on. i think i'll stop there i've given you a taste of some of the things talk about in the book. it's called "the evolution of everything" so there's a chapter on literally everything. i'd love to take some questions, and try to answer them. but don't promise i'll be able. to. [applause] >> there's official selection with animals and -- would there be an equivalent with all the other forms of evolution as directed evolution? >> of course in one sense, every thing in evolutionary change is going to be artificial because we're doing the selecting, which i why i think this process is benign. we can select the good and reject the bad. there are certainly cases where you can imagine a policy, a public policy being to encourage experimentation and then choose the best result. so, for example, the longitude prize. the famous 18th century admiralty prize which they kind of screwed up because they refueled to give the prize to the man who deserved it. saying go out there do experiments, find out how to measure longitude and come back and we'll give a huge prize to whoever has the best. that a deliberate stimulation of an evolutionary competition itch you like, with a deliberate artificial selection at the end of it, a bit like breeding a champion pigeon or whatever artificial selection is. >> answered the question. i have another one ready. another recently published book that has a good deal of similarity to you. maybe it's a little narrower. one by cesar hidalgo. are you familiar with that. >> i don't think i've read that. >> seems a little narrower. just makes the case that not only do biological systems evolve but economies especially evolve, and even social systems and so forth. >> right. >> i had the book sitting right there. the second half of the title is "the evolution of everything --" not of everything -- sorry -- the evolution -- anyway, my question is whether you had any -- took any differences -- >> evolution of -- one thing i can say just as i said 23 people came up with the idea of the light bulb, roughly 23 people seems to be coming up with this idea, too. i know -- brian arthur's book spoke to nature of technology, tim arthur's book, and berlin-johnson how things -- can't remember the rest of the title. there are about five books kind of making this point at the same time. and it does seem to be in the air, seems to be ripe as an idea. this miss take on it. it's quite idio sincrat trick and not a book of the theory. it's anecdotes about what the world looks lime from my point of view. >> based on minimum limited reading i thing yours is closer to the general theory of evolution of everything and that one may be more narrow. >> i'm definitely going to buy that. >> thank you. >> i'd like you to reflect on the potential application the theory of anything, and that is basic income. getting a lot of attention in the rest of the world, in england they call citizens' income, and it's saying that, let's provide everyone as a right with a basic income to ensure we have food and shelter to live our lives and explore and experiment, and it seems to be a marvelous example of taking what you're presenting and generalizing until the sphere of social evolution and economic policy and politics and democracy, and just wondering if you have any thoughts. >> i aren't haley thought about that. i have to think about it. haven't got anything very intelligent to say. it's not anywhere close to being applied in britain as far as i know. >> but closely to being applied in finland and brazil and a few other places. >> right. >> a number of cities throughout europe. >> the issue is -- i mean, it's not dissimilar to the idea you talk about income to low-paid people, something we're in a boggle about in -- you end up subsidizing supermarkets to pay people less. so, there are perverse consequences of some of these things. so i have to think about it. it feels to me like it's one size fits all policy, which i don't think an evolutionary policy would be. evolution would say let a thousand flowers bloom see what happens. i think think about it. >> my sense is the way to ensure that everybody can pan temperatures pate in letting the flowers bloom. >> right. >> thank you. >> how would you reconcile the notion of the inevitability of technological development with the fact that there was no real transport in the americas precolombia. >> really good point. well done. well, i would cling to my point by saying that the invention of the wheel and the invention of the road have to go together, and there's not much point in inventing a wheel unless you are also inventing forms of wheelbarrows. true, yep. i -- on the whole, i find it hard to think of examples of technologies that we should have invented a long time ago but didn't. the one i think is the wheeled suitcase. why didn't we invent that 50 years ago, and i thought, hang on. lightweight aluminum wheels wouldn't have been around 50 years ago. would have had big, heavy cast iron things, and so they would have added a lot of weight to the suit kaatz, and airways were smaller and train stations were full of porters who had bare row which means you didn't a have to put the wheels on the suitcase. the history of the guy who invented the wheeled suitcase is he was turned down by firm after firm before he found one that did, but arguably, by the time he did find one that did, his technology improved to the point writ was really worth doing. or something like that. so, i don't think -- there's not that many examples of things that get left on the shelf. but you're right no wheels in the americasle. quite a good one. thank you. >> i think this question is kind of piggy backing on this one. the inevitablity idea. made me think if we could dial back the emluigs of homosapien and science and technology and run that all over seven, maybe too it ten times or maybe on another planet with similar conditions, would we have exactly the same technologies or there be some variations on them? >> okay. >> just interesting -- >> that's a really nice way to think about it. the answer has to be no, we wouldn't have exactly the same. and steve used to make this point about biological evolution, that there's an element of luck in what you end up with. if you hit the earth with a meetth meteor write --ite at a certain time you -- there's an inevitable of the progress to more and more sophisticated brains. also less -- i'm not saying that all brains get bigger, but the biggest brain gets bigger as time goes by and it's got quite big until the extinction of the dinosaurs and then has to start again from quite a small base and work up again until it gets to us. so there's a sort of inevitability that at some point biological evolution would have produced a -- at some point surely it would have approvalsed a creature that could go technological as we have done. whether it was inevitable it would take four billion years to get to that point, whether it could have been done in one bill if you rerun the tape, does that depend on how many times you hit the earth with an asteroid and have to restart the tape. transferring that human history there are lots of failed industrial revolutions, if you like. china gets very close to something that looks like an industrial revolution at 1100, 1200ad. and then the manipulating emperors come in and decide they're going to be bossy and everybody has to too whatever they say. and you're forbidding front building a boat and trade notice allowed and the whole thing shuts down for several hundred year, and the torch finally transfer to europe. so i think the world would look very different if you ran it again, definitely. but you'd sort of get to some of the same places eventually. >> a broad question, much broader than i've heard. your book is the evolution of everything. almost all of your examples and all of the questions and all of the discussions so far has been on the evolution of technology, of science. that maybe five percent of everything. you also have society, which evolves, i assume, with, let's say, a greater role for women but about tom oinvolves one tenth of the world, not a in places like india and china and so on. there's also evolution in the field of economics. i don't know exactly where we're evolving to. we steam be evolving back to adam smith, because once upon a time there was either capitalism or socialism, communism, now capitalism seems to rule the roost but it's not sure which direction evolution is going. what concerns me even more is politics. democracy is the direction of the evolution but unfortunately democracy only exists in maybe 20% of the countries on the earth. democracy doesn't begin to exist in africa -- >> no longer true. >> it is still threw true there are election but the elects are manipulated, and sufficiently flawed that one would not call them democracies. but what concerns me actually most is evolution in the field of religion. people have been moving away from gods who could decide everything, term our future and so on and so forth, and now all of a sudden we're -- some of us are evolving back to gods who are absolute and who can be traced to fourth century prophets and jesus christ in the purest form, and i don't really see any evolution there. if anything i see dish don't know what the opposite of evolution is, but what is happening in the muslim world, which is a quarter of mankind, is certainly not evolution in the sense that you are speaking of. >> well, you make soming and points. not all my examples even in my talk were taken from technology or science, and just to -- i mean, the list of chapters in my book, i do have a chapter on the evolution of government, one of the evolution of education. i have one on the evolution of morality, and i discuss, for example, that the changing attitudes to homosexuality over the last 50 years, and i make the case that it wasn't lawses that changed the way we thought. it was the way we thought that changed the laws. if you see what mean. that sort of the argument i'm making in most of thieves cases -- most of these cases. i i have a chapter on the if evolution of religion. >> [inaudible] --'ll which is the large nest the world, start moving backwards instead of forwards. >> it's not clear to me that islam is moving backwards. it concept of god is still a very disembodied -- a very modern concept of god in the sense of a disembodied spirit, in fact you're not allowed to depict him and not allowed to depict mohammad and that sort of thing. what i think clear live is happening is a fundamentalism is sweeping through the islamic world, with some not nice consequences for quite a lot of people, just assed did in medieval europe and christianity. i expect that will run its course, whether it will do so quickly or slowly, i'm not here to predict. but, yes, you're right, not everything is going in the right direction, i absolutely agree with that. >> do you address the evolution of warfare? i'm particularly -- >> i don't think i do. >> -- concerned about that with the nuclear weapons. some of these thing yours can make mistakes, but i think that's one where mistake could be catastrophic. of course, that may be the answer. then we start all over again. >> yes, you're right. areas where trial and error isn't a good idea. [laughter] >> nuclear power is another one in that sense. we don't want to have to learn from errors particularly. and i don't particularly -- talk about the evolution of warfare in the book but steven pinker nose this book, the better angels of our nature, and steve had just arrived from colombia, where he pointed out to me that the peace talks are ongoing to bring to an end the only remaining war western hemisphere, and win those peace talks conclude there will be no more ware fair in the western hemisphere. there are 11 wars going on in the worked all in the eastern hemisphere. years ago when we were down to four at one point but it's a lot less. than 20 years ago when we had 20 or something. other a bumpy decline of the 11, two involved mr. putin. and eight involved the prophet mohammad. and one involved neither. in south sudan. just two groups who hate each other. >> i just got a look at your book this afternoon, and was struck by the idea that you may have been thinking about complexity theory, about deterministic done complex deterministic systems. you used some of the language, emergence and so on. do you have something about how that affected your thinking? >> yes. i'm not a great student of complexity theirry. i've read some of it and follow bits and pieces of it in the santa fe work and so on but i'm quite deliberately not going mathematical in the book, not the theory of it too much. i'm trying to sort of tell it through example and anecdote, because i'm very bad at math, put so i don't go very deeply into any of the sort of theoretical basis, and i have a bit on chaos theory, which is quite an interesting sort of aspect of the question of determinism and outcomes you get from simplele beginnings to complex results. >> will the idea about your book i got was you are fleshing out the idea of complexity chaos and how i manifests in all areas. >> yes, yes. what i'm really fleshing out is the idea of a darwinian process in human society, rather than those particular -- my influence comes much more from door win union theory than from complexity theory, but, yes, they do have a lot -- that's what santa fe is all about. >> going to interrupt and the last question. congratulations. >> something more topical, a little lighter. you were introduced with your first name, matt. very democratic, very republican, with a small r. now, tell us your into itle and -- tell us your title and how you went to the house of lords. was it inheritance or were you appointed? will your elder son accede to your title and what brought you to these sums, your education and your interests. >> how long have you got? i got into the house of lords through a secret passage in the british constitution that is -- shouldn't be there but is. and it is an odd arrangement. i mean, even in five minute is can't begin to explain it. but the answer is i'm an elected hereditary. most members over the house of lords these days are appointed. nearly all the hereditaries were kicked out in 1999. okay? but 90 were kept on for temporary period inflame they did a second phase of reform. are you with me so far? that temporary period got longer and longer and hasn't finished yet. so, when they started dying, these 90, they discovered that the legislation allowed them to replace themselves. from the hereditaries kicked out in 1999, or their sons. are you still with me? my dad died in 2012. that meant i became a hereditary vicount, one below an earl. there's hubs and means nothing. but i was suddenly eligible to tanned for a vacancy among the house of lords and become a full member of the house of lords in theory for life or until they abolish me again, and just about six months later someone died and a vacancy came up and i thought, i'll throw my hat in the ring. never get elected. there are lawyers and accountants and people standing for this position. so i went along and each of us had to stand up and give a three-minute speech, a bit like the republican debates. so 27 candidates for one position. 48 electors, so very small electorate you're appealing to, and i listened the other guys. i'm quite down the alpha expect and i had a long wait and i thought, hang on, i've got a chance here. anyway, at the later that day i had to call my wife and say, you now how i said i was just going throw motions. well, i'm afraid i've got the job. so now i'm -- i just sent a message from the whip saying, where are you? we need you to vote. that was yesterday actually. so, it is quite hard work. i sit on the -- we do serious inquiries. i take part in tee -- debates. we're not supposed to turn down significant legislation. the commons has 99% of the power, what we're supposed to do is scrutinize and improve the legislation by amending it in various ways. but the moment we're overreaching ourselves and we had a crisis a week ago when we turned down a significant piece of budget legislation which were absolutely not allowed to do and haven't for a 100 years and this is a crisis, and so we have made us popular in the country by doing that. but more reform is coming and there are 800 members of the house of lords. the second biggest legislative assembly outside of the people's republic of china. i didn't -- you didn't come here for a constitutional message but you got one anyway. thank you. [applause] >> thank you for coming out. if you could remember the chairs. if you are interesting in getting a book signed, line happy to right of the podium here. if you want to purchase a copy of the book, it's behind the register at the front of the store. thank you all so much. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] the next critic circle awards are given each march to honor the best becomes published the previous year according to the organization which is composed of close to 600 critics, authors, literary bloggers and publishing employees. here's a look at some of this year's finalist. for nonfiction, feature nominees including arey bedrooman's look at voting rights, report on a murder in los angeles, and examination of drug use in america. in the auto biography category, margo jefferson's recount of her upbringing in the black elite and vivian's experience as a woman living in new york city, have made this year's list. terry alford's look at the life of john wilkes booth and t.j. styles retilling of the life of general george armstrong custer are being canada fuller the circle award for biography, and national book award winner's thoughts on the state of black america, finalist in the criticism category. this year's national book critic circle worried winners will be announced on march 178th. booktv has covered many have the nominated authors last year. you can find the programs at booktv.org. >> in the 1980s, feminism picks up breast-feeding so breastfeeding backs a symbol of female empowerment and a symbol of the life sustaining force of the female body. in the 1990s, breastfeeding becomes symbolic and important for people, families, who believe in the philosophy of attachment parenting. so attachment parents are parents who -- there are three pillars of attachment parenting their first is baby wearing, which means carrying your baby in a slipping rather -- a sling rather than using a stroller to get your baby around town. the second is co-sleeping, sleep neglect same bed with your child, and the third is breast-feeding. so attachment parenting once again is a larger philosophy. breastfeeding is a hallmark of that festival -- philosophy lawsuit a larger statement about what your family is like and what your family commitments are like and what you're like as a parent and who you are in general. maybe more surprisingly or more surprisingly to me, breastfeeding has been embraced by the christian right. so for many on the christian right, breast-feeding turns out to be proof of intelligent design and also offers evidence of the rightness of heterosexual marriage, with different roles for men and women in the marriage. and it's also been picked up as an issue for environmentalists and for people who believe in locally produced, sustainable food, because after all, what could be more locally produced than breast milk. so, for all of these groups of

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