Massimo Pigliucci

It's a pleasure to be here.

Thanks for having me.

I was in Knoxville, Tennessee, the buckle of the Bible belt, as they called it.

I had started my academic career at the University of Tennessee.

I was a biologist at the time, not a philosopher.

And I was being treated very well by the university there.

But at the same time, there were a couple of things that were problematic.

Number one, the local culture was difficult for me to live in.

I was a professor of evolutionary biology.

My students, some of them actually told me that I was probably going to go to hell.

So it's like, you know, that's challenging.

But the more important bit was that I had a daughter from a previous relationship, and she was living on the East Coast in Connecticut.

So I always wanted to move back into that area.

And that is problematic for somebody who is a full professor with tenure because there are very few positions available, especially in the East Coast, because everybody wants to go there.

And typically universities hire junior faculty, not senior professionals.

So that was a problem.

So my father had been hit by multiple types of cancer.

He was a big smoker.

So at that point, my mother, his ex-wife, made a comment.

She said, l'erba cattiva non more mai, which is Italian for the bad weeds never die.