Rethinking the Discovery of DNA
The Michael Shermer Show
Michael Shermer
4.3 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 3 January 2026
⏱️ 82 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Francis Crick is best known as one of the figures behind the discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA, but the familiar story leaves out as much as it explains. Historian of science Matthew Cobb looks closely at how Crick's life actually unfolded, revealing a career shaped less by inevitability than by luck, conflict, false starts, and a series of highly contingent moments.
The double helix itself may have been waiting to be found, but what followed was anything but predetermined. Crick's influence came from asking uncomfortable questions about what the structure of DNA implied for genetics, evolution, and life itself. Along the way, myths hardened around personalities, credit, and rivalries, especially in the case of Rosalind Franklin, whose role has been both misunderstood and oversimplified.
The conversation also traces Crick's later turn away from molecular biology toward the problem that fascinated him from the beginning: consciousness. From visual perception to the search for neural correlates of experience, his ambition was to push back against mystical explanations and insist that even the most elusive aspects of the mind belonged to the material world.
Matthew Cobb is a professor in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Manchester. He is the author of numerous works of science and history. His new book is Crick: A Mind in Motion, a biography of the legendary scientist Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | After Crick's death, Koch and Freed and others were able to show was that in an individual, |
| 0:06.1 | there would be, they could record from a single cell that would respond, say, to Sydney Opera House |
| 0:12.1 | or to a differential equation, or to a picture of Jennifer Aniston, but not a picture of Jennifer |
| 0:17.7 | Anderson with Brad Pitt. |
| 0:19.4 | On the inevitability of discovery in science versus, say, creativity and art, somebody surely |
| 0:24.3 | would have discovered the double helix because that's the reality. |
| 0:27.2 | Absolutely. |
| 0:27.8 | I mean, I asked Jim Watson this about 10 years ago, I asked him what was the most important thing |
| 0:32.8 | that he'd ever done? |
| 0:34.0 | And he immediately shot back, not the double helix, because that was inevitable. What |
| 0:38.7 | people don't realise is they were not supposed to be working on DNA. That was not their topic. |
| 0:44.6 | They were both working in different ways on proteins at Cambridge. And it was only because |
| 0:50.0 | one crick, as his boss, Lawrence Bragg put it, was a kind of chap who liked finishing other people's crosswords. |
| 0:56.7 | So he was always interested in other people's problems. |
| 0:58.9 | And he knew about the DNA issue through Morris Wilkins |
| 1:01.7 | at the University at King's College London. |
| 1:04.1 | And they had a kind of bash at it in 1951, notoriously failed. |
| 1:08.8 | Rosalind Franklin took one look at it and laughed. and Crick had to admit that it was completely wrong. |
| 1:18.0 | All right, everybody. It's time for another episode of the Michael Shermer show. This is Michael Shermer. |
| 1:23.1 | To support our work, go to skeptic.com slash subscribe. |
| 1:27.9 | That's the best way to get the podcast, the magazine, and all the other stuff that we do. |
| 1:31.5 | My guest today is our returning champion, Matthew Cobb. |
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