Speaker 1: Hello, friends, It's me Josh, and for this week's select,
Speaker 1: I chose our September two thousand and fourteen episode How
Speaker 1: Animal Domestication Works. First, I want to congratulate you on
Speaker 1: being curious enough that you pressed play and what seems
Speaker 1: like it might be a very boring topic, but your
Speaker 1: adventurousness will be rewarded. Indeed, because this is one of
Speaker 1: those stuff you should know episodes that sounds dull, but
Speaker 1: it turns out to be super interesting. I hope you
Speaker 1: enjoy it and spend the rest of your day patting
Speaker 1: yourself on the back. Go ahead, you deserve it. Welcome
Speaker 1: to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles
Speaker 1: W Chuck Bright, and our buddy Noel who's producing us. Yeah. Uh,
Speaker 1: and that's stuff you should know it. How's it going fine?
Speaker 1: Why do you guys? That's just friendly? The ice breaker? Oh?
Speaker 1: I see, yeah, as if we didn't just record another joke,
Speaker 1: we did. It was on police and terrogage. That's right,
Speaker 1: So Chuck, Yes, you've heard of Jared Diamond before? Right? No? Yes?
Speaker 1: Rang familiar guns, germs and steel Okay, he uh he
Speaker 1: Um wrote Collapse. He's known for that those two books.
Speaker 1: Don't think I know that one. I think it came
Speaker 1: after guns Terms and steel Um. But he wrote one
Speaker 1: of my favorite journal articles of all time is called
Speaker 1: the Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race
Speaker 1: about agriculture, about transitioning to agriculture. I was going to
Speaker 1: guess on what that might be. Oh, sorry, that's right.
Speaker 1: What do you what do you guess that it's about
Speaker 1: the agriculture. Well, the thing is is it may be
Speaker 1: the worst mistake in the history of the human rights.
Speaker 1: I've talked about it a million times. Um. The article
Speaker 1: that is um. But he also wrote this really interesting
Speaker 1: article called Evolution, Consequences and Future of Plant and Animal Domestication,
Speaker 1: which sounds extremely boring, and it's in Nature, the journal Nature.
Speaker 1: That it isn't boring. It's really really interesting because in
Speaker 1: it he talks about animal domestication and he says that
Speaker 1: it came about as a result of typically and about
Speaker 1: the same time as agriculture, the Neolithic revolution, where we
Speaker 1: went from hunter gatherers to agriculturists right to farmers, and
Speaker 1: everything changed, like we grew shorter in stature, our brains
Speaker 1: grew smaller, um our jaws grew shorter. Um. We we
Speaker 1: got just weird in a bunch of different ways, right, Um.
Speaker 1: And it was as a result of agriculture. And if
Speaker 1: you look at what happens when we domesticate animals, when
Speaker 1: we take them from the wild and we plant them
Speaker 1: next to us on a farm, the same thing happens.
Speaker 1: So his point is, what he's arguing is that not
Speaker 1: only did humans domesticate animals, humans in turn have become
Speaker 1: domesticated themselves through agriculture. Yeah, there's probably nothing that's had
Speaker 1: a greater impact, no single transition or change or concept
Speaker 1: that's had a greater impact on Homo sapiens than the
Speaker 1: Neolithic revolution or the transition to agriculture. And a big
Speaker 1: part of that was the domestication of animals. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: kind of went hand in hand, in a hoof in hand,
Speaker 1: which to me is hilarious because consider this, I think
Speaker 1: this is the funniest thing I've ever thought of in
Speaker 1: my life. Imagine being an alien come down to Earth,
Speaker 1: all right, and uh, you're just walking along taking everything
Speaker 1: in and you see a human riding horse and us
Speaker 1: it's a human riding a horse. It makes during complete sense.
Speaker 1: But if you're an alien, you see an animal riding
Speaker 1: in their animal, and that would have to be the
Speaker 1: funniest thing you've ever seen ever. If you're a margin, Yeah,
Speaker 1: an animal riding another animal. Yeah, you know, like those
Speaker 1: little cowboy monkeys that ride dogs and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: It's hilarious. And that same thing, it's the exact same thing.
Speaker 1: Or when you watch Planet of the Apes, the an
Speaker 1: ape riding a horse. That's not funny, that's unsettling, that's terrifying. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that is the funniest thing ever you've ever said, Yes,
Speaker 1: it is. Um. So man, that was a good setup.
Speaker 1: Thanks man, It's been a while since we've gotten an
Speaker 1: old Josh story. I get really excited about anthropology. Uh, well,
Speaker 1: we are covering um domestication, and I guess we should
Speaker 1: say off the bat that not everyone is on board. Um.
Speaker 1: Peter had to look this up because I wasn't sure
Speaker 1: what their actual stance was regarding animal domestication. You had
Speaker 1: to look that up. No about pets, sure, I wondered. Um,
Speaker 1: officially they are against pet keeping, but they they know
Speaker 1: it's too late. They hate pets, but they know it's
Speaker 1: too late. They're like, well, we know we're not. What
Speaker 1: they are not for is for setting these animals free.
Speaker 1: Here's why. The original co founder, I think UM is
Speaker 1: Ingrid new Kirk is an animal abolitionist. But Pete is like,
Speaker 1: it's way too far gone. We don't want you to
Speaker 1: set these animals free, So we're going to fight our
Speaker 1: fight on spaying and neutering and reducing that population is
Speaker 1: much as possible. But they are still officially against pets.
Speaker 1: But their position actually does make sense. It's extremely realistic
Speaker 1: because there is a strict definition of a domesticated animal,
Speaker 1: and domesticated animal is a is a species that was
Speaker 1: formerly wild that has been taken in by humans and
Speaker 1: whose characteristics have been so all ser radically altered by
Speaker 1: humans that they can no longer feed themselves. Typically, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's when we actually change their genetic makeup. Yes,
Speaker 1: And part of that change, part of the characteristic changes
Speaker 1: that the food supply is controlled by humans. So if
Speaker 1: you put say an average dog out, my dog luckily
Speaker 1: would be dead in three days. Yeah, And somebody say,
Speaker 1: well they would forage through garbage humanity. If you took
Speaker 1: a dog out of any kind of human area and
Speaker 1: put it in the area, it may return to a
Speaker 1: primal state, in which case that dog is reverted to
Speaker 1: a feral state. Now, a feral animal is one that
Speaker 1: was formally domesticated and then went back to the wild.
Speaker 1: If you take a single wolf and you teach it
Speaker 1: to jump up and grab beef jerky out of your hands,
Speaker 1: what you have there, because that's a tame wolf. Now,
Speaker 1: tame wolf could still go fend for itself. It's a
Speaker 1: it's a tame individual. A domesticated animal is one that's
Speaker 1: born comfortable associating with humans. Yeah, And there's exceptions of course. Cats,
Speaker 1: the domestic house cat being one. You could drop a
Speaker 1: cat out in the middle of the woods and they
Speaker 1: would survive. They would hunt mice and eat mice or whatever, squirrels, um.
Speaker 1: So the and the domestic cat is its own species.
Speaker 1: But that raises some questions under Jared Diamonds definition, the
Speaker 1: stricter definition of a domestic animal. If if a cat
Speaker 1: can just go like take care of itself, is it
Speaker 1: technically feral or is it ever really domesticated? Yeah? Or
Speaker 1: is it just an agreement, Hey, I'll catch the mice
Speaker 1: in your house and I like that wet food every
Speaker 1: day at five pm. So I'll just hang out here
Speaker 1: and I like to sleep under your chin. Like the cat,
Speaker 1: the cat is found an agreeable arrangement that it could
Speaker 1: take or leave at any time. Yeah, mutually beneficial. As
Speaker 1: we'll see that. That's a consistent thing in the domestication
Speaker 1: of animals, is that, uh, some people believe that it's
Speaker 1: good for the animal, it's good for the human. And
Speaker 1: we have learned to uh scratch each other's backs in
Speaker 1: many different ways literally even in some cases. So a
Speaker 1: little bit of a good background for this one might
Speaker 1: be to listen to our show on natural selection, because, um,
Speaker 1: well it covers natural selection, but there's another kind of
Speaker 1: selection called artificial selection when it comes to domesticating animals,
Speaker 1: and that is not the same thing. That is when
Speaker 1: humans are choosing these desirable traits and making it so
Speaker 1: through breeding. Um, like the the original horses, the first
Speaker 1: domesticated horses were they smoked cigars. They did. We broke
Speaker 1: them of that have now there were small like ponies.
Speaker 1: There were little ones, a little wild horses in Mongolia.
Speaker 1: I think they call him the Zewalski's a family in Pittsburgh. No,
Speaker 1: it was a Russian Army officer that they're named after.
Speaker 1: But when you start your name with three consonants, I
Speaker 1: never know which one is silent. Okay, so how do
Speaker 1: you spell it? P r z oh. I was not
Speaker 1: gonna guess that's w all Ski so I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: say z Wolski's horse. But um, people were at one
Speaker 1: point were like, man, I'd love to ride that thing,
Speaker 1: but he's too small. So find the biggest one that's
Speaker 1: a male, and find the biggest one that's a female.
Speaker 1: Make them go have sex, and maybe they'll have a
Speaker 1: bigger one, bigger son, and then make that one mate
Speaker 1: with someone big. And eventually these things are going to
Speaker 1: be big enough to where we can ride them, and
Speaker 1: then by proxy throw away the ones that don't fit
Speaker 1: the criteria that we want or use them for something else.
Speaker 1: Sure food. But that's what we did with dogs too.
Speaker 1: Like you got a bunch of different ones, right, say, big, small, soft, furry, um, fast, cuddly,
Speaker 1: and we we said, well, we like this one for this,
Speaker 1: and we like that one for that, and so artificial
Speaker 1: selection was still going on. We were just spreading it
Speaker 1: out all over the place. With like say a horse
Speaker 1: or something. We wanted bigger and stronger because we wanted
Speaker 1: to ride them. Uh, and we also wanted to apparently
Speaker 1: drink their milk, which I did not know. But it
Speaker 1: makes sense that horses produced milk because their mammals. But
Speaker 1: apparently our ancestors used to drink horse milk. You never
Speaker 1: had horse milk, no, I and I want to know
Speaker 1: if there's anyone out there listening who's tasted horse milk,
Speaker 1: please describe it. Did someone out there is drinking horse
Speaker 1: milk right now while they're listening to the show. One
Speaker 1: of our Mongolian listening straight from the teat. I think
Speaker 1: they're like, they used the horse for all sorts of stuff.
Speaker 1: The Mongolians. They're also like excellent riders. Yeah. I think
Speaker 1: that that Zawolski's horses is in Mongolia again, Yeah, after
Speaker 1: being nearly extinct. I might be wrong about that. So um.
Speaker 1: In addition to selecting the big horse, we also did
Speaker 1: some cool stuff with sheep. We um we selected out
Speaker 1: there they had um, longer, coarser hair that we didn't want.
Speaker 1: That's the camp. We wanted the softer stuff that was
Speaker 1: inside a k a the wool, So we bred sheep
Speaker 1: that had more wool than kemp until basically you can't
Speaker 1: find kemp in sheep any longer. And they were one
Speaker 1: of the first domesticated animals, right the sheep. Yet they
Speaker 1: were um chickens uh don't normally produce eggs as frequently
Speaker 1: as as they do uh once they've been domesticated, and
Speaker 1: like a Rhode Island red will produce five to seven
Speaker 1: a week. That's a lot of eggs. Yeah, apparently the
Speaker 1: original chicken too. I didn't look this up, but I
Speaker 1: remember a friend of mine that was a vegetarian. I
Speaker 1: witnessed an argument between the vegetarian and mediate, which is
Speaker 1: always fun because I don't get involved in that stuff. Um,
Speaker 1: and I think when I was like, well, look at
Speaker 1: the chickens. You know what else are they gonna do?
Speaker 1: You know what are they good for? And he was like, dude,
Speaker 1: the original chicken wasn't anything like this chicken. The original
Speaker 1: wild chicken was like taller and leaner and ran super
Speaker 1: fast and road runner. I guess, yeah, I guess, solve
Speaker 1: crimes and and did all sorts of chicken e things
Speaker 1: that weren't just being slaughtered for food. And apparently the
Speaker 1: first chickens were domesticated. They think for um cock fighting, Yeah,
Speaker 1: for entertainment. Yeah, crazy. We have a shameful, shapeful history,
Speaker 1: don't we as people humans? Yeah? So Diamond, Um, you
Speaker 1: you would think, if we can domesticate animals, why don't
Speaker 1: we just domesticate them all and use them for purposes? Uh?
Speaker 1: And Diamond rites that only about fourteen animal species out
Speaker 1: of a hundred and forty eight cannets have been domesticated,
Speaker 1: and that's because we can't domesticate every animal. There's certain things,
Speaker 1: certain criteria that even opens up the possibility. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: like a six point checklist basically, and it's not progressive.
Speaker 1: If any one of these with these characteristics or traits
Speaker 1: isn't matt, Yeah, it pretty much just throws off the
Speaker 1: whole deal. So you gotta have all six, all right?
Speaker 1: Those six are the first. One is the right diet
Speaker 1: if you're a picky animal like, um, what's what's the
Speaker 1: one that only eats bamboo? The bamboo toad? Those dumb
Speaker 1: the um koalas koalas now they eucalyptus. And yeah, man,
Speaker 1: I'm glad you remember that. Yeah, you're not gonna be
Speaker 1: able to domesticate a koala because what you want is
Speaker 1: something that you can feed in mass quantities on cheap
Speaker 1: accessible food. Oh well, actually bamboo would be the way
Speaker 1: to go. It's eucalyptus. Yeah, I don't know how eucalyptus
Speaker 1: because if they bamboo, they'd probably be domesticated in that. Well. No,
Speaker 1: by cheap accessible food, I think they mean like millions
Speaker 1: of pounds of feed that you can put in a
Speaker 1: trough to Bamboo is like one of the fastest growing
Speaker 1: plants on Earth. Not I realize that I've got it
Speaker 1: still talking about eucalyptus, but it's eucalyptic. But this bamboo thing.
Speaker 1: Have you heard about bamboo? You know, I have a
Speaker 1: company that grows oh, Josh's Bamboo floors. The number two
Speaker 1: thing is a fast growth rate. So um yeah, they
Speaker 1: gotta you know, be able to grow quick and so
Speaker 1: you can use them. Yeah. So, like if we'd figured
Speaker 1: out how to use gorillas to build skyscrapers, that'd be
Speaker 1: all him. But it would take forever to build a
Speaker 1: skyscraper because gorilla is only reproduced fairly and frequently. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we need something that can build a skyscraper fast.
Speaker 1: And that's why that didn't work when they tried it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but that one gorilla wearing that hard hat a lot
Speaker 1: of laughs. Uh, friendly disposition. Um, that's pretty clear. If
Speaker 1: you're a Kodiak bear, you're not going to be domesticated.
Speaker 1: They tried that. They tried grizzlies at one point. That's
Speaker 1: a failed domestication. Yeah. Um. Zebras very famously can't be domesticated. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I imagine people would be like, man, I want
Speaker 1: to ride that thing. It's cool looking. Yeah, and it'll
Speaker 1: bite you to death. Really. Yeah. Apparently in that Jared
Speaker 1: Diamond article, he says that zookeepers zebras account for more
Speaker 1: injuries to zookeepers than any other animal at the zoo. Man, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that is one piste off stripy horse. They're not horses
Speaker 1: at all, though, are they? They're related for sure, But
Speaker 1: the um so the zebras one and then koal is
Speaker 1: too apparently are like ferocious little animals eat while that
Speaker 1: they're try to eat in bamboo. Em right, um one
Speaker 1: to three four, easy breeding, Yeah, that's pretty obvious. You
Speaker 1: gotta be able to pump out little baby puppies quickly, yes,
Speaker 1: because some animals like just shut down when you when
Speaker 1: they're captive, like they don't breed like pandas have a
Speaker 1: lot of trouble breeding and captivity cheetahs too. Is that
Speaker 1: why it's always such a big deal when they're born
Speaker 1: at the zoo or when like twins are born, like
Speaker 1: at the Atlanta Zoo. Oh yeah, Man, I don't know
Speaker 1: about zoos. Well, we did a podcast on that. I
Speaker 1: think that's the conclusion we came to. Huh. I think
Speaker 1: that was the title of it. Man, I don't know
Speaker 1: about zoosh. What does he call her? Zoo's good or
Speaker 1: bad for animals? Yeah, that was a good episode. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's one of those long lost, overlooked ones that are
Speaker 1: so good. That's polarizing to man. I did some Facebook
Speaker 1: posting about killer whales and captivity and people really feel
Speaker 1: passionately about like Blackfish, about supporting Sea World or not
Speaker 1: supporting Sea World. Um, and that black Fish is a
Speaker 1: bunch of bunk. And apparently Blackfishes was highly manipulated. The
Speaker 1: documentary was. But at the end of all of that,
Speaker 1: I was like, I don't care. I just don't think
Speaker 1: they should be kept in captivity this one particular thing. Um.
Speaker 1: But that was just me respect of a social hierarchy.
Speaker 1: That's a big one because if you don't, if you
Speaker 1: can't be the alpha dog and the leader of the pack,
Speaker 1: then you're gonna have a very hard time domesticating that animal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but with a cat being an exception, an animal um
Speaker 1: that does follow a social hierarchy is basically pre arranged
Speaker 1: to be domesticated because you just take that alpha male,
Speaker 1: you punch him in the face a couple of times
Speaker 1: in front of everybody, make them cry, and then now
Speaker 1: you're the alpha male and you say start laying eggs,
Speaker 1: and they listened to you, and then they're domesticated at
Speaker 1: least in that respect, after you've punched the chicken. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but that's a that's a big one. Is with that
Speaker 1: social hierarchy, it sets them up there predisposed to our
Speaker 1: method of domestication, which is listening to humans. And like sheep,
Speaker 1: it's mind blowing because sheep there herd animal that follows
Speaker 1: an alpha leader. Right. Yeah, and so we have gotten
Speaker 1: so we're just show offs when it comes to animal domestication.
Speaker 1: We're so good that we've taken one of our domesticated animals,
Speaker 1: the dog, and put the dog in as the alpha
Speaker 1: male of the sheep. Yeah, that's how sheep are hurted.
Speaker 1: That's that's just showing off the aliens. That's another good
Speaker 1: alien laugh. Well, the double domestications and the dog leading
Speaker 1: the sheep. Um. And it's funny too if you've ever
Speaker 1: had a dog that's a hurting has the hurting instinct
Speaker 1: when you see that play out in your own home. Uh,
Speaker 1: we used to see it all the time with Lucy.
Speaker 1: She would totally hurt us, and when we let her
Speaker 1: out in the backyard, she would walk the perimeter of
Speaker 1: the fence, you know, instead of running through the middle
Speaker 1: of it. Very interesting stuff to that original those original tendencies. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then the last one is they want panic. Um.
Speaker 1: If you have an animal that freaks out behind defence,
Speaker 1: de yeah, it's it's uh that you're gonna have a
Speaker 1: real hard time there. But like we said, there are
Speaker 1: exceptions because wolves were fierce and cats uh don't follow
Speaker 1: a pack leader. Um. And we're gonna get to dogs
Speaker 1: and cats a little later. So if you listen to
Speaker 1: our show on Cave Art, you know that. And on Egyptology,
Speaker 1: you know the animals Mama vacation, Yeah probably, so you
Speaker 1: know the animals have been tied to humans for a
Speaker 1: long time and revered by humans for a long time,
Speaker 1: as evidenced by the fact that they buried them and
Speaker 1: they mummified them, and they painted them on their walls,
Speaker 1: painted pictures of us riding them. Yeah yeah, um yeah.
Speaker 1: They they think that the um the first animal to
Speaker 1: be domesticated by far was the dog. How awesome is
Speaker 1: that hunter gatherer society was and the dog were pals
Speaker 1: long before agriculture ever came along. But about the time
Speaker 1: of the agricultural revolution, which is and get this, check
Speaker 1: this out, uh, ten thousand, five hundred years BP to
Speaker 1: about forty five hundred years BP. Now what's before present?
Speaker 1: Is that the new one? Yeah, that's like the scientific
Speaker 1: way of saying, there's no like zero year or anything
Speaker 1: like that. It's just ten thou five hundred years before present,
Speaker 1: the full present, before present. Not British, that was New Zealand.
Speaker 1: Uh So basically, at some point about ten thousand five
Speaker 1: years ago, what they think happened is the Earth's climate changed. Um,
Speaker 1: maybe we killed off enough of the mega fauna through
Speaker 1: over hunting or through climate change they just went extinct.
Speaker 1: And um, about that time, some plants came around that
Speaker 1: we noticed we really liked and maybe accidentally, we started
Speaker 1: growing them and then we figured out that we could
Speaker 1: just select these ones, and through a process of artificial
Speaker 1: and natural selection merged together, we got agriculture. And about
Speaker 1: that same time we started to domesticate pigs, sheep, and cattle.
Speaker 1: I think we're the big first three and they still
Speaker 1: are the big three, Like those are the money domesticated animals,
Speaker 1: you know. Well, yeah, and like you said, it's tied
Speaker 1: to human natural selection as well, because if you are
Speaker 1: the tribe that has figured out how to keep cattle,
Speaker 1: then you're going to do better than your neighboring tribe
Speaker 1: that hasn't yet. And so you are going to be
Speaker 1: more successful as a civilization. Yeah, you are, and you're
Speaker 1: going to conquer like we talked about and I think
Speaker 1: the Royalty one when we talked a lot about UM
Speaker 1: tribes conquering other tribes through agriculture, through exporting agriculture and
Speaker 1: um as a result. Jared Diamond points out eight percent
Speaker 1: of humans alive today speak one of seven language families
Speaker 1: and they come from two places in Eurasia, which were
Speaker 1: the first places for agriculture to take group. So basically
Speaker 1: those tribes were so effective because of agriculture. Today we
Speaker 1: still basically the vast majority of speak one of seven
Speaker 1: language groups. That's crazy years, all these thousands of years later,
Speaker 1: that's how effective agriculture was, it, asserting Authorida, we should
Speaker 1: do one on agriculture, the birth of agriculture. I can't
Speaker 1: believe we haven't it. Yeah, let's do it, agreed. So
Speaker 1: back to animals. Uh, here's a little breakdown of where
Speaker 1: some of your favorite animals came from. So in Southeast
Speaker 1: Asia's where you uh first got your goats, pick pigs,
Speaker 1: sheep and dogs. Southwest Asia. Yeah, we've gone over to
Speaker 1: Central it's like Mesopotamia. Okay, these are the birth of
Speaker 1: it all. Yes, um, Central Asia, you're gonna get your
Speaker 1: chickens and you're too humped bactry in sadlets pronounced Yeah,
Speaker 1: it looks like camel Central Asia. Yeah. And those camels
Speaker 1: were actually, um, well known for long hair and they
Speaker 1: can survive in cold climates. Yes, and they're not just
Speaker 1: desert dwellers right. No. Apparently when they were domesticated, it
Speaker 1: created such a revolution that some societies stopped using the
Speaker 1: wheel because they're like, we don't need the wheel anymore.
Speaker 1: We got camels. Like the wheel left all together and
Speaker 1: then came back when someone said, uh, cars are pretty
Speaker 1: cool too. Yeah, actually as much sooner than that. Um.
Speaker 1: Arabia is where you have the Arabian camel with a
Speaker 1: single hump. Um China they domesticated pigs and the water
Speaker 1: buffalo and dogs. Move over to the Ukraine and you've
Speaker 1: got the wild Tarpaan horses and uh so what most
Speaker 1: folks think are the original um, the original the o
Speaker 1: g the original horse, even though I read about the
Speaker 1: small ones of Mongolia the Yeah it was new Ski
Speaker 1: or the Kowalskie. Um. Yeah, I'm gonna have to look
Speaker 1: that up. And then Egypt you've got your donkeys, and
Speaker 1: then South America you've got your lama and your alpaca.
Speaker 1: Lama as a beast of burden in the alpaca for
Speaker 1: their soft wool, and the guinea pig for their meat.
Speaker 1: Really yeah in South America, Yeah, the andies. I don't
Speaker 1: want to eat a guinea pig. That's what they were
Speaker 1: britt for. Ariginally wow. Um and those were some of
Speaker 1: the earliest ones in Jared Diamond. Again, I know I
Speaker 1: keep sighting them, but man, this guy's great ideas. Yeah, Okay,
Speaker 1: so he's he's a modern man. Yeah, he's got a
Speaker 1: little beat nick pointy beard and everything. Yeah, he's a
Speaker 1: good guy. Let's get in touch with him. Okay, attention
Speaker 1: Jared Diamond, please contact us for reasons we'll figure out later. Yeah,
Speaker 1: stuff podcast at how Stuff works. Put in the subject
Speaker 1: line I'm Jared Diamond, and now we're gonna get five.
Speaker 1: It'll be lou Bega posing as Jared Diamond. Um So,
Speaker 1: Diamond pointed out that over the last thousand years, only
Speaker 1: one substantial animal has been added to the list of
Speaker 1: domesticated animals. So basically we were good at it to start,
Speaker 1: and we did everything we could. Basically almost all animal
Speaker 1: holes that are going to be domesticated on Earth have
Speaker 1: been domestically the hamster, it was the reindeer. Oh, the
Speaker 1: hamster would until yes, I know. And if you read that,
Speaker 1: that's technically a tamed animal. Oh, it's not domesticated, not
Speaker 1: under the strictest definition, where it's like the animals are
Speaker 1: born in their genetically, they're comfortable around humans, are born
Speaker 1: that way. With it, with a tamed animal, you're like
Speaker 1: inventing the wheel with each individual organism. With this, with
Speaker 1: a domesticated animal. You've taken a wild species and you've
Speaker 1: selected it enough so that when an animal is born,
Speaker 1: it's cool being around a human, Whereas like if you're
Speaker 1: around like a gerbil or a hamster baby, it's not
Speaker 1: gonna be cool around you. It doesn't have, you know,
Speaker 1: thousands of years of genetic information telling it that from
Speaker 1: birth it can be comfortable with you because you're gonna
Speaker 1: give it some pellets to eat, okay, Whereas a dog,
Speaker 1: a puppy will just automatically snuggle up with you, right,
Speaker 1: But think about getting close to a wolf pup. It's
Speaker 1: gonna be problematic. M let's go try right now. Jever
Speaker 1: see that movie Never Cry Wolf, the Disney movie from
Speaker 1: like the mid eighties. It was so good. It wasn't
Speaker 1: it was live action. No, it was way before his time.
Speaker 1: No, no no, no, I totally know what you mean. I
Speaker 1: can picture the guy in my head. He like goes
Speaker 1: and lives with the wolf by himself. Man, that's a
Speaker 1: good movie. Yeah, he was in I can't remember. He's
Speaker 1: in another movie. So when when we did domesticated, like
Speaker 1: I said, we we took a wild animal, underwent a
Speaker 1: process through artificial selection to where it just became something different.
Speaker 1: And there's certain traits that they're not quite sure how
Speaker 1: they happen, but they're clearly linked to the genes that
Speaker 1: lead to domestication, that take an animal and turn it
Speaker 1: from wild to tame to domesticated. Um, and that have
Speaker 1: outward signals and signs like floppy ears. Yeah. Um. The
Speaker 1: only other animal in the wild that has floppy years
Speaker 1: is the African elephant. Every other animal in the wild
Speaker 1: has perky years. But it's almost like it's a signal like, Okay,
Speaker 1: we're tame now, our ears don't need to perk up.
Speaker 1: It totally is smaller brain size, Yep. They don't need
Speaker 1: to be as smart um over the years if you're feeding.
Speaker 1: As evidenced by my dumb dog Buckley, like I said,
Speaker 1: he wouldn't survive two days in the wild. Um. My
Speaker 1: neighbor one time left his dog out all night by accident,
Speaker 1: and I was going out to the car the next
Speaker 1: morning and this big rottweiler comes running over at me,
Speaker 1: and I was like At first, I was like, oh man,
Speaker 1: and then I realized it was Carter, and uh. I
Speaker 1: went and banged on his door and he finally woke
Speaker 1: up and he was like, Carter's in here. I was like,
Speaker 1: I don't think so. And he had come home from
Speaker 1: a long night let him out and forgot to let
Speaker 1: back in a little Carter just slept on the front
Speaker 1: porch like the sweetest thing ever. But Carter survived, is
Speaker 1: my point. But sleeping on the front by sleeping on
Speaker 1: the foot porch and being like scratching on it like
Speaker 1: please let me in. Um so yeah, smaller brains, uh,
Speaker 1: curly hair, um, sharp sense of sight and hearing. Um,
Speaker 1: well it's lessoned. Yeah, it's lesson because they don't need
Speaker 1: that stuff either, right, because they're being cared for by humans.
Speaker 1: The humans are saying, you just get dumb or in charge.
Speaker 1: Now we'll we'll teach everything you need to know. Um.
Speaker 1: We got a lot of this data, this information from
Speaker 1: a Jared Diamond very no, not even a very famous
Speaker 1: study that went on for about forty years um by
Speaker 1: a Russian geneticist named Dmitri Balleyev. And ballete said, Hey,
Speaker 1: I'm going to figure out how domestication actually works, and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna take um silver foxes and I'm going to
Speaker 1: compress the domestication process and basically, over the course of
Speaker 1: like thirty or forty years. Even after he died, his
Speaker 1: UM his colleagues and UM interns and assistance carried on
Speaker 1: this experiment. So it's been going on for maybe fifty years.
Speaker 1: And UM they've found that you can get predictable results
Speaker 1: from domesticating animals. And they've domesticated some silver foxes. Um,
Speaker 1: their ears started getting floppy, their skulls started to get smaller,
Speaker 1: they started to get curly hair, some of them started
Speaker 1: to bark, um, and they were born comfortable around humans. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and here's the thing, um, if you've seen there's a
Speaker 1: really cute video on the internet about a little fox
Speaker 1: getting his belly rubbed, it looks sort of like dogs,
Speaker 1: but they are DNA evidence. They have pretty much proven
Speaker 1: that dogs are descended from the Asian gray wolf and
Speaker 1: have nothing to do with foxes. But um, that's just
Speaker 1: proof through this experiment that taming and domesticating this animal
Speaker 1: can lead to these traits. Yeah, because a lot of
Speaker 1: people are like, how do you get a Pomeranian from
Speaker 1: a gray wolf? From hug from a gray wolf or
Speaker 1: something like that. Have you seen that picture of that
Speaker 1: pug who's um, who is clearly messing around with a
Speaker 1: crawfish and gets his tongue bit and it's like in
Speaker 1: mid air, and you know they have huge eyes that
Speaker 1: are bulging out. Anyway, he's trying to like have sex
Speaker 1: with the crawfis no, no, Like he was sniffing it
Speaker 1: and just the crawfish like grabbed onto his tongue and
Speaker 1: now the crawfish is hanging onto his tongue in mid air.
Speaker 1: Is the pugs like squealing or Whatever's hilarious anyway? Um,
Speaker 1: they they figured out that because of domestication, these traits change,
Speaker 1: and like I said before, with you know, different kinds
Speaker 1: of dogs, you get different kinds of well, different looking
Speaker 1: dogs that we've selected for over time. Yeah, and it
Speaker 1: didn't take that long apparently. Um, Apparently with canine specifically
Speaker 1: selected breeding can affect the species really rapidly. And um,
Speaker 1: there's been evidence of Pekinese dogs as far back as
Speaker 1: first century a d. China. So, um, they weren't wolves
Speaker 1: for long once we decided. And you know, there's different
Speaker 1: theories on how that very first happened. Um. One of them,
Speaker 1: which I like, is that people found abandoned pups and
Speaker 1: it's just a natural human instinct to see a little
Speaker 1: puppy and care for it. So they said, well, let
Speaker 1: me take this little wolf puppy because it needs a home.
Speaker 1: We should talk about the science of cute sometime. It's
Speaker 1: really interesting an email the other day. We'll have to
Speaker 1: do that one. Um. So yeah, that's one of the theories.
Speaker 1: The other one is that, um, maybe some of the
Speaker 1: more tame wolves would rummage around our garbage and for food,
Speaker 1: and so if you were a more tame wolf, you're
Speaker 1: more likely to survive, and eventually that would evolve into
Speaker 1: a more dog like species. Yeah, because you're the human
Speaker 1: garbage pile was much more reliable source of food than say,
Speaker 1: like whatever was growing in the wild. So exactly, they
Speaker 1: would be that's natural selection basically through artificial means almost yeah, um.
Speaker 1: But either way, they think that dogs descended from wolves
Speaker 1: or dive verged from wolves as long as a hundred
Speaker 1: thousand years ago, but they didn't really start to undergo
Speaker 1: the drastic morphological changes until maybe fifteen thousand years ago. Um.
Speaker 1: And again all of this predates the advent of agriculture,
Speaker 1: so that means that hunter gatherers and dogs were friends
Speaker 1: for a while. And they think that the reason that
Speaker 1: happened was because they figured out that a dog could
Speaker 1: go flush out some corry, a hunter gatherer could spirit
Speaker 1: and then tear off a piece and give the dog
Speaker 1: some and eat some himself. And they had a symbiotic
Speaker 1: hunting relationship that was aces Yeah, like we said earlier,
Speaker 1: mutually beneficial. It was great for the dog. They were
Speaker 1: fast and fierce, and we were smart and uh, because
Speaker 1: we already mentioned dogs are are innately want to follow
Speaker 1: a lead dog, an alpha dog. It just it was
Speaker 1: kind of like the perfect relationship and it has been
Speaker 1: ever since. Yeah. And one of the other cool things
Speaker 1: about the domestication of the dog is they in ancient Rome,
Speaker 1: apparently women. That's where they had the first evidence of
Speaker 1: little lap doggies because they were supposedly cured stomach aches,
Speaker 1: which of course they didn't. But I think it just
Speaker 1: made someone feel better having a little dog curled up
Speaker 1: on their lap. So how's your tummy feel? Now? We
Speaker 1: selected them for that, So we selected them for that.
Speaker 1: We selected um, oh, I don't know, sheep dogs to
Speaker 1: herd and terriers to catch rats. And you know that
Speaker 1: that explains all this variation in dog breeds. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: saw a cold special on it the other day. It
Speaker 1: was on I think it was on Animal Planet, but
Speaker 1: it wasn't one of those just like look how cute
Speaker 1: everything is. It was kind of like the science behind
Speaker 1: the history of these animals. It was really cool. So
Speaker 1: let's take a break and we'll come back and we'll
Speaker 1: talk about cats and other stuff too right after this.
Speaker 1: So okay, So cats don't follow in alpha male, which
Speaker 1: leads to a puzzle of how they could possibly have
Speaker 1: been domesticated, and if you talk to certain people, they
Speaker 1: may not have ever really been domesticated. Cats don't look
Speaker 1: different than their their ancestors, right, which means that it
Speaker 1: makes it tough to go back and compare modern cats
Speaker 1: to the cats and the fossil record and say, oh,
Speaker 1: they diverged X number of years ago or whatever. Yeah.
Speaker 1: That's one of my favorite things about cats is when
Speaker 1: you look at a cat in the backyard, you know,
Speaker 1: crouched down to leap on the bird, it looks just
Speaker 1: like a big lion about to leap on the big bird.
Speaker 1: The thing is, they're pretty sure that cats did not
Speaker 1: diverge from big cats like lions. They think they came
Speaker 1: instead from a couple of different wildcats a European wildcat
Speaker 1: and an African wildcat, and both of those are still
Speaker 1: around today, and they think that that's what the cats
Speaker 1: last common ancestors were, or if you look like it, yeah,
Speaker 1: like if you look at the African wildcat, looks like
Speaker 1: just a bigger version of a dabby. Yes, And they
Speaker 1: don't know exactly when they were domesticated, but there's evidence
Speaker 1: that as far back as um years ago there's at
Speaker 1: least one grave site where a cat was clearly buried
Speaker 1: with the human, which indicates some sort of importance and um,
Speaker 1: familial nous with a cat. And they love cats and dogs,
Speaker 1: and I think cats were even had like a religious significance,
Speaker 1: but or maybe both of them did. But because Anubis
Speaker 1: that was the dog, right, I don't remember. I just
Speaker 1: remember Horace was the hawk, right right. But ancient Egyptians
Speaker 1: love their dogs and cats. It was Horace the dog.
Speaker 1: I think Anubis was the dog. So um again, cats
Speaker 1: probably are not technically domesticated, but um well, the reason
Speaker 1: why we we took them in though, is the same
Speaker 1: reason that some people still take them in now is
Speaker 1: because they're good mousers. And that's pretty much the explanation
Speaker 1: for domestication in a lot of ways. Like they animals
Speaker 1: were useful for work, that's right. Um, so some of
Speaker 1: the other animals, very ancient domesticated animals that we domesticated
Speaker 1: for work, and I guess I should say it wasn't
Speaker 1: just for work. Probably initially we domesticated animals for a
Speaker 1: food supply, like their milk. Yeah. Um, things like cattle cows,
Speaker 1: we domesticated them for milk, of course. Yeah, they're ancient
Speaker 1: ancestor it's now extinct called the a rock and um, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what led to modern tame cattle apparently, right. Um, Oxen,
Speaker 1: we domesticated them for work. Although there's milk from them,
Speaker 1: you can pretty much drink milk from anything. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think was you can milk anything right at just a
Speaker 1: little milking. Um. The ox I think was was even
Speaker 1: stronger than the cow. And they would pull initially sledges,
Speaker 1: like put a bunch of junk on that thing and
Speaker 1: pull it over here, and then eventually plows and of
Speaker 1: course wheeled wagons and um. Some say that we wouldn't
Speaker 1: have even gotten to where we were with a wheel
Speaker 1: if it hadn't have been for things like ox Yeah,
Speaker 1: because we would have had to pull it. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: no good. Um, cheap. We eventually figured out that we
Speaker 1: could breathe them for their wool, although apparently there was
Speaker 1: a five thousand year differential between the time we domesticated
Speaker 1: cheap in the time we started um using wool. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: before the loom, before they started weaving by hand. Goats.
Speaker 1: Goats are great because they'll eat anything. Um, so they're
Speaker 1: super useful. Um. You can be on infertile rocky land
Speaker 1: and a goat is pretty happy. They're great climbers. Uh,
Speaker 1: they eat them. Yeah, I got meat. Unfortunately, you can
Speaker 1: make cheese out of their milk. Yeah. Um, did you
Speaker 1: know that Kashmir comes from goats? Yeah, I do not
Speaker 1: know that. I did not know that. Um. I think
Speaker 1: they're just good for looking at and thinking are cute? Sure,
Speaker 1: that's one thing. Uh. Pigs, of course are descended domesticated
Speaker 1: from the wild boar and um. Pigs were domesticated mainly
Speaker 1: because they would eat waste and trash, and so they
Speaker 1: were handy to have around because they would eat our
Speaker 1: trash and then we would eat them, right. And you know,
Speaker 1: it's interesting. North America has a pretty fascinating history as
Speaker 1: far as domesticated animals go. With pigs in particular, the
Speaker 1: wild hogs in North America were not around. There are
Speaker 1: a couple of pig like animals, but there's no true
Speaker 1: wild pigs in North America, or there weren't until the
Speaker 1: sixteenth century when De Soto brought a bunch of domesticated
Speaker 1: pigs who wandered off, some of which wandered off and
Speaker 1: became the wild hogs of the America's Well, that's the
Speaker 1: same thing happened to the horse exactly. They originally came
Speaker 1: over on the bearing Land Bridge and then went extinct.
Speaker 1: And then the Spanish brought them over and they said, hey,
Speaker 1: I don't know why they aren't horses here already, because
Speaker 1: this is pretty great. The horses said that, and some
Speaker 1: of them went feral. And now you have the horses
Speaker 1: on Cumberland Island. Yeah they're still wild, aren't they. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's pretty amazing. They're faking it. Cumberland Island is here
Speaker 1: in Georgia. For those of you that don't know, we're
Speaker 1: not talking about some like South American country. No, Cumberland Island, Yeah,
Speaker 1: right here in the South. Um. And you know it's
Speaker 1: cool is and for me this is the fact of
Speaker 1: the podcast. After the horse, the next step forward and
Speaker 1: speed transportation was five thousand years later with the steam
Speaker 1: traind years, horses were as fast as we could go
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, tie up twelve of them to
Speaker 1: that stage coach and we'll be twelve horses strong. But um, yeah,
Speaker 1: for five thousand years is just amazing. And then finally
Speaker 1: the invent of the steam engine, and the horses were like,
Speaker 1: all right, fine, we'll go over here. But event apparently
Speaker 1: at first they were used for their meat and their milk. Yeah,
Speaker 1: horse milk again again, and then they were used as
Speaker 1: a mode of transportation. Um. Donkeys also good for transporting.
Speaker 1: Like we said in Egypt, you know they came out
Speaker 1: of Egypt. Camels give for transport, and you've got a
Speaker 1: couple of different kinds, the Bactrian and the Arabian camels. Um,
Speaker 1: and the just using animals for transport and for work
Speaker 1: kind of allowed for not only the agricultural revolution to
Speaker 1: take hold, but for it to spread as well through
Speaker 1: trade routes and stuff that allowed humans to just move
Speaker 1: longer distances faster. So that was another big way that
Speaker 1: domestication changed humanity helped spread like a plague over the
Speaker 1: face of your so we could ruin everything. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: guess we can talk about some other um, smaller livestock
Speaker 1: like chickens and roosters. Um, like you said earlier, this
Speaker 1: was I think maybe the second fact of the show
Speaker 1: is possibly domesticated for entertainment as cock fighters. Yeah, which
Speaker 1: is sad um turkeys. I didn't know this. They were
Speaker 1: the um one of the few indigenous North American domesticated animals. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Mesoamericans domesticated them. Who knew. I didn't know that either,
Speaker 1: Although if that Fletcher boat you should read because stuff
Speaker 1: like that comes up. I just need to read both
Speaker 1: those at some point. I can't believe you haven't. I know.
Speaker 1: Here's another one. Bees. We domesticated bees. I'm sure through
Speaker 1: a very long and painful process. This is discussing four
Speaker 1: as well. Um. But so we domesticated bees, and we
Speaker 1: use bees to help us with another domesticated organism, the
Speaker 1: almond tree. Oh yeah, so that's another one. That's like sheep,
Speaker 1: dogs hurting sheep. Oh yeah yeah, but this is bees
Speaker 1: pollinating almonds. Yeah. Well, bees, we did a great episode
Speaker 1: on that. That's how we um sweetened everything for many
Speaker 1: many years and still do using honey. But last night
Speaker 1: it's still delicious in a cocktail. No on a biscuit, Oh,
Speaker 1: nice little honey on a biscuit. Uh, did you make
Speaker 1: the biscuit yourself? You did nice from scratch from the can? Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: those are good though, Oh yeah, you know it's real good.
Speaker 1: I've noticed is the frozen ones in the bag instead
Speaker 1: of the can. They they rise a lot more like
Speaker 1: a traditional Southern biscuit to me, we wanted just like
Speaker 1: a nasty, buttery like layer biscuit. Yeah, the flaky layers. Man,
Speaker 1: those are good and it's always fun to open the
Speaker 1: package too, and it's delicious with honey. But thanks to
Speaker 1: a man named L. L. Lank Strath, he is the
Speaker 1: guy who really made bee keeping. Uh. There are a
Speaker 1: lot of people working with frames already, but he's the one.
Speaker 1: He's the first guy that made removable and movable frames,
Speaker 1: which apparent only bees will have a tendency to uh
Speaker 1: tie their honey combs into the wall of the box,
Speaker 1: let's say. And um, with those removable and movable frames,
Speaker 1: they weren't I couldn't do that anymore. And apparently that
Speaker 1: made it really easy to manage them. So thanks to
Speaker 1: him in eighteen fifty two, smart guy, we could uh
Speaker 1: domesticate those bees for their delicious honey. And so here's
Speaker 1: where it comes. Um kind of falls apart from me.
Speaker 1: I could see saying bees are domesticated. They don't sting you,
Speaker 1: they're used to being around people. Yeah. Um, silkworms yeah no,
Speaker 1: no no. Uh, rabbits no. I would say that you
Speaker 1: can tame a rabbit, but for the most part, they're
Speaker 1: not domesticated. And then the same with hamsters, which I
Speaker 1: didn't realize that they were this recent, Yeah, from nineteen thirty.
Speaker 1: And another fun fact is supposedly the entire population of
Speaker 1: domesticated or I'm sorry, tamed hamsters derives from that one
Speaker 1: hamster family because they make so many little hamsters so quickly.
Speaker 1: So you take issue with silkworms, rabbits, and hamsters, I
Speaker 1: do as tamed but not domesticated. Yes, like the elephant,
Speaker 1: Just because Hannibal rides an elephant doesn't mean it's domesticated.
Speaker 1: It meant he had a tamed elephant to ride and chuck.
Speaker 1: Just before we wrap up that, I mentioned that, uh,
Speaker 1: humans in turn have been domesticated by agriculture. And we
Speaker 1: have like we've gone undergone a lot of the same
Speaker 1: changes that domesticated animals undergo when we domesticate them, Like
Speaker 1: our reproductive period has increased because we don't have to
Speaker 1: carry a kid like ten kilometers every day because we're
Speaker 1: not hunter gatherers, so we can have more kids. Just
Speaker 1: get on the horse and ride all over town exactly. UM.
Speaker 1: And one of the other ways that we've changed, in
Speaker 1: addition to some of us becoming lactose tolerant into adulthood,
Speaker 1: is we've become um ravaged by and also immune to
Speaker 1: a lot of diseases, a lot of epidemic diseases which
Speaker 1: couldn't have ever existed prior to the advent of agriculture
Speaker 1: for two reasons. One, it needs a dense human population
Speaker 1: that agriculture supports for it to be spread around and
Speaker 1: contracted and to really gain steam. And then secondly, it
Speaker 1: also requires a lot of repeated close proximity to animals.
Speaker 1: And it turns out that all of our epidemic diseases
Speaker 1: come from the agricultural revolution and are hanging out with
Speaker 1: livestock a lot like UM. For example, um influenza came
Speaker 1: from pigs and ducks um measles and tuberculosis came from cattle.
Speaker 1: Possibly smallpox came from cattle, if not camels. And then
Speaker 1: get this, the very fact that all of these, almost
Speaker 1: all of these worst epidemic diseases have their origins in
Speaker 1: Eurasia mean that that's because our domestication took place in Eurasia,
Speaker 1: which means that the people of Eurasia were able to
Speaker 1: develop resistance and immunity over the generations to these diseases,
Speaker 1: so they don't get these diseases as much, you know,
Speaker 1: and when we came over, that's what wiped out the
Speaker 1: North American New World populations because they didn't have any
Speaker 1: resistance to these diseases. So you can really make a
Speaker 1: case that agriculture changed everything more than anything else ever has. Wow,
Speaker 1: So that's that you got anything else. I've got nothing else, man,
Speaker 1: you need to read. I'll do that tonight. Okay, if
Speaker 1: you want to know more about animal domestication, you can
Speaker 1: type those two seemingly boring but rather fascinating words into
Speaker 1: the search part house to work dot com and that
Speaker 1: will bring up this article and then sussistant search parts.
Speaker 1: Time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this Nielsen family.
Speaker 1: We heard from quite a few got quite a few
Speaker 1: people that showed pictures of their little like two and
Speaker 1: three dollar packets, which just kind of neat. I don't
Speaker 1: think it's even five dollars anymore. I think a couple
Speaker 1: of people just got two dollars. Apparently they give you
Speaker 1: two to sweeten the pot, and then once you do it,
Speaker 1: you get more. That's what I think, all right, that's
Speaker 1: what somebody I think said, Well, this is from a
Speaker 1: real deal Nielsen family that got paid and they're from Atlanta,
Speaker 1: from Grant Park Um. Apparently our address was picked at
Speaker 1: random by their computer program, and they sent out a
Speaker 1: representative with a gift set of ugly tumblers to convince
Speaker 1: us to participate. We agreed because they pay you about
Speaker 1: two hundred dollars every six months if you let them
Speaker 1: track your TV and computer usage. Rob, who was the representative,
Speaker 1: came by, installed the TV box and computer program, and
Speaker 1: we check in on us in person every six months
Speaker 1: and ask a set of questions about our life and
Speaker 1: purchasing habits. They always asked about table wine, which I
Speaker 1: thought was interesting. Uh, I don't know. Every time we
Speaker 1: turned on our t they would have loved me because
Speaker 1: I would just be drunk on table wine the whole time.
Speaker 1: Every time we turn on the TV or opened up
Speaker 1: our laptop, we had to press a button about who
Speaker 1: was watching. Uh, and using the computer wasn't that hard,
Speaker 1: but it became annoying after a couple of years. So
Speaker 1: we're happy when our contract ended. Apparently they were really
Speaker 1: excited to have us as a part of their program
Speaker 1: because we were what they call a Grand Slam family,
Speaker 1: which means we were young under thirty with over the
Speaker 1: air TV, no cable antenna, and we owned a Mac.
Speaker 1: So that's a Grand Slam apparently. Uh it seems yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess. So it seems like we were pretty rare
Speaker 1: fined in the world, in their world, so rare that
Speaker 1: when our two year participation ran out, they all offered
Speaker 1: us a year long extension. We also got a bonus
Speaker 1: payment for being a minority household, which is hilarious because
Speaker 1: both of us are white as can be, but my
Speaker 1: husband is half Cuban. So that is from Laura and
Speaker 1: Chris right here in Atlanta. Nice Laura and Chris Nielsen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Nielsen family, no cable under thirty Mac users, the
Speaker 1: Grand Slam Grand Slam. If you are a Grand Slam
Speaker 1: family of some weird sort, we want to hear from you.
Speaker 1: You can tweet to us at s y s K podcast.
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