speaking of absence

Humans are meaning making machines.

Professor Tyler Curtain, wrapping up an interview with WUNC in Chapel Hill re a lecture he'll be delivering this Friday on Evolution and Ethics. Extinction is the core idea that runs through the interview. With a welcome peppering of comics.

Long time ago I shared a pizza with Tyler and his then sweetie, a biology grad student, and there was moment in which the conversation wrapped around to global warming and extinction and the biologist said something like: "Oh the planet will always be here: it's humans that won't be."

That was long before Al became Oscar Nobel and things like that simply weren't said in polite society. But it stuck with me, vividly, because it rang so true.

Give the interview a listen »