Chris Packham on the Untold Story of Evolution

0:00Chris Packham:Rowan, you know Chris Packham. How would you describe him?

0:02Penny Sarchet:A legend. Yes. A natural history legend.

0:05Chris Packham:Yeah, he's a renowned British broadcaster and naturalist. I grew up watching him on The Really Wild Show, which was brilliant. And he's one of the hosts of BBC's annual Spring Watch, which is must-watch viewing for birders. Now he has a new BBC2 programme coming out called Evolution, which explores the evolutionary backstories of five iconic animals, from elephants to ostriches. I really enjoyed it. You get to meet pivotal ancestors brought to life using CGI. And it also explores really deep questions like the origins of sensing, moving, feeding, sex.

0:36Penny Sarchet:Awesome. Sounds... big issues, big questions.

0:39Chris Packham:Yeah, it is. And ahead of the show's release, I sat down with him for a chat about why evolutionary science is so important for giving us a proper, a true appreciation of the natural world. And also his wish to travel back in time and die at the tiny hands of T-Rex.

0:54Penny Sarchet:What a way to go.

0:55Chris Packham:Exactly. That's what I said. I'm Penny Sarchet and this is The World, the Universe and Us from New Scientist. Congrats on the new show. What drew you to this project and the subject of evolution?

1:06Penny Sarchet:We like a challenge, basically. We'd risen to that challenge with our previous series about Earth, looking at enormous time spans, basically, and inconceivable events in many people's minds. To take something that was that big and that complex and make it comprehensible was a challenge and Earth worked. It was very popular and I think people were able to take a lot from it. So it seemed that evolution, again, something which is perceived to take a long time and to be inordinately complex, was something that we thought we would rise to. And we learned some lessons with our series about Earth in the fact that we didn't do it chronologically.

1:44Penny Sarchet:And so again, we didn't approach evolution in the classic sort of schoolroom sense, starting with maybe the first cell if you like and working through to the present. We chose you know five iconic animals to carry a narrative about the evolution of locomotion, intelligence, feeding and reproduction etc. And again that gives us that capacity to you know come up with some surprising stories and they need to be surprising stories which are accessible to our audience and engage our audience. I like the idea that we start our programs with little things which they will be so excited by that they'll have to pick up their mobile and text it to their mates or tell them when they next meet them down the pub, you know.

2:30Penny Sarchet:The other thing I have to say is that, you know, if people learned about evolution when they were at school, it was probably rooted in Darwinism and maybe if it was any more complex, it might have been Gregor Mendel and his peas, you know, but therefore a lot of that knowledge tends to stop at that point. But our understanding of it and its mechanisms and its twists and turns have very rapidly evolved. So being able to bring new science to it in the way that your magazine does is another one of our challenges.

2:57Chris Packham:One of the things I thought was really clever about having these sort of five iconic animals and going back and telling their stories was, yes, I guess with a dolphin, you would expect you're going to do intelligence and how they ended up in the water. But you go even further back to the evolution of eyes or with bats. You know, they fly at night. How do they do that? but actually you get into the whole story of why do we feed and how did that begin? I thought that was very engaging, the way that you sort of went several levels deeper each time.

3:26Penny Sarchet:Yeah, I think the fundamental things, you know, where it can be most surprising for people. And those are the sorts of things that sometimes we don't ask those questions. We get through childhood when we should have been really asking those questions. You know, why is the sky blue? Why do stars twinkle? And then we find ourselves as adults and we kind of forget about them. but you know what it's like with any form of science if you bring it back to basics and you look at it in in a childlike not a childish but a childlike way it can be the most joyous you know and i think sometimes we do get preoccupied by the sort of the detail if you like and the immediate sparkle but it has no foundation yeah what we wanted to do with those programs is as you say explain the foundation of it yeah and another key thing that we wanted to do was you know to identify the, you know, in those sort of iconic animals, you know, evolutions, the key turning points, if you like.

4:21Penny Sarchet:And so if there were a biography of that animal, you know, it was basically being born quite clearly. And then it was having its first kiss and then it was getting married and having kids and getting divorced. We wanted to bring all of those sorts of moments, those key points, because it is a big story. We've got 50 minutes. There's a lot of it we can't tell. we have to jump backwards and forwards through time yeah we're gifted you know now because we can use cgi to rebuild some of the you know the creatures that otherwise we would either be talking about in a purely conceptual way or we might just have a fossil of it we're fortunate because a lot of that material is absent but for me it's those turning points that's where i get the most joy from from from that you know when like little things like you know gills becoming jaws yes and part of the jaw becoming the ear bones that give us the capacity to hear.

5:13Penny Sarchet:Yes. You don't normally think about that. And so by using that in a story about bats and looking at their enormous metabolic weight, the fact that they need to eat their half their own body weight every night, how are they going to do it? Well, they need their ears. And in fact, that's part of the mechanism which they're actually eating with. Yes. I love all of those sort of things coming together.

5:34Chris Packham:Me too. As an evolution nerd, I found it very exciting to actually see these things brought to life. The CGI was wonderful. And back when I was studying evolution, you know, it was sort of dusty fossils and textbook ideas. And I wondered if you thought we kind of couldn't have had this story until now. The CGI and the level of scientific detail has sort of come together very nicely.

5:55Penny Sarchet:Yeah, well, I think there is a very good excuse sometimes to sort of repeat some of that. I mean, look, you could argue that a percentage of what the stories that we tell have been told in previous documentaries, and part of it probably has. But, you know, science is never standing still. That's the greatest joy of it. Something that we thought was a truth 50 years ago, we now know wasn't actually the truth. And we've learned what the contemporary version of that is. Science is in constant flux. And what we've done is taken the ability to tell that story in a different way, using that CGI plus what we know now and we've kind of drawn a line in the sand at this point.

6:35Penny Sarchet:We're not saying that we have all the answers. In fact, one of the trials of making this program is that you're working with scientists and sometimes there are several groups of them and they disagree. So we have to put, either we have to inbuilt some ambiguity in the sense that this could have been or this might have been, or we have to say there are two theories. This is one, this is the other. And I quite enjoy that not knowing because what it means is that it gives the program and people's imagination somewhere else to go. Ultimately, maybe in 10, 15 years time, someone could make a series about evolution and basically rethink a lot of the stuff that we presented in this one.

7:15Chris Packham:I wonder what you think a deeper appreciation of evolution brings to loving our wildlife? Because I think sometimes we can love birds and we can love going out into nature, but many people aren't really aware of the backstories that you're telling in this show. What does it bring to our sort of everyday understanding?

7:33Penny Sarchet:Well, I think the first thing is that we mustn't be anthropocentric about evolution. And I think there is a misconception in broader society that we are the be all and end all of evolution. Now look, we are a remarkable organism, inventive, creative, imaginative, resourceful, resilient, so on and so forth. We're great as an organism. We are really good. But we're not it. You know, evolution continues to happen and will always do so, no matter what happens and whatever we do, in fact. So that's the first thing. It's not about us. It's about life. You know, and that feeds that narrative that, you know, we are not isolated.

8:10Penny Sarchet:We are part of nature. And then if you like, you can say that we are dependent upon that nature. And that's something that at the moment we really do need to reinforce in our audience because we're doing so much harm to that nature and harm to ourselves. We're never going to look after it unless we care about it. And that's why people like Sir David have done such a sterling job over many years of engaging people with wildlife and nature and getting them to develop a deep rooted affinity for it. No one could have done more, frankly. But now we're in a different space because we do have to, you know, make, they don't just love it anymore.

8:46Penny Sarchet:They've really got to care about it. And I care about things more if I know more about them. And so by telling people those fascinating little things, then they're not just a bat. They're not just a rat or a worm or something like that. They have an intrinsic value in the evolution of all of our life and how it comes together in its contemporary ecosystem. So yeah, I think that that's part and parcel of it.

9:11Chris Packham:It's all the more poignant as well when you lose a genus or a species, that's billions of years to get and then it's wiped out like that.

9:18Penny Sarchet:Yeah, but then if it's wiped out because of us, I'll cry about it. But we've got to remember that extinction is a very necessary component of evolution. 99 % of everything that's ever lived on the planet is dead and gone. And if it was still here, there wouldn't be room for us and everything we've got at the moment. So that revolving dynamic nature of evolution, of life, I find quite exciting. I mean, you know, it's not doomy, you know, to sit here and think what's coming next. Now, when I say next, I'd rather it wasn't the next 50, 100, 200, 250 years.

9:54Chris Packham:Yeah, millions, hopefully.

9:55Penny Sarchet:But in millions of years, humans won't be here. The world won't look like this. It will be new, exciting and beautiful as it always has been before. So I like that as someone who just loves life and its tenacity and its capacity to adapt to different, you know, different changes.

10:11Chris Packham:It can be quite hard when you're telling the story of life on Earth because there are these mass extinctions that crop up and play these pivotal roles. How do you sort of balance that against people who then use that as an excuse today to not worry too much about what we're doing?

10:24Penny Sarchet:When those mass extinctions took place, they weren't being driven by a single species, which is us, and a species with a conscience. We know that we are harming the natural world, you know? And as a consequence of that, do we really want it on our species' conscience that we have done so much damage? I don't think we do. I don't think this is a mass extinction event. I think it's a mass extermination event. We are driving that extermination. I don't want it on my conscience. I don't think our species does either. So we should do something about it. We all want our pets to live long, vibrant lives.

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11:33Chris Packham:One of the fun things I found was that, well, I guess I was expecting more fossils in the story. This is the fossil that tells us this, this is the fossil that tells us that. And there's a bit of that, but a lot of it is kind of saved as a key question at the end. I was wondering what the thinking there was about sort of saving some of the evidence for the end so that you could have the sort of more pacey story in the middle.

11:52Penny Sarchet:Yeah. I mean, I think we are very conscious that our audiences are changing in the way that they're receiving media. Hence those sort of sparkly points that we want to throw in to keep people engaged. I think it's really important that everything we're doing is accessible. If we ask questions, we've got to provide the material for our audience to answer those questions. It's not a lecture before I tell them so that they're engaged in that sense. I personally like fossils. I've always liked fossils. For me, it's not just about the content. It's about the romance, the idea of something being that ancient and alive.

12:29Penny Sarchet:and here's a tangible part of it in your hand. So I can get very, very excited about fossils. So what we try to do is take a mix of all of those things. And of course, as you say, the extraordinary CGI, which can bring those things to life, give them three dimensions, make them more like animals. Sometimes it's quite difficult to interpret a fossil and turn it into something which could be living and playing a part in that story. But ultimately, look, you'll notice that pretty much all of those programs end with a sum up where we bring together all of the ideas, all of the threads that we've sewn and we've asked a question at the beginning and then we come back at the end and sometimes there are three, you know, principal, you know, components to the narrative and sometimes there are five or six and I will trot through all of those and therefore it's almost like what we've done is we've given a kit and we've assembled it at the end.

13:21Penny Sarchet:I think that when you've got a complex story, which people sometimes think is impenetrable evolution, if you can make it real in the space of 50 minutes and explain it, then that's mission accomplished.

13:34Chris Packham:Yeah, I'd agree. But then the appendix at the end, the evidence, and you do go through sort of a key question in each one and the actual fossils that got us there. The idea of providing evidence for evolution, it took me back sort of 20 years to the Bush administration and creationism and intelligent design. And remember, there was a real time then where evolutionary biologists were feeling that they really had to like fight and defend evolution as a science. Do you think the environment is better now or we can't take it for granted?

14:02Penny Sarchet:I don't know. It's difficult to know, isn't it? Because people like you and I probably live in a bubble because we're constantly excited by and consuming new science. Every now and again, I burst my bubble and I look out and I see that there are people who are not feeling exactly the same way and maybe you know that adherence to you know law or outdated ideas is still there and it's still unfortunately shaping and informing their lives but i think that you know our ability to communicate science through magazines podcasts all the things you do all the things that we do is giving good science a higher profile yes and and this is essential because you know we're in a mess we've got to get out of it for me the solution will be changing our behavior certainly but also it will be science you know we will be dependent on people coming up with abilities technologies to put things right and they will not be politicians they will be people who have tried and tested ideas that they've invented or imagined and created to make a positive difference science is our future we can't refute it so you know i'm not i'm still not there with the flat earthers.

15:11Chris Packham:I wondered in all of sort of deep time, the evolution of life, if you could for a moment travel back, where would you go? What would you want to see?

15:19Penny Sarchet:Well, it would be gratuitous because, you know, I'm the kid that grew up with T-Rex as the best animal in the world, you know, a big, fierce and most importantly extinct. Now, the key thing about the extinction is that, you know, when I was a kid, I never imagined that I would know what T-Rex looked like. It was one of those things. You know, if you were in a classroom and you got the felt tips out, everyone would do T-Rex in a different colour. And my perception was that we would never know what colour that dinosaur was. However, I'm 65 years old now. So basically, we've had 60 years of rapidly advancing paleontological knowledge.

15:54Penny Sarchet:And we've completely redefined that animal. We've learned more about it in the last 60 years than the last 65 million years, you know? Yes. And for me, that is enormously exciting. to see that animal evolve through scientific discovery and become what it is now is bullion but we still there are questions about it that we don't know so yeah if i'm trickling towards the end of my life and you offer me five minutes in a time machine i'm in the cretaceous i want to know what color it was yes and and how it was hunting and so on and so forth and um if it didn't interrupt the space time continuum i'd throw myself in front of it to be consumed you know what a way to go What a way to go, yeah.

16:33Penny Sarchet:We got it on the tombstone, wouldn't it really?

16:36Chris Packham:And then also I enjoyed in the series, you go to meet not just the five key animals that star in each episode, you also go to see sort of modern relatives or modern analogues for key past ancestors. So you meet all kinds of animals in the show. I wondered if you had any particular standout favorites?

16:55Penny Sarchet:Well, it's a joy obviously to see them. Sometimes it's the collective spectacle, so obviously the bat cave is just astonishing. I'd have to say that actually the parla guano was a greater part of the spectacle than the bats emerging from the cave, basically, because it was so almost overwhelming. The scale, the smell, the fauna of everything living in it was just amazing. And the architecture of the caves and the setting for all of that was brilliant. But at the same time, the little velvet worm, you know, I'd seen velvet worms in books and photographs and film, but you know, I'd never met a velvet worm and they are just so unbelievably weird.