WEBVTT

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So I've got something that I'm
slightly embarrassed to admit to.

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At the age of 17,

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as a creationist,

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I decided to go to university
to study evolution

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so that I could destroy it.

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(Laughter)

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I failed.

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I failed so spectacularly
that I'm now an evolutionary biologist.

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(Applause)

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So I'm a paleoanthropologist,
I'm a National Geographic Explorer

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specializing in fossil hunting in caves

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in unstable, hostile
and disputed territories.

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And we all know that
if I was a guy and not a girl,

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that wouldn't be a job description,
that would be a pick-up line.

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(Laughter)

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Now, here's the thing.
I do not have a death wish.

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I'm not an adrenaline junkie.

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I just looked at a map.

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See, frontline exploratory science
does not happen as much

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in politically unstable territories.

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This is a map of all the places
which the British Foreign Office

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have declared contain
red zones, orange zones

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or have raised some kind
of a threat warning about.

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Now I'm going to go out on a limb here
and say that it is a tragedy

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if we're not doing frontline exploratory
science in a huge portion of the planet.

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And so science has a geography problem.

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Also, as a paleoanthropologist,

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guys, this is basically a map
of some of the most important places

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in the human journey.

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There are almost definitely
fascinating fossils to be found here.

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But are we looking for them?

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And so as an undergraduate,
I was repeatedly told

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that humans, be they ourselves,
homo sapiens, or earlier species,

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that we left Africa
via the Sinai of Egypt.

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I'm English, as you can
probably tell from my accent,

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but I am actually of Arab heritage,

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and I always say that I'm
very, very Arab on the outside.

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You know, I can really be passionate.

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Like, "You're amazing! I love you!"

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But on the inside, I'm really English,
so everybody irritates me.

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(Laughter)

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It's true.

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And the thing is,
my family are Arab from Yemen,

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and I knew that that channel,

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Bab-el-Mandeb,

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is not that much of a feat to cross.

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And I kept asking myself
this really simple question:

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if the ancestors to New World monkeys
could somehow cross the Atlantic Ocean,

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why couldn't humans cross
that tiny stretch of water?

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But the thing is, Yemen,

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compared to, let's say, Europe,

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was so understudied

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that it was something akin
to near virgin territory.

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But that, along with its location,
made the sheer potential for discovery

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so exciting,

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and I had so many questions.

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When did we first
start using Bab-el-Mandeb?

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But also, which species of human
besides ourselves made it to Yemen?

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Might we find a species
as yet unknown to science?

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And it turned out, I wasn't the only one
who had noticed Yemen's potential.

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There was actually
a few other academics out there.

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But sadly, due to political instability,
they moved out, and so I moved in.

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And I was looking for caves:

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caves because caves
are the original prime real estate.

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But also because if you're looking
for fossils in that kind of heat,

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your best bet for fossil preservation
is always going to be caves.

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But then, Yemen took
a really sad turn for the worse,

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and just a few days
before I was due to fly out to Yemen,

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the civil war escalated
into a regional conflict,

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the capital's airport was bombed

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and Yemen became a no-fly zone.

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Now, my parents made this decision
before I was born:

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that I would be born British.

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I had nothing to do
with the best decision of my life.

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And now ...

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Now the lucky ones
in my family have escaped,

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and the others, the others
are being been bombed

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and send you WhatsApp messages
that make you detest your very existence.

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This war's been going on for four years.

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It's been going on for over four years,
and it has led to a humanitarian crisis.

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There is a famine there,

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a man-made famine.

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That's a man-made famine,
so not a natural famine,

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an entirely man-made famine
that the UN has warned

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could be the worst famine
the world has seen in a hundred years.

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This war has made it
clear to me more than ever

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that no place, no people
deserve to get left behind.

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And so I was joining these other teams,
and I was forming new collaborations

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in other unstable places.

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But I was desperate
to get back into Yemen,

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because for me, Yemen's really personal.

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And so I kept trying to think
of a project I could do in Yemen

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that would help highlight
what was going on there.

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And every idea I had just kept failing,

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or it was just too high-risk,
because let's be honest,

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most of Yemen is just too dangerous
for a Western team.

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But then I was told that Socotra,
a Yemeni island,

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was safe once you got there.

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In fact, it turned out there was a few
local and international academics

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that were still working there.

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And that got me really excited,

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because look at Socotra's
proximity to Africa.

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And yet we have no idea
when humans arrived on that island.

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But Socotra, for those of you who know it,

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well, let's just say you probably know it
for a completely different reason.

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You probably know it
as the Galapagos of the Indian Ocean,

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because it is one of the most
biodiverse places on this earth.

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But we were also getting information

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that this incredibly delicate
environment and its people

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were under threat

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because they were at the frontline
of both Middle Eastern politics

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and climate change.

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And it slowly dawned on me
that Socotra was my Yemen project.

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And so I wanted to put together
a huge multidisciplinary team.

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We wanted to cross the archipelago
on foot, camel and dhow boat

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to conduct a health check of this place.

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This has only been attempted
once before, and it was in 1999.

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But the thing is, that is not
an easy thing to pull off.

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And so we desperately needed a recce,

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and for those of you who aren't
familiar with British English,

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a recce is like a scouting expedition.

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It's like a reconnaissance.

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And I often say that a really big
expedition without a recce

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is a bit like a first date
without a Facebook stalk.

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(Laughter)

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Like, it's doable, but is it wise?

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(Laughter)

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There's a few too many
knowing laughs in this room.

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Anyway, so then our recce team thankfully
were no strangers to unstable places,

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which, let's be honest,
is kind of important

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because we were trying to get
to a place between Yemen and Somalia,

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And after calling in
what felt like a million favors,

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including to the deputy governor,

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we finally found ourselves on the move,

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albeit on a wooden cement cargo ship

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sailing through pirate waters
in the Indian Ocean

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with this as a toilet.

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(Laughter)

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Can you guys see this?

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You know how everybody has
their worst toilet story?

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Well, I've never swam
with dolphins before.

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I just went straight to pooping on them.

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(Laughter)

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And also, I genuinely discovered
that I am genuinely less stressed

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by pirate waters

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than I am with a cockroach infestation

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that was so intense

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that at one point I went belowdeck,

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and the floor was black and it was moving.

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(Audience moans)

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Yeah, and at night there was
three raised platforms to sleep on,

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but there was only --
let's say there was four team members,

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and the thing is, if you got
a raised platform to sleep on,

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you only had to contend
with a few cockroaches during the night,

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whereas if you got the floor,
good luck to you.

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And so I was the only girl in the team
and the whole ship,

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so I got away without
sleeping on the floor.

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And then, on, like,
the fourth or fifth night,

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Martin Edström looks at me and goes,
"Ella, Ella I really believe in equality."

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(Laughter)

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So we were sailing on that
cement cargo ship for three days,

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and then we slowly started seeing land.

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And after three years of failing,

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I was finally seeing Yemen.

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And there is no feeling on earth
like that start of an expedition.

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It's this moment where
you jump out of a jeep

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or you look up from a boat

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and you know that
there's this possibility,

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it's small but it's still there,

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that you're about to find something

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that could add to or change our knowledge
of who we are and where we come from.

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There is no feeling like it on earth,

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and it's a feeling
that so many scientists have

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but rarely in politically unstable places.

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Because Western scientists
are discouraged or all-out barred

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from working in unstable places.

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But here's the thing:

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scientists specialize in the jungle.

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Scientists work in deep cave systems.

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Scientists attach themselves to rockets
and blow themselves into outer space.

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But apparently,
working in an unstable place

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is deemed too high-risk.

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It is completely arbitrary.

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Who here in this room
wasn't brought up on adventure stories?

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And most of our heroes
were actually scientists and academics.

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Science was about going out
into the unknown.

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It was about truly global exploration,
even if there were risks.

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And so when did it become acceptable
to make it difficult for science to happen

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in unstable places?

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And look, I'm not saying
that all scientists should go off

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and start working in unstable places.

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This isn't some gung-ho call.

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But here's the thing:

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for those who have done the research,
understand security protocol

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and are trained,

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stop stopping those who want to.

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Plus,

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just because one part of a country
is an active war zone

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doesn't mean the whole country is.

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I'm not saying we should go
into active war zones.

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But Iraqi Kurdistan looks
very different from Fallujah.

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And actually, a few months
after I couldn't get into Yemen,

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another team adopted me.

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So Professor Graeme Barker's team
were actually working in Iraqi Kurdistan,

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and they were digging up Shanidar Cave.

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Now, Shanidar Cave a few decades earlier

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had unveiled a Neanderthal
known as Shanidar 1.

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Now, for a BBC/PBS TV series
we actually brought Shanidar 1 to life,

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and I want you guys to meet Ned,
Ned the Neanderthal.

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Now here's the coolest thing about Ned.

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Ned, this guy,

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you're meeting him before his injuries.

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See, it turned out
that Ned was severely disabled.

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He was in fact so disabled that
there is no way he could have survived

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without the help of other Neanderthals.

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And so this was proof that,

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at least for this population
of Neanderthals at this time,

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Neanderthals were like us,

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and they sometimes looked after
those who couldn't look after themselves.

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Ned's an Iraqi Neanderthal.

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So what else are we missing?

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What incredible scientific discoveries

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are we not making
because we're not looking?

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And by the way, these places,
they deserve narratives of hope,

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and science and exploration
can be a part of that.

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In fact, I would argue
that it can tangibly aid development,

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and these discoveries
become a huge source of local pride.

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And that brings me to the second reason
why science has a geography problem.

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See, we don't empower
local academics, do we?

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Like, it's not lost on me

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that in my particular field
of paleoanthropology

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we study human origins,

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but we have so few diverse scientists.

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And the thing is, these places
are full of students and academics

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who are desperate to collaborate,

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and the truth is

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that for them,

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they have fewer security issues than us.

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I think we constantly forget that for them
it's not a hostile environment;

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for them it's home.

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I'm telling you,

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research done in unstable places
with local collaborators

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can lead to incredible discoveries,

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and that is what we are
hoping upon hope to do in Socotra.

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They call Socotra

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the most alien-looking place on earth,

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and myself, Leon McCarron, Martin Edström
and Rhys Thwaites-Jones could see why.

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I mean, look at this place.

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These places, they're not hellholes,
they're not write-offs,

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they're the future frontline
of science and exploration.

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90 percent of the reptiles on this island,

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37 percent of the plant species
exist here and nowhere else on earth,

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and that includes this species
of dragon's blood tree,

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which actually bleeds this red resin.

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And there's something else.

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People on Socotra,
some of them still live in caves,

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and that is really exciting,

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because it means if a cave
is prime real estate this century,

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maybe it was a few thousand years ago.

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But we need the data to prove it,
the fossils, the stone tools,

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and so our scouting team
have teamed up with other scientists,

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anthropologists and storytellers,

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international as well as local,
like Ahmed Alarqbi,

00:15:15.750 --> 00:15:18.934
and we are desperate
to shed a light on this place

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before it's too late.

NOTE Paragraph

00:15:22.667 --> 00:15:26.101
And now, now we just somehow
need to get back

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for that really big expedition,

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because science,

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science has a geography problem.

NOTE Paragraph

00:15:33.625 --> 00:15:35.726
You guys have been
a really lovely audience.

00:15:35.750 --> 00:15:37.018
Thank you.

NOTE Paragraph

00:15:37.042 --> 00:15:40.542
(Applause)