PALCA: That's interesting, because, you know, there's this question, I mean evolution, if Darwin is correct or runs by an ordered set of rules but has to start some place. And then eventually in the society and technology and all that, so we were kind of stepping way back and looking at the big picture. We actually wanted to track the origin of life to the evolution of single cell up to multiple flavor(ph) features, then intelligence. WRIGHT: Well, I would say that "Spore" the game, was inspired by a little larger view of evolution. Was it this kind of thing, that's kind of thought that was inspiring this game or were you off on a different tack altogether. And Will Wright, I don't know how much you heard, we were just talking with Jim Noonan about the - the evolving - how a human hand evolves from the same set of genes that a chimpanzee has, but obviously the hands in humans are different. And if you'd like to join our conversation, the number is 80, that's 800-989-TALK. Anyway, so now we're talking about this new game. PALCA: So I should've checked, I can make sure you're really at Yale by making sure the weather's the same, but now we'll let you - we'll assume. RICHARD PRUM (Chairman, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Yale University): Thank you. Welcome back to the program, Doctor Prum.ĭr. Wait a minute, weren't we just talking to some - yes, we were just talking to somebody at Yale in New Haven, Connecticut. PALCA: And Richard Prum, he's a professor of Evolutionary Biology and chairman of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale University. WILL WRIGHT (Chief Designer, MAXIS): Oh thank you very much. He joins us on the phone from California. Joining me now to talk about "Spore" and the science behind it are my guests, Will Wright, he's chief designer at MAXIS and creator of Spore. Sounds like a computer game both kids and evolutionary biologists would love, well, we'll find out. Players start out as tiny microbes swimming in the primordial soup, gobbling up whatever floats by, and then one step at a time they crawl onto land, pick up some adaptations, establish civilizations, blast off into space, and write computer games. But this time it's not about urban planning or running the lives of simulated people, the game is called "Spore" and it's inspired by science, particularly evolutionary biology. This month, the creator of those classic computer games "Sim City" and "The Sims" is back with another game. OK, and now we're going to change from the real world of biology toward the sort of a simulated world of biology.
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