Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb. Hey, this is Christian Seger Christian.
Speaker 1: Where do you stand on mass extinction? Well, I think
Speaker 1: it's a good thing. Yeah, yeah, just sort of a
Speaker 1: regular sort of cleaning out of the lent catcher of
Speaker 1: the of civilis exactly Cosmos Earth changing its oil every
Speaker 1: couple of million years. Okay, all right, Today we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about mass extinctions, and in particular we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about it in relation to Anteine Knewitz, who used
Speaker 1: to be the other in chief over at Iona and
Speaker 1: she's now at Gizmodo, both under the Gawker banner, I believe, uh.
Speaker 1: And she has this great book called Scatter Adapt and
Speaker 1: Remember how humans will survive a mass extinction. And so
Speaker 1: what we're gonna do today is we're gonna talk about
Speaker 1: the five mass extinctions that have already happened on Earth.
Speaker 1: We've already gone through five of them before human beings
Speaker 1: were even walking around. The sixth one that we're pretty
Speaker 1: much with no doubt living in right now, and then
Speaker 1: what nuances and some of the other articles that we
Speaker 1: researched for this episode. Recommendations are for surviving the sixth
Speaker 1: mass mass extinction that's coming up on us right because
Speaker 1: they can be survived based on the ones we've seen
Speaker 1: so far. You have such creatures as say the earthworm,
Speaker 1: that's a champion of surviving mass extinction events. Exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And uh, let's keep in mind that for a mass extinction,
Speaker 1: what qualifies as one is that seventy of all species
Speaker 1: go extinct in less than two million years, So that
Speaker 1: leaves you know which earthworms would fall under. There's also
Speaker 1: a really interesting creature that Annally talks about in her
Speaker 1: book called the Listosaurus, and we'll get to there. Um.
Speaker 1: But I should qualify this by saying that, uh, last
Speaker 1: your fallen. For our How Stuff Works video channel, I
Speaker 1: interviewed and Antale about this book, and you can go
Speaker 1: and watch that episode on our HSW channel right now.
Speaker 1: It's about twenty minutes long, and I get to talk
Speaker 1: with her personally about the book and her ideas, and
Speaker 1: she's much more eloquent and steeped in this material than
Speaker 1: than we are. But this is a fun discussion I
Speaker 1: think for us to kind of piggyback on and bring
Speaker 1: some of our how stuff works knowledge to the table
Speaker 1: as well. Indeed, if you want to watch that video,
Speaker 1: I'll make sure that there is a link to it
Speaker 1: in the landing page for this episode. It's stuff to
Speaker 1: bow your Mind dot Com. So okay, we established what
Speaker 1: a mass extinction is. Uh, what are the two basic
Speaker 1: causes for mass extinction? Well, there's usually inanimate physical world events, right, volcanoes,
Speaker 1: climate changes, outer space debris. We all think of this
Speaker 1: massive massive asteroids striking the planet and killing all the dinosaurs, right,
Speaker 1: that's basically the one that everybody kind of imagines. But
Speaker 1: there's also long term to inches to biological life that
Speaker 1: are affecting the ecosystems around us and killing off species. Uh,
Speaker 1: and we are responsible for some of those. And then
Speaker 1: in those five previous ones, which will go through shortly,
Speaker 1: you know that there was a lot of versions of
Speaker 1: an invasive species that were destroying habitats and and subsequently
Speaker 1: the species that lived within them. Yeah. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: always important to keep in mind that yes, humans and
Speaker 1: and are and various other creatures live on Earth, but
Speaker 1: we all we live in a very slim portion of
Speaker 1: the atmosphere here on Earth, and you can break that
Speaker 1: down even further, especially you know, depending on the particular species,
Speaker 1: very small pockets of even that layer of atmosphere, depending
Speaker 1: mon climate and an environment, So it becomes less of
Speaker 1: a we are the creatures who live on this planet,
Speaker 1: as we are the creatures who live in often very
Speaker 1: small areas of this planet, and the in areas of
Speaker 1: this planet that are susceptible to catastrophic change. And keep
Speaker 1: in mind too, that these environmental changes we're talking about
Speaker 1: take sometimes a billion years, like these are it's the
Speaker 1: the the time that these go through. It's unfathomable. I
Speaker 1: don't know about you, but from my human consciousness, I
Speaker 1: have a hard time. Once we get to a million years,
Speaker 1: I'm like, I don't know, it's it's all, you know,
Speaker 1: great terrain after that. But these are huge amounts of time,
Speaker 1: and that's why we're fairly confident that we can say
Speaker 1: that we're living in one right now, because keep in mind,
Speaker 1: they're two million years long, so, uh, it's happening at
Speaker 1: an incredibly slow pace to our human lives. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a lot easier to comprehend that space collision situation where
Speaker 1: something snacks into the Earth and it brocks everything out,
Speaker 1: or a you know, the volcano going that's erupting in
Speaker 1: the background of that dinosaur illustration in our childhood paleontology books.
Speaker 1: But we have to think about the long term changes
Speaker 1: that steadily alter the environment and killed off the species
Speaker 1: that have found their their niche within that environment. That's
Speaker 1: that's a little harder to comprehend. Yeah, absolutely, So let's
Speaker 1: look at our five examples here. The first one is
Speaker 1: the order vichi and extinction event. Uh. And this occurred
Speaker 1: somewhere between four hundred and nine million years ago and
Speaker 1: four hundred forty five million years ago. And the ideas
Speaker 1: that you know, the world before that was the Cambrian period.
Speaker 1: It was basically multicellular life evolving over the course of
Speaker 1: millions of years. But what happened was this catastrophe that
Speaker 1: some think was caused by cosmic rays from outer space.
Speaker 1: Now let's qualify this. This isn't like cosmic rays from
Speaker 1: some science fiction novel or comic book or anything like that.
Speaker 1: This is energetic sub atomic particles that let's say they
Speaker 1: were blasting us today, right, they would damage our DNA
Speaker 1: and probably cause cancer within us. But they more importantly,
Speaker 1: they could also affect the atmosphere, and that's what the
Speaker 1: theory is that happened here in the order Vichyan period
Speaker 1: was that they affected the atmosphere. They basically turned coastal
Speaker 1: habitats into deserts, and most of the life forms that
Speaker 1: were out there, these multi cellular life forms were marine based.
Speaker 1: They were living in water, so their entire habitat was destroyed.
Speaker 1: And we see the ice age because the world is
Speaker 1: covered in these you know cloud cover. Basically that makes
Speaker 1: everything colder and it freezes. So we see a massive
Speaker 1: not a complete reset, but it's kind of kind of
Speaker 1: a massive reboot of life on Earth. Life is just
Speaker 1: finally getting to the point where it's evolving, uh, to
Speaker 1: you know, a couple of different cells, and and it
Speaker 1: gets blasted with ice. Yeah. Yeah, it's easy to I
Speaker 1: guess to think about these two in terms of like
Speaker 1: economic comparisons. You know, there's an economic downturn and uh
Speaker 1: and what happened suddenly you know a number of positions
Speaker 1: have to disappear at a particular place of work, which
Speaker 1: leads to different two roles changing, which leads sometimes to
Speaker 1: bigger opportunities for those that remain. Yeah, absolutely, but it
Speaker 1: but it changes the playing field. Yeah, and there's you know, again,
Speaker 1: let's keep this in mind too, there's not a lot
Speaker 1: of control that any of the players involved have over this.
Speaker 1: So we get to the second one then, which is
Speaker 1: the Late Devonian extinction, and this is four hundred and
Speaker 1: fifteen million years to three hundred and fifty eight million
Speaker 1: years ago, And the basic cause of this one was
Speaker 1: what we were mentioning earlier, invasive species. So the world
Speaker 1: at the time, it's often referred to as Annalee had
Speaker 1: talked to me about in our interview as the age
Speaker 1: of fishes and um, there's some plant life on land,
Speaker 1: but for the most part, again we're talking about marine life.
Speaker 1: Can you get this combination of earthquakes and volcanoes that
Speaker 1: start pushing habitats into different areas of the world together,
Speaker 1: and the habitats smashed together because of these natural disasters,
Speaker 1: and you get these inland seas where predators start taking
Speaker 1: over habitats that they didn't previously exist in. Right, So
Speaker 1: massive invasive species take over and the killop seventy of
Speaker 1: the species that are existing in these previous ecosystems. From
Speaker 1: an economic standpoint, you can think of this as see
Speaker 1: the merger of two companies, Suddenly there are redundancies that
Speaker 1: have to have to be dealt with. These both of
Speaker 1: these uh, these individuals have the same job. Which one
Speaker 1: is going to eat the other one? Uh? Yeah, And
Speaker 1: and let's stick with this metaphor. I like this, So, uh,
Speaker 1: new species do not evolve for a long time after
Speaker 1: this Devonian extinction period. So from this corporate perspective, there's
Speaker 1: no new jobs being created, right, there's no new positions.
Speaker 1: There's not a lot of creativity within the organization. That
Speaker 1: leads us to the Permian period, which is two hundred
Speaker 1: million to two hundred and fifty one million years ago,
Speaker 1: and this is the big uh. They refer to it
Speaker 1: as the Great Dying, which I particularly like that name.
Speaker 1: It sounds like some Norwegian black metal band. Yeah. But
Speaker 1: this is basically the mega volcano era, right, So the
Speaker 1: world is all getting pushed together again. There's these land
Speaker 1: masses that are basically forming what we call Pangaea, and
Speaker 1: there's this massive climate change and mega volcanoes, and the
Speaker 1: mega volcanoes are belching out these toxic gases that go
Speaker 1: into the atmosphere again, you know, very similar to the
Speaker 1: cosmic rays creating these this cloud cover the species on
Speaker 1: the planet die off. It takes seventy five to qualify
Speaker 1: as a mass extinction. Got twenty more percent here, No
Speaker 1: wonder is called the Great Dyeing. Yeah, like this is
Speaker 1: this is one of those examples where you can say
Speaker 1: it came pretty close, almost wiped everything out. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: the world afterwards is basically the the ocean becomes acidified.
Speaker 1: We've got what we would think of today as pollution,
Speaker 1: but it's you know, caused by mega volcanoes and and
Speaker 1: this this is this horrible gas that's everywhere in the
Speaker 1: air and h effects that are similar to what we
Speaker 1: would call global warming today. But the five percent survival though,
Speaker 1: that's kind of like the corporation has been reduced to
Speaker 1: a mere startup right right after thee And this is
Speaker 1: what the startup consists of. This is this is anally
Speaker 1: really spelled this out for me, and I liked it.
Speaker 1: She said that some scientists refer to this era as
Speaker 1: slime world because the main creatures of the five percent
Speaker 1: that survived, or what we would refer to as slimes. Uh.
Speaker 1: So you've got these slimes that are moving around this
Speaker 1: black sludge basically right, and then crocodiles. So this it's
Speaker 1: not a friendly place. Is this barely breathable habitat full
Speaker 1: of slime and crocodiles. Uh. And that goes on until
Speaker 1: we've got the early Triassic period two hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: million to two hundred and twenty million years ago, and
Speaker 1: this is where we start seeing the early evolution of
Speaker 1: dinosaurs again. Egg of volcanoes come into play. They start
Speaker 1: blowing up, pushing continents around, and you know, habitats are destroyed. Okay,
Speaker 1: So as these habitats get pushed together, food webs, you know,
Speaker 1: the relationships between these different animals and and the and
Speaker 1: the flora within their regions start unraveling essentially. And uh.
Speaker 1: In Annally's book, she has a great example of the
Speaker 1: one animal that survives this. This is this is the
Speaker 1: survivor that we should look to as an example for
Speaker 1: our own case of living through the sixth mass extinction.
Speaker 1: It's called the listrous saurus and it's basically this is
Speaker 1: the description from the book an ancestral or no, maybe
Speaker 1: you added this one an ancestral shovel lizard. Added a lizard. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love that description. Shovel lizards. So basically it's faces
Speaker 1: a shovel, right that survived. It kind of looked like
Speaker 1: it was about the size of a pig, and it
Speaker 1: was mammal like reptile aisle, Right, it had like strands
Speaker 1: of hair and stuff like that. But I believe it
Speaker 1: qualified as a reptile. And but here's how it survived.
Speaker 1: Because of its shovel face. It was able to burrow
Speaker 1: its way underground and survive all of these you know,
Speaker 1: pushing around of land masses and the various you know
Speaker 1: problems with breathing in the air and also the the
Speaker 1: invasive species. And uh so what they do is they
Speaker 1: basically go underground, and they had this special way of
Speaker 1: breathing so that they could breathe really well underground with
Speaker 1: low oxygen levels, even if there was dusty airborne contaminants.
Speaker 1: So they adapted essentially to survive in this world. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the other thing that was really fascinating about the
Speaker 1: listener store is not a picky eater would basically eat
Speaker 1: anything that came across. So, you know, as it's shoveling
Speaker 1: around under the earth, I'm picturing, Uh, what are those
Speaker 1: creatures from D and D that that like, uh tunnel
Speaker 1: around there? Like called land sharks or something like that.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I'm trying to now I'm thinking of all
Speaker 1: the different under dark creatures. Number hulk lister source is
Speaker 1: a good D and D monster. That we should add
Speaker 1: that to somebody's campaigns someday. Yeah. I love the the
Speaker 1: idea too, that it it survived because it was essentially
Speaker 1: a generalist, because that also kind of that kind of
Speaker 1: falls into the whole economic corporate structure as well, and
Speaker 1: one that I often fall back on when I when I,
Speaker 1: you know, start thinking about, you know, where I am
Speaker 1: in a particular place, and I'm thinking, all right, I,
Speaker 1: you know, make sure that I don't have all my
Speaker 1: my tools in one basketing know, exactly a journalist because
Speaker 1: jack of all trades, master of not Yeah. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: the list of source for you. It's the long term employee. Yeah,
Speaker 1: who do you want to be when the when the
Speaker 1: cuts come? Do you want to be the social media
Speaker 1: specialist or the tumbler specialist? You know? Right? Yeah? Like that.
Speaker 1: You know, sometimes it can behoove you to specialize, but
Speaker 1: don't specialize so much that you're the you know, you're
Speaker 1: essentially this one creature that has survived to live in
Speaker 1: a very particular uh you know, tidle pool. And when
Speaker 1: that title pool dries up your toast, you're the first
Speaker 1: one to get the axe. In mass extinctions and incorporations,
Speaker 1: life lessons from stuff to blow your mind. Uhl SOO,
Speaker 1: then we get to the one. This is the one
Speaker 1: that everybody knows about, right, that's the fifth one. This
Speaker 1: is the one we all think of. It's the Cretaceous
Speaker 1: period a hundred and forty five million to sixty five
Speaker 1: million years ago. This is the meteorite impact striking basically destroying. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's massive impact in what today is Baja California. Uh,
Speaker 1: and it kills off the dinosaurs. Right. This is the
Speaker 1: like Land before Time Jurassic Park, the one that's really
Speaker 1: hammered it into our heads. And uh, there's an interesting
Speaker 1: thing here though, that's going on. In Antalye's book, she
Speaker 1: says that between scientists that study this particular era, there's
Speaker 1: some contention that it, yes, there was definitely some kind
Speaker 1: of impact in that area of the world, and yes
Speaker 1: that probably contribute it did to, you know, an extinction
Speaker 1: of of certain species. But they also think that there
Speaker 1: were some more mega volcanoes going on more likely in India,
Speaker 1: and that it's easy to think about again, like let's
Speaker 1: get to this idea of it's really easy to think
Speaker 1: about this huge asteroid striking Earth and just killing everybody
Speaker 1: in one fell swoop, right, but it Yeah, those that
Speaker 1: were in the general area of impact were killed instantly.
Speaker 1: But that's not where we're seeing the extinction. That's not
Speaker 1: where the sevent of species are dying off. It is
Speaker 1: the world afterwards, because you get this again, slow process
Speaker 1: of climate change makes it really hard for plants to grow,
Speaker 1: subsequently makes it really hard for animals to find something
Speaker 1: to eat, and then the carnivorous animals who are eating
Speaker 1: the other animals subsequently don't have a lot to eat.
Speaker 1: So again food food webs are unraveling. There's just not
Speaker 1: a lot left. Yeah, I mean we're talking about for
Speaker 1: the most part, with these volcano examples and the and
Speaker 1: the impact examples, it's it's less about getting trapped in
Speaker 1: the lava floor. We're getting hit by the thing that
Speaker 1: collides with the earth as much as the material that's
Speaker 1: dejected into the atmosphere. The sort of nuclear winter scenario
Speaker 1: where where there's just less some light reaching the earth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's interesting, Like, uh, I'm thinking about disaster movies right now, right,
Speaker 1: and like we have this sort of obsession with them
Speaker 1: in in in popular culture right now. Like I think
Speaker 1: San Andreas comes out this weekend, which is the movie
Speaker 1: that features the Rock rescuing his family from the Big
Speaker 1: one in California. Uh and um yeah, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: when there's a big earthquake like that, of course lots
Speaker 1: of people are going to die, but the after effects
Speaker 1: are what's going to really affect the larger community, the
Speaker 1: entire ecosystem of the planet. Yeah, especially when you start
Speaker 1: stealing seeing these these the spiraling collapse as the webs
Speaker 1: begin to unravel. Yeah. All right, we've taken you on
Speaker 1: just a roller coaster ride through the five extinction events
Speaker 1: that have occurred so far. Uh. And now we're going
Speaker 1: to discuss the sixth great extinction event. Uh, one that
Speaker 1: we may be living in right now that may not
Speaker 1: you know, consists of some sort of cosmic calamity just
Speaker 1: wiping things out, but rather the slow process that has
Speaker 1: a lot, if not everything, to do with the human civilization. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's the key, Like with those other ones, it's
Speaker 1: very much about the slow you know, again, a mass
Speaker 1: extinction requires two million years for the breakdown. Um. But
Speaker 1: if we look at the sort of longitudinal uh, what
Speaker 1: what is called the background extinction rate. So this is basically, uh,
Speaker 1: all the time species are dying out right, not because
Speaker 1: of mass extinctions. It's just part of the natural order
Speaker 1: of things. You know, species die, new species come come forth. Uh,
Speaker 1: and there's they're always going on. But the background extinction
Speaker 1: rate has been higher. There's been a huge spike in
Speaker 1: numbers since the Cretaceous period. So actually, if you go
Speaker 1: and you look at at our how Stuff Works articles
Speaker 1: on mass extinction, surviving mass extinction, things that are causing
Speaker 1: the six mass extinction, there's some interesting stuff in there
Speaker 1: as well. And our colleague Jonathan Strickland from tech Stuff
Speaker 1: and Forward Thinking actually wrote one of those pieces, and
Speaker 1: he cited a statistic that says that the background extinction
Speaker 1: rate for speechies is somewhere between a hundred to a
Speaker 1: thousand times greater than it should be. Uh. And he
Speaker 1: cited Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson as being somebody who
Speaker 1: estimated that we're looking at thirty thousand species going extinct
Speaker 1: every year. Uh, And so you know, we're still under
Speaker 1: the seventy five percent threshold range. But that's faster than normal.
Speaker 1: Another another statistic here is that the background rate is happening.
Speaker 1: They're on the average. It's point one extinctions per million
Speaker 1: species per year. Okay, this is this is how people
Speaker 1: have studied this. Look at it. It's actually quantified as
Speaker 1: e over m s y extinctions per million species per
Speaker 1: year UM. But the current rate is somewhere again, like
Speaker 1: I said, between a hundred and a thousand, so we're
Speaker 1: far over what you know, the average is there. So okay,
Speaker 1: so we know that our background extinction rate is significantly
Speaker 1: higher than it should be. Right. Uh, let's let's take
Speaker 1: a look in the same way that we looked at
Speaker 1: those other extinctions at the world before. You know what
Speaker 1: we had, and you know what we're looking at now.
Speaker 1: So you know, I'll remember it all takes a seventy
Speaker 1: five species in two million years. Uh, and we're looking
Speaker 1: at you know, there's like roughly you know, five major signs,
Speaker 1: but there's all kinds of other external reasons that could
Speaker 1: cause our mass extinctions. Right, And do you want to
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about the age of man and
Speaker 1: how you know we're coming into that. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: this is a vital piece of the puzzle here because, uh,
Speaker 1: many people refer to this age that we're living in now,
Speaker 1: this age, potentially of the sixth grade extinction event, is
Speaker 1: the anthropasyne era, the the age of man, because humans
Speaker 1: are now the dominant force of change on Earth or
Speaker 1: not just augmenting our physical selves, but but we're also
Speaker 1: augmenting the land around us from ancient aqueducts and cloud seating, um,
Speaker 1: you know on up until you know the agricultural revolution. Uh,
Speaker 1: even if you go back, you know, even before agriculture,
Speaker 1: and you just look at us killing off the mammoths, right,
Speaker 1: we're hunting the mammoths. And then when we kill off
Speaker 1: the mammoths, it allows birch to grow unconsumed and erase
Speaker 1: much of the grassland. Uh. And then and these and
Speaker 1: the trees then change the color of the landscape, making
Speaker 1: it much darker so that it absorbs more of the
Speaker 1: sun's heat and this heats at the air. Um. And
Speaker 1: so this process would have added to natural climate change,
Speaker 1: making it harder for the mammoths to cope and helping
Speaker 1: the birch tree spread further. Which I love this example
Speaker 1: because it shows that even even primitive humans just doing
Speaker 1: the most primitive thing possible, just spearing a bunch of mammoths.
Speaker 1: Right in doing that, we we just dropped the balance
Speaker 1: and we begin kind of paraforming the world into a
Speaker 1: new form. It's the classic invasive species conundrum basics, because
Speaker 1: we are the big invasive species we are, and not
Speaker 1: only are we an invasive invasive species, but we are
Speaker 1: also moving other life forms out of their natural habitats
Speaker 1: and into other ones because we find them aesthetically pleasing. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: for instance, an example that is often used as the
Speaker 1: kudzoo plant in Southern America where we live right now.
Speaker 1: It was brought here and it's taking over chunks of
Speaker 1: the entire United States since the late eight hundreds because
Speaker 1: people brought it here. I thought that it was appealing,
Speaker 1: and now it's everywhere, right Like, man, I can't like
Speaker 1: walk down the street in Atlanta without seeing, you know,
Speaker 1: a house or a wall overgrown with kad zoo. Uh
Speaker 1: there's even yeah, it's everywhere. Yeah, I mean even some
Speaker 1: of the tolerated things in our neck of the woods.
Speaker 1: The English ivy. People love English ivy, but it's it's horriful.
Speaker 1: What you know kills trees, that it's it's invasive. Here's
Speaker 1: one of my favorite examples. I actually did an episode
Speaker 1: about this for Brain Stuff. Uh raccoons. So um, this
Speaker 1: is I'll try to make this brief, but this is
Speaker 1: a perfect example of human beings causing an invasive species
Speaker 1: problems a problem. So in Japan in the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: there's this cartoon featured this cute cartoon raccoon Okay, and
Speaker 1: Japanese importers said, wow, like people really love this cartoon.
Speaker 1: Let's start importing raccoons from the United States. They're going
Speaker 1: to make great pets. And of course they're not domesticated animals.
Speaker 1: So these families would go out and buy raccoons and
Speaker 1: then you know, they were fairal animals basically, and they
Speaker 1: couldn't domesticate them. They didn't they couldn't live with them,
Speaker 1: so the raccoons either escaped or they were let out.
Speaker 1: Right now, Japan is facing this huge crisis of raccoon
Speaker 1: proportions because they have raccoons all throughout the forests in Japan,
Speaker 1: and there um in particular a problem because they're attacking
Speaker 1: the historical landmarks in Japan like temples and such um
Speaker 1: not attacking. It's not like these raccoons are like rising up.
Speaker 1: It's not Planet of the Raccoons. But they're you know,
Speaker 1: essentially as an invasive, invasive species moving in on this
Speaker 1: territory and destroying this the habitat. They're destroying the buildings
Speaker 1: that are around them, They're burrowing into them, making their
Speaker 1: new homes there. And Japan has this huge problem where
Speaker 1: they're just constantly trying to catch and unfortunately kill all
Speaker 1: these raccoons because they just can't. The population is growing
Speaker 1: so quickly just since the seventies that they can't deal
Speaker 1: with it. It's the raccoons pushing it out. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean when it comes to invasive species, and it brings
Speaker 1: to mind the earlier examples we were talking about where
Speaker 1: you had to have like masses of land converging and
Speaker 1: drifting apart for these kind of invasive situations to take place.
Speaker 1: Uh literally mountains were being moved to facilitate this. But
Speaker 1: humans have so altered life on this earth that they
Speaker 1: just do it by just moving around, by transporting materials
Speaker 1: bye bye, you know, sometimes accidentally, such as the lionfish
Speaker 1: being an example, Well that was kind of a combination
Speaker 1: because on one hand you have people saying, oh, the
Speaker 1: lionfish is beautiful, I want to keep it in an aquarium. Uh,
Speaker 1: And then you also have people you just have international
Speaker 1: shipping affecting it because even though it's a beautiful, delicate
Speaker 1: looking creature, it's extremely hardy and it can survive, you know,
Speaker 1: stuck away in the bulge of a ship. So on purpose,
Speaker 1: by accident, we end up just mixing everything around, and
Speaker 1: uh in a number of species, a lot of species
Speaker 1: are going to be unable to flow with that change.
Speaker 1: So this is a huge contributing factor to this this
Speaker 1: current mass extinction that we're living in. It's you know,
Speaker 1: it's happened before with invasive species moving in on other habitats,
Speaker 1: but in this case it's you know, often because of
Speaker 1: our intervention that we're moving these things around and and
Speaker 1: knocking out the the ecosystem that's in place. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: just to a couple other facts, we just drive home
Speaker 1: how much we have influenced the world. Um By at
Speaker 1: least eight of Earth's land surface had been directly affected
Speaker 1: by humans, and as of two thousand five, humans had
Speaker 1: built so many dams the nearly six times as much
Speaker 1: water was held in storage as flowed freely through rivers.
Speaker 1: So okay, listeners out there probably thinking, Okay, these guys
Speaker 1: are on the blame the human train. It's all our fault, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're right, I am at least, But well it's kind
Speaker 1: of a compliment, right, I mean, because human humans here,
Speaker 1: we are pilot successful at what we set out to
Speaker 1: do exactly. But it's, uh, the thing we set out
Speaker 1: to do was like by its very nature, um like
Speaker 1: world shaping and world destroying, and when we get to it,
Speaker 1: this may be what saves us as well. But there
Speaker 1: are other factors that are going onto that aren't necessarily
Speaker 1: caused by humans. And other is that our oceans are
Speaker 1: changing again it's it's it's habitat loss, but it's not
Speaker 1: on the land, right, So there's these massive changes that
Speaker 1: are happening. So, for example, half the coral reefs on
Speaker 1: Earth have been destroyed h and about a third of
Speaker 1: mangrove forest as of those like underground underwater forests that
Speaker 1: you know you see like a manateese swimming thread or
Speaker 1: something like that. I don't know, Uh, those have been
Speaker 1: destroyed as well, right there their home to land and
Speaker 1: sea animals you're thinking of, I'm thinking of like otters.
Speaker 1: I'm assuming I don't know off the top of my head.
Speaker 1: I'm not a marine biologist, but some kind of air
Speaker 1: breathing land animal that that works within this ecosystem together
Speaker 1: with the marine life that's there. Right. Uh. And in addition, okay,
Speaker 1: this is human beings. Over fishing has led to two
Speaker 1: thirds of the world's marine fisheries being tapped to their limits.
Speaker 1: So again we're missing with things a little bit. But
Speaker 1: there's there's stuff going on at a long term rate
Speaker 1: that we're not necessarily affecting either. Right. And another one
Speaker 1: that I here is of course a loss of biodiversity,
Speaker 1: which has everything to do with agriculture. Uh. We we have. Agriculture,
Speaker 1: of course, is by its very nature an artificial you know,
Speaker 1: manipulation of vegetation to say, hey, we really like that
Speaker 1: a little potato crop that's grown over there. We really
Speaker 1: like these red berries. They're pretty delicious. Let's have an
Speaker 1: entire portion of land that grows nothing but that in
Speaker 1: an artificially maintained scenario. And uh, And then you end
Speaker 1: up depending on one particular strain of that species, and
Speaker 1: that becomes the dominant um uh, you know, basically the
Speaker 1: dominant life form on huge pieces of land. Yeah. Anally
Speaker 1: uses as an example for for this. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: it seems like a long time ago, but the Irish
Speaker 1: potato famine of eighteen forty five within the grand scheme
Speaker 1: of two million years, it's not a whole lot of
Speaker 1: time has past. But cheese is an example to show
Speaker 1: how habitat loss and extinction or at least uh death
Speaker 1: you know by famine uh, can be caused by two
Speaker 1: things that are going on. You've got a lower population, right,
Speaker 1: and then there's class divisions that are going on that
Speaker 1: are sort of deciding who gets access to the food, right,
Speaker 1: and then that subsequently leads to airborne fungus that spreads
Speaker 1: disease and so on. So you know, we're really looking
Speaker 1: at industrial farming nowadays as playing a huge role in this.
Speaker 1: It's replacing this diverse population of plants that we have
Speaker 1: with a single crop that were raising for you know,
Speaker 1: the purposes of selling them the grocery store basically, which
Speaker 1: means you're highly susceptible to one microbe one of these
Speaker 1: coming along and just wiping that out. What if something
Speaker 1: takes up corn? Yeah, because we increasingly depend on one
Speaker 1: strain of corn. I mean, that's why there are efforts
Speaker 1: to maintain these additional strains of corn in the protected
Speaker 1: places so that we have that genetic diversity to fall
Speaker 1: back on. Yeah. Yeah, that's scary just on its own, right,
Speaker 1: But um, let's add a fourth one to the mix.
Speaker 1: And this is again, this is not a human a
Speaker 1: human error here. This is the one that we know
Speaker 1: from the Cretaceous period, the asteroid impact. Right, this is
Speaker 1: your arm again, this is your deep impact movie scenario. So, um,
Speaker 1: we're actually do for one of these. NASA essentially says
Speaker 1: that asteroids that are you know, that are big enough
Speaker 1: to cause the Cretaceous period extinction event. They're supposed to
Speaker 1: strike the Earth every million years. In our dou dates
Speaker 1: come up, we haven't had one, and um, so we're
Speaker 1: just kind of crossing our fingures waiting to get hit
Speaker 1: by a big rock from outer space. The one of
Speaker 1: the thing about this particular threat, this particular extinction events scenario,
Speaker 1: is that we increasingly have the ability to to to
Speaker 1: track these these near Earth objects. We increasingly have the
Speaker 1: ability to launch the kind of countermeasures that could prevent
Speaker 1: them once spotted. Uh, neither neither of those efforts are
Speaker 1: are funded to the extent they should be, which is
Speaker 1: crazy when you realize that that of all these things
Speaker 1: like these this is in the movies, there's always a
Speaker 1: hero of saving the world, doing something heroic to save
Speaker 1: the world. Historically, like no living actual person has ever
Speaker 1: saved the world. But this is a scenario where we could,
Speaker 1: like like a particular effort, a particular organization could save
Speaker 1: the world or a whole lot of people in it
Speaker 1: from annihilation by a near Earth object. Yeah, but we're
Speaker 1: not there yet. Yeah, no, we're not. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: all episode for another time. But obviously, you know, the
Speaker 1: NASA and other national space organizations aren't getting the funding
Speaker 1: they need to sort of defend US, I guess at large.
Speaker 1: But this is you know, something that analegue gets into later,
Speaker 1: is that outer space is really going to be uh
Speaker 1: the long term goal here for us development of travel
Speaker 1: throughout space, paying attention to what's going on around the
Speaker 1: planet Earth. That's going to be a huge factor in
Speaker 1: making sure that the human species survives. Yeah, and also
Speaker 1: in terms of just like moving up the Cardassian scale,
Speaker 1: like we have to master the planet and in a
Speaker 1: in a real and meaningful sense and not just oops,
Speaker 1: we screwed everything else up on the planet. So there's
Speaker 1: a fifth one here that I think is a pretty
Speaker 1: big one, and you know, we'd be remiss if we
Speaker 1: ignored it, which is the rising temperature caused by dun
Speaker 1: dun dune global warming. Um. And we're not going to
Speaker 1: get into the debates of its origin. You know, obviously
Speaker 1: there's a lot of conflicting reports back and forth of
Speaker 1: what scientists say or politicians say about this one way
Speaker 1: or the other. But let's just stick with this one fact, okay.
Speaker 1: So it all it takes is a shift of one
Speaker 1: degree celsius, which is for us in America one point
Speaker 1: degrees fahrenheit one point eight sorry, one point eight degrees fahrenheit.
Speaker 1: That alone would lead to thirty percent of Earth's species
Speaker 1: being wiped out forever. So uh, you know, depending on
Speaker 1: where you stand on global warming, just know that, you know,
Speaker 1: all it takes is that one little nudge on the
Speaker 1: temperature scale and boom, it's just gone. Because again, like
Speaker 1: so many creatures, essentially live in a metaphorical tidal pool,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't take much to make that pool just vanish. Entirely.
Speaker 1: So you've got a couple of examples that are like
Speaker 1: the asteroid one outer space kind of cosmic events. Let's
Speaker 1: let's let's think a little bigger. Let's think Jack Kirby here.
Speaker 1: So what have we got? Well for starters, if a
Speaker 1: sufficiently large nearby star or to burn out, the resulting
Speaker 1: hyper nova could theoretically blast the Earth with enough gamma
Speaker 1: radiation to destroy our ozone layer, and that would expose
Speaker 1: us to deadly doses of solar radiation. So that's uh,
Speaker 1: that's a potential factor there. So okay, so another reason
Speaker 1: for us to be paying more attention to what's going
Speaker 1: on matter space. Yeah, yeah, I mean this this would
Speaker 1: be an example of one that would be less uh less,
Speaker 1: less easily diverted. It's not a matter of incoming object.
Speaker 1: Can we just sort of nudge it off course? But
Speaker 1: obviously the more we know about it, the better position
Speaker 1: we are to understand what's happening. Then maybe we would
Speaker 1: be able to devise some means to shield the planet.
Speaker 1: Another similar event, Uh, there's an orange dwarf dubbed Glease
Speaker 1: seven ten, and it poses another threat. Astronomers predicted that
Speaker 1: this rogue star may barrel into our corner of the
Speaker 1: galaxy roughly one point five million years from now, So
Speaker 1: we're looking out a little um shredding the Orc cloud
Speaker 1: on the outskirts of our Solar system and pelting us
Speaker 1: with comets formed from the impact. So it's not the
Speaker 1: star itself, but it's the resulting commets that are going
Speaker 1: to basically hit us like mortar fire basically, and indeed
Speaker 1: the stress that we put on leaving the planet. And
Speaker 1: that's in roughly seven point six billion years, the Sun
Speaker 1: will burn through the last of its fuel and swell
Speaker 1: into a red giant, and in this form, the Sun's
Speaker 1: diameter will encompass Earth's current orbit and vaporize the planet awesome. Now,
Speaker 1: before that occurs, however, scientists predicted the Sun's a slow
Speaker 1: expansion will raise temperatures and boil the oceans dry, uh
Speaker 1: essentially turning Earth into a desert world in a mere
Speaker 1: five hundred million years, And some estimations are predicted that
Speaker 1: the Earth, unbound by the Sun's decreased mass, will actually
Speaker 1: then drift out into an out or orbit safe from
Speaker 1: the expansion of the Sun. But again, yeah, what the
Speaker 1: catastrophic effects there are are pretty staggering, like the ocean's
Speaker 1: freezing solid. Uh and you know life on Earth consisting
Speaker 1: of only you know, some creatures huddled around up a
Speaker 1: hyperthermal vent. So we'll have have to have gotten off
Speaker 1: the planet well before then, yeah, or or figure out
Speaker 1: a way to move it, which is another sort of
Speaker 1: far future possibility, like what can you do in terms
Speaker 1: of moving us, moving the planet and rolling with these
Speaker 1: long term cosmic catastrophes that are just a part of
Speaker 1: the life cycle of a solar system. Okay, so let's
Speaker 1: get into next. What we'll talk about is how we're
Speaker 1: going to survive this thing, what strategies are in place,
Speaker 1: and in particular, Knewances book really you know, focuses on
Speaker 1: this and the title of her book is is um
Speaker 1: useful here? Scatter? Adapt? And remember, those are the strategies
Speaker 1: at hand. We've we've talked about the five extinction events
Speaker 1: that have occurred, We've talked about the sixth that we're
Speaker 1: involved in right now, the steady um transformation of the
Speaker 1: planet into a less hospitable form, as well as some
Speaker 1: of the you know, truly cosmic cataclysms that potentially await
Speaker 1: us and in some cases definitely await us in the
Speaker 1: far future. So all right, looking at all of this
Speaker 1: death and destruction that's happened on Earth, that is happening
Speaker 1: on Earth and that will happen on Earth really makes
Speaker 1: me kind of back up. And you know, you hear
Speaker 1: the term cosmic horror get thrown a lot, especially in
Speaker 1: the wake of love Crafts contribution to literature. This is
Speaker 1: cosmic horror. When you think about this on the scale
Speaker 1: and the magnitude that it's happening at, it makes you
Speaker 1: feel utterly insignificant. There's nothing we can do to stop it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I actually when when we were researching this,
Speaker 1: I kept thinking back to um uh to Lovecraft and
Speaker 1: Clark Ashton Smith and in some of their stories like
Speaker 1: talking about like well, first came the lizard men, and
Speaker 1: then came the you know, this cosmic entity you know,
Speaker 1: just talking about like life forms that were in habiting
Speaker 1: uh some you know, fictional version of the Earth, and
Speaker 1: in dealing with such like long periods of time that
Speaker 1: the human life and human accomplishments were just so insignificant. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that you kind of feel the same way when
Speaker 1: you start looking at these extinction events that have come
Speaker 1: before and the extinction events to come. Absolutely it reminds
Speaker 1: me of m have you ever heard of? This is
Speaker 1: an English professor, uh, well known Marxist philosopher. I guess
Speaker 1: you could call him Frederick Jamison, uh, and he has
Speaker 1: this This isn't an exact quote, but this is one
Speaker 1: of these things that they throw at you in graduate school,
Speaker 1: is that the apocalypse is easier for us to imagine
Speaker 1: something like this, right than living in a post capitalist society.
Speaker 1: So it's easier for us to imagine this mass extinction
Speaker 1: this world without us, these uh, huge scenarios where we're
Speaker 1: completely insignificant than than his This is his Marxist argument obviously.
Speaker 1: Then then in a world that's like a that's not
Speaker 1: based on this sort of capitalist economy that we currently
Speaker 1: live within, right, So like uh, I guess the counterpoint
Speaker 1: to him would be like the Star Trek world where
Speaker 1: everybody's got access to the replicators and they can just
Speaker 1: make food and there's no problems. They're able to fly
Speaker 1: away from their mass extinction events and perfectly survive them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean it kind of plays into our
Speaker 1: our love affair with apocalypse, right, that we were often
Speaker 1: drawn to these tales of some catascostic, some cataclysmic event,
Speaker 1: setting the reboot button on on life as we know it. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, if nothing else, you know, you have a
Speaker 1: bad day of work and you're like, I wish an
Speaker 1: asteroid would hit my employment. Yeah right, Well, turns out
Speaker 1: all that cosmic horror isn't necessarily as bad as we
Speaker 1: think it is. Okay, We're not as insignificant as it feels.
Speaker 1: So from Antaline Knewitz his book, there are some recommendations
Speaker 1: for how we might you know, look back and learn
Speaker 1: from species like the Lister source that had survived extinctions
Speaker 1: and learned from them like directly, like live underground. We
Speaker 1: could we could like make shovel faces and attach them
Speaker 1: to to our heads and just dig underground. I don't
Speaker 1: know that that would help us with every type of
Speaker 1: extinction event, especially when the Sun swallows the Earth and
Speaker 1: a couple of millions. Well, you know, I think we should,
Speaker 1: we should consider even the most mad science of Well, definitely,
Speaker 1: we'll have the shovel Head Division get on it. At
Speaker 1: the same time that we're in our ideal world, we
Speaker 1: have taxes funding two things, NASA and shovel heads. You know,
Speaker 1: I feel like this was a sadly unexplored to a
Speaker 1: certain extent plot in the second season of American Horror Story.
Speaker 1: You had the Mad Scientists character who I loved, uh,
Speaker 1: and he was making these mutants James Cromwell to James
Speaker 1: Cromwell character. His character's name eludes me, but yeah, like
Speaker 1: a former Nazi doctor, and he wanted to make this
Speaker 1: race of mutants that would survive comic becoming Atomic Apocalypse. Um,
Speaker 1: so yeah, I think we should keep all options on
Speaker 1: the table. Yeah, alright, well I'm writing down shovel head. Shovelheads,
Speaker 1: just consider it everyone. But in the more more more immediately,
Speaker 1: what knew its recommends is that we look at her first.
Speaker 1: Phrasing for this is scattering. Essentially. The example for this
Speaker 1: is ethnic diasporas right, So, a diaspora, the aspora is
Speaker 1: a geographical dispersion of people separated from their homeland. Right.
Speaker 1: And then one of the most often used examples of
Speaker 1: this is the Jewish diaspora. Um that's told through the
Speaker 1: holiday of Passover. Right. The story is passed on every generation.
Speaker 1: It's the story of Moses and the ten plagues within
Speaker 1: Egypt and how Jews fled from Egypt for forty years
Speaker 1: wandering throughout the desert until they eventually found Israel. So
Speaker 1: people are displaced, their force to go to different geographic
Speaker 1: corners of the Earth. They're forced to, to a certain extent,
Speaker 1: merge without a cultures while also retaining some level of
Speaker 1: their own cultural And so her recommendation is that this
Speaker 1: is something that we as a species human beings should
Speaker 1: start coming to terms with and and thinking about as
Speaker 1: a strategy. Right, it's scattering essentially, whether it is across
Speaker 1: the globe or out into the stars somewhere. Uh. And
Speaker 1: so even you know, her recommendation here is, you know,
Speaker 1: look at Passover as an example that even if whatever
Speaker 1: ethnic group or or species in this case has unwillingly
Speaker 1: been torn apart by disastrous events or what have you, Um,
Speaker 1: your children will remember where they came from hundreds of
Speaker 1: years down the road. Okay, So, um, Passover has passed
Speaker 1: down this this this tradition of memory essentially. Okay, So
Speaker 1: even though you were a mutated shovel head creature that
Speaker 1: we genetically modified to live on an extraterrestrial world, doesn't
Speaker 1: mean you can't celebrate past them exactly. Yeah, They'll be
Speaker 1: like a new holiday that the shovel heads can celebrate
Speaker 1: and and remember you know what life was like on
Speaker 1: Earth when we recorded ye old podcasts. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: I love this idea because a lot of it is
Speaker 1: about just recognizing, like the change is part of life
Speaker 1: on Earth in a central part. And you can't take
Speaker 1: any particular phase and evolution or even in human culture
Speaker 1: and say this is we want to stick right here.
Speaker 1: We don't want to draw any more cards into our hand,
Speaker 1: and we don't want to discard. We want to stick
Speaker 1: with this hand. No, you have to keep playing the game. Essentially,
Speaker 1: what she's saying is is exactly that, right, Like, we
Speaker 1: can't just sit on our laurels and be satisfied with
Speaker 1: the exact world that we live in now and think
Speaker 1: that that's going to go on forever, because it's not
Speaker 1: regardless of extinction level events or not. Uh, we have
Speaker 1: to change in order to survive. It's just the ebb
Speaker 1: and flow of nature and of humanity. And this is
Speaker 1: why so many scientists most no doable. Stephen Hawkings argue
Speaker 1: that the long term survival of human life depends on
Speaker 1: our ability to expand beyond our planet, to expand beyond
Speaker 1: our solar system. I mean, even if you're talking about
Speaker 1: the just ultimate long gain, uh, expanding beyond the universe itself. Uh.
Speaker 1: So in that sense, the answer is, hey, if you
Speaker 1: really want to survive humans, you have to transcend humanity
Speaker 1: and become some sort of uh, you know, multiverse walking
Speaker 1: god species. And this gets into the you know, her
Speaker 1: second argument essentially, which is the adaptation one. Right, we
Speaker 1: need to adapt, We have to change. We have to
Speaker 1: first of all, like uh, come to grips with that
Speaker 1: idea in itself that we have to change in order
Speaker 1: to survive. Um. And and this isn't just you know,
Speaker 1: we're not just talking about like becoming gods here. We're
Speaker 1: talking about like, uh, making just small changes in are
Speaker 1: realizing what's not working. UM. Daniel Quinn in his book Ishmael,
Speaker 1: which is often you know, the book about the talking
Speaker 1: gorilla that tells us what's wrong with human culture and
Speaker 1: uh and how bad agriculture is. But it makes a
Speaker 1: lot of strong compelling arguments. And one of the um
Speaker 1: examples that's thrown out is that the human civilization as
Speaker 1: we know it is like a guy in an old
Speaker 1: timey uh airplane, you know, the kind of a push
Speaker 1: off the side of a hill and the guys in there,
Speaker 1: and he's peddling as hard as he can, and he's
Speaker 1: like pulling levers to flap the wings and it's not flying.
Speaker 1: It's plummeting, but he feels like it's flying. But but
Speaker 1: but part of our responsibility is to realize, Hey, the
Speaker 1: plane that we think is soaring and flying and ascending,
Speaker 1: it's actually descending. And then realizing and then making the
Speaker 1: realization we can we can do things to change this airplane.
Speaker 1: We can make it a little less of a loadstone.
Speaker 1: It may be a little more of a of an
Speaker 1: actual vehicle. And you know, touching on this is of course,
Speaker 1: you know, we'll get this is touching back into the
Speaker 1: preachy sort of global warming aspect of this conversation, which
Speaker 1: is that, you know, we really have to come to
Speaker 1: terms with the fact that human beings are causing climate change,
Speaker 1: that's the first thing. And how we're going to reduce
Speaker 1: that basically, right, reduced greenhouse emissions. They have to be
Speaker 1: reduced by fifty by twenty fifty, that's theoretically within our lifetimes,
Speaker 1: has to happen for us to stave off that that
Speaker 1: that one degree shift in temperature change that we're talking
Speaker 1: about earlier. Um, and there's easy ways to do this.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna spend you know, the rest of our
Speaker 1: time here rattling it all off, but you know, look
Speaker 1: it up online. Combine trips in your car, you know,
Speaker 1: car pooling, buy more efficient cars, adjust your thermostat in
Speaker 1: the winter, bike to work, or cycle. All of these things, CANNA,
Speaker 1: you know, essentially help with reducing greenhouse emissions. Uh. Basically
Speaker 1: just just look at this one example here, So if
Speaker 1: every American replaced one incandescent bulb with one of those
Speaker 1: energy saving ones, the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions would
Speaker 1: be the equivalent of taking eight hundred thousand cars off
Speaker 1: the road. So that's you know a small thing. We
Speaker 1: we talked about this love crafty and sense of insignificance,
Speaker 1: but that's a relatively small thing that everybody can do
Speaker 1: that's gonna you know, slightly stave off the coming apocalypse.
Speaker 1: That's not going through life with a gas mask or
Speaker 1: some sort of a weird alien tentacle creature or like
Speaker 1: attached your spinal column or anything. That's that's very doable. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, new Its touches on this in her
Speaker 1: book as well by talking about these, she went and
Speaker 1: talked to a lot of really interesting, kind of future
Speaker 1: oriented scientists at universities around the country. One in particular
Speaker 1: was looking at how we could use photosynthesis as like
Speaker 1: a method that we could replicate within our solar cells,
Speaker 1: essentially by building artificial photosynthesis. Uh. It's called biomamesis, and
Speaker 1: the practice is basically you're imitating biological life forms to
Speaker 1: make artificial systems as efficient you know, biomamic right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So there's this idea that you know, if we can
Speaker 1: switch over to some kind of uh energy system that
Speaker 1: utilizes photosynthesis instead of you know, carbon emitting fuels such uh,
Speaker 1: that that you know, would be in much better shape.
Speaker 1: And they she even looked into the um. There's this
Speaker 1: algae called ciano bacteria I believe, uh, And there's this
Speaker 1: scientist I believe it's at the University of Washington that's
Speaker 1: looking at mutated versions of this that release hydrogen instead
Speaker 1: of oxygen, you know, like like like normal plant life does.
Speaker 1: And it would allow for this clean fuel production because
Speaker 1: you would have hydrogen being released, you'd be utilizing the
Speaker 1: hydrogen for your energy, and the only byproduct that would
Speaker 1: be releasing is water essentially. You know, so we're talking
Speaker 1: about biofuels essentially here. Okay, so we touched upon this earlier,
Speaker 1: that memory is really important to our survival, right, the
Speaker 1: idea that yes, we can scatter as a species, whether
Speaker 1: it's across the world or it's across the planets of
Speaker 1: the universe, but there needs to be some kind of
Speaker 1: built in memory system for the human species to learn
Speaker 1: from its previous mistakes, learn from history essentially, right, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's I can see it's sort of being
Speaker 1: a two sided thing. Like one is just the pure
Speaker 1: vanity of saying, hey, this is like we have a continued,
Speaker 1: continued line here um, and we have the memories of
Speaker 1: what came before. But then on the other hand, science
Speaker 1: itself is about knowing, you know, what has come before,
Speaker 1: having this accumulated knowledge and knowing what works and doesn't work,
Speaker 1: and for humanity to survive. I mean, it's worth the
Speaker 1: point now where science is essentially humanity, if not something greater. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean this begs the question why do we want
Speaker 1: to survive? Right? Like, why what is our urge to
Speaker 1: make it through this sixth mass extinction? Why do we
Speaker 1: need to do that? I would argue that you know,
Speaker 1: so that our people endure for the long term, and
Speaker 1: that you know, the legacy of our species is carried on.
Speaker 1: All these memories are brought throughout time. This understanding of
Speaker 1: the world, this understanding of ourselves, it's not lost. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it comes down to two things.
Speaker 1: I mean, on one hand, you have, like the basic
Speaker 1: genetic mission in any organism is to pass its seed
Speaker 1: on and see the continuing the continuation of that particular
Speaker 1: genetic line, and so far so that becomes extrapolated in
Speaker 1: this quest for the survival of the human race. But
Speaker 1: then also it ties into the problem of immortality that
Speaker 1: that on you not a very basic level. A lot
Speaker 1: of what goes on in our culture is about us
Speaker 1: struggling with the reality that we are, each individual. Each
Speaker 1: person listening to this today, he's going to die, right, Absolutely.
Speaker 1: The idea that we as individuals are going to die
Speaker 1: is horrible to think of. The idea that we as
Speaker 1: a species are all going to die is practically unthinkable. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or is it? I don't know. I guess the thing is,
Speaker 1: it's like, you can come to terms with your your
Speaker 1: own personal mortality, but it it can make a bit
Speaker 1: more sense if there is a larger cultural, even species
Speaker 1: wide in mortality, because maybe, just maybe your memory could
Speaker 1: survive in there. Maybe you'd be one of the few
Speaker 1: lucky individuals like, uh, you know, you'll be You'll be
Speaker 1: an Aristotle, You'll be uh, you'll be a confused to see,
Speaker 1: you'll be somebody whose name actually resonates to a meaning,
Speaker 1: meaningful degree throughout the long term. Yeah, you'll have a legacy. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so like, let's let's pull back from this for
Speaker 1: a second and just look at like a I say small,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say a smaller example, but it's actually for
Speaker 1: a much bigger animal than us. Okay, so whales, take
Speaker 1: whales for example. Memory is important to all animals survival,
Speaker 1: and whales are a perfect example of this, right they
Speaker 1: teach one another the maps for their migration patterns throughout generations.
Speaker 1: This is just a simple example of why memory is important.
Speaker 1: It doesn't have to do necessarily with the vanity of
Speaker 1: wanting to have a legacy right and be remembered forever.
Speaker 1: Although I can certainly relate to that. I'm sure most
Speaker 1: human beings have a certain amount of ego inside of
Speaker 1: them that resonates with that, right, but uh, more importantly,
Speaker 1: just this idea that like, this is the route to survival,
Speaker 1: This is the way that we've done, This is the
Speaker 1: way to go, and it will get you know, lead
Speaker 1: to the continuation of our family and of our species. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is the way you use your shovel head to
Speaker 1: dig exactly right. You can't just expect them to know
Speaker 1: how to shovel their way under the earth with their face.
Speaker 1: So alright, So Nuance has got these two recommendations that
Speaker 1: she really advocates for at the end of her book,
Speaker 1: and I think these these are kind of where she's
Speaker 1: a saying something new, saying something that hasn't necessarily been
Speaker 1: brought to the community before. The two things are this
Speaker 1: that we as a species needs to invest more in
Speaker 1: our cities. Uh and I'll explain more about that later.
Speaker 1: That's the first one, and the second is what we've
Speaker 1: been hinting at all along, which is we need to
Speaker 1: explore beyond this planet because no doubt about it, sometime,
Speaker 1: whether it's in the next hundred years, are the next
Speaker 1: fifteen million years, there's going to be an event that's
Speaker 1: going to wipe out life on Earth. Uh. So the
Speaker 1: city part this is a really interesting thing. So check.
Speaker 1: This is a great statistic that she pulled out in
Speaker 1: the past decade. Okay, so we're just talking about, like,
Speaker 1: from two thousand five to now, the number of people
Speaker 1: on Earth that live in cities has surpassed those that
Speaker 1: live outside of them. I didn't I didn't expect that
Speaker 1: when I read that in her book. I thought I
Speaker 1: would have thought that there were more people living in
Speaker 1: rural communities, but I guess not. Uh, And it's it's
Speaker 1: expected to rise. United States. Uh sorry, the United Nations
Speaker 1: Population Division estimates that sixty seven percent of humanity is
Speaker 1: going to live in urban areas by So you know,
Speaker 1: that's why she's advocating, we really need to figure out
Speaker 1: a way to make our cities sustainable, right, So that
Speaker 1: means the cities need to be able to sustain damage
Speaker 1: such as from Earth quick. They need to be able
Speaker 1: to feed everyone in that that city. You need the
Speaker 1: city to actually uh be less susceptible to the ravages
Speaker 1: of disease, which, of course cities have you know, since
Speaker 1: really the emergence of major metropolitan areas have served as
Speaker 1: as of incubators, incubators for diseases such as as syphilis.
Speaker 1: And then there's what we were talking about earlier, which
Speaker 1: is that they have to offer sustainable energy to their citizens. Right.
Speaker 1: So this idea that we were talking about earlier about
Speaker 1: biofuels and you know, utilizing photosynthesis, whatever it is, whatever
Speaker 1: method that we end up using for for clean energy
Speaker 1: that's sustainable and that we can keep using it for
Speaker 1: a long period of time. Cities have to figure out
Speaker 1: a way to make that happen. Right, Um, they can't
Speaker 1: exist without agriculture. Uh, and they're also you know, so
Speaker 1: we can't just you know, abandoned rural areas. We need
Speaker 1: them as well. So yeah, we need the food that
Speaker 1: comes from them, you feed the city. So there needs
Speaker 1: to be you know, cooperation between these communities. And then
Speaker 1: this is an interesting aspect that I hadn't thought about,
Speaker 1: but she points out that cities in and of themselves
Speaker 1: are monuments, their constructs of human memory. So, you know,
Speaker 1: our cities, depending on who's in power at the time
Speaker 1: that they're built, whether it's you know, the churches or
Speaker 1: nationalistic organizations or or corporations. You see in the architecture
Speaker 1: throughout a city. What was the dominant force at the
Speaker 1: time that it was built right, whether it's extravagant churches
Speaker 1: or the beautiful large buildings that are built to sustain
Speaker 1: the government, or the skyscrapers that we work in here
Speaker 1: in Atlanta, you know, working for big companies. You know it.
Speaker 1: You know when you look at the vanity that goes
Speaker 1: into a city, when you look at the disease incubation,
Speaker 1: when you look at the the energy drain and and
Speaker 1: the amount of energy it takes to feed individuals in it.
Speaker 1: I mean, it really makes it seem like the city,
Speaker 1: the modern city is kind of a tumor of human culture,
Speaker 1: Like it's the the human culture as tumor um. It
Speaker 1: brings to mind. I believe it was in Grant Morrison's
Speaker 1: The Invisibles, where there's at one point one of the
Speaker 1: characters has a vision of planets. They are just nothing
Speaker 1: but like empty cities. Yeah, like where the the idea
Speaker 1: of city has just completely ravaged an ecosystem. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a classic Morrison thing that he revisits over and over again,
Speaker 1: the the the idea of humans as disease as cancer
Speaker 1: and then subsequently using that as a way to some
Speaker 1: somehow survive. Right, So like harnessing that somehow. Um. I
Speaker 1: think he had this story once. I don't. I don't
Speaker 1: know if it was ever published, but where there was
Speaker 1: a person who had had a tumor, I believe it
Speaker 1: was in their lung and they had learned they turned
Speaker 1: it into a familiar, like a magical familiar, and so
Speaker 1: the their their tumor was was helping them instead of
Speaker 1: hurting them. It's interesting metaphorical ideas, but that's essentially that
Speaker 1: you know, you get getting back to the reality of
Speaker 1: notes as premise here, Like that's the argument, how do
Speaker 1: you keep this this idea of city and this idea
Speaker 1: of human civilization entirely? How does it become less of
Speaker 1: a disease and more of a sustainable like hybrid existence exactly? Yeah,
Speaker 1: And then you know the last one is essentially you know,
Speaker 1: what we've been talking about all along here is that
Speaker 1: we need a long term plan to get off planet Earth.
Speaker 1: That's it, plain and simple. We've got to build, we've
Speaker 1: got to explore. We should probably be investing more in
Speaker 1: uh simply just observing space around us, even if it's
Speaker 1: not uh, you know, in terms of figuring out a
Speaker 1: way to propel ourselves outside this galaxy or not like
Speaker 1: you were saying earlier, you know, just in terms of
Speaker 1: the asteroid impact thing. We need to be on top
Speaker 1: of our game. Yeah, especially as we increasingly play this
Speaker 1: long game of survival. I mean just in terms of
Speaker 1: the odds because we've been around such a short time
Speaker 1: and we've seen the five I have extinction events that
Speaker 1: have preceded us. So in order to keep those odds
Speaker 1: going to remain in the sort of you know, cosmic
Speaker 1: Vegas game of survival, we've got to we've got to
Speaker 1: to learn to bend the rules to our favor. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Uh so, I mean I don't have a whole lot
Speaker 1: more to add to that other than that, you know,
Speaker 1: I think that if you want to know more about
Speaker 1: both her recommendations for making cities better and for coming
Speaker 1: up with long term solutions for space travel, I would
Speaker 1: highly recommend reading her book. Again, it's a scatter adapt
Speaker 1: and remember how humans will Survive a mass extinction, And
Speaker 1: that's by Anneleine new It's you can order it on Amazon,
Speaker 1: probably buy it in your local bookstore. I've been reading
Speaker 1: it off of my kindle. Cool. All right, Well, there
Speaker 1: you have it, um A quicker run through the five
Speaker 1: extinction events that came before and uh, you know, preview
Speaker 1: of the ongoing extinction event and possible events to come
Speaker 1: and how we can survive it. Uh. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: if you want to check out those resources that we've
Speaker 1: discussed that video, some of those how stuff works articles,
Speaker 1: be sure to check out stuff to blow your mind
Speaker 1: dot com. There you will find a landing page for
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Speaker 1: to add to the conversation, let us know what do
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