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>> john t. scopes waited for the jury to reach its decision. ♪ ♪

♪ waiting on a jury down in tennessee ♪ ♪ they about to lock me up and throw away the key ♪ ♪ oh, yeah ♪ now, you might think i'm some kind of crook ♪ ♪ my only crook is teaching mr. darwin's book ♪ ♪ the jury got a little something to decide ♪ ♪ down here you best be careful of your speech ♪ ♪ 'cause you could get yourself busted just for what you teach ♪ ♪ oh, yeah ♪ and if you think out loud, you will likely find a school board going to put you out on your behind ♪ ♪ so you got a little something to decide ♪ ♪ when i look around i realize it's really not so strange ♪

♪ people like to think a truth is something that can never change ♪ ♪ oh, no ♪ ♪ well, you can have your hopes fits your fears ♪ ♪ you got a little something to decide ♪ ♪ let's go to trial here he said at the trial, he said, you believe in a rock of ages or the age of rock? ♪ now, many times i wondered what this life is all about ♪ ♪ now, should we keep the faith or does it make more sense to doubt ♪ ♪ oh, yeah

♪ the most sacred thing that a man can do is tell the world what he believes is really true ♪ ♪ and i got a little something to decide ♪ ♪ the jury got a little something to decide ♪ ♪ yes, and we have all got a little something to decide ♪ ♪ yes, we do ♪ we certainly do, you know. [applause] >> well, let's -- let's talk about dino and fossil face. i'm dino and fossil face was my

friend steven j. gould and we grew up together in queens. there we are. and if you know steve gould, he didn't change a bit. he died about five, six years ago, you know, very tragic. but he was a great friend to me. and great influence. and we used to go to the american museum of natural history together, bronx zoo. if i could interrupt myself there was a story about the scopes trial and i forgot and i just want to throw that in. 'cause i love it so much. you know, brian died right after the trial. some said after a broken heart because his beliefs were so mersly attacked by darrow. darrow said, i don't think if anything to heaven or hell. after 30 years as a trial

lawyer, i have so many good friend in both places. [laughter] >> and there's a little poem about that that i like to quote, too, from darwin's nemesis, samuel butler, who was a great writer. and he wrote a poem that i thought connected him very well with darwin. it seems nobody had noticed this. it was called "life after death" and what he wrote was this, a sonnet. we shall not argue saying twas was thus or thus. our arguments hold drift. we shall forget who's right, who's wrong. to all will be one to us. we shall not even know that we have met. yet, meet we shall. and part and meet again.

where dead men meet on lips of living men. and now i will segue back into the story of me and steve gould because steve gould was the continuation on that same argument on lips of living men and participated in some of the recent trials, textbook trials and so on. now, when steve and i were kids, we had a couple of interests besides evolution and animals and so on. one of them was -- we had a great interest in the exalted use of language and we were both gilbert and sullivan fans when were little kids and some of the songs i wrote in gilbert was to tickle steve gould. and then we had other heroes besides.

for example, there's steve and a giraffe. joe dimaggio was his hero because of his excellence and gracefulness on the ball field and he was a lifelong yankee fan who had an amazing command of baseball statistics, which was almost as great of his knowledge of evolutionary biology. and he'd throw it in to an essay on biology every now and then and our other big hero was jimmi durante because he was totally mangled english on the other end of the spectrum. but i was asked we had a tribute to gould while he was aleve.

-- alive. he wanted to summarize all feel steve's essays? -- in one gilbert and sullivan song. and i had been away from him for about 25 years. and when we met again, and i said to him -- i wrote him, and i said you've inherited huxley mammal for teaching evolution to a new generation. do you remember me? and he wrote back, blood may be thicker than water but junior high school friends are thicker than anyone. so we met again and now he was a big harvard professor with this great darwinian view of life. ♪

♪ oh, steven j. gould is my name and fossils and shells are my game. canadian shays. -- if darwin is your cup of tea you don't have to look in his book you could learn evolution from me. i could tell you a tale of trial where brian and darrow once tangled, a courtroom so laden with bile the truth got distorted and mangled. fundamentalists shouted defiance. darwinian textbooks must go. the bible contains all the science a biology class needs to know ♪ ♪ i write of baseball statistics and do-do's and man drals watching them bifurcate fractally. i write essays themat cal always grammatical, asteroids and home

runs demagical. if my essays anyone lacks i've got the back issues in stacks. you can get them for me for a nominal fee if you drop me a line or a fax. ♪ ♪ i can find no cosmic mind behind life's eternal mystery. if an ape replayed the tape, he'd see only contingent history. a plan to make a man was not evolution's objective. to believe all the fuss was all about us is a perspective. i write of cranial capacity, owens mendacity, and insanity. how they take them without an apology faked illustrations about embryology. ♪ ♪ there was marshes collecting ♪

♪ [applause] >> well, we're almost to the end of the trail here today. buckaroos. one more thing remains to be done.

and that is that in searching the literature and a knowing that wallace and darwin -- all these people were great evolutionary biologists, i thought it would kind of tickle my friend steve if i told about the greatest unknown evolutionary biologist of all time, mr. james durante. in person. ♪ ♪ wait a minute. wait a minute, stop the music. i want to reminisce. soft, soft, soft. ah, colossal ♪ ♪ let me hear it. ♪

♪ as i go along in life, you know, i do the best i can ♪ ♪ and try whenever possible to help my fellow man ♪ ♪ i showed bing crosby how to sing his bababoo and i taught betty boop, how to bop, bop, bop ♪ ♪ what a note. a promissory note if ever i heard one ♪ ♪ that note was given to me by pavarotti ♪ ♪ i've got a million of them, i tell ya ♪ ♪ when i look back at my career, one achievement that stands out above them all ♪ ♪ so let's celebrate ♪ 'cause i'm feeling great ♪ i'm the guy who found natural selection ♪ ♪ i was brought up to believe in

adam and eve ♪ ♪ but the time was overdue for a correction ♪ ♪ we was all laboring under a misapprehension ♪ ♪ i was with alfred russell wallace in the jungles of malaysia. ♪ folks, i'll tell you how it will happen because it will amaze you ♪ ♪ one day i'm walking through the rain forest with alfred russell wallace ♪ ♪ brushing aside an orangutan or two ♪ ♪ when we see these butterflies ♪ ♪ i said, alfred they're selecting their mates ♪ ♪ it's only natural ♪ he said to me natural selection ♪ ♪ and he handles a note ♪ back in