The Infinite Monkey Cage - Christmas Special: The Science of Christmas Behaviour

Episode Date: December 24, 2012

Brian Cox and Robin Ince get into the Christmas spirit as they look at the science of Christmas behaviour with actor and writer Mark Gatiss, geneticist Steve Jones, psychologist Richard Wiseman and emeritus Dean of Guildford Cathedral Victor Stock.

In our new podcast, Nature Answers, rural stories from a changing planet, we are traveling with you to Uganda and Ghana to meet the people on the front lines of climate change. We will share stories of how they are thriving using lessons learned from nature. And good news, it is working. Learn more by listening to Nature Answers wherever you get your podcasts. This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon pull-apart only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey and just five bucks with a small coffee all day long.

Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. This is a download from the BBC. To find out more, visit bbc.co.uk slash radio4. Hello! On my left, there was a wise man who followed a star, which

was a silly thing, as it led him back to exactly where he began, because stars are effectively fixed and only appear to rotate about the pole because the Earth itself is rotating. But nevertheless, by following that star, he had a go in a helicopter and saw some volcanoes. It were brilliant. It's Professor Brian Cox. On my right, Robin Ince,

a man who would be the Ebenezer Scrooge of stand-up comedy, were it not for his refusal to even countenance the existence of the ghost of Christmas yet to come, and thereby be warned of the dangers of appearing on Let's Dance for Comic Relief with Melanie Phillips, Anne Widdicombe and Peter Hitchens. Imagine that. No, don't, don't. Today we're going to take a look at Christmas from an evolutionary perspective,

and not just because, of course, Charles Darwin and Father Christmas have very similar beards. We will be investigating whether science can explain human behaviour at Christmas and whether evolutionary psychology explains anything at all, in fact. However, it's effectively just a branch of philosophy and therefore merely for the amusement of well-trained minds with nothing better to do. As usual, we are joined by our panel of experts. So Steve Jones is a geneticist with a penchant for snails

and also an award-winning author. He has previously rewritten the works of Charles Darwin, and with that out of the way, he's now beginning to rework the... Well, in fact, the words of the Bible, initially looking at the science of Genesis. So it's no more, in the beginning was the word, it's quite near the beginning, but at roughly 10 to the minus 38th of a second, something happened.

But we're not in Charlie Shore. That's the way science works. Victor Stock is the recently retired Dean of Guilford Cathedral. Now, I first met Victor when I was a token scientist on a panel discussing the nature of religion at Guilford Cathedral. So I decided to reciprocate by inviting him to be the token former Dean of Guilford Cathedral on a panel discussing the nature of science. It's a very great privilege to be here.

And we have, of course, worked together at CERN in Geneva. Yes, we did. He blesses the particles before they're released. My contribution to the CERN experience was going round the tunnel underneath Geneva and noticing that part of this elaborate scientific equipment was held together, as I said on a broadcast, with what looked like baking foil.

And you may remember that soon after the whole thing broke down, it was the baking foil. You need to have some sceptical person looking at these things. Richard Wiseman is a psychologist and former cunderer, which, of course, he combined the two and used to be the king of the Freudian card trick, where he would do a brilliant sleight of hand by distracting you, by reminding you

about what your mother might look like if she was naked. Think of your mother naked. Can you think of your mother naked? Was it the king of hearts? It wasn't your unconscious. I win again. And Mark Gatiss is a polymath, or at least a dodecamath, or perhaps an octamath. Generally, he can be referred to as an n-math, where n is an integer. In fact, he could more accurately be referred to as a z-math,

because he's a very complex individual. Ooh! APPLAUSE Mathematicians. By which I mean he has many sides. This year he's presented a documentary film about European horror movies, played Charles I, and been writing a new series of Sherlock. And this is our panel.

APPLAUSE Victor. Yeah. Presumably, before we start, you have an explanation for the origin of christmas so as a reverend for the record can you outline precisely what it is certainly but the origin of christmas begins with the roman feast of saturnalia and it's to do with the dark time of the year and the need for a feast and cheering up time and And in the New Testament, which covers a period from around A.D. 48 to A.D. 98, 99, 100, Christmas comes very late in the document.

The documents start with the death of Jesus and what people believed about his resurrection. And then much later on, people start thinking backwards from that into well what about the beginnings I think it comes third it's first of all death and resurrection then teaching and then much later on as far as we understand it these stories about the origins of Jesus in Luke and Matthew there have no no interest to John, the last Gospel, and no interest to Mark, the first Gospel, and very little interest to St Paul,

the major writer of the New Testament. So, in fact, the New Testament gives us very little stuff about Christmas. There's only a bit in Luke and Matthew. That was very impressive, because we were expecting the answer to be there was a baby and his name was Jesus. That just shows you how naive scientists can be. Steve, Christmas now, certainly in the UK, is the big festival of the year.

What do you think it is? Why do human beings need festivals? I think it's because we're overwhelmingly a social organism. We need to affirm our membership of a shared group, and one way to do that is to display to each other, make the same signs, which makes us and them feel that we belong. As primates, as homo sapiens, a species to which many of us claim to be members, we live in far bigger groups than any other mammal. And many people suggest that actually the origin of religion came from this. Religion, whatever you believe, it didn't matter.

As long as you believed the same thing, this gave you a sense of community, a sense of togetherness, which in the end led to the Christmas Orders. I agree with that entirely. Mark, even without the religious side of the festival, someone who appears to be a workaholic just from your introduction alone, I mean you've worked on so many things, an enforced holiday, is this something you think is required?

It's a very good idea. I love, love, love Christmas. And I don't really mind what it ever was, I just mind what it is now. And I think even the fact that it's actually quite a new invention in terms of how we enjoy it, and Dickens had a huge hand in making it up in that way, it's become something which I think is imprinted into us all. I would say, I actually read the Gospel of Luke at the National last year.

One of several people, we did the whole Bible. And it was really interesting because you just realise you never read it and you never hear it, the whole thing. And it was fascinating but the abiding impression I got was what a strange thing this is.

Because there are lots of very famous quotes and then there are other things which we never seem to hear. There's an amazing bit, you can tell me about this, where they go into the desert and a sort of cloud descends. God speaks to them. And then when it rises up again, all their clothes have been cleaned. Do you know what I mean?

We refer to this as the miracle of the dry cleaning clown. I really don't remember that one from Sunday school. What's that about? And it was a very interesting experience to hear how it went down with the audience, but also, for our own experience, just thinking, a bit like classic FM, you actually only get the famous bits. Well, the interesting thing about that is,

in the Greek, about that cleansing business, they don't know what to say, so they call it like fuller's soap. And that's what you get in the authorised version of the Bible, when people are trying to make the Latin text into something everybody would understand. And in those days, that was the detergent everybody used. So you do a kind of approximation. Oh, I know, it was like detergent. And everybody knew immediately what that meant. It was really spot of approximation. Oh, I know, it was like detergent. And everybody knew immediately

what that meant. It was really spotlessly white. Richard, as a psychologist, as well as many other things, we heard from Steve that festivals seem to be part of a group experience. So we'll explore that a little bit more later on. But can you give us an insight into the psychology of festivals the psychology of Christmas? Well I guess it's a time for coming together and arguing which is important and for me personally I'm a materialist so it simply is about the cost of the presents I'm given by others. That's

how I judge any relationship. It isn't the thought that counts. It's just how much they've spent. Is it differential? So it's the cost, what you spend minus the cost that you're given? I don't give. Entirely positive. It's the nice thing about knowing Christians is that I

can say, well, I was thinking about you, and that's my gift to you, but you need to give me something more tangible. They won't again. They are prepared to forgive me, which is nice. Steve, in your new book, which isn't out yet, so we can mention it. You can't buy it for this Christmas, but next Christmas. Next Christmas. You mentioned that Darwin suggested that biology played a part in the divine, as you put it.

You quote Darwin as saying that as soon as the important faculties of imagination, wonder and curiosity, together with some power of reasoning, can become partially developed, man would naturally crave to understand what was passing around him and would have vaguely speculated on his own existence. In other words, on that view, spirituality is a by-product of evolution. Yes, I mean, the trouble with that... I mean, Darwin was right about almost everything,

and he was also a great cynic in the Greek sense of the word, in that he followed the law of societies, don't trust in words, not only us in verba. The problem with that famous couple of sentences, it's very hard to test, but you can do simply observations on children in particular, which suggests that a desire to believe is almost built in. It's not a coincidence that the Jesuits say, give me a child before he's seven, and he will be mine for life. And there's a famous or notorious experiment called the Princessuits say, give me a child before he's seven, and he will be mine for life. And there's a famous or notorious experiment called the Princess Alice experiment,

which has been done again and again with all kinds of kids all over the world. And what you do, you get this unfortunate child in, and you say there are two boxes, this one on the left and one on the right. One of them contains a reward. And what I want you to do is to point at the one which you think contains the reward,

and then open it. But fortunately, I have summoned up somebody into the room called Princess Alice, who knows the right answer. And she will send you a sign if you make a mistake when you point. And the experimenter has got in his or her hand a little button. So when the child makes points, the wrong one, the experimenter presses the button and the lights flicker or a picture falls off the wall. And with 100% consistency, the child changes its choice. So it believes almost as part of its essence that there is a higher power. And so I think it's that intrinsic curiosity and willingness to believe that makes us human. I would say it's been perverted by religion, but of course I would say that, wouldn't I?

Well, I think I'd agree with you again. Yes. You can't say that. No, I can. No, I can. You'll have your emeritus taken away. No, no, I'm an Anglican. It's all right. It's also the experiments where you bring people into one of two rooms,

and you get them to do an experiment or a task where they have the option of cheating or not. And in one of the rooms you tell them it's haunted, the other one you tell them it's just fine. And what you find is that less people cheat in the haunted room. And so the kind of argument is that God is this... We've created God as a kind of all-seeing thing, entity, person thing, which... Stop me if I get too technical.

I find this awfully helpful. So, anyway, we've created this thing in order to create more honest societies, because you can't police people all the time, so you tell there's a god watching down, everyone becomes a lot more honest, and it's good for everyone. Sleeping policemen. Sleeping policemen. A god as sleeping policemen.

So there's all these kind of different theories washing around I wonder whether this has anything to do with what we mean or you mean by God isn't it to do with fear it's fear of things I'm not sure it is the same thing I think non-religious people often say

it is but I don't think for religious people it is fear though I would say that deep in people all the time is anxiety and fear. So what you've just been describing with a child is nothing to do with God or religion, but it is to do with anxiety and fear. I've come after nearly 45 years as a priest to think that the thing that I see in people every day, at some level or other, is anxiety and fear. And the Christmas message is, just to cheer you up,

fear not, says the angel. Get over it. Steve, it seems that you write about what you call the biology of faith, I suppose the biology of festivals, in a sense. I mean, is the assertion or the understanding that this communal behaviour, which you see also in other animals besides humans, inevitably leads to this kind of, well, for one, religion,

but also, as we're talking about Christmas, just festivals and this kind of, well, for one, religion, but also, as we talked about Christmas, just festivals and this kind of behaviour in general. Yeah, it's very easy to come up with beautiful ideas, but it's very hard to test them. The difficulty with all these social behaviours which seem to favour other people is a fatal error, which Darwin himself really pointed at, which is that if anybody cheats,

like the gentleman at the other end of the table when it comes to giving gifts, then everything falls to bits. If we all behaved like him, we wouldn't have any Christmas. So the notion that we're open to cheaters is what makes this idea that somehow being beautiful and charming and delightful is what makes us what we are. Because we're not charming, we're not delightful, and most of us are not beautiful.

But this is this idea of a reciprocal altruism, isn't it? Well, you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours, but we have a non-scratcher. What do we do about that? Kill him! Kill him! But the idea is... Get him out of the tribe, quickly! Just to clarify...

You don't have a non-scratcher. You have an honest person. And I think, as such, should be prized more. But my question would be, is there any other animal that celebrates Christmas? What about snails? No, what about the turkey? I was going to say snails. No, the turkey.

I mean, if you take a biologist's ruthless look at Christmas, what animal should celebrate the festival? Obviously the turkey, because it's a rare bird in the wild. There are millions of them at Christmas, so clearly it's biologically coded. Mark, mentioning before about the fact you love Christmas. I love Christmas. So what for you is the benefit of Christmas?

What is the joy? I mean, mentioning things like altruism, that seems to be a major part of it, is people who enjoy socialising, enjoy sharing things, people who are very much the kind of, I suppose, the matter to Richard Wiseman's antimatter. Those kind of people. Is that what you gain from it?

What is it that you gain from it? It is. I mean, as Richard says about, you know, the hell of a family Christmas must not be underestimated. We've all been there. I think it's a pressure cooker environment. It's desperately unhealthy. You're trapped in this room with the smell of warm farts

and chipolatas and barely suppressed anger. It's a great album, that. That is good, I shall say. I'm getting it for Christmas. And barely contain fury. And you just keep thinking, I always think, this is just not necessary. You should just do whatever you want to do at Christmas.

Just let it go. Enjoy yourself. But for me, what I love is that I love the darkness of the time of the year, the fact that it actually feels special. It's indefinable, it's magical, you can't put your finger on it, but you know as soon as you get through January 1st, it's gone. And then you've got three months of just the darkness, which is not fun. But up until that time, particularly tonight, Christmas Eve,

the most magical day of the year, and it is, I don't know what it is. It feels like the time to tell ghost stories, it feels like the time to me when the lights of shops and people's houses just have a sort of indefinable magic about them. And I think it is the time, and you shouldn't just do it on one day of the year, that you actually feel like there is something, even if it's just ingrained in us by tradition,

where people are a bit kinder to each other. And you must not try and quantify this. It's nothing to me to do with religion about it. It's just something about the time of the year which feels special, which other holidays and festivals don't have. Well, there is a suggestion that the great festivals in all cultures are associated with darkness. They tend to appear

in the winter months, and indeed you find that in New Zealand, the Maori festival is in the New Zealand winter. Makes perfect sense, and it's that idea of people gathering together with a common need and a desire to share their stories and their experiences and their hope for the new year is very powerful, I think.

And there's a Christmas carol, which I read every year, and it's an amazingly powerful story. When the ghost of Christmas present takes Scrooge around the aisles, something that's rarely done in dramatisations, it always makes my hair stand on end. He takes them out to sea, past a lighthouse, to a ship in the storm, and they're all singing Christmas carols, and then to some miners' cottages,

and they're all singing old songs and stuff like that. And it feels to me like it's tapping into something very beautiful and old, no matter what you believe, Christmas and everything. Can I make a historical point, which I think is quite important? It wasn't until the late 19th century that the Matthew story and the Luke story were used in church at Christmas. In this country, in England, the Christmas story was the philosophy of the opening chapter of St. John. In the beginning was the word and the Word is with God. And for hundreds and

hundreds of years, people went to church on Christmas Day and they heard the prologue to St John's Gospel. They didn't hear the shepherds, the manger, certainly not the kings because that doesn't happen until the 6th of January. What has happened in the 20th century and into the 21st century is that we've majored on the Luke Matthew picture before that we had something deeply philosophical and if you went to church and use the book of common prayer at Christmas you'd have the amazing piece of the letter to the Hebrews which is one of the sublime pieces of literature and has absolutely no story in it at all. And then you'd get St John, which has none of the Christmas content

that we are associating with Christmas at all. So from that, I want to say, Christmas and Easter are about deep things to do with being born and dying. And that's going to happen, and it has happened, and will continue to happen whilst this world exists we're going to be born and we're going to die and these stories i know this is a shock but these stories help us i think at some deep level to deal with and approach these enormously exciting and frightening facts.

So it's not just something that isn't true, it's actually something which is deeply true, whether you're religious or not. I mean, it's no coincidence that the Christmas festival, both here and in the equivalent on June 21st in New Zealand, is on the darkest, the shortest day of the year. And that's death and rebirth. The days get shorter and shorter, and then they're reborn.

And there's clear evidence that in the early days of Middle Eastern agriculture, that was literally so. Every year, a king was elected, had a nice turkey dinner, then they killed him. Yeah, that's right. And he was then reborn with a new king for the next year. It is time to keep our appointment with the Wicker Man. Steve, we've been trying to kind of analyse

some of the behaviour of Christmas and look at some of those ideas. I do just want to get on to the idea of evolutionary psychology, where sometimes we try... Is it possible to be able to read into a lot of human traditions or indeed any human traditions something which we could actually look at scientifically as part of evolution i think so yes i mean uh anything you can measure you can look at scientifically okay um you can measure human happiness you can ask people questions whether they're happy or not you can measure religiosity do you believe that your god is the one true good you can measure it

may not be a very accurate measure. And if you can do that, you can do biology on it. You can do genetics on it. And in fact the extent to which religiosity is inherited is quite high. It's about 40% of the total variation in a population for belief seems to be within

biology. Now that means rather less than many people think. But it's clearly the case that under some circumstances, your DNA makes it much more likely that you'll be a believer than you're not. The obvious case, as so often, is in the gene that we prefer not to talk about in public, which is the Y chromosome. Now, universally, worldwide, it's always been the case that those who are crippled and afflicted by having a Y chromosome, that's all of us on this platform, are less religious and less willing to accept religion than women who don't have a Y chromosome. And it's very hard not to argue there's some kind of biology there. We may not know exactly what it is, but biology is in there somewhere.

There's some very recent stuff, which is really quite startling, which is that people with autism, There's some very recent stuff which is really quite startling, which is that people with autism, people who live in a little universe of their own to a degree, and people with Asperger's syndrome, which has just been removed as a separate criterion, and these are people who are often perfectly functional. They tend to be deeply interested in one thing and very good at numbers and the like.

These are far, far less likely to be religious than anybody else. And once again, we know that these things have quite a strong inherited component. So I think that the religiosity, the religiousness, and the socialness, sociability of people go strongly together. And that's why I think Christianity has taken advantage of Christianity. Victor, what does that mean to you as a Christian, if science is beginning to uncover, I know Steve wasn't saying this, but almost a gene or at least a genetic basis to predispose the individual to believe in a God? that we have to take notice of it as religious people have to take notice all the time of things which are new developments and new understandings what the religious person can't do it's a hiding to nowhere is to resolutely set your face against what you're being told but what you're being told and what's being understood is set against the background of other people's experience and your own.

So I think that's a kind of Weasley, Church of England, you know, answer. But I'm proud to be an Anglican because I think that the only contribution Anglicanism makes to world Christianity is that we are open, sceptical, and liberal. And liberal means generous. Skeptical and liberal And liberal means generous So I don't really find myself Worrying more than I did About more information I just want to know more

The scientist on the end Has been completely implausible And the Reverend Victor Steele I don't know why I'm very confused It's the miracle of Christmas Steve, help We've reached the end of the show. We have actually asked the audience a question as well.

We asked them, what gift to science would you most like to see under your Christmas tree? And we have some of these here. Oh, what a surprise the first one is. It doesn't matter what the question is, we always get this answer. A near-naked Professor Brian Cox. We have asked... Doesn't matter.

What's the latest news you'd like to see in space exploration? A near-naked Brian Cox. Stand up who said that. And then the whole audience stand up. Oh, I thought it said a box of dark energy chocolates. Dorky chocolates. Dark, dark. Dark energy chocolates. They'll expand, won't they, when you eat them?

Is it true that it's still that 90% of the contents of a box of chocolates remains unknown? This is a good one. A Higgs with bows on. Yes. That's very good. Well done, Ed Parker. So, thank you very much

This is a Christmas special We require, much like the kind of To Ronnie's Christmas special, a musical guest Elkie Brooks, I'm afraid, was unavailable As was Leo Sayer Barbara Dixon We've got Barbara Dixon just in case We keep her in a wardrobe for these kind of occasions

But we have a fantastic band that I first saw At the Latitude Festival back in July And they're absolutely brilliant And they've written a song especially for the show. So please welcome to the stage Johnny and the Baptists! APPLAUSE Christmas is a time for giving and receiving So long as reciprocity is something you believe in Wrapping paper looks pretty, but it's a wolf in sheep's clothing If our gifts aren't equal, we end up with a year of self-loathing One year a mixtape's fine, the next it's a holiday on a hang glider

And that way madness lies, I'll end up getting you a large Hadron Collider. We'll split it across four credit cards but the spare them up for let. At least the economy benefits if we all get into debt. And there's nothing to be gained from this annual

Merriment Charade. So it's time for a change. Let's sell short our Christmas stocks Cos in economic terms It's a total northern rock And when you think about it Shouldn't Scrooge have got it right

In survival of the fittest He would have won the fight You cannot fend off predators You can't protect your mate. When you're drunk on brandy butter, you can never procreate. So how have we survived? Should be extinct, don't you see? There's no competitive advantage to generosity.

From dinosaurs to dodo's, every species has its downfall. We don't need an Armageddon Just Merry Christmas one and all And there's nothing to be gained From this annual merriment charade But what chance is there of change? There's no hope in sight Cos against all the odds Christmas carries on in spite

Of every evolutionary, economic and scientific plight So is the only answer The creationists are right Sorry about that. Johnny and the Baptists. Thank you very much to the rest of our panel as well Steve Jones, Victor Stock, Richard Wiseman and Mark Gatiss Have a very happy Christmas We hope to see you again next year

If you've enjoyed this programme you might like to try other Radio 4 podcasts Thank you. slash Radio 4. This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon pull-apart only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey, and just five bucks with a small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. In our new podcast, Nature Answers,

rural stories from a changing planet, we are traveling with you to Uganda and Ghana to meet the people on the front lines of climate change. We will share stories of how they are thriving using lessons learned from nature. And good news, it is working. Learn more by listening to Nature Answers wherever you get your podcasts.