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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff

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Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow

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Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas,

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Speaker 1: and we are, as usual, podcasting to you from the

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Speaker 1: eleventh floor of a building here in Atlanta, Georgia. Big

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Speaker 1: concrete and glass structure shooting up into the sky, surrounded

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Speaker 1: by mazes of concrete. There's a giant highway just right

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Speaker 1: outside the window that's continually built with a stream of traffic.

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Speaker 1: There's noise, there's some greenery, but it's difficult to argue

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Speaker 1: that this is in any way, shape or form a

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Speaker 1: natural environment. And yet it inhabits a natural environment if

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Speaker 1: you think about it. I know we're way up on

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Speaker 1: the eleventh floor, but all around us there are ghosts,

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Speaker 1: ghosts of chemicals of years past, and we forget that

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Speaker 1: even though we're up here and these rarefied airs of

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Speaker 1: the Buckhead region of Atlanta, um, we are very much

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Speaker 1: tied to the earth below where. Of course we know this,

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Speaker 1: but we take it for granted. Many things existed before us.

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Speaker 1: There are ghosts of fauna and flora all around us. Yes,

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Speaker 1: ghosts in a metaphorical sense though, I would love to

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Speaker 1: see a giant sloth made out of ectoplasm on my

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Speaker 1: train ride to work some morning. But indeed you haven't

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Speaker 1: seen that on Marta, not yet. But it's just a

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Speaker 1: matter of time. Okay, all right, you just wait. But indeed,

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Speaker 1: I mean that when when you start looking at the

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Speaker 1: details and you start looking at the fossil record, you

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Speaker 1: see the shadows, You see these ghosts of the environment

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Speaker 1: that came before the natural environment that came before the

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Speaker 1: rise of man. Yeah. I think one of the best

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Speaker 1: examples of this is actually in Trafalgar Square. That's not

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Speaker 1: to say that you will find hippos and elephants roaming

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Speaker 1: around Trafalgar Square today, which is this incredibly compact area

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Speaker 1: of London. Right. Well, the only time I was there,

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Speaker 1: I couldn't see it because there was a Scissor Sisters

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Speaker 1: concert in Square, right, But any other day you would

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Speaker 1: see the hippos and elephants. But actually, excavation of various

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Speaker 1: sites in London, including Square, found remains from the last

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Speaker 1: ice age of these animals. We're talking about a hundred

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Speaker 1: and ten thousand, twelve thousand years ago. So again here's

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Speaker 1: a good example of this. You know, extremely densely populated

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Speaker 1: area which does have some classical elements of human history

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Speaker 1: woven throughout it, which makes it feel really historical. But

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Speaker 1: when you think about these mega fauna roaming around, you know,

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Speaker 1: a hundred ten thousand years before, you really begin to

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Speaker 1: get this sense that, um, everywhere we are we are

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Speaker 1: surrounded by this deep history. We forget how very rich

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Speaker 1: it is. Yes, and we're talking about about creatures of

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Speaker 1: all sizes, including mega fauna, the the the ultra large creatures,

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Speaker 1: the king sized creatures that have have subsequently vanished from

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Speaker 1: from much of the world. Yeah. In fact, there's more

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Speaker 1: evidence from remains that monkeys and rhinos were also native

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Speaker 1: to Britain during another period about six thousand years ago,

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Speaker 1: with a climate that's similar to the one we have today,

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Speaker 1: which has had some people say well, hey, why don't

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Speaker 1: we bring back monkeys to the UK. And we'll get

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Speaker 1: into that in a bit, but it does bring up

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Speaker 1: this idea of these these ghosts of the past and

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Speaker 1: what they mean to our current ecosystems. Yeah, and the

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Speaker 1: ecosystem is key here because, especially in our urban environment,

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Speaker 1: with our fancy towers and our highways, we we often

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Speaker 1: think of ourselves as detached from the ecosystem. We think

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Speaker 1: of here's the city, and beyond the city, well, that's

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Speaker 1: that's the nature. And if we have some some nature

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Speaker 1: here in the city, you know, and some pocket plants

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Speaker 1: and a little little garden here in a park here,

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Speaker 1: well that's all fine and good, but we don't think

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Speaker 1: of it in term. We don't think of ourselves in

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Speaker 1: terms of being a part of the of the ecology itself. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and a lot of this is because more and more

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Speaker 1: of us are living in urban centers in a way

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Speaker 1: from farmlands, in a way from nature. And we've talked

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Speaker 1: about this before in several podcasts having to do with

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Speaker 1: um just inhabiting cities, which is vastly different even from

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Speaker 1: the eighteen hundreds. So what happens here is that you

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Speaker 1: get yourself a little bit divorced from the reality of

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Speaker 1: nature what's going on out there, and then you also

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Speaker 1: have this sort of storybook reality that was created for you.

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Speaker 1: And John mu Alum, who wrote The Wild Ones, talks

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Speaker 1: about this a lot that we are raised on all

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Speaker 1: these sort of parables that deal with animals and this

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Speaker 1: idea that there's this luxurious amount of animals out there

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Speaker 1: for us to just revel in, when in fact we

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Speaker 1: know that if we want to see an animal, a

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Speaker 1: wild one, particularly one that is exotic, you gotta get

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Speaker 1: to the zoo. Right. And so again this is just

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Speaker 1: kind of underscoring again how very far away we are

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Speaker 1: from from true nature, and it starts to get into

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Speaker 1: this idea of well, if we're that removed from our

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Speaker 1: own ecosystems, then perhaps we're that removed from understanding how

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Speaker 1: we affect them, and that we may even be entering

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Speaker 1: into a period of ecological collapse as a result. And

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Speaker 1: by that we're talking about the just the overall crippling

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Speaker 1: of an ecosystem and a drastic reduction in its ability

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Speaker 1: to support the organisms that are a part of it.

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Speaker 1: And and and force again we hear organisms that are supported

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Speaker 1: as a part of it. We don't exist outside of it,

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Speaker 1: we we exist within it. Uh. And ecological collapse is

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Speaker 1: often a permanent event um with with drastic consequences including

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Speaker 1: mass extinction. Yeah, if you think about it, there's a

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Speaker 1: certain carrying capacity to humans, right, And so we have

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Speaker 1: all this junk with us, we have all this need

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Speaker 1: for resource is we have limited amounts of land, we

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Speaker 1: have global warming going on, and we have a population

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Speaker 1: that is just bursting out of control. And we've talked

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Speaker 1: about this. By twenty fifty, there are some um stats

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Speaker 1: out there that say that we may get to ten

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Speaker 1: million people on Earth. Yeah, which is a bad thing.

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Speaker 1: I read an editorial not too long ago where an

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Speaker 1: individual was saying, well, it's not necessarily a bad thing.

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Speaker 1: We need to start stop thinking about it is a

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Speaker 1: bad thing, because then they were making a case for

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Speaker 1: for a very optimistic case for the education of people

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Speaker 1: and the changing of people, and which is all well

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Speaker 1: and good, but when you're looking at the facts, when

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Speaker 1: you're looking at the sheer numbers, it's very hard to

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Speaker 1: uh to see that as as any kind of a

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Speaker 1: positive outcome for the planet. Yeah, and I think we're

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Speaker 1: so good at kicking the cam further into the future

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Speaker 1: anyway and saying we'll deal with that when we get there, right,

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Speaker 1: and oh, technology that will save the day. But or

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Speaker 1: we're just getting better. You know, we're more enlightened. Enlightenment

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Speaker 1: will save us, even if they are even more of us.

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Speaker 1: But we know that's not necessarily true. When when the

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Speaker 1: road meets the rubber, rubber meets the road, not everybody

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Speaker 1: is acting in a way that would be helpful for

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Speaker 1: the impactor. Glad you mentioned the road again, because the

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Speaker 1: road ends up is a part of this. We have

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Speaker 1: this massive, continuous concrete asphalt thing that is basically like

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Speaker 1: a chain that we've we've used to wrap up the

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Speaker 1: natural environment, cutting across uh, you know, territories of existing animals,

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Speaker 1: carrying up the landscape, allowing humans to to to permeate

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Speaker 1: every every part of the environment. Paved paradise and they

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Speaker 1: put up a parking lot. Well yeah, um, but no,

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Speaker 1: I mean seriously, I mean you think about it in

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Speaker 1: that way, right, just the paving of land. And then

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Speaker 1: also people burn force for agriculture and grazing, and as

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Speaker 1: they replace native vegetation with monoculture crops, that discourages cloud formation,

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Speaker 1: and that alters the relationship to the surface in the atmosphere,

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Speaker 1: which initiates further drying and warming and further species loss.

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Speaker 1: And again here is this sort of invisible I stay

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Speaker 1: invisible because we don't see the chemicals, right, we don't

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Speaker 1: see them interacting all of this stuff going on behind

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Speaker 1: the scenes, And it's hard to get a beat on

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Speaker 1: it for us humans because we'd like to have concrete,

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Speaker 1: nice visual things to illustrate what's happening in our lives,

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Speaker 1: right And so I think that's some of where the

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Speaker 1: climate issues come into play. Because you have one camp

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Speaker 1: that says, dire need, big trouble right now if we

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Speaker 1: don't address this, and we have another camp that says,

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Speaker 1: I don't really see much going on here. Let's get

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Speaker 1: a little bit warmer. So we're going to try to

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Speaker 1: discuss a little bit more of this. And it does

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Speaker 1: all have to do with this ecological collapse. Now, so

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Speaker 1: many of these examples of ecological collapse and the forces

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Speaker 1: at work in the ecological collapse there, it's very much

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Speaker 1: like a spiral. You see one thing that sort of

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Speaker 1: kicks off the movement, and then it just keeps going

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Speaker 1: and going, and it gets more disastrous and more disastrous

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Speaker 1: until hopefully, uh, somebody checks the action and the listeners

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Speaker 1: maybe Remember we did an entire episode about this called

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Speaker 1: Black Blizzards of the dust Bowl. So the dust Bowl

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Speaker 1: occurred in the nineteen thirties here in the United States,

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Speaker 1: but its roots reached back into the late nineteenth century.

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Speaker 1: You had pioneers moving into a semi arid Midwestern Southern

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Speaker 1: Plains region. And what do they do. They wanted to

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Speaker 1: make a living, right, so they were farming. Then World

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Speaker 1: War One hits and farms needed up their production, so

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Speaker 1: they turned to the machines. They brought in plows and

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Speaker 1: other farming equipment. In between nineteen thirty more than five

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Speaker 1: million acres of previously unfarmed land was plowed. So he

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Speaker 1: had record crops in nineteen thirty one. But soon there's

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Speaker 1: too much wheat on the market and there's two little

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Speaker 1: money out there to spend on it, so prices is plummet. Okay,

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Speaker 1: So what they do They expanded their fields in an

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Speaker 1: effort to turn out a profit. They covered the prairie

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Speaker 1: with wheat in place of natural drought resistant grasses, and

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Speaker 1: they left the unused fields bear so and then in

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Speaker 1: the wake of all this plow based farming, the telling

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Speaker 1: of the soil. You have fertile top soil that literally

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Speaker 1: blows away in the wind, and without it, the ground

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Speaker 1: becomes less nurturing and more susceptible to drought. So we

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Speaker 1: see this example where where humans as always have remade

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Speaker 1: their environment, they've remade their world and and then what happens,

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Speaker 1: Drought comes like a vengeance. High temperature set in, it

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Speaker 1: bakes the parched earth, and when the winds blow through,

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Speaker 1: they summon up these great black dust storms. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: those dust storms rereak havoc on people, right. I mean,

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Speaker 1: you all of a sudden are in this really inhospitable

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Speaker 1: terrain and you don't have the resources that you normally

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Speaker 1: would in terms of food. In fact, John Steinbeck explored

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Speaker 1: this in a fictional manner in the Grapes of Wrath,

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Speaker 1: and I think most people are familiar with it, or

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Speaker 1: with the dust bowl um in that sort of fictional account.

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Speaker 1: But this happens all over the world. I believe that

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Speaker 1: Australia has dealt with this right now in Arizona. There

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Speaker 1: has been a huge impact on farming practices and how

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Speaker 1: that has changed the land for the worst. So we

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Speaker 1: see this on and on and on again. And it's

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Speaker 1: a kind of extinction of vegetation of flora that is

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Speaker 1: changing the ecosystems and changing our access to resources. So

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Speaker 1: the other thing, you have our animals here as part

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Speaker 1: of this equation. And I wanted to bring up ancient

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Speaker 1: Egypt because there's a two thousand and fourteen study that's

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Speaker 1: published in the September eight Proceedings of the National Academy

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Speaker 1: of Science of p and A. S and it found

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Speaker 1: that about six thousand years ago there were thirty seven

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Speaker 1: species of large bodied mammals in Egypt, but today there

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Speaker 1: are only eight species. So some of the species that

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Speaker 1: were lost lions, wild dogs, elephants, or x hard a

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Speaker 1: beast in giraffes, so those were roaming around, right, and

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Speaker 1: mega fauna is really important for keeping other species in

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Speaker 1: check um for also spreading seeds and also interacting with

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Speaker 1: the vegetation. So what you're talking about here on the

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Speaker 1: Nile is that there were three major periods of really

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Speaker 1: dry climates that happened over that six thousand years. And

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Speaker 1: what happened is you also, at the same time had

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Speaker 1: human population just increasing quite a bit along the Nile.

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Speaker 1: You have a competition, a competition for space, and this

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Speaker 1: contributed to wiping out species. And of course, you know,

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Speaker 1: a lot of this is based on the fact that

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Speaker 1: we we saw the illustrations of these creatures in the

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Speaker 1: artifacts of the day. Yeah, that's right. They were able

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Speaker 1: to really go back and um and figure out what

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Speaker 1: sort of species existed and what time periods not counting

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Speaker 1: humans with the jackal heads of course no, and current

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Speaker 1: ones too, right. Um, so what we're talking about our

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Speaker 1: keystone species. These are creatures that interact really strongly with

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Speaker 1: the environment and they wield an outsized influence. So an

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Speaker 1: example would be even a beaver, Like you don't necessarily

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Speaker 1: think about them as this big giant um powerful uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, animals. But what they do is they alter

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Speaker 1: the course of streams, they open meadows within forests, they

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Speaker 1: create pollond ecosystems. And then here's another example. Elephants. They

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Speaker 1: graze and they browse, and they act like forest engineers,

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Speaker 1: and they push over trees and they keep vast grasslands

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Speaker 1: like the Serengetti open, and that makes them the keystone species.

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Speaker 1: So Caroline Fraser, who wrote the book Rewilding the World, says, quote,

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Speaker 1: the list of threatened plants and animals re rely on

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Speaker 1: is weird and varied, including amphibians, bears, gymnasperms, uh, cone snails, sharks,

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Speaker 1: and horseshoe crabs. She says, cone snails they have toxins

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Speaker 1: that they are prized in medical research, where they're used

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Speaker 1: in developing pain medication for cancer and AIDS patients. The

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Speaker 1: blood of horseshoe crabs that carries antimicrobial peptides that kill

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Speaker 1: bacteria being tested for treatments in HIV, leukemia, prostate cancer,

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Speaker 1: breast cancer, in rheumatoid arthritis, and these are all things

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Speaker 1: that we depend on, but we don't realize that our

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Speaker 1: actions as humans are decreasing the populations of Yeah, here's

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Speaker 1: a quote from Center for Biological Diversity. They say, quote,

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Speaker 1: although extinction is a natural phenomenon, it occurs as a

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Speaker 1: natural at a natural background rate of about one to

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Speaker 1: five species per years. Scientists estimate we're now losing species

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Speaker 1: at one thousand to ten thousand times the background rate,

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Speaker 1: with literally dozens going extinct every day. It could could

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Speaker 1: be a scary future. Indeed, with as many as thirty

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Speaker 1: to of all species possible heading toward extinction by mid century,

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Speaker 1: and also adding of currently threatened species are at risk

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Speaker 1: from human activities, primarily those driving habitat loss, introduction of

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Speaker 1: exotic species, and global climate change, which leads to the

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Speaker 1: idea of global ecological collapse. And we'll talk about that

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Speaker 1: as well as the frozen zoo and the doomsday seed

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Speaker 1: vault when we get back. All right, we're back, and

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Speaker 1: you know, so many of horror episodes lately seemed to

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Speaker 1: be dwelling on this long term versus short term idea,

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Speaker 1: this idea that we we only live in the short term.

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Speaker 1: And I don't think anything could be more true than

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Speaker 1: this when you talk about UH ecological systems or the

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Speaker 1: future of our planet and the environments UH contained within.

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Speaker 1: So when you start to look at global ecological collapse

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Speaker 1: first glimpse, it does feel a little bit like the

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Speaker 1: sky is falling. The sky is falling. On the other hand,

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Speaker 1: if you take all of the data and you put

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Speaker 1: it together, you see that there is a direction that

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Speaker 1: we are going toward which seems to indicate a global

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Speaker 1: wide collapse of ecosystems if we can't get our stuff together. Indeed,

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Speaker 1: we may be approaching what is called a state shift

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Speaker 1: in Earth's biosphere, which is as scary as it sounds,

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Speaker 1: a planetary a scale, critical ecological transition as a result

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Speaker 1: of human influence. Yeah, there's a two thousand and twelve

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Speaker 1: study called Approaching State Shift and or spiosphere, and it

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Speaker 1: talks about how humans have already converted about of the

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Speaker 1: ice free land surface of the planet for raising crops

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Speaker 1: from livestock and building cities and nice buildings like the

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Speaker 1: when we're in right now. And studies on a smaller

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Speaker 1: scale have suggested that when more than fifty of a

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Speaker 1: natural landscape is lost, the ecological web can collapse. So

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Speaker 1: the idea is, let's step back and look at this

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Speaker 1: from a planetary perspective and see it going on all over.

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Speaker 1: And Dennis Meadows, who is a professor emeritus of systems

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Speaker 1: policy at the University of New Hampshire and he's written

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Speaker 1: extensively on the limits of growth, says collapse will not

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Speaker 1: be driven by a single identifiable cause simultaneously acting in

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Speaker 1: all countries. He says it will come through a self

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Speaker 1: reinforcing complex of issues, including climate change, resource constraints, and

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Speaker 1: socio economic equality. When economies slow down, fewer products are

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Speaker 1: created relative to demand, and when the rich can't get

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Speaker 1: more by producing real wealth, they start to use their

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Speaker 1: power to take from lower segments. Okay, well that's it's

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Speaker 1: definitely sound alarmist, but it does paint a picture of

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Speaker 1: a greater population of people and less resources to go

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Speaker 1: around for everyone. Yeah, and then we're also facing what

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Speaker 1: is called a youth bulge. Um. This is uh, this

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Speaker 1: is basically on one level, it's easy to dismiss this

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Speaker 1: because you you just look at the basic reality that

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Speaker 1: the old wild always distrust the youth. The youth are

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Speaker 1: always filled with all of this passion and this feeling

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Speaker 1: that they can change in the world. And uh, sometimes

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Speaker 1: they can't. Sometimes they have the scary ability to change

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Speaker 1: the world. And uh, and and how do we deal

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Speaker 1: with that? And then what do you do when due

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Speaker 1: to population explosions, you see this sudden swell in the

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Speaker 1: number of youths out there, youth that end up having

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Speaker 1: these very passionate ideas about what they need to do,

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Speaker 1: sometimes militant ideas about what they need to do to

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Speaker 1: change the world. Yeah. And according to Kenneth Wise, of

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Speaker 1: the l A Times, of the something two and a

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Speaker 1: half billion people who will be added to the planet

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Speaker 1: by twenty nine percent are expect to be to be

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Speaker 1: born in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Now, these are

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Speaker 1: some of the poorest, most volatile countries, and we know

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Speaker 1: about eight percent of the world civil conflicts um since

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Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies have occurred in countries with young, fast

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Speaker 1: growing populations. And again, this is the the youth bulge

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Speaker 1: that we're talking about. So the stage is really set, uh,

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Speaker 1: for those who have control and influence to try to

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Speaker 1: maintain that control, influence and influence in that status quo,

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Speaker 1: and then for the poor to turn towards opportunities, whatever

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Speaker 1: opportunities they may have, whether or not that's that's joining

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Speaker 1: a militia, or whether or not that is doing something

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Speaker 1: that's more positive to affect change. And so that's when

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Speaker 1: you begin to look at the global collapse not just

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Speaker 1: as an environmental one, but also an economic one. Yeah. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: the the the economic and ecological ramifications of conflict. I mean,

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Speaker 1: we've discussed in the past. I feel like we did

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Speaker 1: an episode about about sunken dangerous. I think it was

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Speaker 1: when we talked in part about some of the lingering

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Speaker 1: ecological problem stemming from the Second World War, Uh, which

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Speaker 1: you know, again was a it was indeed a massive conflict,

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Speaker 1: was truly a world war. Anywhere you went on the planet, Uh,

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Speaker 1: somebody was wrapped up in this this termoil in one

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Speaker 1: way or another. UM. It just it makes me think

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Speaker 1: about some of our recent episodes about UM infectious disease,

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Speaker 1: because you know, we're looking at the complexity of of

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Speaker 1: the ecosystem, and you can easily tie that into into

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Speaker 1: guy a hypothesis, the idea that that all the life

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Speaker 1: on Earth is essentially one organism, that it's all interconnected,

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Speaker 1: because we we we do see that when we talk

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Speaker 1: look at ecological collapse, we see the dominoes falling over.

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Speaker 1: And when you hurt one thing, when you take one

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Speaker 1: thing out, when you pollute one corner of the earth,

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Speaker 1: there are shock waves and uh, and the results can

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Speaker 1: be catastrophic. And it's it's hard not to see human

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Speaker 1: culture as an illness uh in the organism, in the

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Speaker 1: metal organism of life on Earth. But it's a but

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Speaker 1: it's a nefarious organism. It's it's it's one that is

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Speaker 1: infecting more than just one area. You can't just you

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Speaker 1: can't just treat one tissue or one part of the

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Speaker 1: body because it is it is so ingrained in every

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Speaker 1: part of the creature. Not to keep bringing up the

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Speaker 1: matrix on every episode, but there is one part when

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Speaker 1: the when the alien guy can't remember his name, yes

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Speaker 1: Mr Smith, right, right, remember, and he talks about how

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Speaker 1: humans really have been the cancer on the Earth. And

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Speaker 1: that's the very dark view of it, is that we

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Speaker 1: are affecting all of these negative changes, and in doing

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Speaker 1: it somewhat willy nilly, although I will say it appears

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Speaker 1: that we are trying have a backup plan in place,

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Speaker 1: and I don't just mean people um putting together different plans,

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Speaker 1: which we'll talk about. One of them is real wild

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Speaker 1: ing um. But but taking a very like what would

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Speaker 1: happen tomorrow if there were the apocalypse approach, And what

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Speaker 1: I'm talking about is the doomsday seed vault. Yeah, now,

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Speaker 1: seed seed vaults, um seed refugees are you know, there's

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Speaker 1: nothing new. We've been h We've been doing those as

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Speaker 1: a human culture for quite some time, and there are

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Speaker 1: a number of different ones around the world, but the

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Speaker 1: most famous of these, located on the Norwegian Archipelago, is

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Speaker 1: uh Small bar the small Bard seed Vault out out

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Speaker 1: here in this largely barren Arctic Arctic frigid waste land

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Speaker 1: where polar bears roam uh and you know, and it's

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Speaker 1: not completely unoccupied there. It was a mining place for

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Speaker 1: for some time, but but still it's a very remote

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Speaker 1: setting and it's the perfect setting to have this uh,

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Speaker 1: this vault where they hope to in are in in

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Speaker 1: the process of storing the world eats so that we'll

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Speaker 1: have the seed heritage, not just the the massive seed

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Speaker 1: crops that we have and depend on, but other varieties.

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Speaker 1: Because it gets very, very complicated. It's it's like, you know,

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Speaker 1: when you have one variety of that you're depending on exclusively.

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Speaker 1: It's it's like having a you know, inbreeding that that

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Speaker 1: crop isn't susceptible to harm. And then likewise you have

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Speaker 1: you have types of plants that if they vanished, then

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Speaker 1: we we want the ecological heritage of being able to

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Speaker 1: to study it, to grow it and and heal the earth.

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Speaker 1: Even if you want to get to uh, you know,

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Speaker 1: almost religious about it, Well, that's the day after the apocalypse,

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Speaker 1: you would you would return to this compound here um

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Speaker 1: and then just started cultivating the seeds. I mean that

398
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Speaker 1: is a very simplistic view of it. But if you've

399
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Speaker 1: never seen this before, it's pretty amazing. It's basically like

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Speaker 1: a concrete wedge pounded into a mountain, and it contains

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Speaker 1: the world's crops one point five billion seeds, including everything

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Speaker 1: from California so flowers to ancient Chinese rice. So it's

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Speaker 1: kind of like a backup copy of nature, at least

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00:23:05,920 --> 00:23:09,480
Speaker 1: in seed form, yes, well, a backup copy that you

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00:23:09,480 --> 00:23:13,600
Speaker 1: would have to put some considerable work in um to

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00:23:13,880 --> 00:23:17,560
Speaker 1: to to implement. It's a it's not a there's no

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Speaker 1: push push the button and repopulate the earth mechanism at

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Speaker 1: the small bard. But it is contains the algorithms it does.

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Speaker 1: It contains it contains the essentially the seed heritage of

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Speaker 1: the world, in which if you think about it, like

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Speaker 1: we have um crop extinction all the time, and this

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Speaker 1: happens usually because of the mono agriculture practices that we

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Speaker 1: have in place. So it's it's not weird that we

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Speaker 1: would lose some crops, but some of it has been exascerbated,

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Speaker 1: has been made worse because of our practices. So consider

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Speaker 1: that in the eighteen hundreds they were seventy one catalog

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Speaker 1: species of apples the United States. Today there are just

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Speaker 1: three hundred species seeds, so we lose them all the time.

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Speaker 1: But the seed vault, again, it's it's a place where

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Speaker 1: you could start from the beginning. It's the idea that

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Speaker 1: if we had a disease that was rampant that took

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Speaker 1: out a large amount of the population, if there was

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Speaker 1: something that that created that collapse, maybe it's global warming.

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Speaker 1: Maybe it's war that we would have something to return to,

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Speaker 1: you know. On the subject of of lost crops. If

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Speaker 1: anyone out there wants to watch a good cooking show,

427
00:24:25,840 --> 00:24:29,120
Speaker 1: a good food show, highly recommend The Mind of a Chef,

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Speaker 1: especially the second season as it pertains to this episode,

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00:24:33,680 --> 00:24:39,040
Speaker 1: uh features a lot from Chef Sean Brock, who really

430
00:24:39,080 --> 00:24:43,719
Speaker 1: goes into lost seed heritage and and and reclaiming it

431
00:24:44,080 --> 00:24:47,520
Speaker 1: and especially is it concerned Southern cuisine because you see

432
00:24:47,520 --> 00:24:49,760
Speaker 1: the shift where people are getting away from the crops

433
00:24:49,800 --> 00:24:52,320
Speaker 1: that are actually grown and the plants that are part

434
00:24:52,320 --> 00:24:55,760
Speaker 1: of the natural ecology or stuff that we've we've lost

435
00:24:55,920 --> 00:24:58,960
Speaker 1: as we moved towards these big mono crops. Yeah, and

436
00:24:59,080 --> 00:25:02,760
Speaker 1: the flavors. I feel like the different species are kind

437
00:25:02,760 --> 00:25:06,119
Speaker 1: of like the Willy Wonkas of flavors in nature that

438
00:25:06,200 --> 00:25:09,399
Speaker 1: we don't always experience because of the mono agriculture. And

439
00:25:09,440 --> 00:25:12,560
Speaker 1: I believe Nolan producer, he turned me onto that show. Um,

440
00:25:12,560 --> 00:25:14,880
Speaker 1: it is really great mind of a chef, So check

441
00:25:14,920 --> 00:25:17,439
Speaker 1: it out. All right, so you have your seeds, but

442
00:25:17,760 --> 00:25:20,600
Speaker 1: what about your fauna? That's right, It's one thing to

443
00:25:20,640 --> 00:25:23,840
Speaker 1: have the plants, but again it's it's you know, getting

444
00:25:23,840 --> 00:25:26,600
Speaker 1: back into that idea of the ecology as the complex

445
00:25:26,640 --> 00:25:29,040
Speaker 1: system about life on Earth is one hole. You need

446
00:25:29,119 --> 00:25:31,240
Speaker 1: all the pieces. So what do you do about the

447
00:25:31,240 --> 00:25:35,320
Speaker 1: the animal pieces? Well, uh, there are currently several programs

448
00:25:35,320 --> 00:25:39,920
Speaker 1: going on of note to preserve the genes of endangered animals.

449
00:25:40,160 --> 00:25:43,440
Speaker 1: There's China's Giant Panda Breeding and Research Base. They keep

450
00:25:43,440 --> 00:25:46,000
Speaker 1: eggs and sperm and other tissue samples from panda is

451
00:25:46,040 --> 00:25:49,399
Speaker 1: another native species, and they keep it all in cold storage. There's, uh,

452
00:25:49,480 --> 00:25:52,840
Speaker 1: the UK's Frozen Art Project took on the mission to

453
00:25:52,840 --> 00:25:55,720
Speaker 1: create a network of similar gene banks around the world

454
00:25:55,720 --> 00:26:00,159
Speaker 1: devoted to endangered animals. And there is the f was

455
00:26:00,200 --> 00:26:03,520
Speaker 1: in Zoo which Oliver Writer at the San Diego Zoo

456
00:26:03,840 --> 00:26:07,240
Speaker 1: created founded um that is a cryod preservation of cells

457
00:26:07,240 --> 00:26:10,639
Speaker 1: and DNA from natured animals over a thousand species, and

458
00:26:10,800 --> 00:26:14,199
Speaker 1: Writer says, quote, it's a small amount of biodiversity for

459
00:26:14,240 --> 00:26:18,000
Speaker 1: the number of species that are potentially facing extinction. So

460
00:26:19,000 --> 00:26:20,960
Speaker 1: as you have, if we call back to some of

461
00:26:21,000 --> 00:26:23,600
Speaker 1: the statistics that you threw out earlier, the amount of

462
00:26:23,600 --> 00:26:27,960
Speaker 1: species that's those are good efforts to try to preserve

463
00:26:28,000 --> 00:26:29,520
Speaker 1: some of them, but we won't be able to do

464
00:26:29,720 --> 00:26:33,439
Speaker 1: all of them, particularly the ones that are going extinct. UM.

465
00:26:33,480 --> 00:26:35,600
Speaker 1: But I think it kind of this whole thing stepping

466
00:26:35,640 --> 00:26:41,280
Speaker 1: back and looking at seed preservation or DNA preservation of species.

467
00:26:41,400 --> 00:26:45,560
Speaker 1: The fact that we are sinking millions, if not billions

468
00:26:45,560 --> 00:26:48,840
Speaker 1: of dollars into these endeavors, I think will illustrate the

469
00:26:48,880 --> 00:26:53,840
Speaker 1: concept that perhaps something is going on, and then we

470
00:26:53,880 --> 00:26:57,440
Speaker 1: should take this seriously, the fact that that ecological collapse

471
00:26:57,480 --> 00:27:00,920
Speaker 1: could happen. And uh, you know, and I also want

472
00:27:00,920 --> 00:27:03,120
Speaker 1: to want a caution to don't take too much heart

473
00:27:03,520 --> 00:27:06,879
Speaker 1: in the and especially the frozen Zoo movements in the

474
00:27:06,960 --> 00:27:11,640
Speaker 1: sense that bear in mind that bringing an extinct animal

475
00:27:11,720 --> 00:27:15,840
Speaker 1: back just with its genetic information on that alone, just

476
00:27:15,880 --> 00:27:19,600
Speaker 1: with this blueprint, uh, is exceedingly difficult. So this is

477
00:27:19,640 --> 00:27:22,040
Speaker 1: not a situation where oh, we just have a backup again,

478
00:27:22,240 --> 00:27:24,560
Speaker 1: you just push the button and it's good to go. No,

479
00:27:24,760 --> 00:27:27,760
Speaker 1: it's there's some hope in it. But uh, but for

480
00:27:27,800 --> 00:27:30,520
Speaker 1: the most part, when a species is gone, it is gone. Well,

481
00:27:30,560 --> 00:27:33,800
Speaker 1: and if you're talking about a really a huge extinction here,

482
00:27:33,960 --> 00:27:40,199
Speaker 1: and we're talking about global uh ecological collapse on a

483
00:27:40,240 --> 00:27:43,280
Speaker 1: mass scale, we're talking about mass extinction, and let's keep

484
00:27:43,320 --> 00:27:45,800
Speaker 1: this in mind. Two hundred and fifty million years ago,

485
00:27:45,840 --> 00:27:49,280
Speaker 1: the most catastrophic, the Great Dying of the Permian Age,

486
00:27:49,600 --> 00:27:53,520
Speaker 1: wiped out over all species and the oceans and on land,

487
00:27:53,560 --> 00:27:56,920
Speaker 1: and it took tens of millions of years for life

488
00:27:56,920 --> 00:28:00,520
Speaker 1: to recover. So I don't know that we're going to

489
00:28:00,600 --> 00:28:02,720
Speaker 1: I mean, some will say we're going towards the sixth

490
00:28:02,800 --> 00:28:07,159
Speaker 1: extinction of humans and that you know, you can have

491
00:28:07,200 --> 00:28:11,000
Speaker 1: as many seeds and frozen DNA as you want of species,

492
00:28:11,040 --> 00:28:14,480
Speaker 1: but that's not going to counteract the amount of time

493
00:28:14,520 --> 00:28:18,040
Speaker 1: it takes to put systems back into place. Indeed, But yeah,

494
00:28:18,040 --> 00:28:19,720
Speaker 1: to your point, we've had actually for not round to

495
00:28:19,760 --> 00:28:23,360
Speaker 1: do it. But yeah, again to your point that we've

496
00:28:23,359 --> 00:28:26,520
Speaker 1: had five known mass extinction events in our history, and

497
00:28:26,600 --> 00:28:29,040
Speaker 1: it's it's crucial to know that two of them wiped

498
00:28:29,040 --> 00:28:32,080
Speaker 1: out at least half of all species. So that's that's

499
00:28:32,080 --> 00:28:35,400
Speaker 1: pretty stackering. So when we talk about a six extinction event, uh,

500
00:28:35,760 --> 00:28:39,280
Speaker 1: it is not a minor occurrence. No, And Caroline Fraser,

501
00:28:39,320 --> 00:28:43,280
Speaker 1: again the author of Rewilding, says bio biologists have begun

502
00:28:43,320 --> 00:28:45,959
Speaker 1: to understand that nature is a chain of dominoes. If

503
00:28:46,000 --> 00:28:48,440
Speaker 1: you pull one piece out the whole thing falls down,

504
00:28:48,640 --> 00:28:54,800
Speaker 1: lose the animals, lose the ecosystems, game over very well put.

505
00:28:54,840 --> 00:28:56,880
Speaker 1: And again, this is one of those things that is

506
00:28:56,920 --> 00:28:59,840
Speaker 1: so difficult for us to wrap our heads around because

507
00:29:00,200 --> 00:29:03,040
Speaker 1: there there's not this sort of concrete thing in front

508
00:29:03,080 --> 00:29:06,560
Speaker 1: of us that says, by the year X, all things

509
00:29:06,640 --> 00:29:10,400
Speaker 1: will die off. We can only look at what's happening

510
00:29:11,160 --> 00:29:15,080
Speaker 1: and predict what we think is going to happen, and

511
00:29:15,160 --> 00:29:17,680
Speaker 1: we can't say with certainty at what moment. And I

512
00:29:17,720 --> 00:29:19,840
Speaker 1: think that's what drives us nuts. And I think that's

513
00:29:19,840 --> 00:29:24,160
Speaker 1: what drives some people to in action indeed, And again

514
00:29:24,200 --> 00:29:26,920
Speaker 1: it just comes back again to our our inability to

515
00:29:27,360 --> 00:29:31,080
Speaker 1: deal with the long term consequences of our actions and

516
00:29:31,360 --> 00:29:33,240
Speaker 1: in our own life as well. But when you start

517
00:29:33,240 --> 00:29:35,800
Speaker 1: looking at at the model being the lives of our

518
00:29:35,880 --> 00:29:38,840
Speaker 1: children and their grandchildren or the generations to come, it

519
00:29:38,960 --> 00:29:41,840
Speaker 1: just it seems to cripple us even more. Yeah, there's

520
00:29:41,880 --> 00:29:46,440
Speaker 1: something called a shifting baseline syndrome, and it's a concept

521
00:29:46,480 --> 00:29:51,480
Speaker 1: that was coined in by fisheries scientists Daniel Polly, who

522
00:29:51,520 --> 00:29:55,960
Speaker 1: said that each subsequent generation of scientists uses wildlife populations

523
00:29:56,000 --> 00:29:58,520
Speaker 1: at the time they entered the field as the baseline

524
00:29:59,240 --> 00:30:02,640
Speaker 1: leveling the awareness of how much these populations may have

525
00:30:02,680 --> 00:30:07,040
Speaker 1: plummeted between that point and the baseline of the generation before,

526
00:30:07,160 --> 00:30:13,520
Speaker 1: which leads to this sort of environmental generational amnesia. Mhm, yeah,

527
00:30:13,520 --> 00:30:15,720
Speaker 1: I mean that that makes perfect. I mean the old

528
00:30:15,720 --> 00:30:18,480
Speaker 1: people will always tell you, you you know, when when when

529
00:30:18,520 --> 00:30:20,920
Speaker 1: I was your age, it was such and such. When

530
00:30:20,920 --> 00:30:22,240
Speaker 1: I was your age, it was such and such, and

531
00:30:22,280 --> 00:30:24,840
Speaker 1: we when we almost never listened to that, except maybe

532
00:30:24,840 --> 00:30:28,560
Speaker 1: as a just a curious, uh, you know, side tangent.

533
00:30:28,680 --> 00:30:31,160
Speaker 1: But but that's the reality we see here. It's it's

534
00:30:31,200 --> 00:30:34,560
Speaker 1: always what we're just taking our own experiences of when

535
00:30:34,560 --> 00:30:37,600
Speaker 1: we we enter into this world and using that as

536
00:30:37,960 --> 00:30:41,440
Speaker 1: as is almost the primordical setting as the base setting

537
00:30:41,760 --> 00:30:44,040
Speaker 1: that that everything else needs to be lined up to.

538
00:30:44,160 --> 00:30:48,680
Speaker 1: Forgetting that this base setting is somewhat downhill from where

539
00:30:48,680 --> 00:30:50,720
Speaker 1: I rolled from last time, and then from the time

540
00:30:50,760 --> 00:30:54,600
Speaker 1: before right deep time just isn't generally our thing, And

541
00:30:54,760 --> 00:30:58,800
Speaker 1: so yeah, we don't remember or even sometimes know that

542
00:30:58,840 --> 00:31:03,440
Speaker 1: there were elephants follower square right um, and that there

543
00:31:03,560 --> 00:31:07,360
Speaker 1: was a very different environment in place before us. It's

544
00:31:07,560 --> 00:31:10,479
Speaker 1: basically each generation, it's it's it's like if you came

545
00:31:10,520 --> 00:31:12,760
Speaker 1: into the doctor and this is and you've only had

546
00:31:12,800 --> 00:31:15,800
Speaker 1: this new doctor for two weeks. And the doctor says, hey,

547
00:31:15,840 --> 00:31:18,720
Speaker 1: you seem to be doing great. You're you know, only

548
00:31:18,760 --> 00:31:21,800
Speaker 1: one of your knees is painting you. And then you

549
00:31:21,840 --> 00:31:23,480
Speaker 1: have to remind the doctor but there was a time

550
00:31:23,520 --> 00:31:26,280
Speaker 1: when neither of my knees pained you. And then the

551
00:31:26,520 --> 00:31:28,520
Speaker 1: doctor said, well, I wasn't here for that, and then

552
00:31:28,520 --> 00:31:30,200
Speaker 1: he just starts to go in about how we're not

553
00:31:30,200 --> 00:31:34,120
Speaker 1: supposed to be up right anyway, exciting at desks. Alright,

554
00:31:34,200 --> 00:31:36,160
Speaker 1: So you know, this is a this is a bit

555
00:31:36,200 --> 00:31:38,880
Speaker 1: of a bit of a bummer episode in some respects.

556
00:31:38,920 --> 00:31:41,640
Speaker 1: It's kind of not a happy pants, not a happy

557
00:31:41,680 --> 00:31:44,560
Speaker 1: pants episode for sure. So I'm gonna I thought, maybe

558
00:31:44,560 --> 00:31:47,920
Speaker 1: I capt it off by reading just a quick little

559
00:31:47,920 --> 00:31:54,080
Speaker 1: paragraph from another bummer work, that being a cormat McCarthy's

560
00:31:54,120 --> 00:31:56,920
Speaker 1: The Road. Here's this uplifting quote. Bring it Yeah, Well,

561
00:31:56,960 --> 00:31:59,280
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's beautiful, but it it does deal

562
00:31:59,400 --> 00:32:02,320
Speaker 1: with ass extinction, with the loss of life on the planet,

563
00:32:02,360 --> 00:32:05,800
Speaker 1: the complexity of life on the planet. So here it goes.

564
00:32:06,720 --> 00:32:09,120
Speaker 1: Once there were brooked trout in the streams in the mountains.

565
00:32:09,120 --> 00:32:11,760
Speaker 1: You could see them standing in the amber current, where

566
00:32:11,800 --> 00:32:14,400
Speaker 1: the white edges of their fins wimpled softly, and the

567
00:32:14,520 --> 00:32:17,360
Speaker 1: flow they smelled of moss in your hand, polished and

568
00:32:17,440 --> 00:32:21,440
Speaker 1: muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that

569
00:32:21,560 --> 00:32:24,320
Speaker 1: were maps of the world, and it's becoming maps and

570
00:32:24,400 --> 00:32:27,120
Speaker 1: mazes of a thing which could not be put back,

571
00:32:27,560 --> 00:32:30,160
Speaker 1: not to be made right again. In the deep glens

572
00:32:30,200 --> 00:32:32,960
Speaker 1: where they lived, all things were older than man, and

573
00:32:33,000 --> 00:32:36,720
Speaker 1: they hummed up mystery. So there you have it. UH,

574
00:32:36,960 --> 00:32:39,120
Speaker 1: great book of course, and UH and I'm pretty sure

575
00:32:39,120 --> 00:32:41,800
Speaker 1: that one's available on audible for anyone who's thinking about

576
00:32:41,800 --> 00:32:45,960
Speaker 1: taking up that audible deal that we mentioned in the break. Indeed, alright,

577
00:32:46,280 --> 00:32:48,960
Speaker 1: make sure to check out the next episode, which is

578
00:32:49,200 --> 00:32:52,080
Speaker 1: about re wilding, which I guess you could say is

579
00:32:52,360 --> 00:32:54,160
Speaker 1: one of the ways in which we could approach this

580
00:32:54,240 --> 00:32:57,640
Speaker 1: in a very tactile way, a very concrete way, and

581
00:32:57,920 --> 00:33:00,240
Speaker 1: try to find a solution. Yeah. So if you want

582
00:33:00,280 --> 00:33:02,760
Speaker 1: something a little more upbeat to cat this, tune in

583
00:33:02,840 --> 00:33:05,640
Speaker 1: next time and we will U, We'll cheer you up

584
00:33:05,640 --> 00:33:09,640
Speaker 1: a little bit because rewilding is uh is a dash

585
00:33:09,640 --> 00:33:13,960
Speaker 1: of hope, uh to take on top of this this topic. Yeah,

586
00:33:14,000 --> 00:33:17,440
Speaker 1: and a Komodo dragon for everyone. Yeah who didn't want that? Yeah?

587
00:33:17,640 --> 00:33:19,840
Speaker 1: Check it out, saying In the meantime, be sure to

588
00:33:19,920 --> 00:33:21,680
Speaker 1: check out Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That

589
00:33:21,840 --> 00:33:24,480
Speaker 1: is our homepage, our mothership. You will find every podcast

590
00:33:24,480 --> 00:33:27,760
Speaker 1: episode we've ever done uh, and the podcast landing page

591
00:33:27,760 --> 00:33:30,800
Speaker 1: for this episode will include links to related content, stuff

592
00:33:30,800 --> 00:33:34,400
Speaker 1: we've mentioned here, et cetera. UH. That page also includes

593
00:33:34,440 --> 00:33:36,760
Speaker 1: links out to our various social media accounts, so you

594
00:33:36,800 --> 00:33:40,160
Speaker 1: can certainly follow us on Facebook and Twitter, Tumbler, or

595
00:33:40,240 --> 00:33:42,600
Speaker 1: Google Plus, you name it. We'd love to hear your

596
00:33:42,640 --> 00:33:45,840
Speaker 1: perspective on this topic, and you can send your thoughts

597
00:33:45,880 --> 00:33:48,720
Speaker 1: to us at below the mind at how stuff works

598
00:33:48,760 --> 00:33:56,200
Speaker 1: dot com or more on this and thousands of other topics.

599
00:33:56,320 --> 00:34:00,600
Speaker 1: Does it how stuff works dot com? Could you kid

600
00:34:00,640 --> 00:34:01,600
Speaker 1: you Leier