Name: Isaac Asimov on The David Letterman Show, October 21, 1980
Uploaded: 2017-08-21T06:11:53.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Isaac Asimov on The David Letterman Show, October 21, 1980' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2017-08-21. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Isaac Asimov on The David Letterman Show, October 21, 1980' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2017-08-21. Transcript available.

my next guest most recent published work is his two hundred twenty first book I
haven't written that many postcards the book is entitled enjoy still felt an
autobiography welcome please dr. Isaac Asimov
let's just spend a minute here talking about the fact that you've written two
hundred twenty one books so far so far is that a compulsive behavior I enjoy it
you know why not sure but I say to myself here I am a handsome writer why
should I write yeah what kind of schedule do you put in to write that many
books I
get up in the morning sit down and write when I finish writing go back to bed
is
is there one particular work that's a favorite for you out of all of those
publications well yes the one you've got right there is the second volume of my
autobiography that in the first volume you put them together is my favorite
book
because it's my favorite subject tell me a little bit about yourself what what
what
would we need to know about you well once you've said two hundred twenty one
books
that's it what else is there I mean if you sit down and write that you haven't
got time for anything else what are you working on now several things right now
I'm
working on my monthly essay for the magazine of fantasy and science fiction and
when I get done with that I will go back to one of the books I'm in the middle
of
is that your favorite topic area science and science fiction I suppose so
though I
also like to write mysteries and like to write limericks like to write history
books
like to annotate like the Bible Shakespeare various other things
what exactly does that mean when you annotate the Bible oh well you simply you
simply copy down all
the all the verses in the Bible and you make little footnotes and and and say
whatever you please about
about each one if you're if you do it right the annotations are longer than the
thing you're annotating I've got a book coming out called in the beginning in
which I annotate the first
eleven chapters of Genesis if you get the first eleven chapters on Genesis and
maybe 15 pages or so but
the book is about 200 pages long counting my annotations um why do you think
there is now um a real interest in in science and uh like these space movies
Star Wars the Empire Strikes Back close encounters
oh well because the technology of the movie industry has reached the point
where they can put in spectacular special effects and people enjoy watching
those special effects yeah did you enjoy those two movies I enjoyed Star Wars
the Empire Strikes Back in fact I enjoyed the Empire Strikes Back so much that
when they finished it I jumped up my seat and yelled stop the third part
they have done that haven't they they're they're projected like nine and I and
I figure that at the rate they're going they'll do the last few after I'm dead
which doesn't strike me as fair
um you know what I feel uh is in unfair uh at the height of the man space
projects you know that was great because everyone's attention was focused on
that and I wish we had something else like that to shoot for now do you think
we uh backed away from the man space program at the wrong
time no yes absolutely the reason for that was that we had gone into space
primarily to beat the Russians so when we got to the moon we had and so with
true football fashion having scored the the touchdown we went home yeah but the
Russians are keeping right on going and sooner or later they'll do something
spectacular and we'll get back in the race what do you think that that would be
what spectacular thing could we look for
well I suppose if they build a really large space station or they put up their
version of the shuttle and make it work while we're still fussing around with
ours
mm-hmm then all of a sudden Congress will spill pour a lot of money into it and
we'll get going again yeah
um what would be the next logical step after we put a man on the moon and say
we wanted to continue putting men places where would we put our next man
ah well we ought to stay here in the earth moon system for a while and get it
really developed we have to ought to build space stations we ought to build
space settlements get uh some power stations in orbit
build some factories get a mining station on the moon and once we've got a real
space civilization going then we can explore further from a good strong space
base
is that speaking as a science fiction writer or a man who has studied the needs
and uh what space can provide us
no I think that's speaking as a real human being yeah have you ever written
about things and then seen them come true
occasionally yes uh I described a space walk in 1952 and when they did it some
years later it turned out to be exactly the way I described it wasn't very
difficult
I described pocket computers in 1950 got the appearance exactly right I talked
about space stations getting energy down to earth in 1940 and got that almost
right
I put the put it in mercury's orbit instead of moon's orbit to get it closer to
the sun maybe someday we'll do that
mm-hmm I predicted that the opposition to the space race and there was yeah so
uh but these are little things I never tried to predict I just tried to write
stories I would sell so I could pay my way through college
that whole phenomenon with uh phenomenon with computers and digital stuff it
used to be I could pretty well figure out any clock radio not so anymore it's
all advanced to the point where you really have to sit down and read the lousy
book to figure out any clock radio not so anymore
not so anymore it's all advanced to the point where you really have to sit down
and read the lousy book to figure these things out now and uh seems like things
are getting more and more complex for just getting by day to day
well it always happens that way things get more complex to do more then as the
technology advances further it gets simpler again until the next quantum jump
and then it becomes complex again
yeah I remember when radios first came out see you're too young for that when
radios first came out it was next to impossible to tune them
uh now you know you just turn them on I remember when television first came out
you had to have a live-in television repairman
yeah now you just turned it on if anything goes wrong with it it means you buy
a new set yeah
when the uh the radios did come out they were like the size of a of a buick in
some cases and now you can get them just about that big it's uh
unless you want to walk down the street playing at the top of the range then it's
back to the buick yeah that's right
it's a whole different situation here in new york city we have to pause for a
couple of commercials we'll be back
uh talking about among other things his prolific uh work as a writer this
represents 221 books published what uh what kind of hardware do you have in
your home to keep this thing uh moving various typewriters yeah that's about
all you just get up and work and work and work and work and work
you have various typewriters yeah that's about all you just get up and wander
from room to room type a little and then type a little and type a little
no there's just one typewriter and the other three just sit there in case
something happens to the one i can grab one of the other three
is it possible to write more than one book at a time well not simultaneously
but i've got three different books in various stages
that's what i mean do you ever how do you keep everything straight well as long
as it's non-fiction there's no trouble you just or at least for me there's no
trouble
if it were fiction i'd have to work on one book i i don't think i could manage
two fiction books i'd get confused in the plots yeah
uh i want to get back to talking about your feelings about new developments in
certain areas for example
uh in the next five to ten to fifteen years in medicine why it seems to me that
the important
discoveries will be how to uh fiddle around with genes so as to perhaps correct
some of the diseases we that
are congenital uh maybe instead of treating diabetes with insulin we can fix up
a gene so that you make your own
uh maybe perhaps we can get rid of some other conditions like that how would
that be administered do you do you get like an
inoculation at birth or the parents get it or how would that happen well i
suppose that eventually we'll reach the stage
where children as born will have a genetic analysis and that you could then try
to do something like that
graft the necessary genes into the pancreas for instance and hope that they'll
do sufficient work
to prevent the eventual development of the diabetes that's a very risky area to
be uh experimenting with
isn't it yes and presumably they'll do their best with animals before they try
anything on human beings
you could you could alter uh or add to or detract from any characteristic of a
human that way couldn't
you well in theory yes but you know you have to work up the technology to a
high pitch of excellence and
we're just at the beginning of that now yeah uh and what uh what signals the
beginning what have we done
so far well we've been working mostly with bacteria that's how far we are and
we've managed to engineer
bacteria so to speak so that uh particular bacteria can form chemicals that
they themselves naturally
wouldn't make but we insert the genes for it so that we can now have bacteria
making human insulin
uh diabetics now take insulin obtained from domestic slaughtered domestic
animals which is not exactly
like human insulin it does the work but you could you could get allergic to it
uh and now we have
human insulin which we can get from bacteria have i heard correctly about a
synthetic insulin or is
that what you're speaking of well in a sense it's synthetic in that it's
manufactured as a result of human
agency but it's exactly like human insulin and the body can't tell the
difference uh what about uh cancer
research any breakthroughs there well heaven only knows we've been waiting for
one for 30 years at least
maybe 50 and we can never we can never tell when it'll come but it isn't here
yet yeah um what about the
weapons race well now they keep talking about space weapons about using about
using laser beams or ion beams
things like that against satellites and you'll have either killer satellites
doing the job or stations on
earth and uh as long as the satellites are unmanned i suppose it doesn't do any
harm to shoot them down
but uh i figure that the best weapons research is no weapons research yeah you
don't foresee that happening
though i guess huh oh well i imagine that uh i imagine that in 30 years we'll
have a situation in which
there won't be any wars either that or there won't be any us um let's get to
the matter of communications
developments uh we were unable to place a call here to missouri on a fairly
sophisticated piece of
equipment um you see any monumental breakthroughs in the area of communications
well there are monumental
breakthroughs that are underway now in terms of communication satellites and
optical fibers
and i imagine that more and more we'll be using laser beams for communicating
rather than either
electrical currents or radio waves and it will then be possible to have
millions literary millions
of times as many massive messages carried on a on a wire or on a beam as we now
can so that everyone
can possibly have their own television channel the way we all now have our own
telephone numbers
and uh closed circuit television will become the great thing and everything
from education to
research will be done by by way of uh communication communication devices the
book is called enjoy still
felt which is part two of your autobiography correct right part one was in
memory at green it had a
autobiography of isaac asimov 1920 to 1954 with a black border made my wife
very nervous
she hadn't even met me in 1954 she kept saying who's this imposter right dr isaac
asimov thank you
very much doctor for being with us we get a pause for an nbc news update we'll
be right back