Professor Kurt Wise of Bryan College puts it somewhere around 6,000. The gap between these two figures is so huge it’s almost impossible to grasp. It’s the same difference as exists between six and four million. Six years ago I moved to New York. Four million years ago I … When I emerge from the museum, the sun is out and the humidity is down to 90 per cent. Without further lightning bolts, I drive to Bryan College, and find my way up to Kurt’s office, off the corridor of dead and ancient things. Kurt is a tall man with brown hair, a moustache, and large wire-rimmed glasses. He is probably in his mid to late thirties, but it is hard to say because he is so boyish. You might almost think the moustache was grown to make him look older. A white T-shirt saying, ‘Ho-Ho, the University of Chicago Is Funnier Than You Think’ is tucked into his corduroy jeans. I tell him I’m writing a book about the Scopes Trial and Dayton, and would like to talk to him about creationism. He ushers me in.
