August 15, 2025 • 44 mins
Ella Al-Shamahi grew up as a Muslim creationist, part of a ‘tribe’ that believes that humankind was created whole by a higher power. At university, she enrolled in courses that studied evolution, specifically to prove her professors wrong - but the plan backfired when she became fascinated by evolutionary biology and came to the conclusion that Darwin was, in fact, right all along. Now an accomplished paleoanthropologist, she explores the complex journey of human evolution and the origins of Homo sapiens. In this episode of Ways to Change the World, Ella joins Krishnan Guru-Murthy to discuss her remarkable personal transformation from creationism to science. She also explains why she believes humans haven’t fully evolved to meet the demands of the modern world, and shares her unwavering faith in humanity’s resilience and potential.
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(00:00):
Studying human evolution, you cannot help but be impressed
with our species. I mean, we're a nightmare of
species at the same time, don't get me wrong, But time and time
again we are resilient against all odds.
And every single person listening to this is literally
the result of thousands of people who, against all odds,
(00:22):
survived. I have a lot of hope in our
species. You are a questioning scientist.
You're a professional skeptic. Yeah, But as, as a teenager,
yeah, you were a religious. Missionary, Missionary.
Zealots. So you had a massive personality
change in, in, in over the over the period of time.
I think that is the nature though of tribalism.
(00:43):
You agree with your tribe. Hello and welcome to Ways to
Change the World. I'm Christian Gurimurthy, and
this is the podcast in which we talk to extraordinary people
about the big ideas in their lives and the events that have
helped shape them. My guest today is best known for
exploring our human origins, buther own origin story is a
(01:05):
gripping tale too. Ella Al Shamahi grew up as a
Muslim creationist but was converted to evolutionary
biologist at university and is now a paleoanthropologist
exploring the evolution of Homo sapiens in the BBC series Human.
Ella, Welcome, welcome. Thank you for having.
Me. First of all, what is a
paleoanthropologist? It's somebody who studies deep,
(01:27):
deep time. So I I wouldn't wake up for the
Romans as an archaeologist, but I would wake up for early
civilizations and I'd certainly wake up for early man.
And and, and how much of it is anthropology and projection and
how much of it is science? Don't ask me that.
No. At the top, yeah.
It's like a stab in the heart. Yes.
(01:49):
We have very, very few remains and we build a lot of stories
out of that. Because the thing that always,
you know, grips me with BBC landmark series like Human is
how sure the script is of, of what we did and how we did it
and all the rest of it. And and I wonder how sure you
(02:10):
are. I, I will say look at the script
carefully or hear it carefully. There are a lot of maybe.
There are a lot of perhapses. Sometimes we have a maybe and a
perhaps and a single sentence just to, you know, appease
everyone. I will say though, we actually
now have quite a lot of evidenceto paint a certain picture
(02:31):
because we also have DNA. And I think that has been a
massive, massive game changer. So, so for example, just a
simple one, like did Neanderthals and Homo sapiens
interbreed? Which is really just a fancy way
of saying, did we have sex? This has been like a story.
It's been just debated for the longest time.
As soon as you start getting ancient DNA.
(02:52):
It's game over, you know? You can answer that question.
So I would say ancient DNA has has really, I mean, it's
revolutionized the field withouta doubt.
I mean, there's a reason Swante Papa won a Nobel Prize.
It was a year ago or something, because it was just him invent.
Well, he didn't invent it. He he was able to extract that
DNA was so pivotal to the field.And what human has done is, is
look at all the different types of people, yeah.
(03:15):
Who were, who were on the planet, yeah.
Coexisting, yeah. Which is not something we forced
about a lot. Yeah.
Has it made you question taxonomy, you know, and and make
you think, well, actually we, we've given names for all these
things, but are they really as distinct as all of that given
they were all interbreeding? So it's interesting that you say
(03:37):
types of human, because I would say that there's different
species of human. But you're so right to ask about
the taxonomy thing. Most people at school, this is
slightly technical, but most people at school got taught what
a species is. And the understanding of a
species is, oh, it means that it's basically if two
(03:57):
individuals can have children, but those children are
infertile, that basically means they're two different species.
That is called the biological species concept.
It turns out there are over 20 different species concepts
because it's all to some extent bull, because we are trying to
put a taxonomy and a framework on nature and nature knows no
framework, right? But it is a useful tool to help
(04:21):
decipher because we're clearly different to those other
species. And there were many of them.
And I think in that show, in theshow, 1 of the things that is
just so exciting is that we're able to portray this world of
many. And I think for most people,
they just haven't grasped this concept that this is the only
(04:42):
time in human history that only one species has walked the
earth. This is a bizarre the last
20,000 years is not the norm forfor hundreds of thousands of
years we shared the planet with many other humans, human
species. They were.
They were things like Homo erectus Neanderthals.
And the things we. Learned to draw at school.
(05:02):
If you Yeah. And a lot of time people weren't
even taught this stuff at schooland you know, there's some
species in there that seem fantastical.
I keep talking about the so-called Hobbit, which is
actually called Homo floresiensis, which is this tiny
human who came up to about my, I'd say about my hips.
So about a meter tall, so just over 3 feet.
(05:24):
They had brains the size of chimps and yet they were able to
make fire, make stone tools, stood upright, were humans in
the full sense of the word. But they lived on this one
island in Indonesia with giant marabou stalks that were taller
than me, miniature elephant likemammals called stegadons, giant
rats. There's a reason we call it The
(05:45):
Hobbit and there's a reason why I would argue that that was a
Lord of the Rings esque world, except it was real.
And I, I do feel very strongly that partly it is just a
fantastic story to tell and. And have you come to any
conclusions yourself about why we were the ones who won if you
put in the end? 10 paleoanthropologists in a
(06:07):
room. Everybody would give you a
slightly different answer. Some of them would be wildly
different. I present in the show what I
feel is most accurate and I kindof come down to a few reasons.
And there are reasons that obviously it has to align with
some of our series consultants and what have you, But there is
(06:28):
a joy in being able to present your field and go, you know
what, this is the theory I am going to run with.
And they're often theories that people aren't expecting, right?
So a lot of people have just assumed it's our brain size, but
Neanderthals had similar sized brains to us.
And also if it's just about brain size, I keep saying this,
if it was just about brain size,elephants and whales would be on
(06:48):
this podcast right now. And not like it's like, it's not
just brain size. So one of the things we argue
actually is that friendliness, cooperation is what gave us an
edge as a species. And that shocks people because
they look at us and they go the friendly species really.
And I'm like, yes, actually cooperate.
There is so much evidence to show that we are a hyper highly
(07:11):
cooperative species in a way that no other species has ever
been, and that that gave us thisedge.
And there are theories that state things like language and
our brain kind of being superior.
And I'm saying this in inverted commas isn't actually because
that was being, that's what was being selected for.
That was what, you know, we weredriving towards.
(07:34):
It's that actually we were a highly cooperative species.
And so we ended up with better brains and we ended up with
language just to help us be the social cooperative.
So actually us being smarter is kind of a side effect of us just
being really social, which is kind of wonderful.
And I'm like, why are we not talking about this, especially
in the political climate we're in right now?
Yeah, it feels relevant. It feels relevant that actually
(07:57):
the hyper corporate cooperation is the cornerstone to our
success, in my opinion. Yes, although you, you might
then say that we're, we're regressing in terms of sort of
the dominance human characteristics on display
around the world right now, tribalism, war fights.
Yeah. And that's where it gets
uncomfortable for me because a lot of us in the field would
(08:18):
argue that the world around us today is not the world we've
evolved for. It's just not.
And and we will probably never be evolved for the world that
we're in ever again because we evolved for caves being prime
real estate for a tribe of about100, I don't know, 150 people
where I don't know, 2/3 of them would have basically been your,
(08:40):
your dad's relatives where you knew everybody by name.
We did not evolve for farming cities and certainly the last
400 years where there's just been this absolute technological
overhaul and that comes with problems.
It just does. And that's an existential
conundrum for me because I see it as a trade off, right
(09:03):
Krishnan? Like on the one side,
truthfully, if our ancestors hadn't made that huge, massive
leap, farming cities, etcetera, etcetera, we wouldn't have the
beauty that we sometimes see. I, I don't mean to sound, you
know, but like, you know, art things that are truly the kind
of art that takes your breath away, the kind of creativity
(09:24):
that takes your breath away. Also, we wouldn't have the
capacity to support as many people.
You and I realistically just wouldn't have like, you know,
our ancestors wouldn't have madeit.
But the trade off is that we're not evolved for the world that
we're in. We don't fit here.
Like it, it, it, it doesn't, it is not, it's not a, it's not a
(09:44):
good fit in any way. To the extent that I, I think we
can blame a lot of things that are going wrong on the fact that
we're cave people. We're just stuck here with many
benefits, You know, like truthful, if you held the gun to
my head and we're like, OK, well, you go back to the
Paleolithic and I'll be like, no, no, no, please.
I'm actually quite happy where Iam, but there's so much that
(10:06):
isn't working. And in my opinion, it isn't
working because this isn't the world we've evolved for.
Right. But do you believe as an
evolutionary biologist now that that evolution will have the
answers to? This.
No, because and that this is something that's constantly
moving and changing and. No, I think I agree with other
evolutionary biologists that basically think evolution is now
dwindling to the point of almostnot existing in our species
(10:31):
because we have medicine and science that have just taken
away the things that would normally have cast out people
that, you know, for example, I mean, the most extreme example,
this is uncomfortable. So I'm really sorry about this.
But like infertility, infertility that is the biggest
thing that would normally be selected against like just by
(10:53):
very nature of it now. Well, infertility is something
to be solved with science, whichis a wonderful thing.
Like it's. One Direction is no longer.
Operative, if it's it, it does still exist.
It's very weak. It's very, very weak.
Certainly in the West. It's incredibly incredible.
You know, it's I mean. Because that it's quite, it's a
(11:13):
massive claim that certainly you're saying human behaviour,
yeah, has halted evolution. Oh, yeah.
I don't think that's controversial.
That's, you know, that's what we've been saying this for for a
while now. It's just, you know, do people
want to hear it? Because it sounds like I'm being
a Luddite and I'm not. I'm saying, you know, it's
wonderful that you can, that youcan do all this stuff.
(11:33):
Like truthfully, you know, looking at Saint Paul's, for
example, takes my breath away. I cycle past it every single
time I cycle past it, I have to stop myself from stopping
because it takes my breath away.And yet there's, there's, it's a
trade off and it's, I would argue it's the biggest trade off
we've ever made. But why wouldn't we evolve to
get better? You know, human behaviour can
(11:54):
preserve us as we are, Yeah, butwhy?
Why wouldn't we actually get better at living on this planet
that we now live on? Because the.
Two things. One is the brutal reality of
natural selection is that if something is not advantageous,
you would not be having childrenor you'd be having less
children. That's just not our world today.
(12:15):
Our world today. You can, you can be brilliant by
every standard and choose not tohave children and that be, you
know, absolutely normal. You can have some kind of a like
any kind of disease that normally would have.
We laugh in our family that quite a few of us have got
allergies and one of us has an allergy to dust.
And we just laugh at that particular sibling because we're
(12:37):
like, Can you imagine how you would have handled the caves?
Bless you. It's a good job that the
Shamahis were like, you know, hanging around right now and not
back then basically. And the flip side is that
technology is evolving way too fast.
So I have a condition. People see me sometimes typing
with a stylus on my on my smartphone.
(12:58):
And I am sure that a lot of people think I'm a hipster, and
I am. But I do it because this motion,
which is where you move your thumb to swipe is something I
can no longer do on my right hand because I overused my phone
10 years ago, answering emails, being a workaholic, etcetera,
etcetera. And I gave myself repetitive
(13:20):
strain injury, which they used to call BlackBerry syndrome, but
they actually called it BlackBerry syndrome because in
the early days of technology, the BlackBerry isn't even around
anymore. So I have a condition.
It's but I have a condition because of technology that the
ancestor there, there was no, noearly homo sapien was sitting in
a cave needing to do that motionto make a stone tool, to create
(13:40):
art, to do anything. I need to do it for my phone
today. Ironically, the name given to my
syndrome colloquially, it is obsolete because that technology
is now also obsolete. Do you see what we're dealing
with? I don't know what to do with
half of this because I'm just, you know, it's it's such an
existential. Yeah, it is an existential
(14:01):
dilemma. I think it's in one way, I try
to argue that it's wonderful because it gives me context for
things. We have, for example, a problem
with procrastination and negativity bias and we see it
playing out, for example, in social media.
And for those who don't know about negativity bias, that's
the study upon study has shown that we remember and have a
(14:23):
stronger reaction to negative things over positive things.
So if I was to lose $50.00, in fact, this is an experiment, I
have a stronger reaction to it than if I was to find $50.
And you think, right, so, so just we're screwed, right?
We've got except if you understand the evolutionary
context of it, because Once Upona time it was more helpful for
(14:44):
me to remember the thing that would kill me.
I don't know the mushrooms on the left of The Cave that are
going to kill me than the lovelygrapes on the right of The Cave
that are just nice to eat. That information.
The mushrooms that are going to kill me, that's the information
I have to have a stronger reaction to because I might die
if I don't remember that. So it's, you know, it's like we
survived to, we didn't survive to thrive.
(15:05):
We just survived to survive, basically.
Now, I, I mentioned in the introthat your own origin story is,
is is is as gripping. And the truth is, you were
brought up not to believe. Yeah, most of what you've yeah
said. Yeah.
So, So what was your childhood? I mean, you, you were, you were
brought up as a creationist. Effect Yeah.
(15:27):
So this was a community, a Muslim community that was highly
conservative and at the time, and I really do want to point
out the community has moved on since then, but at the time
there was no space for evolution.
Everybody was a creationist. But it wasn't just that, it was
that I was, I was a missionary. I decided to become a missionary
(15:50):
at the age of 13 or something ridiculous.
I guess I have a certain personality type.
It's been incredibly freeing. But if I'm to be honest,
uncomfortable, Krishna, to talk about this in the last few days
because it's a huge part of my life, my story.
All my friends know about it. I make sense to them because of
(16:11):
that. And yet it's something I kind of
have very much kept mostly underwraps.
But I was a missionary, and one of the things that I had
identified as an incredibly young missionary was that we had
a real problem with our responseto evolution.
If you walked into almost any Muslim bookshop at the time, the
(16:33):
book shops were filled with books by a particular author
called Harun Yahya, who is now in prison and has been exposed
as a cult leader, but at the time was the Muslim answer to
human evolution. And I'm really glad that the
community has moved on since then.
And it's a community now that isvery pluralistic.
(16:54):
So many people are very, very, very chill with evolution.
But that just wasn't the case even 13 years ago.
And so I decided as a very, veryyoung person with the arrogance,
I think to some extent of youth,I'm kind of smiling because I
realized how embarrassing this is in some ways to say that I
thought I was going to go to university to study evolution so
(17:15):
that I could destroy it, becauseI thought we were either being
lied to or that something else was going on.
So. What did you actually believe?
I, I believed in a very, very I I just would not comprehend the
idea of any evolution, actually,not just humans, but the
(17:39):
evolution of any kind. So God created everything.
Yes, but created everything in its final form 'cause there are
today, for example, you'll find a lot of.
Plenty of religion that's compatible with.
Exactly, exactly. And.
And yeah, I mean. You were very literal about it.
Yes. And to be fair, the community at
the time, that was that was the orthodoxy when you talk about
(18:01):
the. Community, I mean, do do you
mean, I mean, was it your parents who brought you up this
way or was it everyone around you?
Or everyone around me. And I I am sure that there were
some people that were probably chill with evolution, they just
weren't saying it publicly. Certainly not in the UK and
certainly in the missionary world.
(18:22):
Yeah, we weren't going to. We weren't going to mess with
that. Were you just not questioning of
it at that time? I, I mean, I was questioned, I,
but I was, I understood that I had the absolute truth and my
interpretation was absolutely correct.
And the interpretation that my community and my missionary
crowd all had was absolutely thetruth.
And therefore I, why wouldn't I?I think this is the thing that
(18:47):
people don't often understand isa lot of the time it in whatever
your tribe is, if you really believe in something, you really
believe it. Like you, you assume that the
scientists are either lying or the, or they're just wrong
somehow. And that's what I thought.
And so. So when you talk about your
community, yeah, I mean, 'cause obviously there are lots of
Muslim community. It's not, it's not a single
(19:08):
entry. So what do you mean?
Do you mean 'cause you're Yemeniin origin?
Yes. I mean is, is that significant
in this? Or no so so if you if you look
what? Was your community.
So my community, I would say wasa broad based, very conservative
Muslim community that was kind of pan Arab, I would say.
But then in the missionary world, it was much, much
(19:33):
broader. So a lot of Pakistanis in that
world, it was basically missionaries, a more
conservative interpretation of the faith.
And also the thing obviously, well, maybe it's not obvious,
but if you're a missionary or aswe say in Arabic, daiya or
you're doing dawa, by and large,you tend to take the most
conservative interpretation for everything.
It's just the way it is. But.
(19:53):
I'm quite I'm really interested in how you came to be like this.
You know, Do you, do you now think I was brainwashed or I was
raised this way or I think you know, because you're, you're as
questioning scientist, you're a professional skeptic.
Yeah. But as, as a teenager, yeah, you
were a religious what? Missionary, Missionary.
(20:16):
Zealots, you know, I mean, what's?
I mean, yeah, those were massive.
Personality change in in in overthe over the period of time.
Yeah, I mean, obviously still got big personality.
Jeez, I think that is the nature, though, Christian of, of
(20:36):
tribalism. You agree with your tribe and
you pretty much accept by and large the opinions of your
tribe. And the reason there were so
many incidents which were very telling to me because I
obviously turned up to university and there were one or
two people there who were also from my community.
(20:58):
They weren't missionaries, but they were from my community.
And I remember looking at one ofthem who was had to take an
evolution class. So I turned up to university
taking every single evolution class I could.
That was, I was on a mission. Yeah, I was there.
Whereas others were at University College London.
They're not going to let you. It's historically UCL was, you
(21:21):
know, the godless place on GowerStreet.
There have a huge genetic evolutionary kind of tradition.
The Darwin building is literallywhere Darwin lived, etcetera,
etcetera. And they they're not going to
teach you a lot of their biological subjects without
forcing you to take a number of evolution classes.
And I looked at one of them and I said, OK, so I thought I found
(21:42):
my sister in like, you know, brainstorming.
And I was like, great. So I'm thinking there's a
weakness here and there's potential weakness here.
What what are you thinking? And she, she was panicked.
And she was like, I don't want to think about this.
I have to take this class to pass and to get this, you know,
to get through the I do not wantto think about this.
And I was like, for me, looking back now, I see what that was.
(22:07):
That was you fought in line withyour tribe and you don't want to
question something because of the time that was actually
questioning your faith. It wasn't questioning.
It's not like there was the alternative that there is today.
It wasn't like there was a bunchof today there are actual Muslim
scholars who will vocally support evolution.
That was not happening at the time.
And I think when you live in that world, and I think it's
(22:29):
relevant today because of thingslike climate denial, vaccine
science denial people, those people are not sitting there
lying. They genuinely think that the
science is wrong, either that the scientists are lying to them
(22:49):
or that the science scientists are incredibly biased and are
not being honest about the data.And that's where I was.
I just thought these people are either lying or they're so
brainwashed into disbelief that they are just reading the data
in the way that they want to you.
Thought they were the tribe. I thought they were a tribe and
I thought I was a tribe, but I was part of a tribe, obviously
100%. And then the more I studied it,
(23:12):
the more yeah, the more obviously, yeah, it was awful
because I was like. I'm just about a gradual
process. Or was it was gradual was.
There a moment where you thoughtI've got to actually.
It was change. What I say and think?
It was gradual and it was over many, many years.
I mean, I was so I was so in love with that community.
(23:33):
I wasn't going to leave and evenhave unorthodox opinions easily.
And were you wearing hijab? Yes.
Hijab and also Jabab for a lot of the time, which is the kind
of long close. So.
So when did you take the hijab off?
So it was basically I was studying, studying.
(23:54):
The first thing was that very quickly I realized that
scientists weren't lying to me. Very quickly I was like, these
guys really believe so. So then I was like, all right,
there's the bias that's going onhere.
And then it was trying to look into every bit of evidence that
that could possibly be used to support either either narrative.
And obviously, you know, it got to the point where it's like
(24:16):
that, that Darwin, I don't know if I'm allowed to swear, but and
it just got to the point where Iwas like, you, just you, you're
going to have to accept. And it was it was a moment
actually even just talk. I even just talking about it
(24:36):
like kills me. It was a moment actually in the
shower where I really had had that kind of, you know, that
conversation with myself, because I've been having like
elements of the conversation with myself for a really, really
long time. And there was this moment in the
shower where I was like, and I can't, I'm, I'm sure it's in a
diary somewhere, but it's something along the lines of you
(24:59):
need to grow a pair and you needto accept that you believe in
evolution. And in, in that moment, like I
like, I fell to the floor, like I just, I cried my eyes out.
And it was because in I just knew that there was no way I
(25:21):
could continue to exist in that missionary world, a world that I
loved, that I had no problems with.
And I was like, right, what's this going to mean?
First of all, my ex-husband and I were having problems.
But what it meant was there was no way in hell I could go back
to that marriage. It meant that I had no idea what
(25:42):
was going to happen with my family.
Thankfully, my siblings are the most incredible people in the
world, and they decided to continue kind of holding me
tight. And the third thing is realizing
that I had to leave. And in in realizing I had to
leave, I can't tell you how terrifying that was because that
was everybody I knew. That was a paradigm shift on
(26:04):
that scale. I mean, I'm struggling to tell
you this right now. And this is how many years has
it been? I'm, I'm, you know, that I was
27 when that happened. I'm 41 now and I still can't
talk about it without like really.
And, and it was just like, I'm going to have to start all over
(26:26):
again. I'm going to have to say goodbye
to everyone. And it had to be extreme.
It had to be, I had to, I had tosay goodbye to everyone because
without a goodbye, which is the really weird bit because I knew
the missionary training, they were just going to try and drag
me back. There was no, there was one or
two people that I maintained some kind of contact with from
(26:47):
that world friends. And when I broke the news to one
of them, she just looked at me and went, you're the one that
got us into all this and you're just going.
And I was. Like did you feel as a
missionary then working for Charles Darwin, that you then
had to go and tell them, look, this is all rubbish?
No, the reason I decided not to do that and I have had quite
(27:08):
clearly 0 interest in pushing that kind of thinking with our
individuals of any kind is that I had no intention of putting
anybody through what I went through.
I was like, you believe what youwant to believe.
My hope was that the community would evolve to the point where
(27:31):
it didn't feel like a choice. And that is exactly what's
happened. I've actually had a number of
people in the last week and a half, Many, many people actually
message saying like, is Islam compatible with evolution or
telling me that they think it isor telling me that they think it
isn't and they're struggling or what have you.
And my attitude has been I'm, I'm my, those days are over.
(27:55):
My missionary days are over. I'm not here to tell you exactly
what to believe. I think evolution is completely
correct. But your relationship with
science and faith and your reading of the Quran is up to
you. And here's the, and what I will
actually do, which is kind of very UN missionary like of me.
I will present them with the arguments that I know Muslim
(28:17):
theologians today are making to support a literal interpretation
of the Quran and marrying it up with evolution.
Now, obviously, if you're like me and you don't believe in
illiterate interpretation of Godand you, you're, you're fine,
right? It's, it's metaphorical.
It's this, it's not the other. But if you believe in illiterate
interpretation like many Muslimsdo, I want to point out to them,
you don't have to take the path I took.
(28:38):
You can, because what I did was heartbreaking and I don't want
anyone to do it if they don't want to and.
And did it make you reject everything about religion so
you're now an atheist? No, no, no, no.
So I, and I think that's become a, a thing that I want to scream
really loudly actually, that science cannot be a playground
(28:58):
just for left wing atheists. I myself, I'm a non practicing
Muslim. It just, it basically means that
I don't take the Quran literally.
I I, you know, I I I but. You believe in God?
Yeah, believe in a creator. Yeah, it's not.
But it's not like I have to thenbelieve in every single.
I have many people in, in my world, for example, who are
(29:20):
incredibly comfortable with their interpretations of things,
and they're just not very literal interpretations.
I don't want people to feel likeit should be this choice.
But part of the reason I'm talking about it now is that I'm
seeing a polarization of sciencethat scares the hell out of me.
And so I'm I, I think it feels even more relevant today, but.
(29:42):
What is that polarization? There is a real crisis, I would
say, I would personally say thatI completely agree that we live
in the post truth era vaccine science, climate science is, is
is massively contested. There was a real crisis of, of
trust in science. What's the OG theory that people
didn't like and they still don'tlike and that they still don't
(30:04):
like? It's it's evolution.
I happen to be able to speak to that quite extensively.
And my opinion is, and I say this not just to somebody who's
been through this, but it's my opinion as a
paleoanthropologist, as an evolution biologist, your
opinions are the opinions of your tribe and that that has
been selected for over, you know, hundreds of thousands of
(30:26):
years. And it has been to great
advantage historically and fundamentally.
You, you choose the opinions of your tribe, You choose the
opinions of the people that you love.
You don't often cross over the aisle.
And if we present science like it is in any way a tribal issue,
(30:48):
we are asking people to choose between the people that they
love and the paradigm that they exist in and science.
And that is not going to end well for our scientists.
Like it's just not because most people will choose the people
that they love. I didn't the question.
I was in too deep. I was years into studying this.
(31:08):
Subject So So what you're talking about in terms of
current culture wars, if you like, you know, people who are
growing up in vaccine sceptic communities or you know, people
who are just generally challenging the establishment
and the status quo, which is sort of a huge trend at the
moment and growing in power. And also people that are on the
(31:29):
right. I, I say as well also developed
people, highly religious people.Depending on the area of
science, It's hard to find people that will openly say that
they're very religious in any ofany part of evolutionary
biology. I know that there are some
they're hiding in plain sight. They don't feel feel
particularly comfortable talkingabout it because they're bluntly
(31:52):
ridiculed often or, you know, eyebrows are raised.
You see, even in medicine, you know people, people are
surprised by it, but you're. Talking about COVID as an
example, where but where the thelab leak theory was sort of Pooh
poohed at first by science that was and now seems to be widely
accepted. That was so quickly polarized,
(32:12):
politically polarized. So what I have seen personally,
and this is my interpretation ofthings, is in the last few
years, science has always been kind of left-leaning, the
playground for atheists, certainly in the evolutionary
science, you know, by and large,that's kind of, but it has got
to a point which feels too tribal in my opinion.
(32:36):
So you had, for example, Jordan Peterson's very short kind of
chair in 2019, rescinded at Cambridge, makes me feel quite
uncomfortable. It's not that I like Jordan
Peterson, find his opinions to be yeah, uncomfortable,
etcetera, etcetera. But if you are on the right or
(32:58):
you support some of his opinionsand you see that you see right.
Well, hold on, how many right wing scientists can I count if
if the data point is is if thereare only like 3 data points and
I know that one of them has justhad their chair cancelled.
It looks like science is not because it's.
Not about left or right because,you know, obviously Elon Musk is
(33:18):
going through the same thing with the Royal Society where
there are lots of scientists whoare part of the Royal Society
want them expelled. Now it's not about left or right
or is that about people who are,you know, the, the, the reason
they are going for him, many of them is like he is, he is part
of something that is damaging science.
I am trying to avoid. Because of the cuts to science.
(33:39):
Yeah, So I so the Elon Musk thing I think comes out of my
argument slightly because he wasin the administration and was
responsible for staff. Jordan Peterson wasn't the
people that were supporting the lab leak theory in the early
days when they were being decried as racists, that they
weren't part of the administration like they were.
They were not in political power.
(34:00):
They were scientists, some of whom were right leaning.
Sure. I'm not even arguing, by the
way, that some on the right weren't utilizing this for
political gain. But what I am saying is, and it
is so uncomfortable to be for for some of my tribe to hear
this, we have some culpability on the left because what I saw
with the lab leak theory, that'sa really good example, is that
(34:24):
kind of throwing around of, oh, this is a racist ideology, et
cetera, et cetera. And what it really took was one
or two really big names who werewilling to step outside of their
tribe and vocally say, and, and I would argue at the time took a
little bit of guts. But for example, Francois
Bellew, Professor Francois Bellew at UCL saying he was open
(34:46):
to the lab leak theory clearly being on the left, that kind of
helps the the energy dissipation.
Is that politics is actually getting in the way of good
science? Yeah, yeah.
But I would argue that while we have done a really good job, I
think of arguing and I for bloody good reason, right, that
the left have a huge amounts of culpability.
(35:08):
You know, I have a masters in biodiversity like climate.
Climate science is, is currentlybeing denied in a way that just
absolutely boggles the mind. But I would say that we are
really, really good at pointing all that out and we are
completely correct. But I think we need to go look
at our own tribe as well for a minute and accept that there is
some culpability and accept as ageneral rule that if we have
(35:31):
somebody on the right who has opinions that we really, really
disagree with, as long as they are not causing physical harm
and as long as they are following the scientific method,
they need to be in the room. And we need to be arguing very
loudly that those people need tobe in the room.
And what I have is that I am a brown woman.
(35:52):
And I, I stopped myself at saying an advantage because
obviously, you know, but in thisparticular instance, I would say
it's an advantage because as a brown woman and as somebody
whose career was basically builton me going into hostile
territories and saying these people deserve science as well.
I've kind of proven to some extent my progressive
credentials. Does that like as in it's much
(36:14):
more difficult for people to come at me when I go and defend
a right wing scientist and and we'll, you know, and we'll turn
around and say things like, I will say things like you look, I
don't necessarily have to like their opinion, but you guys need
to get over it. And this person needs to be in
the room partly for the good of science, because those bias,
their biases are going to be slightly different from my
biases. And and that's really important
(36:34):
just for the health of science. But then there's the wide
existential very over the momentconversation about the health of
science, which is if those people aren't here, what that
means is that the general publiclook at science as if it is not
not of their tribe. And that will reduce faith in
science. But also, and we're seeing this
(36:54):
now, it makes funding cuts so much easier because you can
argue this is we're, we're funding left wing science as
opposed to, no, we're just funding science.
And I, I know some people have got a bit annoyed with me saying
this in, in recent days, but I'll be honest with you, more
people have been messaging me going, yeah, yeah.
(37:14):
Because do you think what's happening in America, which is,
which is huge cuts to science funding, you know, medical
trials being stopped mid flow, whole tranches of research
basically being lopped off because so much government, so,
so much science funding in America actually comes from
central government? Yes.
Is is that a risk here as well? It absolutely is if we continue
(37:35):
going down this road. And that's why I think I will
say to people, we each need to go, we each need to go collect
our tribes. You know, I will be calling out
and I will be trying to rein in when our tribe is is getting a
bit too polarizing, being a bit too aggressive and unwelcoming
(38:01):
to those on the right and to those who are religiously
devout. And, and I would hope that those
on the right are also willing tocall out things like cuts to
science funding or denial of science that's quite robust as
this kind of science that reallyshouldn't be kind of called into
question. We all need to start really
(38:24):
thinking about what's at stake here.
And what's at stake here is science.
And that is terrifying it. We should be really, really
concerned about this. And yet I think we're more
comfortable pointing to the other.
I will say, though, I really do think the majority actually kind
of agree, but a lot of people are scared to say it.
(38:44):
A lot of people that have been messaging me are white men who
are scientists. Is it partly because science has
has often thrived and medical science particularly, I suppose,
has thrived on uncertainty and, you know, giving people the
impression that we know what we're talking about
definitively? And the truth is it's it's not,
(39:07):
it's never that quite that clearcut.
That's a fair criticism. I, I do think that is a fair
criticism. I think it depends on the bit of
science, but I do think we have not always done a very good job.
And and to some extent, this isn't just scientists fault,
this is also government's fault for, you know, you've got to
build up the education system sothat people understand that
(39:28):
science is just an interpretation of a set of data
points at a particular time. And that can change.
And I do think that sadly, most people understand science to be
gospel. And you?
Can't argue with the science. Yeah, well, actually you can.
Yeah, it is a really difficult one.
It is. And I do think, you know, as a,
as a science communicator, maybewe work on that one a little
(39:48):
bit, but at the same time, it, it is, it is a time that is
quite scary right now. I have turned around recently,
though, I was having a chat withsome on the right in science and
we kind of looked at each other and we're like, what did we
(40:10):
think was going to happen? You know, we have, we have been
so loud about bringing down right wing thinking in the
sciences and right wing individuals.
What did we think was going to happen?
Did we really think that half of.
The population who are on the right would continue looking at
(40:31):
it and get science and think, you know, no, we've got to be
really, really careful and have a more nuanced discussion.
I think this moment should be a wake up call.
But I, I can, I definitely know that some people are having a
(40:54):
small wake up. I think some of them though, are
having that wake up call becausetheir funding is being cut and
they're like, oh crap, I've got to play the game.
Just finally, I mean just sort of pull, pull things together a
little bit. I mean, you know, as somebody
who thinks evolution seems to have stopped.
I love how you're really focusedon that.
You're like slightly alarmed by it, not completely stopped, but
(41:16):
I would say it's it's it's trudging along like very, very.
The the we're facing this sort of crunch points in science
where a huge number of people around the world could lose
faith in facts and science. Are you, are you able to
maintain any sense of optimism about human development as a
(41:38):
result of all of this or are you, or are you a sort of a, a
bit of a catastrophize? No, no, no, I OK, so I would say
two things to this. One is studying human evolution.
You cannot help but be impressedwith our species.
I mean, we're a nightmare of a street species at the same time,
don't get me wrong. But time and time again, we are
resilient against all odds. And every single person
(42:01):
listening to this is literally the result of thousands of
people who, against all odds, survived.
I mean, there were seven speciesof human.
Most of them were, let me put itdifferently, we were the
underdog of the group, and yet we're the ones that are left
(42:23):
standing. I have a lot of hope in our
species. But the second reason is my own
story. I think for somebody to be able
to make such a traumatizing shift and find the funny in it,
you know, learning, let me tell you, learning how to exist in a
secular world. Having grown up, I often say,
(42:46):
you know, arranged marriage, by the way, by my imam, my imam
arranged my marriage to Tinder was quite the journey, let me
tell you. And the fact that fine, do you
know what I mean? Like I'm absolutely fine and can
come out the other end preventing ABBC landmark on
human evolution. For me, I'm like, we have the
capacity within us to be resilient, to come up with
(43:11):
ideas, to step outside of our tribe to change, etcetera,
etcetera. But it's difficult.
If you could change the world inany way, how would you change
it? I would ensure that social media
companies could not encourage polarization and tribalism.
(43:36):
I don't know how exactly they would do that.
We'd need some research into it.But if there was one thing I
could do, it was enforcing whatever is being advised to
stop that polarization. LL Shami, thank you very much
indeed. Thank you for having me.
I hope you enjoyed that. If you did then give us a rating
or review and then other people will find the programme.
(43:57):
You can watch all of the Ways toChange the World interviews on
the Channel 4 News YouTube channel.
Until next time, bye bye.
Studying human evolution, you cannot help but be impressed
with our species. I mean, we're a nightmare of
species at the same time, don't get me wrong, But time and time
again we are resilient against all odds.
And every single person listening to this is literally
the result of thousands of people who, against all odds,
(00:22):
survived. I have a lot of hope in our
species. You are a questioning scientist.
You're a professional skeptic. Yeah, But as, as a teenager,
yeah, you were a religious. Missionary, Missionary.
Zealots. So you had a massive personality
change in, in, in over the over the period of time.
I think that is the nature though of tribalism.
(00:43):
You agree with your tribe. Hello and welcome to Ways to
Change the World. I'm Christian Gurimurthy, and
this is the podcast in which we talk to extraordinary people
about the big ideas in their lives and the events that have
helped shape them. My guest today is best known for
exploring our human origins, buther own origin story is a
(01:05):
gripping tale too. Ella Al Shamahi grew up as a
Muslim creationist but was converted to evolutionary
biologist at university and is now a paleoanthropologist
exploring the evolution of Homo sapiens in the BBC series Human.
Ella, Welcome, welcome. Thank you for having.
Me. First of all, what is a
paleoanthropologist? It's somebody who studies deep,
(01:27):
deep time. So I I wouldn't wake up for the
Romans as an archaeologist, but I would wake up for early
civilizations and I'd certainly wake up for early man.
And and, and how much of it is anthropology and projection and
how much of it is science? Don't ask me that.
No. At the top, yeah.
It's like a stab in the heart. Yes.
(01:49):
We have very, very few remains and we build a lot of stories
out of that. Because the thing that always,
you know, grips me with BBC landmark series like Human is
how sure the script is of, of what we did and how we did it
and all the rest of it. And and I wonder how sure you
(02:10):
are. I, I will say look at the script
carefully or hear it carefully. There are a lot of maybe.
There are a lot of perhapses. Sometimes we have a maybe and a
perhaps and a single sentence just to, you know, appease
everyone. I will say though, we actually
now have quite a lot of evidenceto paint a certain picture
(02:31):
because we also have DNA. And I think that has been a
massive, massive game changer. So, so for example, just a
simple one, like did Neanderthals and Homo sapiens
interbreed? Which is really just a fancy way
of saying, did we have sex? This has been like a story.
It's been just debated for the longest time.
As soon as you start getting ancient DNA.
(02:52):
It's game over, you know? You can answer that question.
So I would say ancient DNA has has really, I mean, it's
revolutionized the field withouta doubt.
I mean, there's a reason Swante Papa won a Nobel Prize.
It was a year ago or something, because it was just him invent.
Well, he didn't invent it. He he was able to extract that
DNA was so pivotal to the field.And what human has done is, is
look at all the different types of people, yeah.
(03:15):
Who were, who were on the planet, yeah.
Coexisting, yeah. Which is not something we forced
about a lot. Yeah.
Has it made you question taxonomy, you know, and and make
you think, well, actually we, we've given names for all these
things, but are they really as distinct as all of that given
they were all interbreeding? So it's interesting that you say
(03:37):
types of human, because I would say that there's different
species of human. But you're so right to ask about
the taxonomy thing. Most people at school, this is
slightly technical, but most people at school got taught what
a species is. And the understanding of a
species is, oh, it means that it's basically if two
(03:57):
individuals can have children, but those children are
infertile, that basically means they're two different species.
That is called the biological species concept.
It turns out there are over 20 different species concepts
because it's all to some extent bull, because we are trying to
put a taxonomy and a framework on nature and nature knows no
framework, right? But it is a useful tool to help
(04:21):
decipher because we're clearly different to those other
species. And there were many of them.
And I think in that show, in theshow, 1 of the things that is
just so exciting is that we're able to portray this world of
many. And I think for most people,
they just haven't grasped this concept that this is the only
(04:42):
time in human history that only one species has walked the
earth. This is a bizarre the last
20,000 years is not the norm forfor hundreds of thousands of
years we shared the planet with many other humans, human
species. They were.
They were things like Homo erectus Neanderthals.
And the things we. Learned to draw at school.
(05:02):
If you Yeah. And a lot of time people weren't
even taught this stuff at schooland you know, there's some
species in there that seem fantastical.
I keep talking about the so-called Hobbit, which is
actually called Homo floresiensis, which is this tiny
human who came up to about my, I'd say about my hips.
So about a meter tall, so just over 3 feet.
(05:24):
They had brains the size of chimps and yet they were able to
make fire, make stone tools, stood upright, were humans in
the full sense of the word. But they lived on this one
island in Indonesia with giant marabou stalks that were taller
than me, miniature elephant likemammals called stegadons, giant
rats. There's a reason we call it The
(05:45):
Hobbit and there's a reason why I would argue that that was a
Lord of the Rings esque world, except it was real.
And I, I do feel very strongly that partly it is just a
fantastic story to tell and. And have you come to any
conclusions yourself about why we were the ones who won if you
put in the end? 10 paleoanthropologists in a
(06:07):
room. Everybody would give you a
slightly different answer. Some of them would be wildly
different. I present in the show what I
feel is most accurate and I kindof come down to a few reasons.
And there are reasons that obviously it has to align with
some of our series consultants and what have you, But there is
(06:28):
a joy in being able to present your field and go, you know
what, this is the theory I am going to run with.
And they're often theories that people aren't expecting, right?
So a lot of people have just assumed it's our brain size, but
Neanderthals had similar sized brains to us.
And also if it's just about brain size, I keep saying this,
if it was just about brain size,elephants and whales would be on
(06:48):
this podcast right now. And not like it's like, it's not
just brain size. So one of the things we argue
actually is that friendliness, cooperation is what gave us an
edge as a species. And that shocks people because
they look at us and they go the friendly species really.
And I'm like, yes, actually cooperate.
There is so much evidence to show that we are a hyper highly
(07:11):
cooperative species in a way that no other species has ever
been, and that that gave us thisedge.
And there are theories that state things like language and
our brain kind of being superior.
And I'm saying this in inverted commas isn't actually because
that was being, that's what was being selected for.
That was what, you know, we weredriving towards.
(07:34):
It's that actually we were a highly cooperative species.
And so we ended up with better brains and we ended up with
language just to help us be the social cooperative.
So actually us being smarter is kind of a side effect of us just
being really social, which is kind of wonderful.
And I'm like, why are we not talking about this, especially
in the political climate we're in right now?
Yeah, it feels relevant. It feels relevant that actually
(07:57):
the hyper corporate cooperation is the cornerstone to our
success, in my opinion. Yes, although you, you might
then say that we're, we're regressing in terms of sort of
the dominance human characteristics on display
around the world right now, tribalism, war fights.
Yeah. And that's where it gets
uncomfortable for me because a lot of us in the field would
(08:18):
argue that the world around us today is not the world we've
evolved for. It's just not.
And and we will probably never be evolved for the world that
we're in ever again because we evolved for caves being prime
real estate for a tribe of about100, I don't know, 150 people
where I don't know, 2/3 of them would have basically been your,
(08:40):
your dad's relatives where you knew everybody by name.
We did not evolve for farming cities and certainly the last
400 years where there's just been this absolute technological
overhaul and that comes with problems.
It just does. And that's an existential
conundrum for me because I see it as a trade off, right
(09:03):
Krishnan? Like on the one side,
truthfully, if our ancestors hadn't made that huge, massive
leap, farming cities, etcetera, etcetera, we wouldn't have the
beauty that we sometimes see. I, I don't mean to sound, you
know, but like, you know, art things that are truly the kind
of art that takes your breath away, the kind of creativity
(09:24):
that takes your breath away. Also, we wouldn't have the
capacity to support as many people.
You and I realistically just wouldn't have like, you know,
our ancestors wouldn't have madeit.
But the trade off is that we're not evolved for the world that
we're in. We don't fit here.
Like it, it, it, it doesn't, it is not, it's not a, it's not a
(09:44):
good fit in any way. To the extent that I, I think we
can blame a lot of things that are going wrong on the fact that
we're cave people. We're just stuck here with many
benefits, You know, like truthful, if you held the gun to
my head and we're like, OK, well, you go back to the
Paleolithic and I'll be like, no, no, no, please.
I'm actually quite happy where Iam, but there's so much that
(10:06):
isn't working. And in my opinion, it isn't
working because this isn't the world we've evolved for.
Right. But do you believe as an
evolutionary biologist now that that evolution will have the
answers to? This.
No, because and that this is something that's constantly
moving and changing and. No, I think I agree with other
evolutionary biologists that basically think evolution is now
dwindling to the point of almostnot existing in our species
(10:31):
because we have medicine and science that have just taken
away the things that would normally have cast out people
that, you know, for example, I mean, the most extreme example,
this is uncomfortable. So I'm really sorry about this.
But like infertility, infertility that is the biggest
thing that would normally be selected against like just by
(10:53):
very nature of it now. Well, infertility is something
to be solved with science, whichis a wonderful thing.
Like it's. One Direction is no longer.
Operative, if it's it, it does still exist.
It's very weak. It's very, very weak.
Certainly in the West. It's incredibly incredible.
You know, it's I mean. Because that it's quite, it's a
(11:13):
massive claim that certainly you're saying human behaviour,
yeah, has halted evolution. Oh, yeah.
I don't think that's controversial.
That's, you know, that's what we've been saying this for for a
while now. It's just, you know, do people
want to hear it? Because it sounds like I'm being
a Luddite and I'm not. I'm saying, you know, it's
wonderful that you can, that youcan do all this stuff.
(11:33):
Like truthfully, you know, looking at Saint Paul's, for
example, takes my breath away. I cycle past it every single
time I cycle past it, I have to stop myself from stopping
because it takes my breath away.And yet there's, there's, it's a
trade off and it's, I would argue it's the biggest trade off
we've ever made. But why wouldn't we evolve to
get better? You know, human behaviour can
(11:54):
preserve us as we are, Yeah, butwhy?
Why wouldn't we actually get better at living on this planet
that we now live on? Because the.
Two things. One is the brutal reality of
natural selection is that if something is not advantageous,
you would not be having childrenor you'd be having less
children. That's just not our world today.
(12:15):
Our world today. You can, you can be brilliant by
every standard and choose not tohave children and that be, you
know, absolutely normal. You can have some kind of a like
any kind of disease that normally would have.
We laugh in our family that quite a few of us have got
allergies and one of us has an allergy to dust.
And we just laugh at that particular sibling because we're
(12:37):
like, Can you imagine how you would have handled the caves?
Bless you. It's a good job that the
Shamahis were like, you know, hanging around right now and not
back then basically. And the flip side is that
technology is evolving way too fast.
So I have a condition. People see me sometimes typing
with a stylus on my on my smartphone.
(12:58):
And I am sure that a lot of people think I'm a hipster, and
I am. But I do it because this motion,
which is where you move your thumb to swipe is something I
can no longer do on my right hand because I overused my phone
10 years ago, answering emails, being a workaholic, etcetera,
etcetera. And I gave myself repetitive
(13:20):
strain injury, which they used to call BlackBerry syndrome, but
they actually called it BlackBerry syndrome because in
the early days of technology, the BlackBerry isn't even around
anymore. So I have a condition.
It's but I have a condition because of technology that the
ancestor there, there was no, noearly homo sapien was sitting in
a cave needing to do that motionto make a stone tool, to create
(13:40):
art, to do anything. I need to do it for my phone
today. Ironically, the name given to my
syndrome colloquially, it is obsolete because that technology
is now also obsolete. Do you see what we're dealing
with? I don't know what to do with
half of this because I'm just, you know, it's it's such an
existential. Yeah, it is an existential
(14:01):
dilemma. I think it's in one way, I try
to argue that it's wonderful because it gives me context for
things. We have, for example, a problem
with procrastination and negativity bias and we see it
playing out, for example, in social media.
And for those who don't know about negativity bias, that's
the study upon study has shown that we remember and have a
(14:23):
stronger reaction to negative things over positive things.
So if I was to lose $50.00, in fact, this is an experiment, I
have a stronger reaction to it than if I was to find $50.
And you think, right, so, so just we're screwed, right?
We've got except if you understand the evolutionary
context of it, because Once Upona time it was more helpful for
(14:44):
me to remember the thing that would kill me.
I don't know the mushrooms on the left of The Cave that are
going to kill me than the lovelygrapes on the right of The Cave
that are just nice to eat. That information.
The mushrooms that are going to kill me, that's the information
I have to have a stronger reaction to because I might die
if I don't remember that. So it's, you know, it's like we
survived to, we didn't survive to thrive.
(15:05):
We just survived to survive, basically.
Now, I, I mentioned in the introthat your own origin story is,
is is is as gripping. And the truth is, you were
brought up not to believe. Yeah, most of what you've yeah
said. Yeah.
So, So what was your childhood? I mean, you, you were, you were
brought up as a creationist. Effect Yeah.
(15:27):
So this was a community, a Muslim community that was highly
conservative and at the time, and I really do want to point
out the community has moved on since then, but at the time
there was no space for evolution.
Everybody was a creationist. But it wasn't just that, it was
that I was, I was a missionary. I decided to become a missionary
(15:50):
at the age of 13 or something ridiculous.
I guess I have a certain personality type.
It's been incredibly freeing. But if I'm to be honest,
uncomfortable, Krishna, to talk about this in the last few days
because it's a huge part of my life, my story.
All my friends know about it. I make sense to them because of
(16:11):
that. And yet it's something I kind of
have very much kept mostly underwraps.
But I was a missionary, and one of the things that I had
identified as an incredibly young missionary was that we had
a real problem with our responseto evolution.
If you walked into almost any Muslim bookshop at the time, the
(16:33):
book shops were filled with books by a particular author
called Harun Yahya, who is now in prison and has been exposed
as a cult leader, but at the time was the Muslim answer to
human evolution. And I'm really glad that the
community has moved on since then.
And it's a community now that isvery pluralistic.
(16:54):
So many people are very, very, very chill with evolution.
But that just wasn't the case even 13 years ago.
And so I decided as a very, veryyoung person with the arrogance,
I think to some extent of youth,I'm kind of smiling because I
realized how embarrassing this is in some ways to say that I
thought I was going to go to university to study evolution so
(17:15):
that I could destroy it, becauseI thought we were either being
lied to or that something else was going on.
So. What did you actually believe?
I, I believed in a very, very I I just would not comprehend the
idea of any evolution, actually,not just humans, but the
(17:39):
evolution of any kind. So God created everything.
Yes, but created everything in its final form 'cause there are
today, for example, you'll find a lot of.
Plenty of religion that's compatible with.
Exactly, exactly. And.
And yeah, I mean. You were very literal about it.
Yes. And to be fair, the community at
the time, that was that was the orthodoxy when you talk about
(18:01):
the. Community, I mean, do do you
mean, I mean, was it your parents who brought you up this
way or was it everyone around you?
Or everyone around me. And I I am sure that there were
some people that were probably chill with evolution, they just
weren't saying it publicly. Certainly not in the UK and
certainly in the missionary world.
(18:22):
Yeah, we weren't going to. We weren't going to mess with
that. Were you just not questioning of
it at that time? I, I mean, I was questioned, I,
but I was, I understood that I had the absolute truth and my
interpretation was absolutely correct.
And the interpretation that my community and my missionary
crowd all had was absolutely thetruth.
And therefore I, why wouldn't I?I think this is the thing that
(18:47):
people don't often understand isa lot of the time it in whatever
your tribe is, if you really believe in something, you really
believe it. Like you, you assume that the
scientists are either lying or the, or they're just wrong
somehow. And that's what I thought.
And so. So when you talk about your
community, yeah, I mean, 'cause obviously there are lots of
Muslim community. It's not, it's not a single
(19:08):
entry. So what do you mean?
Do you mean 'cause you're Yemeniin origin?
Yes. I mean is, is that significant
in this? Or no so so if you if you look
what? Was your community.
So my community, I would say wasa broad based, very conservative
Muslim community that was kind of pan Arab, I would say.
But then in the missionary world, it was much, much
(19:33):
broader. So a lot of Pakistanis in that
world, it was basically missionaries, a more
conservative interpretation of the faith.
And also the thing obviously, well, maybe it's not obvious,
but if you're a missionary or aswe say in Arabic, daiya or
you're doing dawa, by and large,you tend to take the most
conservative interpretation for everything.
It's just the way it is. But.
(19:53):
I'm quite I'm really interested in how you came to be like this.
You know, Do you, do you now think I was brainwashed or I was
raised this way or I think you know, because you're, you're as
questioning scientist, you're a professional skeptic.
Yeah. But as, as a teenager, yeah, you
were a religious what? Missionary, Missionary.
(20:16):
Zealots, you know, I mean, what's?
I mean, yeah, those were massive.
Personality change in in in overthe over the period of time.
Yeah, I mean, obviously still got big personality.
Jeez, I think that is the nature, though, Christian of, of
(20:36):
tribalism. You agree with your tribe and
you pretty much accept by and large the opinions of your
tribe. And the reason there were so
many incidents which were very telling to me because I
obviously turned up to university and there were one or
two people there who were also from my community.
(20:58):
They weren't missionaries, but they were from my community.
And I remember looking at one ofthem who was had to take an
evolution class. So I turned up to university
taking every single evolution class I could.
That was, I was on a mission. Yeah, I was there.
Whereas others were at University College London.
They're not going to let you. It's historically UCL was, you
(21:21):
know, the godless place on GowerStreet.
There have a huge genetic evolutionary kind of tradition.
The Darwin building is literallywhere Darwin lived, etcetera,
etcetera. And they they're not going to
teach you a lot of their biological subjects without
forcing you to take a number of evolution classes.
And I looked at one of them and I said, OK, so I thought I found
(21:42):
my sister in like, you know, brainstorming.
And I was like, great. So I'm thinking there's a
weakness here and there's potential weakness here.
What what are you thinking? And she, she was panicked.
And she was like, I don't want to think about this.
I have to take this class to pass and to get this, you know,
to get through the I do not wantto think about this.
And I was like, for me, looking back now, I see what that was.
(22:07):
That was you fought in line withyour tribe and you don't want to
question something because of the time that was actually
questioning your faith. It wasn't questioning.
It's not like there was the alternative that there is today.
It wasn't like there was a bunchof today there are actual Muslim
scholars who will vocally support evolution.
That was not happening at the time.
And I think when you live in that world, and I think it's
(22:29):
relevant today because of thingslike climate denial, vaccine
science denial people, those people are not sitting there
lying. They genuinely think that the
science is wrong, either that the scientists are lying to them
(22:49):
or that the science scientists are incredibly biased and are
not being honest about the data.And that's where I was.
I just thought these people are either lying or they're so
brainwashed into disbelief that they are just reading the data
in the way that they want to you.
Thought they were the tribe. I thought they were a tribe and
I thought I was a tribe, but I was part of a tribe, obviously
100%. And then the more I studied it,
(23:12):
the more yeah, the more obviously, yeah, it was awful
because I was like. I'm just about a gradual
process. Or was it was gradual was.
There a moment where you thoughtI've got to actually.
It was change. What I say and think?
It was gradual and it was over many, many years.
I mean, I was so I was so in love with that community.
(23:33):
I wasn't going to leave and evenhave unorthodox opinions easily.
And were you wearing hijab? Yes.
Hijab and also Jabab for a lot of the time, which is the kind
of long close. So.
So when did you take the hijab off?
So it was basically I was studying, studying.
(23:54):
The first thing was that very quickly I realized that
scientists weren't lying to me. Very quickly I was like, these
guys really believe so. So then I was like, all right,
there's the bias that's going onhere.
And then it was trying to look into every bit of evidence that
that could possibly be used to support either either narrative.
And obviously, you know, it got to the point where it's like
(24:16):
that, that Darwin, I don't know if I'm allowed to swear, but and
it just got to the point where Iwas like, you, just you, you're
going to have to accept. And it was it was a moment
actually even just talk. I even just talking about it
(24:36):
like kills me. It was a moment actually in the
shower where I really had had that kind of, you know, that
conversation with myself, because I've been having like
elements of the conversation with myself for a really, really
long time. And there was this moment in the
shower where I was like, and I can't, I'm, I'm sure it's in a
diary somewhere, but it's something along the lines of you
(24:59):
need to grow a pair and you needto accept that you believe in
evolution. And in, in that moment, like I
like, I fell to the floor, like I just, I cried my eyes out.
And it was because in I just knew that there was no way I
(25:21):
could continue to exist in that missionary world, a world that I
loved, that I had no problems with.
And I was like, right, what's this going to mean?
First of all, my ex-husband and I were having problems.
But what it meant was there was no way in hell I could go back
to that marriage. It meant that I had no idea what
(25:42):
was going to happen with my family.
Thankfully, my siblings are the most incredible people in the
world, and they decided to continue kind of holding me
tight. And the third thing is realizing
that I had to leave. And in in realizing I had to
leave, I can't tell you how terrifying that was because that
was everybody I knew. That was a paradigm shift on
(26:04):
that scale. I mean, I'm struggling to tell
you this right now. And this is how many years has
it been? I'm, I'm, you know, that I was
27 when that happened. I'm 41 now and I still can't
talk about it without like really.
And, and it was just like, I'm going to have to start all over
(26:26):
again. I'm going to have to say goodbye
to everyone. And it had to be extreme.
It had to be, I had to, I had tosay goodbye to everyone because
without a goodbye, which is the really weird bit because I knew
the missionary training, they were just going to try and drag
me back. There was no, there was one or
two people that I maintained some kind of contact with from
(26:47):
that world friends. And when I broke the news to one
of them, she just looked at me and went, you're the one that
got us into all this and you're just going.
And I was. Like did you feel as a
missionary then working for Charles Darwin, that you then
had to go and tell them, look, this is all rubbish?
No, the reason I decided not to do that and I have had quite
(27:08):
clearly 0 interest in pushing that kind of thinking with our
individuals of any kind is that I had no intention of putting
anybody through what I went through.
I was like, you believe what youwant to believe.
My hope was that the community would evolve to the point where
(27:31):
it didn't feel like a choice. And that is exactly what's
happened. I've actually had a number of
people in the last week and a half, Many, many people actually
message saying like, is Islam compatible with evolution or
telling me that they think it isor telling me that they think it
isn't and they're struggling or what have you.
And my attitude has been I'm, I'm my, those days are over.
(27:55):
My missionary days are over. I'm not here to tell you exactly
what to believe. I think evolution is completely
correct. But your relationship with
science and faith and your reading of the Quran is up to
you. And here's the, and what I will
actually do, which is kind of very UN missionary like of me.
I will present them with the arguments that I know Muslim
(28:17):
theologians today are making to support a literal interpretation
of the Quran and marrying it up with evolution.
Now, obviously, if you're like me and you don't believe in
illiterate interpretation of Godand you, you're, you're fine,
right? It's, it's metaphorical.
It's this, it's not the other. But if you believe in illiterate
interpretation like many Muslimsdo, I want to point out to them,
you don't have to take the path I took.
(28:38):
You can, because what I did was heartbreaking and I don't want
anyone to do it if they don't want to and.
And did it make you reject everything about religion so
you're now an atheist? No, no, no, no.
So I, and I think that's become a, a thing that I want to scream
really loudly actually, that science cannot be a playground
(28:58):
just for left wing atheists. I myself, I'm a non practicing
Muslim. It just, it basically means that
I don't take the Quran literally.
I I, you know, I I I but. You believe in God?
Yeah, believe in a creator. Yeah, it's not.
But it's not like I have to thenbelieve in every single.
I have many people in, in my world, for example, who are
(29:20):
incredibly comfortable with their interpretations of things,
and they're just not very literal interpretations.
I don't want people to feel likeit should be this choice.
But part of the reason I'm talking about it now is that I'm
seeing a polarization of sciencethat scares the hell out of me.
And so I'm I, I think it feels even more relevant today, but.
(29:42):
What is that polarization? There is a real crisis, I would
say, I would personally say thatI completely agree that we live
in the post truth era vaccine science, climate science is, is
is massively contested. There was a real crisis of, of
trust in science. What's the OG theory that people
didn't like and they still don'tlike and that they still don't
(30:04):
like? It's it's evolution.
I happen to be able to speak to that quite extensively.
And my opinion is, and I say this not just to somebody who's
been through this, but it's my opinion as a
paleoanthropologist, as an evolution biologist, your
opinions are the opinions of your tribe and that that has
been selected for over, you know, hundreds of thousands of
(30:26):
years. And it has been to great
advantage historically and fundamentally.
You, you choose the opinions of your tribe, You choose the
opinions of the people that you love.
You don't often cross over the aisle.
And if we present science like it is in any way a tribal issue,
(30:48):
we are asking people to choose between the people that they
love and the paradigm that they exist in and science.
And that is not going to end well for our scientists.
Like it's just not because most people will choose the people
that they love. I didn't the question.
I was in too deep. I was years into studying this.
(31:08):
Subject So So what you're talking about in terms of
current culture wars, if you like, you know, people who are
growing up in vaccine sceptic communities or you know, people
who are just generally challenging the establishment
and the status quo, which is sort of a huge trend at the
moment and growing in power. And also people that are on the
(31:29):
right. I, I say as well also developed
people, highly religious people.Depending on the area of
science, It's hard to find people that will openly say that
they're very religious in any ofany part of evolutionary
biology. I know that there are some
they're hiding in plain sight. They don't feel feel
particularly comfortable talkingabout it because they're bluntly
(31:52):
ridiculed often or, you know, eyebrows are raised.
You see, even in medicine, you know people, people are
surprised by it, but you're. Talking about COVID as an
example, where but where the thelab leak theory was sort of Pooh
poohed at first by science that was and now seems to be widely
accepted. That was so quickly polarized,
(32:12):
politically polarized. So what I have seen personally,
and this is my interpretation ofthings, is in the last few
years, science has always been kind of left-leaning, the
playground for atheists, certainly in the evolutionary
science, you know, by and large,that's kind of, but it has got
to a point which feels too tribal in my opinion.
(32:36):
So you had, for example, Jordan Peterson's very short kind of
chair in 2019, rescinded at Cambridge, makes me feel quite
uncomfortable. It's not that I like Jordan
Peterson, find his opinions to be yeah, uncomfortable,
etcetera, etcetera. But if you are on the right or
(32:58):
you support some of his opinionsand you see that you see right.
Well, hold on, how many right wing scientists can I count if
if the data point is is if thereare only like 3 data points and
I know that one of them has justhad their chair cancelled.
It looks like science is not because it's.
Not about left or right because,you know, obviously Elon Musk is
(33:18):
going through the same thing with the Royal Society where
there are lots of scientists whoare part of the Royal Society
want them expelled. Now it's not about left or right
or is that about people who are,you know, the, the, the reason
they are going for him, many of them is like he is, he is part
of something that is damaging science.
I am trying to avoid. Because of the cuts to science.
(33:39):
Yeah, So I so the Elon Musk thing I think comes out of my
argument slightly because he wasin the administration and was
responsible for staff. Jordan Peterson wasn't the
people that were supporting the lab leak theory in the early
days when they were being decried as racists, that they
weren't part of the administration like they were.
They were not in political power.
(34:00):
They were scientists, some of whom were right leaning.
Sure. I'm not even arguing, by the
way, that some on the right weren't utilizing this for
political gain. But what I am saying is, and it
is so uncomfortable to be for for some of my tribe to hear
this, we have some culpability on the left because what I saw
with the lab leak theory, that'sa really good example, is that
(34:24):
kind of throwing around of, oh, this is a racist ideology, et
cetera, et cetera. And what it really took was one
or two really big names who werewilling to step outside of their
tribe and vocally say, and, and I would argue at the time took a
little bit of guts. But for example, Francois
Bellew, Professor Francois Bellew at UCL saying he was open
(34:46):
to the lab leak theory clearly being on the left, that kind of
helps the the energy dissipation.
Is that politics is actually getting in the way of good
science? Yeah, yeah.
But I would argue that while we have done a really good job, I
think of arguing and I for bloody good reason, right, that
the left have a huge amounts of culpability.
(35:08):
You know, I have a masters in biodiversity like climate.
Climate science is, is currentlybeing denied in a way that just
absolutely boggles the mind. But I would say that we are
really, really good at pointing all that out and we are
completely correct. But I think we need to go look
at our own tribe as well for a minute and accept that there is
some culpability and accept as ageneral rule that if we have
(35:31):
somebody on the right who has opinions that we really, really
disagree with, as long as they are not causing physical harm
and as long as they are following the scientific method,
they need to be in the room. And we need to be arguing very
loudly that those people need tobe in the room.
And what I have is that I am a brown woman.
(35:52):
And I, I stopped myself at saying an advantage because
obviously, you know, but in thisparticular instance, I would say
it's an advantage because as a brown woman and as somebody
whose career was basically builton me going into hostile
territories and saying these people deserve science as well.
I've kind of proven to some extent my progressive
credentials. Does that like as in it's much
(36:14):
more difficult for people to come at me when I go and defend
a right wing scientist and and we'll, you know, and we'll turn
around and say things like, I will say things like you look, I
don't necessarily have to like their opinion, but you guys need
to get over it. And this person needs to be in
the room partly for the good of science, because those bias,
their biases are going to be slightly different from my
biases. And and that's really important
(36:34):
just for the health of science. But then there's the wide
existential very over the momentconversation about the health of
science, which is if those people aren't here, what that
means is that the general publiclook at science as if it is not
not of their tribe. And that will reduce faith in
science. But also, and we're seeing this
(36:54):
now, it makes funding cuts so much easier because you can
argue this is we're, we're funding left wing science as
opposed to, no, we're just funding science.
And I, I know some people have got a bit annoyed with me saying
this in, in recent days, but I'll be honest with you, more
people have been messaging me going, yeah, yeah.
(37:14):
Because do you think what's happening in America, which is,
which is huge cuts to science funding, you know, medical
trials being stopped mid flow, whole tranches of research
basically being lopped off because so much government, so,
so much science funding in America actually comes from
central government? Yes.
Is is that a risk here as well? It absolutely is if we continue
(37:35):
going down this road. And that's why I think I will
say to people, we each need to go, we each need to go collect
our tribes. You know, I will be calling out
and I will be trying to rein in when our tribe is is getting a
bit too polarizing, being a bit too aggressive and unwelcoming
(38:01):
to those on the right and to those who are religiously
devout. And, and I would hope that those
on the right are also willing tocall out things like cuts to
science funding or denial of science that's quite robust as
this kind of science that reallyshouldn't be kind of called into
question. We all need to start really
(38:24):
thinking about what's at stake here.
And what's at stake here is science.
And that is terrifying it. We should be really, really
concerned about this. And yet I think we're more
comfortable pointing to the other.
I will say, though, I really do think the majority actually kind
of agree, but a lot of people are scared to say it.
(38:44):
A lot of people that have been messaging me are white men who
are scientists. Is it partly because science has
has often thrived and medical science particularly, I suppose,
has thrived on uncertainty and, you know, giving people the
impression that we know what we're talking about
definitively? And the truth is it's it's not,
(39:07):
it's never that quite that clearcut.
That's a fair criticism. I, I do think that is a fair
criticism. I think it depends on the bit of
science, but I do think we have not always done a very good job.
And and to some extent, this isn't just scientists fault,
this is also government's fault for, you know, you've got to
build up the education system sothat people understand that
(39:28):
science is just an interpretation of a set of data
points at a particular time. And that can change.
And I do think that sadly, most people understand science to be
gospel. And you?
Can't argue with the science. Yeah, well, actually you can.
Yeah, it is a really difficult one.
It is. And I do think, you know, as a,
as a science communicator, maybewe work on that one a little
(39:48):
bit, but at the same time, it, it is, it is a time that is
quite scary right now. I have turned around recently,
though, I was having a chat withsome on the right in science and
we kind of looked at each other and we're like, what did we
(40:10):
think was going to happen? You know, we have, we have been
so loud about bringing down right wing thinking in the
sciences and right wing individuals.
What did we think was going to happen?
Did we really think that half of.
The population who are on the right would continue looking at
(40:31):
it and get science and think, you know, no, we've got to be
really, really careful and have a more nuanced discussion.
I think this moment should be a wake up call.
But I, I can, I definitely know that some people are having a
(40:54):
small wake up. I think some of them though, are
having that wake up call becausetheir funding is being cut and
they're like, oh crap, I've got to play the game.
Just finally, I mean just sort of pull, pull things together a
little bit. I mean, you know, as somebody
who thinks evolution seems to have stopped.
I love how you're really focusedon that.
You're like slightly alarmed by it, not completely stopped, but
(41:16):
I would say it's it's it's trudging along like very, very.
The the we're facing this sort of crunch points in science
where a huge number of people around the world could lose
faith in facts and science. Are you, are you able to
maintain any sense of optimism about human development as a
(41:38):
result of all of this or are you, or are you a sort of a, a
bit of a catastrophize? No, no, no, I OK, so I would say
two things to this. One is studying human evolution.
You cannot help but be impressedwith our species.
I mean, we're a nightmare of a street species at the same time,
don't get me wrong. But time and time again, we are
resilient against all odds. And every single person
(42:01):
listening to this is literally the result of thousands of
people who, against all odds, survived.
I mean, there were seven speciesof human.
Most of them were, let me put itdifferently, we were the
underdog of the group, and yet we're the ones that are left
(42:23):
standing. I have a lot of hope in our
species. But the second reason is my own
story. I think for somebody to be able
to make such a traumatizing shift and find the funny in it,
you know, learning, let me tell you, learning how to exist in a
secular world. Having grown up, I often say,
(42:46):
you know, arranged marriage, by the way, by my imam, my imam
arranged my marriage to Tinder was quite the journey, let me
tell you. And the fact that fine, do you
know what I mean? Like I'm absolutely fine and can
come out the other end preventing ABBC landmark on
human evolution. For me, I'm like, we have the
capacity within us to be resilient, to come up with
(43:11):
ideas, to step outside of our tribe to change, etcetera,
etcetera. But it's difficult.
If you could change the world inany way, how would you change
it? I would ensure that social media
companies could not encourage polarization and tribalism.
(43:36):
I don't know how exactly they would do that.
We'd need some research into it.But if there was one thing I
could do, it was enforcing whatever is being advised to
stop that polarization. LL Shami, thank you very much
indeed. Thank you for having me.
I hope you enjoyed that. If you did then give us a rating
or review and then other people will find the programme.
(43:57):
You can watch all of the Ways toChange the World interviews on
the Channel 4 News YouTube channel.
Until next time, bye bye.
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