The Daily Show: Ears Edition - TDS Time Machine | Conversations with Authors - Pt. 2

Episode Date: February 1, 2026

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You're listening to Comedy Central. That's selling author, my guest, tonight. His new book is called David and Goliath. Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants. Please welcome to the program. Malcolm Gladwell. The book is called David and Goliath. Basically, the premise being, sometimes being David,

is a very positive thing, is that you can use those to your advantage. Is that the desirable adversity, I guess, is what? Desirable difficulties, is the phrase that I use in the book. Yeah, this is an examination of underdogs and their strategies. And also, generally, of the idea, the book really asks the question about whether we have an accurate understanding of what an advantage is. Right. Because lots of things that seem like disadvantages can be actually highly advantageous.

And that's sort of the theme that runs to a lot of the chapters. In the book, things like dyslexia or having a crappy childhood. Yes. I have a, you know, dyslexia is a great example of this, that many people with dyslexia suffer. and it's a real obstacle to get ahead in life. But at the same time, if you look at groups of very successful entrepreneurs or professionals, you will find a much greater than expected number

of dyslexics in their ranks. So the number of incredibly successful entrepreneurs over the last 25 or 30 years who are dyslexics, Richard Branson, Charles Schwab, the guy who runs Cisco, John Chambers. I mean, I could go on and on. And what happens... Because if it was just four, that wouldn't be very good.

No, they're significantly more. Oh, all right, good. And when you talk to them, it's really fascinating. What they'll tell you is that they didn't succeed in spite of their dyslexia, but because of it. That being forced to cope with a highly problematic childhood where they couldn't do the thing they're required to do, which is Reed, forced them to learn all kinds of strategies that ended up being more important. But there must be some kind of like laugh or curve with this, like with supply-side economics, where it gets to a certain point where a certain, if I may use a I learned in a different book,

tipping point, of a tipping point of disadvantages that bury you, like a bad childhood and dyslexia and no mouth. You know, or like, or you say like, then you put Helen Keller up there, like, but, you know. I use that phrase desirable difficulty to, which is a lovely phrase that these two psychologists at UCLA have come up with, to distinguish between

the kinds of difficulties that can prove advantageous and undesirable difficulties, which are not the kind of thing that anyone should be expected to recover from or compensate. Yet, I'm sure some people do. The human spirit incredibly adaptable and sometimes does it. But isn't in, don't we all have, to some extent, disadvantages that shape our character as we go through. And it is sort of the tenacity with which you overcome them, no matter what that would be. I mean, I got started on this book because in my last book, when I, Outliers, when I was spending a lot of time talking to very successful people, and I was always struck by how often when they accounted for what they had achieved,

they began with the difficulties, not with the obvious advantages. And so much of their sense of themselves was something that grew out of some, in some case, it was some terrible blow that had happened to them, that they had managed somehow to navigate. Right. So there's a chapter here on parental loss. Right. And on this striking fact that very large numbers of American presidents and British prime

ministers have lost a parent in childhood, way higher than would be expected from the normal population. Really? And that's, you know, that's something that, that's just about the worst thing that can happen to a human being. No kidding. So you're saying, if my son wants to be president. Oh, boy. I mean, here's the thing. I shut the lights and I close my eyes around this kid.

But look, you know, Bill Clinton, Obama, these are two people who have, but the list is actually extraordinarily long. And what you understand is that these are, one of the things that distinguishes these people is that they have some, there's something about them that took that devastating experience and found a way to come out stronger. Are we, is it a chicken in the egg? Is there some way of determining if there is an inherent personality type that is able to translate these types of devastating blows into a positive outcome or whether or not

the positive outcome influence, I mean the blow influences the outcome? I don't know. I mean, it's... What do you mean you don't know? You wrote the book? Oh, there's so much I don't know. I mean, these books always raise more questions than they resolve. And that's what they're supposed to do, right?

They're supposed to kind of start... I mean, it would be really fascinating. I didn't do it now. I think I should have. To sit down next to Bill Clinton and ask him that question, right? I mean, here's a guy who had the furthest thing from a silver spoon in his mouth when he was... Right. No question. I just don't know if he would share his story with you.

I mean, he's very reticent about that. Yeah, he is. He's not someone who's not going to open up easily. Very shy. You might get a couple of minutes. Right, yeah. He would be like... Exactly. You'd be like, I don't care. The book's too big! Well, it's interesting stuff. It does raise tons of questions. is a nice way to look at, you know, kind of that old adage,

the lemons and the lemonade and all that sort of thing. David and Goliath, be David. Why not? Malcolm Gladwell, everybody, on the bookshelves now. Her new book is called Gulp. Adventures on the Elementary Canal. Please welcome back to the program. Mary Roach. Like your books.

Very funny. Thank you, John Stewart. This one's called Gulp. It answers all the questions of what happens. happens when we eat food and then obviously the post food. The whole shoot. The whole shoot. You answer many interesting questions.

Why doesn't the stomach digest itself? Which brings up an interesting point that I would like to ask you. Why doesn't the stomach digest itself? It's a very good question. Thank you. Because you can eat haggis, which is stomach. Yes. And your own stomach will go, oh, no problem.

I can take that, pick the part. Pass it on, but yet your own stomach. And the answer, are you ready? Yes. OK. It does. Trick. It does.

It does. It does. But it's also, your stomach is very good at rebuilding your stomach lining. So it does digest it, but then it build it back up. And every, I love this. Every three days, you have a new stomach lining. Really? Yeah, and I do, and I do, too.

No, no, no, no. I don't know about you. I have a new stomach lining. So it's a constant pitched battle. It's just exhausted people rebuilding stomach. Your poor stomach. It never stops working on your behalf. Unbelievable.

Talk to me about the beginning of the process, which would be the mastication, the saliva. Oral processing. Thank you. Yes. That's true looking for it. Talk to me. Yes.

Oral processing. Okay. This is something I went to this university in the Netherlands where there's not a whole lot of people who go into the field of oral processing. Sure. You have to go to an institute. You have to go to an institute.

You'll have to go to an institute in the Netherlands. Yeah, is that what they call it in the Netherlands? So what it's all about in there is bolus formation. Bolus. Formation. You are, first of all, you're taking your food apart. You're grinding it up, taking it apart, and then you need to reassemble it in the swallible state,

which is a cylindrical bolus, which is one of my favorite words. Bolus. Bolus. I think oral processing bolus is now one of my favorite words. But how do you, so you're breaking apart your food to allow, I guess, the saliva to work on it, but then how do you reformulate it into a cylinder? Because I've never thought about this before,

but now that I am, there's no way I'm ever going to be able to make a cylinder again to swallow. I'm just going to be making like trapezoids. Like, I don't know. How does the body do that? There's a certain amount of intra-oral bolus rolling that goes on. I'm glad this is on.

Late at night. The tongue. Yeah. The wonderful tongue. And it does it without us thinking about it. If you try to think about it, if you try to pay attention, it's very, very, I tried because this is what I was doing for two years.

I was trying to pay attention to my bolus formation. It's very hard because you get a little creeped out. If you eat cylindrical food, does your mouth go like, oh, good day for us, easy day? Like Cheetos are cylindrical. Why do you think they do hot dogs? Hot dog eating conscious. The competitive eaters, it's always the bowl is shaped. So just straight down.

That's why hot dogs are shaped that way. So, so, so, I mean, the beautiful part about it is it is a bolus going down and and if things are going right, a bolus on the way out. You are so good. Thank you. I read. Yes. Is that, are there, but in the stomach it is non-bolus.

In the stomach, it is a, we know, right? It's more like a slurry. A slurry. A slurry. A slurry. Yes. Kime. Kime is the.

The chyme is the slurry. It's the... That's like saying two made-up words. Like, the bollwich is the nabasaw. The chyme is the slurray. Yeah, it's broken down in kind of a slurry. It can be passed on easily through the sphincter there at the bottom of the stomach. Sure.

Into the small intestine. And the sphincter is doing the bolus work, turning it back into something more cylindrical. Well, because the intestines are cylindrical, it's a tube. Yeah, yeah. So it's a natural. The bolus, the cylinder is a natural. shape for the interior of the... Well, listen, hold on one second.

Just want to tell my kids, good night, guys. Will you stick around? There's more than that one. Golf is on the bookshelows. Now, it's wonderful, as every Mary Roach book is. You should get it. Mary Roach, everybody. His new book is called Flash Boys,

A Wall Street Revolt. Please welcome back to the program. Michael Lewis. First off, let me just say this. You write pretty. This book is so good. First of all, we'll back to it. This is about this thing called HFT, high frequency trading.

What is that? Very fast, computerized trading on the stock market. So to get an advantage. To get an advantage, right. So the stock exchanges in this country, there are 13 public stock exchanges, sell the right to advance information, to high-frequency traders.

And they do this by selling them the right to locate their computers. They're trading, the high-frequency trading computers right next to the stock exchange computers. So that... So it's a question of milliseconds. Yes. I mean, the difference between the information that a high-frequency trader

sees and what most investors see is a couple of milliseconds, yes. And what it basically does, it's a computer. That's enough for a computer. It's a computer. So a couple of milliseconds is a lot of time for a computer. So there's enough time for the computer to react to what you do.

So the computer finds out you place an order for a stock. The computer jumps in and says, oh, you're buying that stock. Let me jump in, buy that stock, and sell it right back to you. More, you know, that'll do. That is what they do. That will do. They insert themselves as a middleman in a transaction. They have no business being in.

In many ways, yes, that's exactly right. It's, and they, it's, they're trading as if they know the prices before you do. So if you come in to buy, they may know that they can buy it cheaper because the price is moved, but you don't know that, so they buy it cheaper and they sell it to you. So yes, it's totally unnecessary Wall Street intermediation. Sort of like sitting, putting themselves in the middle of the market where they're not needed. Now, there is something called front running that is illegal, that if you do it with just information, If you find out information about something

and it allows you an advantage to buy it before someone else does, that's called front running and that's illegal, yes? Because it's a computer, it's okay. Oh. So, that's a rule. So this is allowed. But front running as a person is illegal, but as a computer, eh. No, I think this is more generally a problem,

is people will do things with computers that they will never do as people. Why are you looking at me? Why are you looking at me when I'm saying? No, but that, So this book, but here's what's great. So this book isn't just about this world of high frequency trading. What I didn't expect from this book is a kind of group of heroes to emerge. And that's really what this is about.

This group of individuals that got together to do something about it. It's such a strange story because it really is, it's about a group of people who are actually on Wall Street who figure out kind of around 2008 that the stock market is all of a sudden, something funny is happening. And it's not just the financial crisis. All of a sudden, they look at their screens and the stock market says it's, you know, you can buy 50,000 shares of Microsoft in $20 a share. They go to buy it, and it goes away. It goes away, and the stock price goes up.

And it's as if the market knows what they're going to do before they do it. So it's one character. It's a Canadian, a guy named Brad Katsuyama, who runs the Stock Market Department, the Royal Bank of Canada. Because he's Canadian, he has a sense of decency. And he's not like some radical. I mean, he's a Wall Street guy. He's not even really that much of a Wall Street guy.

He's kind of a Canadian guy. He's, you know, he's, I mean, it's odd that he's in this situation because he's conformist even by Canadian standards. I mean, he's just like, all he wants to do is be, like, doing good work at his Wall Street firm. Right. But all of a sudden, the market looks rigged. and he starts to ask, how is it rigged? And the story is the story of him

starting just turning over rocks and finding something nefarious under every rock until he's assembled a picture of the stock market, which no one really is assembled. And then instead of taking advantage of it to make money for the Royal Bank of Canada or himself, he just goes and tells investors about it, which is also kind of another Canadian thing to do, right?

And so, I mean, there's a Canadian dimension to this story that record runs through, right? I don't want to say the name Dudley Do-Rite, but... Yeah. Hard not to see the comparisons. Yeah. So, the, the, the, uh, the disadvantage the story has is the hero's Canadian because everybody got to go is Canadian.

Yeah. Yeah. Uh, but the, the, the, he, he assembles like a rag tag team. Like the ocean's 11. That's exactly right. Yeah. Yes. I mean, he's getting people.

Let me pitch the movie for you. Yeah, well, that's, it's been done. They get together. Um, and they start their own stock exchange that runs things right. Well, they go to investors. Like, everybody, people who. who are running the savings of this country and say, look, this is basically what's happened.

And the investors, you would think the investors would know what's going on the stock market. And they kind of do, they all kind of know something's wrong. They go to the hedge fund manager, Bill Ackman, who he was always buying companies and selling companies. He thought, he thought that he had a leak, like insider trading leak. He said the market was so able to anticipate what he did in the market, he thought someone inside his shop was like leaking information about what he was doing.

Which would be illegal. Which would be illegal. If a computer does it, it's okay. Especially if it's America. Especially if it's a Mac. But it's a, but the, so, so, he goes on this, he educates people. Right. And they say to him, you know, create a fair place for us to trade.

I mean, I think that, so, so in a way he was answering a call. Right. And they do it, and people go after them in incredibly vicious ways, try and ruin them, try and break them. and they create this IEX and it and it's working. It's still going on though. I mean, yes. So the problem is, yeah. Do we have time here?

Well, no, you know, here's what we'll do. When I come back, I want to talk about, so these guys did that. I want to talk about the financial news networks and their responsibility in this and why they abdicate it and why they're attacking you like crazy for just writing this story.

So when we come back, we'll talk about that. We'll be right back with more from Michael Lewis. We're talking about this group of, of ex-bankers and hedgemen guys and Wall Street guys that formed their own stock exchange because these high-frequency traders were rigging the market. What is the bank's role in this high-frequency trading, you know, scam for... So you're back away from it, the whole thing. I mean, it looks like there's an ecosystem that's built itself around high-frequency traders

making, you know, skimming profits, scalping people in the market. They pay the exchanges for special access, for special information that ordinary investors don't have. They pay the brokers, the people who handle stock market orders for your order. So when you place an order, you pay a commission to trade the stock, but the information about what you want to do gets sold to some high-frequency trader, and the right to trade against you gets sold. It's called payment for order flow. I mean, that in itself.

I mean, why would someone pay to execute your stock market order? You would think someone would ask that question. And they do because this trader gets a volume. They make money on volume. He gets a high-frequency trader gets a chance to trade against you at the old price. And you don't know he's there. And you don't know he's there. And you have not invited him in.

You have not invited him in. But so there's serious. There are different kinds of predatory activities that the high-frequency traders are engaged in. But basically none of them are really good. They're not good for us. I mean, they're not good for their attacks on investors. Well, that's so here, now we get to the second part of it, which is, so you write this and immediately, CNBC, FONX Business News, they all jump up to defend this as, no, this helps us.

This is adding liquidity. There's nothing wrong with it. It's actually great, even though it, to my mind, completely deteriorates any faith you would have in the fairness of that system. And is not American and not even capitalism. It's cheating. They're attacking him, too, and it's amazing to me because all he really went to do was figure out how the stock market work. And it was a breathtakingly complicated question. And it became complicated so you wouldn't understand.

Yes. And so all he's trying to do is, like, rectify that problem. He deconstructed it. And the mere fact of doing it was a radical act. And the reason people are so upset is if you back, if you're going to be back away from it. So high-frequency traders are essentially making money for the whole Wall Street system. They're paying exchanges.

They're paying banks. So anybody whose, you know, livelihood is dependent on Wall Street profits, which partly includes the SEC, since people quit the SEC to go work for Wall Street, is sort of invested in this. And I think a lot of this, it sounds like a conspiracy. When you look at how it lays out in it, it looks like a conspiracy exists to keep invest buyers of stock

away from sellers of stock so these people can insert themselves artificially in between. But it was largely accidental, but then the money started getting made, and the conspiracy is preventing the change. And they function on volume and volatility. What I don't understand is, IEX comes in and they establish a parameter for trading speed. They give you a set. You cannot jump this amount of time. They become faster than all the people on the exchange. So they slow down the high

frequency traders. Correct. Right. Why doesn't, why isn't there a standard? You can't buy less than a share, right? They've set a standard for that. You can't buy like a hundredth of a share. Right. So if there's a standard for share buying, why isn't there a standard for frequency of trading that is just the standard? So everybody's on the same field. You know, that's, that That would be in a sane world, right? Right. That's what you would do. You would just say, you would say that nobody's going to get the information about prices faster,

or be able to trade faster than everybody else. You'd set a high speed. You wouldn't make it like, you have a half hour. So that's what they've done. Like you get, you make it fast. Yeah, you make it really fast. So they make it really fast. It's all imperceptible.

The speeds we're talking about are imperceptible to human beings. It all seems instantaneous. So that's what you would do. In a sane world, that's how it would be structured. We don't live in that world. We live in a different world. And what's cool about this, and what makes it so neat is they have created the place where it's fair. It's the one place, it's one stock exchange.

It's not run by intermediaries. It's not run by Wall Street people. It's run by, it's four investors. And they figured it out. Because there is no need for these middlemen. They are unnecessary to the system. They don't provide liquidity. They're unnecessary.

The liquidity is provided by the investors. Right. This is absolutely true. So now we have a choice. For the first time in this modern stock market, there's a choice. why isn't my order going to this exchange where I won't get scalped? And that's going to force investors. Are you allowed to get that information now?

Is that information available to the investor? Are they allowed to say, tell me who my order went to? They're being told no, but yes. And there is, the IX actually set my website called I'minvestor.org where you can learn your rights as an investor. You can demand that your order be handled in a certain way. I'm going to go on that site. Is there also porn? Because I like to have a little something extra when I go on a site.

I don't know if there's like it. I could win an Xbox if I click on something. We'll do that. We're going to come back. You're staying with me and we're going to go to the web because I do want to ask you, these financial news networks that are complicit in this is driving me insane. Flash Boys, it's on the bookshelves now. It's about an incredibly intricate and interesting topics,

but it's so well written. It's beautiful narrative. Michael Lewis, you've got to get this. Tremendous. Thank you, sir. His new book is called Knife. Meditations after an attempted murder. Please welcome to the program, Solomon Rushdie.

So, first question, obviously, how are you? This was obviously a traumatic experience. How are you feeling? I'm okay, you know, I mean, surprisingly. Yes. But sometimes there are good surprises. This was one. I'm pretty much recovered.

I have to say, and I know this, it sounds peculiar to say this, because of the traumatic experience that you endured. I love this book. It's a beautiful work of interest, I feel like I know now how your mind works. You know, I've read other of your books, but you really do a wonderful job of taking us through how you think. Yeah, it's weird how I think.

I mean, I have this kind of free associating mind, which goes from the moon to a movie, to a book, to a piece of mythology, to a joke. I had to read this book with another book next to me to get just some of the references. It's, but it's, it allows you, you know, sometimes you'll read an author's memoir and there's a certain self-consciousness to it. But maybe because this is about a traumatic incident, I feel like your defenses were down and it was very revelatory. Yeah, I mean, there's a subject. Right.

I mean, it's, what I felt is that it starts off. There's a love story which turns into a murder story, which turns back into a love story. Yes. The love story, by the way, is with his wonderful wife, Eliza, who is really the hero maybe of the book. Yeah. No, I mean, she did a huge amount, and I wouldn't be here in good shape without her. And plus, she's an amazing writer. Right.

There's that too. I say with a certain amount of gritted teeth. Yes. Is there competition in writerly families? Not really. Actually, one of the nice things about this is there isn't. We're enormously supportive of each other's work. I thought a really interesting part of the book is, spoiler alert at the end, when you go back to Chautauqua.

Chautauqua is the famed community in upstate New York where they bring in speakers and where this unfortunate event happened. Yeah. And you go back to revisit the scene of it, but also the jail where they are holding this person that attacked you. Yeah, it was a last-minute decision. We were actually on the plane flying up to, because I had this desire to go and revisit the scene of the crime and show myself that I was standing up where I fell down. Right. You know, sort of important for me. But then on the flight up there, I thought, Chautau was a really small town.

And if he's in the county jail, how far is that from the institution? And it turned out it was like five minutes drive. So I thought, well, let's go to the jail. I just, it blows my, but you didn't have a desire necessarily to see this individual. No, I just wanted to see the jail. But I just... You get there. It's a really boring jail.

It's a little cell block and a wall with some barbed wire. But I thought, you know, he's in there. I'm out here. That feels good. You win. And what happened is a weird thing happened. My feet started dancing. You were dancing. No, my feet were dancing. What does that look like? It's just

shimmying, but the body stayed. And my wife said, stop doing that. I can imagine. This gentleman just glancing out the window for no apparent reason and going, is that the guy? Yeah, and he's dancing at the car park. You know, you talk a lot about your thoughts about this gentleman and whether you wanted to confront him. There's actually a really wonderful section of it, almost like a Socratic litigation that you do in four parts.

Yeah, I make him up. You make him up. Yeah. But you don't make him defenseless. No. The litigation that you and the dialogue that you have with him is challenging. Yeah. Well, I thought, you know, you've got to give the enemy an even break.

you know, if you're going to have a serious conversation, then it's, it can't just be me yelling at him, telling him what a bad person he is, which I think. Yes. But he wasn't, it makes you wonder about, you know, you spent since 1989, this fatwa is put upon you, and it's these fundamentalists, and these are religious extremists who have decided they're going to punish you for whatever their reasoning was. You write, though, that this gentleman,

is sort of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of that. He's 24. He wasn't even born when this thing happened. And he, by his own account, had read nothing I'd written. And yet he was willing to commit murder. I mean, that's stupid. Yes. But it's clear, if you think of it, does it strike you as a change in fundamentalism?

You know, you say he was radicalized by Iman Utube. that he watched YouTube videos. And do you think this attack had more to do with, like, John Lennon's attack or with a religious attack? No, I think in some ways it's a very American attack. Right. He spent four years in a basement playing video games and watching videos. And it kind of messed with his head. And also, you know, I mean, he's born and bred in New Jersey.

Slow down. I think I know where this is going. Well, you know, you're ahead of me. But, you know, we live in an America where people kill each other every five minutes. Right. You know, and I think maybe in his New Jersey brain. Yes. That is how we describe it as well, by the way.

He's got that New Jersey brain. Exactly. Do you think that there is a shift, you know, we think of fundamentalism, as primarily a religious artifact, have the algorithms made fundamentalism something different from that? I think maybe they have. I mean, I'm too old to know, really,

because I don't, algorithms don't know what to do with me. Right. Give them a chance. No, I do. But they don't know what to do. So I'm not algorithmically influenced. Right. But people are.

People are all the time. And yeah, I mean, I think he was, something happened in him, which made it possible for him to decide to murder a total stranger. Right. And that has to be brainwashing of some kind. Right. Whatever you want to call it, but I call it brainwashing. Yeah, as I read the story, I started thinking, you know, we're so used to this idea that of violence with a cause, this idea that these, You know, there is something deep inside them that can almost be noble or understandable.

This is not that. It struck me more as more in common with the school shootings we see here. Or the other things that you were just this thing he saw. And you know what's so strange about it is, first of all, he must have known that he was messing up his own life as well. Right. You know, not just mine. At 24. At 24.

And you know the last thing he did before he got on the bus from Fairview, New Jersey to Chautauqua? The last thing he did, he cancelled his gym membership. Because he knew the prison had weights? He wasn't coming back. He wasn't coming back. And why should he keep his standing order going?

Wow. So he's going through it and going like, I don't need serious radio anymore. So this, was he suicidal? Or was he? I don't know. I mean, maybe we'll find out if whenever if this trial happens, we might find out more about him.

Do you dread something like that? Is that something that still visits you? No. I mean, I think, you know, if I, if they need me to testify, I'll go testify. And I'll be in the courtroom with him, but my view is he should be scared about being in the courtroom with me. Absolutely. Absolutely.

You know, and this is not not to get, but you and I are both getting older. and you write a lot in the book about... Speak for yourself, Jim. Fred, Saddle down. I was just on jury duty, by the way. I don't know if you saw that picture of my doffelganger. But there is mortality. You write about Martin Amos and Paul Losser

and people that you've lost, even during the writing of this book, lost to esophageal cancer. You had a cancer scare in the middle of rehabilitation. Yeah, in the middle of all this repair work, suddenly, apparently I might have prostate cancer. I thought that's not fair. No. Well, you're right. He writes, he goes to the doctor.

Well, you can tell. Yeah, I mean, I went to the doctor and they, examining your prostate is not fun. Again, speak for yourself. It's, it depends on if you have a Jersey brain. Anyway, the first examination, they thought they found a bump on the prostate. And then I had to have an MRI scan. And the MRI scan, you know, grades from one to five, and five is really bad. And I came out at four.

And it said, cancer probable. And then it turned out that it was not probable, that it had this bump had been caused by some other infection. And a medicine that they had actually given you. Yeah, exactly. And so then a second doctor, the first doctor's boss, also examined my prostate more thoroughly. Were they lined up down the hallway?

What are we doing here? No, this was very thorough. And also he was an Indian doctor and he was a fan of mine. So he was an extra-throat. Nothing more uncomfortable than that. Extra thorough. Yes. And he said, no, I think this might be caused by this other infection and so on.

So they had to go back and have another MRI scan and it said one to five, it's one, no cancer. So I had cancer for two months and then I didn't. It's so incredible because you face this, as you write in the book, this 27 seconds. Yeah. It was just 27 seconds. And yet, do you think about, and pardon the question, but do you think, does it matter how you die? As you watched your friends and you thought about your fate and your brush with mortality and then to have this cancer scare, did it make you think it mattered how you die?

I prefer not to. I've got some bad news. It's coming for all of us. Bad news for all of us. Yes. But I mean, I don't know, my wife, Eliza and I have decided we're planning our 100th birthday party by 100th birthday. I think it has to be a dance party. Yes.

Just your feet, though, not the whole body. So we try to decide who should DJ. And he... I'll pick somebody. But it strikes me because you, whether you've wanted this mantle or not, and I'm assuming you don't, you represent something. You represent a courage and a freedom of artistic expression, of the importance of artistic expression, and of the danger that artistic expression often visits upon the people who do it. It's a noble shield to carry, but not an easy one, I don't imagine. Not an easy one.

In a way, there's bits of me that would prefer to be well-known for being a good writer. Well, I have to tell you, I'm pretty sure that's in there, too. Is that in there? You know, it used to be when I started out as a writer, when people would write about my books, they would mention that they were funny. And then after the attack on the satanic verses, everybody stopped saying I was funny. Really? And it's...

Because that book is satirical. Yeah, and it's... And people who read it, I get two reactions to people to read it now. One is, where's the dirty bit? Because we can't find it. Yeah. And the second is, who knew it was funny? And I say, people who read it.

It's funny. But it's, you know, with that on you, do you feel there's an idea that you have to wear that heroism? I don't know about the heroism, but I think I have to be part of the fight. Right. You know, I mean, there is a fight about free expression in America too at the moment. And I'm, I feel like I'm in that fight. I have a dog in that fight.

What do you think how the nature of fundamentalism has changed and how that affects artistic expression? Like even now when we see all the protests, you know, up at Columbia University, some students protest, protests, others think that's going too far and they're threatening people. And we're crossing all those difficult lines. You spoke at the Penn Banquet, yes? Yeah, last year. Last year, which is a consortium of writers and poets and a lot of people, truly defenders of free speech. I just got a text today. They've canceled. They've canceled the prize giving because they're people attacking them for not being sufficiently anti-Israeli or pro-Palestinian or something. I mean, everybody's so angry right now that nobody can listen or talk to anybody else.

So people have shouted at each other. Listen, there was a critic, and this is going to sound like a joke, a critic of Taylor Swift's new music album, the Torture Post Society. They had to remove the critic's name from the critique because of death threats. Because he didn't like the record? I didn't read it because I love the record. I don't want to hear any negativity. No, but so do I, John. But it speaks to, in 1989, there was an Ayatollah and a fatwa and a group of religious muckety-mucks who delivered the law from high above.

And now we're all fundamentalists. Everybody's an expert. Everybody's got an opinion. and hostility. And hostility. The level of anger is crazy right now. Do you think of, you know, you have a dog in the fight in that creative. How do we, and I think about this a lot, how do we manage that, and is that just a function of the algorithm?

It might be, I think to an extent it is. Yeah. I mean, I don't know, frankly, I'm glad you asked me, because I have the answer to the world's problems. It's actually on page, if I would. Exactly. But you are thoughtful enough and you've been through it enough that I know you have an opinion. Yeah, I mean, I just think people have to stop having such thin skins. You know, at the moment, we're all very easily offended.

And what's more is we also believe that being offended is a sufficient reason for attacking something. Right. But actually, everything offends somebody. Always. Always. I mean, occasionally you. What? How dare you, sir? I am offended.

You see, and then if you go down that road, then we can't talk to each other anymore. Right. But haven't groups always had a way of policing language or behavior? I think I'm trying to think, has my perspective changed on it or has the dynamic changed? I think what's happened is the temperature has got arisen. Right. I mean, yes, of course, people have always disagreed and people have always said you can't say that. say this, that's not new. What's new is the volume and the heat. And so what do we do by taking

down the volume and taking down the heat? That's the question. I mean, and again, not to make you the avatar of this, but this is coming from a man who, because of threats from fundamentalists, had to basically alter your entire life. Well, it did certainly have an impact, yeah, yeah. I mean, what is sad is that I'd actually got my life back, really. I mean, I've been living in, York City for getting on for 25 years. Right. Well, you had made a decision, I'm going to come out of this and make myself available. And for 23 years, it was fine. Right. You know, I mean, I was doing everything that writers do.

Book tours, readings, lectures, you know. Oh, I know. I'm a writer. Don't stop. I've been there with the coffee clotches. Yeah. And Oprah. Yeah. Well, I haven't been with Oprah. None of us have. But anyway, so it was a shock when this thing out of a quarter of a century ago, more than that, 30 years ago, sort of came out of a crowd at me. You know, it was, I really was very surprised.

Do you find yourself now freed of that fear or is there still that PTSD? Like, what does that do to you? Well, I mean, it does, you know, nothing good. Right. But it's now been, what, 20 months or something. I think I'm pretty much back to myself at this point. Do you feel like you're in that writing rhythm again? Has your mind started to dream again?

Let's finish this, John. And by the way, let me tell you something. And we don't have people on where I don't either read it or take a look. It's such a beautiful and incredibly interesting and revelatory book. thank you for writing it because you had to endure something awful but your insight into that experience is is really a remarkable gift to give to other people and I really do appreciate it's got funny bits a couple of funny bids not for a writer but for a writer but it really is a fantastic piece of

work and I and I thank you for doing it the book is called knife. It is available as we speak. Salmon Rushdie. We're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back after this. The bestselling author of the God Delusion. His new book is a memoir called An Appetite for Wonder The Making of a Scientist. Please welcome to the program, Richard Dawkins.

Sir! The book is called An Appetite For Wonder. And look at you. Look at you! With the mop top. And you could have been in a band with that. That's what I call the grinning idiot picture. The British one has the Rupert Brook picture, which

is the sideways poetic look. Oh, really? You have both of those on you, do you? All right, fair enough. I have a, so there's a very liberal Presbyterian pastor in my audience. We get to this. When I say liberal, here's how liberally is.

He's Jewish. So for better or for worse, you seem to be the avatar for the dividing line of the incompatibility of religious belief and scientific belief. Somehow you have, through maybe your words... Yeah, I'll take that. Yeah. So his question was, can you let Richard Dawkins know

that there are religious individuals, the strong belief in God, who also believe quite strongly in the scientific method? Does that seem incongruous to you? No, I'm well aware of that, and quite often... No, I... What did I tell you? He says,

He says, ask him if he's aware of that, and I go, I'm pretty sure he's aware of that. It's a point I often make, and I often join forces with bishops and other friends to combat the anti-scientific tendency of fundamentalist religion. It's one of the great fallacies among fundamentalists that they think all religious people are like them, and they're not. That's exactly right. There's a certain rigidity to it. Now, you, here's my proposal for the question for the discussion tonight. Do you believe that the end of our civilization will be through religious strife or scientific advancement?

What do you think will, in the long term, be more damaging to our prospects as a human race? The Astronomer Royal, Martin Rees, and President of the Royal Society, gives humanity a 50% chance of surviving through the 21st century. Wait, hold on, I got to do some math. Oh, fine.

And one of the reasons is he fears that the fruits of scientific advance, the bad fruits, things like dirty bombs, things like biological warfare, could get into the hands of religious fanatics who, unlike all other terrorists, actually want to die. I mean, they want to go to paradise. and a martyr's death. And so when you, the question you ask, the answer is probably both, that science provides, in the form of technology, weapons which hitherto have been only available to reasonably responsible governments will become, or are likely to become available to nut cases who believe that their

God requires them to wreak havoc and destruction. Doesn't it, though, let scientists off the hook to some extent to suggest that their work could only be misused by those who are, whose minds are boggled by religious fanaticism, when in fact, isn't there a strong probability that we are not necessarily in control of the unintended consequences of our scientific advancement? I'm not suggesting to ever stop it, but don't you think it's even possibly more likely that we will create something that the unintended consequences of our scientific advancement? something that the unintended consequence of it is worldwide catastrophe. That is possible, and it's something we have to worry about the precautionary principle, I think, is very important. Science is the most powerful way to do whatever it is you want to do, and if you want to do good, it's the most powerful way of doing good.

You want to do evil. It's the most powerful way to do evil. And it seems to provide us for every scientific advance. There is, I guess it would be the, what is the third love for every equal action? There's an opposite reaction. That's one Newton's, yeah. So you have nuclear energy. You split an atom.

You go this way and you can light the world. You go this way and you can blow up the world. And it seems like we always try this part first. Well, there is a suggestion that one of the reasons why we don't detect extraterrestrial civilizations is that when a civilization reaches the point where it's capable of broadcasting radio waves that we could pick up, there's only a brief window before it blows itself up. that there's a brief window between discovering the advanced technology to communicate by radio which we could then pick up, and producing the horrific technology, which then gets out of control.

Right. So it may be that all over the universe, there are little civilizations, winking into action, briefly, flashing into action for a few centuries, and then killing themselves. Why do you think it only takes them a few centuries? And does that make us... Oh, no, that's just a speculation. So you feel like we are low-achieving when it comes to destroying ourselves? Not at all.

The point is that it takes many billions of years for evolution to reach the point where technology takes off. But once technology takes off, it's then an eye blink by the standards of geological time. I see. According to this rather pessimistic speculation, I'm not forwarding it myself. At this point, the only speculation I've heard from you is somewhat pessimistic. I have yet to hear you say, we are, but I guess that's the point is, I think that it's very easy to look at the dark side of fundamentalism and the damage that it can do. Sometimes I think we have to challenge ourselves and look at the dark side of achievement and the dark side of, because I believe that the final words man utters on this earth will be, it worked. You know what I mean?

It'll be an experiment that isn't misused, but will be a rolling catastrophe. Yeah, it's a possibility, and I can't deny it. What do they do? I'm more optimistic than that. About science? Yes, yes. In terms of its ability to control its, you know, curiosity killed the cat, and the cat never saw it coming.

That's true. Can you stick around? Yeah, yeah. Beautiful. Uh, the, uh, an appetite for wonder is on the bookshelves now. Richard Dawkins. Explore more shows from the Daily Show podcast universe by searching the Daily Show, wherever you get your podcasts.

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