I should quite.

You're listening to Radio Lab, the podcast from New York Public Radio, WNYC, and NPR.

Hello, I'm Chad Aboumrod.

And I'm Robert Krelwich, and this is not the regular Radio Lab, no.

No, this is Radio Lab, the podcast, meaning, would you like to explain?

Yes, it's Radio Lab in between our regular season shows, so this is going to be a little

shorter probably than the regular shows and a little less produced, but a lot of fun because

it's birthday time.

I'm Hannah Say, happy birthday, of course, to Charles Darwin, or Chuck Darwin is I sometimes

like that.

Oh, more Charles Darwin birthday celebrity.

And I want, just be quiet and listen to me for just a second.

I want to say that a lot of people, when they think about Charles Darwin, think about a brilliant,

brilliant man who 150 or so years ago woke up some morning and thought,

wow, I have a wonderful deep insight into the nature of how life changes.

Well, it was wonderful and it was deep. It was one of the deepest ever.

Yes, but it wasn't instant.

And that's the first thing we ought to say about Charles Darwin,

is that he did not have an excelsior idea.

He had a notion which gradually formed into an idea which then required an enormous amount

of hard, hard work.

And to begin, I'd like to play you a story I did a number of years ago with David

...