#33852: Beep — 08/05  at  09:14 AM
Congrats on making the big time

#33863: Alon Levy — 08/05  at  10:52 AM
Congratulations, PZ!

Now, how can I listen to it, exactly? At 9 PM EDT on Monday I'll be in class, so to listen to it I'll need to access the show after it's on. How can I do it?

#33899: — 08/05  at  01:12 PM

Now, how can I listen to it, exactly? At 9 PM EDT on Monday I'll be in class, so to listen to it I'll need to access the show after it's on. How can I do it?

Hopefully they archive the segments on their webite. I'll be working at that time so I can't hear it live either.

Congrats on stardom PZ! Who would of thought your little blog would of brought so much publicity, your blog is mroe famous than your college

#33905: Alon Levy — 08/05  at  01:50 PM
By the way, is it 9 PM EDT, i.e. 1 AM GMT, or 9 PM EST, i.e. 2 AM GMT? I have class from 8 to 10 on Tuesday, so if it's 9 PM EST, I'll probably be able to listen to it live.

#33966: Ken Cope — 08/06  at  02:13 AM
BBC is the big time. I look forward to hearing your voice broadcast and podcast far and wide!

Now that ID has the blessings of the president, there has been a lot of good radio on the topic. Al Franken had some skits involving all the creation myths that need equal time in science classes. Here in San Francisco on KGO, a self-described moderate on the afternoon air, who spends too much of his time as an apologist for Bush, excoriated him for endorsing creationism, and the station's late night host got bitchy about fundies for a good quarter hour and then started aiming at science because it has "no concrete evidence" for whatever it says about origins.

I managed to get a couple of minutes to find out how hard it is to organize a simple message while keeping it light and appropriate for the style of the program. I managed to snag the 10 minute segment in which my call appeared (about two thirds of the way in, and would welcome feedback on where I went wrong.

#33970: KathyF — 08/06  at  03:56 AM
But wait--I'll be asleep then! It will be 2 a.m. here in London, and I don't think many people will be listening. Will it be broadcast at any other time?

Is this to be on BBC Five? I don't listen to that; I listen to BBC 4, which seems like a better audience for you, frankly.

Please tell them your London audience would like this to be played at a convenient time, on BBC 4, preferably. And while you're at it, tell them you'd like to be interviewed by John Humphrys. (Don't worry, they're used to demanding Americans.)

#33971: — 08/06  at  03:59 AM
Ken, you did very well.

#33972: — 08/06  at  04:02 AM
To clarify a little. Ken, you handled him exactly correctly. The only thing I would have liked you to have done, was to explain to him that evolution doesn't have anything to do with how life started, but that would probably have seemed a little to agressive, so your approach was probably better.

#33976: Aaron M — 08/06  at  06:44 AM
Yay, two of my addictions rolled into one.

For those not familiar with the BBC's website, all audio is available online for one week after the broadcast. Here's the direct link to listen to the "Pods & Blogs" programme; if you miss the live broadcast, click on that afterward to hear the archived audio.

#34001: — 08/06  at  11:13 AM
Coincidences(!) Being an engineer for 30-odd years, I'm not supposed to "believe" in them. Anyway, I just had my first 59 seconds of celebrity on Wednesday, speaking by 'phone to Brian Lehrer on WNYC-FM (93.9 MHz). The subject was E. vs I.D. in the public schools, so I had to put in my 1-1/2 cents. Only last night did I come across Pharyngula in Newsweek! (Strange connections are quite likely, and we notice & remember them, so they seem like a big deal.)

After introducing myself as the Skeptic from Missouri, I said that my Quest for the Truth was touched off in earnest when I was 12, lying on the lawn under a clear summer night sky. The Question, I decided, was not "Where did the matter & energy come from?" but "Where did the empty space come from?" It was, and is, a scary thought; of course this question is unanswerable - there are no scientists wasting their careers on it, and creationists have never thought about it, because it's not mentioned in the Bible.

Why scary? Like all my human brothers & sisters on both sides of the issue, I want answers to my questions, a nice pattern leading from here to there, so infinate space & infinate time, the idea that something (even empty space) could have existed forever does not jive with any of our earth-bound experiences.

I told Brian that earlier callers had already pointed out that god explains nothing, merely adding more complexity. I didn't have time to add that, unlike math or logic proofs, which can be knocked down by one counter-example, the omniscient & omnipresent god described in detail by my Sunday school teachers could easily prove him- or herself to all of us in an instant, but hasn't bothered! Actually, hesh blew it by making skeptics like me in the first place; try that argument on your local Morman missionaries, and you will get the most convoluted rationale you ever heard.

I did get the last few words, however. I told the tri-state audience that, 45 years ago, my 7th grade science teacher was required to read a statement, before starting into evolution, that "there are other theories" to explain where life came from. Progress, or Retrogression? -Walt

#34041: — 08/06  at  04:15 PM
Walt, physicists and cosmologists do think about where space comes from, and what space is. There current answer is, 'we dunno, but we're looking'. They do think that the space between the stars is not empty, but it is dark. Brian Greene has an excellent book about this called The Fabric of the Cosmos. At least it tells you how science is approaching the problem.