The beginning of the conversation is awkward. Eric interjects, a lot. At some points, he stops Bret from expanding on the biological points he is making, and steers the conversation from to a more human side of the story. He tends to oversell his brother, a lot; which is even more awkward given that Eric is not a biologist and probably doesn’t fully appreciate the impact of someone’s research; but he is happy to engage in name-dropping. Yet, when he finally gets off Bret’s back, the story that unfolds is worth a listen.
On a personal note, I agree with Eric’s assessment that people likely wouldn’t take a professor from Evergeen to be an important scientific thinker — I know that I certainly didn’t. However, in the debate/conversation between Bret and Richard Dawkins, Bret wasn’t making much sense to me. I remember thinking of him as of a misguided weirdo who tries to extend concepts of evolutionary biology to social sciences, where they don’t belong.
