WEBVTT - How Charles Darwin Worked 0:00:01.160 --> 0:00:11.319 Welcome to stuff you should know, Friendhouse Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, 0:00:11.360 --> 0:00:13.680 and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's 0:00:13.760 --> 0:00:17.119 Charles W Chuck Bryan. So this is stuff you should know. 0:00:17.880 --> 0:00:21.599 That's right, unless I forget. Jerry's over there. She's over there. 0:00:21.720 --> 0:00:24.840 You know, we went like five years, I went five 0:00:24.920 --> 0:00:28.000 years of this podcast. Were just mentioning us once in 0:00:28.000 --> 0:00:31.800 a while, mentioning Jerry. But I mean, like, I can't 0:00:31.800 --> 0:00:35.720 imagine the podcast without Jerry too. Now, after after five years, 0:00:35.720 --> 0:00:38.160 finally I'm like, yeah, I guess she should stay young. 0:00:38.400 --> 0:00:41.280 She's earned her place. Yeah, at least she keeps quiet. 0:00:41.600 --> 0:00:45.920 That's right. How you doing, I'm great. How are you? 0:00:46.400 --> 0:00:50.520 I'm good. Yeah, I'm like low key calm, I'm fine, 0:00:50.680 --> 0:00:53.000 that's good. I'm a little smelly, which we talked about. 0:00:53.120 --> 0:00:55.560 I know, but I'm talking about it, which makes the 0:00:55.600 --> 0:00:58.200 smell worse. What is it? What is it about someone's 0:00:58.240 --> 0:01:02.680 own special sweet tang of assent that they're drawn to, 0:01:03.720 --> 0:01:06.200 like you're drawn to your own tang? Yeah? Man, everyone 0:01:06.240 --> 0:01:08.440 I think like secretly smells their own shoe and their 0:01:08.480 --> 0:01:10.399 own armpits when they get a little ripe. And maybe 0:01:10.480 --> 0:01:13.600 we all deep down one to mate with ourselves. Maybe, 0:01:13.600 --> 0:01:16.880 so that's not true because I'm disgusted with myself. Yeah, 0:01:16.920 --> 0:01:19.160 but I see you looking at your armpit eye and 0:01:19.200 --> 0:01:22.280 it like that. I know if you I do that thing. Yeah, 0:01:22.880 --> 0:01:26.840 I've slipped out twice today just to smell them. There's 0:01:26.840 --> 0:01:30.720 a little on your nose. Uh So, Chuck, you're doing good. 0:01:30.760 --> 0:01:33.720 I'm doing good. We'll just assume Jerry's doing good. Um, 0:01:33.840 --> 0:01:37.959 and we're all doing good because we're fairly fit. You 0:01:38.000 --> 0:01:42.440 know why we're fit because we're alive. We're evolving as 0:01:42.480 --> 0:01:46.520 we speak. We are part of this huge, long, natural 0:01:46.720 --> 0:01:54.200 procession of change forced by scarcity, competition, the ravages of nature, 0:01:54.880 --> 0:01:57.280 and we as humans have climbed to the top of 0:01:57.320 --> 0:02:00.440 the food pyramid of the evolutionary chain and said we 0:02:00.680 --> 0:02:05.240 own this planet. That's why we're doing good today. It's 0:02:05.280 --> 0:02:10.120 one of my most favorite notions evolution. Yeah, natural selection. 0:02:10.160 --> 0:02:12.480 I think it's like one of the most beautiful things 0:02:13.639 --> 0:02:16.799 that we've been able to figure out. Yeah, evolution gets 0:02:16.800 --> 0:02:19.760 all the spotlight. I'm a big natural selection fan myself too, 0:02:20.200 --> 0:02:26.040 you know, so divergent that stuff turns me on. That 0:02:26.160 --> 0:02:30.639 and your smell intellectually. Uh So, let's let's talk about this. 0:02:30.840 --> 0:02:34.560 You can't have evolution without natural selection again, even though 0:02:34.600 --> 0:02:37.839 evolution gets all the spotlight, at the very least, there's 0:02:37.880 --> 0:02:43.080 no evolution on Earth without natural selection, and the idea 0:02:43.240 --> 0:02:47.000 of natural selection of evolution in general, the idea that 0:02:47.560 --> 0:02:51.920 God didn't create everything exactly the way we see it now, 0:02:52.880 --> 0:02:58.280 um is a fairly recent notion, despite how tremendously widespread 0:02:58.320 --> 0:03:01.800 it is. You know Bill Nye, the science guy you're 0:03:01.800 --> 0:03:03.919 talking about this debate, Yeah, he got in a debate 0:03:03.960 --> 0:03:07.160 with Ken hamp just just totally off the cuff, not 0:03:07.200 --> 0:03:09.239 planned at all. They just both happened to be in 0:03:09.280 --> 0:03:12.400 the same auditorium. I watched the whole thing, did you 0:03:12.520 --> 0:03:15.520 the whole two hours? I couldn't pull myself away from it. 0:03:15.680 --> 0:03:21.320 So I'm guessing that you suspect Bill ni won the debate. Well, 0:03:21.360 --> 0:03:24.280 I mean, are there winners and losers, So don't be shy. 0:03:24.320 --> 0:03:29.880 There are, um there's there's a British uh religious website 0:03:30.440 --> 0:03:35.080 that pulled it's um it's guests because you know, people 0:03:35.080 --> 0:03:38.680 who go to websites are called guests. But in England 0:03:38.720 --> 0:03:42.760 there and said who won? And um, I think ninety 0:03:42.960 --> 0:03:47.440 two said Bill ny one and The reason why is 0:03:47.480 --> 0:03:51.400 because in the comments section, it was revealed that most 0:03:51.400 --> 0:03:53.840 of these people said, yeah, we believe in God, but 0:03:54.080 --> 0:03:58.800 evolution is still real. And to deny evolution outright is 0:03:59.000 --> 0:04:01.720 pretty silly. I think when you say things like dragons, 0:04:01.840 --> 0:04:04.480 you might lose people. Did he say dragons that didn't 0:04:04.480 --> 0:04:07.280 see it? Yeah, he mentioned dragons. Well, I mean that's 0:04:07.800 --> 0:04:10.800 some people. And like you said, religion and science co 0:04:10.920 --> 0:04:14.160 exists for a lot of religious folk. But um, there 0:04:14.160 --> 0:04:16.640 are some that are very literal and strict and say 0:04:16.640 --> 0:04:18.400 that you know, how to explain dinosaurs while they may 0:04:18.440 --> 0:04:23.360 have been dragons, and I don't that that doesn't explain 0:04:23.400 --> 0:04:25.560 anything that well, I think that just changes in the Bible. 0:04:26.680 --> 0:04:29.960 Oh yeah, if if I'm getting this wrong and I 0:04:30.160 --> 0:04:34.960 really get killed, we should pausitive for a second. Um, Like, 0:04:35.040 --> 0:04:37.320 the point of this episode is not to stomp on 0:04:37.360 --> 0:04:40.520 anybody's beliefs. No, I think science can be just as 0:04:40.560 --> 0:04:44.839 dogmatic as religion. Um, so like that's not what we're 0:04:44.880 --> 0:04:48.600 doing now. Like, if you believe in creationism, to each 0:04:48.600 --> 0:04:52.200 his own, Like, we're not gonna pound our beliefs into 0:04:52.279 --> 0:04:54.800 you or you know, vice versa. I've never understood that, 0:04:54.880 --> 0:04:59.640 Like who cares just either way, you know, it's like 0:05:00.200 --> 0:05:02.560 to my way of thinking, or else you are just 0:05:02.640 --> 0:05:07.039 so wrong it's mind boggling. Um, well, that's not the 0:05:07.040 --> 0:05:09.000 point of this. I think we should just c o 0:05:09.080 --> 0:05:11.160 a with that, because that's not what we're like. There's 0:05:11.160 --> 0:05:13.040 some people who don't always listen. Maybe this is their 0:05:13.080 --> 0:05:17.200 first episode. Welcome. Uh, we are not those kind of guys, know, 0:05:17.440 --> 0:05:21.000 And specifically with this episode, it's on Charles Darwin the 0:05:21.040 --> 0:05:24.279 man and kind of what made him who he was not? 0:05:24.440 --> 0:05:27.440 And we'll tackle are we committing to go ahead and 0:05:27.440 --> 0:05:30.760 doing natural selection? As a matter of fact, we'll have 0:05:30.800 --> 0:05:32.760 this one come out on a Tuesday. We'll do natural 0:05:32.760 --> 0:05:35.719 selection on a Thursday. Look at that? All right? I agree, 0:05:35.800 --> 0:05:41.000 let's do it. Let there be like, but h Darwin 0:05:41.080 --> 0:05:45.400 is a fascinating dude though, Yeah, yeah, because you can't 0:05:45.440 --> 0:05:49.159 really overstate the idea that he was. As Robert lam 0:05:49.200 --> 0:05:51.440 puts in his fine article, I have to say one 0:05:51.480 --> 0:05:56.960 of his best um that Charles Darwin was the fulcrum 0:05:56.960 --> 0:06:01.440 by which or on which the entire he change from 0:06:01.480 --> 0:06:05.279 a religious worldview to a scientific worldview took place. It 0:06:05.360 --> 0:06:08.640 was on this man's shoulders, even though oddly enough. He 0:06:08.720 --> 0:06:11.720 wasn't the only person to come up with natural selection now, 0:06:12.040 --> 0:06:14.120 and we'll get to that. He wasn't the first or 0:06:14.160 --> 0:06:17.440 the last. Uh. But it turns out he was the 0:06:17.480 --> 0:06:21.720 most thorough in his research right and had the most 0:06:21.720 --> 0:06:26.320 social breeding and in breeding. Yeah. Man, this is the 0:06:26.400 --> 0:06:29.120 ultimate tease. It is. So let's get started, Chuck. Let's 0:06:29.120 --> 0:06:32.080 talk about Darwin He Um didn't He wasn't born with 0:06:32.160 --> 0:06:35.480 a Bunsen burner in a flask in his hand. No, 0:06:35.680 --> 0:06:39.640 he was not. Uh. He was born, if anything, with 0:06:40.720 --> 0:06:44.080 a stethoscope in his hand. Because his father, doctor Robert 0:06:44.120 --> 0:06:49.480 Wearing Darwin Um, had designs on little Chuck being a 0:06:49.560 --> 0:06:52.800 doctor like him, because he was you know, they had 0:06:52.800 --> 0:06:55.359 some dough that he was an English gentleman. They weren't 0:06:55.400 --> 0:06:58.880 poor by any means. No. Apparently his grandfather a massive, 0:06:58.920 --> 0:07:02.120 vast fortune in China, and not the country, but the 0:07:02.200 --> 0:07:06.280 porcelain interesting, So would be incorrect to say he had 0:07:06.279 --> 0:07:10.480 a Chinese fortune. He had a China fortune, okay, Uh. 0:07:10.560 --> 0:07:13.640 But little Chuck was not into anatomy. He was definitely 0:07:13.680 --> 0:07:18.040 not into surgery on humans. It freaked him out. I 0:07:18.080 --> 0:07:21.640 think he was a little queasy as a person. It 0:07:21.680 --> 0:07:24.320 seems like, yeah, but he was. He was way into 0:07:24.360 --> 0:07:29.880 the natural sciences and was just fine with dissecting a frog. Yeah. 0:07:29.920 --> 0:07:31.880 You know, he was cool with biology. As long as 0:07:31.880 --> 0:07:35.040 you weren't human, he'd cut you, that's right. Uh. So 0:07:35.120 --> 0:07:38.240 he was sent to several schools um first when he 0:07:38.360 --> 0:07:41.600 was going to be a doctor, to the Anglican Shrewsbury School, 0:07:41.920 --> 0:07:44.960 then to Edinburgh University, and finally his dad was like, 0:07:45.000 --> 0:07:46.320 all right, you don't want to be a doctor or 0:07:46.320 --> 0:07:48.400 so the only other option for you is to be 0:07:49.200 --> 0:07:52.120 a man of religion parson in the country. Yeah, so 0:07:52.120 --> 0:07:54.680 I'm gonna send you to christ College in Cambridge, which 0:07:54.720 --> 0:07:56.880 is I mean, if you're gonna go be a country parson, 0:07:57.480 --> 0:07:59.760 you could do a lot worse. I agreed. You know, 0:08:00.200 --> 0:08:07.200 the fighting padres is over there, padres um. So he 0:08:07.400 --> 0:08:11.360 was very well educated, uh and had been exposed to 0:08:11.600 --> 0:08:13.280 all kinds of science, so he was. He was a 0:08:13.360 --> 0:08:17.040 very smart guy from early on, um, and way into 0:08:17.120 --> 0:08:20.880 natural science, like I said, but not into the religion 0:08:20.920 --> 0:08:24.520 thing as much. He was agnostic from a pretty early age, right, 0:08:24.680 --> 0:08:27.920 and he seemed like he was going to follow the 0:08:27.960 --> 0:08:30.120 path that his father was laying out for him. I 0:08:30.120 --> 0:08:34.640 guess he was very domineering and Charles Darwin was a 0:08:34.720 --> 0:08:38.120 pretty great thinker, pretty all around good guy. But he 0:08:38.240 --> 0:08:41.120 also was a bit of a pantywaist. It seems like, 0:08:41.760 --> 0:08:46.640 you know, he was like really really affected by stress. Yeah. Sight, 0:08:46.720 --> 0:08:49.959 he had a lot of psycho somatic symptoms from stress 0:08:50.800 --> 0:08:54.400 pretty much throughout his whole life. Despite that, though, he 0:08:55.480 --> 0:08:58.440 took a very brave course in life. And it started 0:08:58.440 --> 0:09:01.080 when he was twenty one and he was on his 0:09:01.160 --> 0:09:03.640 way to becoming that country parson that his father had 0:09:04.080 --> 0:09:07.160 decided he would be. And he got an invitation to 0:09:07.240 --> 0:09:10.840 go on a tour of the islands off South America 0:09:11.400 --> 0:09:14.520 UM from a guy named Robert Fitzroy who was twenty 0:09:14.600 --> 0:09:18.640 six years old. He was an aristocrat and he liked Darwin. 0:09:18.840 --> 0:09:22.640 He said, hey, you're good at conversations. When I get bored, 0:09:22.880 --> 0:09:25.560 I suffer about to depression. I'm about to go on 0:09:25.600 --> 0:09:28.320 this boat called the h MS Beagle for god knows 0:09:28.360 --> 0:09:31.199 how long, So why don't you come along and uh, 0:09:31.320 --> 0:09:34.000 we can chat and I won't get depressed. And Darwin said, 0:09:34.040 --> 0:09:37.640 you know what, let's do this. That's right, which is 0:09:37.640 --> 0:09:39.960 a that's a pretty bold move. Yeah, he's he was 0:09:40.600 --> 0:09:43.840 for someone who was would you say, pennyways, Yeah, Pennyways. 0:09:43.880 --> 0:09:45.400 It's sort of surprising that he was up for that 0:09:45.440 --> 0:09:49.520 kind of adventure. Yes, a milk toast. You could also 0:09:49.559 --> 0:09:53.360 call him a milk toast. Maybe call him that. All right? Uh, 0:09:53.400 --> 0:09:56.960 so this was one He boarded the HMS Beagle, which 0:09:57.000 --> 0:09:59.240 I for some reason just cracks me up. You know, 0:09:59.360 --> 0:10:02.280 our buddy go from forward thinking just adopted a dog 0:10:03.040 --> 0:10:06.960 part beagle, and his name is Darwin. Huh because of 0:10:07.000 --> 0:10:10.680 that association, I would imagine, And Joe said, he looks 0:10:10.679 --> 0:10:16.520 like Darwin head on ibrow. That's funny. Um. All right, 0:10:16.520 --> 0:10:18.800 so he board at the HMS Beagle. What did you say? 0:10:18.800 --> 0:10:21.920 How old was he? Twenty one? And they took a 0:10:21.960 --> 0:10:25.080 five year voyage around South America. Um. The purpose for 0:10:25.120 --> 0:10:28.480 fitz Roy was to chart the waters of South America 0:10:28.520 --> 0:10:30.960 and the coastlines and that kind of thing. But Chuck 0:10:31.200 --> 0:10:35.520 was like, I'm into natural stuff and species that I 0:10:35.559 --> 0:10:39.360 don't know, So what better thing to do than spend 0:10:39.920 --> 0:10:42.000 like most of my time not on the boat but 0:10:42.120 --> 0:10:44.920 on land just researching stuff. I'm sure he got pretty 0:10:44.920 --> 0:10:49.040 good at rowing from the ship too short back and forth. Yeah, 0:10:49.160 --> 0:10:54.040 he's basically Paul Bettany's character and master and commander Well, 0:10:54.080 --> 0:10:56.839 which is ironic because Paul Bettany played Charles Darwin. Did 0:10:56.920 --> 0:11:00.520 he really in that movie Creation? Oh yeah, I never 0:11:00.520 --> 0:11:02.400 saw that, but I know what you're talking about. That's funny. 0:11:02.400 --> 0:11:04.480 You had no idea. Huh. No, he stepped right into 0:11:04.480 --> 0:11:07.480 that one. I wonder if he recognized that. I don't know. 0:11:07.600 --> 0:11:09.880 It's a good movie, that Creation. You should check it out. 0:11:09.880 --> 0:11:12.920 It's um details a lot of the struggles of his 0:11:12.960 --> 0:11:14.800 life that we're gonna go over here, and mainly is 0:11:14.800 --> 0:11:19.120 about his uh anxieties of what he was doing in 0:11:19.160 --> 0:11:22.560 his relationship to his Christian wife. Oh yeah, I'll bet 0:11:22.559 --> 0:11:25.000 that was kind of a sore spot big time. We'll 0:11:25.040 --> 0:11:27.440 get to that though in a second. So okay, So 0:11:27.480 --> 0:11:30.800 they head off to South America. There he's spending two 0:11:30.840 --> 0:11:33.000 thirds of the voyage. Of this five year voyage, he 0:11:33.080 --> 0:11:36.120 spends on land. Uh. One of the most famous places 0:11:36.120 --> 0:11:39.440 he visited was the Galapa Ghost which are still around. Yeah, 0:11:39.440 --> 0:11:42.560 and that apparently was really overstated. He was only, uh, 0:11:42.640 --> 0:11:44.920 what is still around? Is that a joke? The Galapa 0:11:44.920 --> 0:11:49.040 Ghost They're still around? Okay. I thought I was missing 0:11:49.040 --> 0:11:51.200 on something because you looked at me like you're missing 0:11:51.240 --> 0:11:55.640 a joke. That's this look Okay, um what was that one? 0:11:55.679 --> 0:12:00.600 As you smell that was my either water. So the 0:12:00.640 --> 0:12:05.119 Glapaos apparently it was a little overstated it's significance wise. Um, 0:12:05.160 --> 0:12:06.960 he was only there for about five weeks out of 0:12:07.000 --> 0:12:11.520 the five years, and historians think it's been overstated because 0:12:11.600 --> 0:12:14.400 it was so exotic and people wanted to point to 0:12:14.520 --> 0:12:18.520 some like kind of fantastical birthplace of all these ideas 0:12:19.280 --> 0:12:23.120 I mean stuck, yeah, I mean for sure, and he 0:12:23.760 --> 0:12:27.239 you know, collected all kinds of different specimens from the Glapicos, 0:12:27.320 --> 0:12:29.040 but it wasn't as big a deal. Have you ever 0:12:29.080 --> 0:12:31.480 seen the size of the turtles there or the tortoises? 0:12:31.559 --> 0:12:34.600 Are the huge, dude, They're like the size of VW. Beatles. 0:12:35.160 --> 0:12:39.720 They're enormous and apparently like they'll hang out with you. 0:12:41.160 --> 0:12:44.720 What else are they gonna do? Run away slowly? Okay? Yeah, 0:12:44.800 --> 0:12:47.560 they have no choice, they have agency. They could be 0:12:47.600 --> 0:12:49.600 like I don't want to be here around you, I'm 0:12:49.600 --> 0:12:51.960 gonna go this way. They just it wouldn't work very 0:12:51.960 --> 0:12:55.520 well or very quickly. Yeah. Okay, so where are we? Man? 0:12:55.960 --> 0:13:00.240 We are? I was just poopooing the Galapagos. Yeah. Um, 0:13:00.280 --> 0:13:02.320 but what he did while he was gone was he 0:13:02.920 --> 0:13:04.840 did a lot of great work and made a real 0:13:04.960 --> 0:13:08.040 name for himself and kind of came back a well 0:13:08.120 --> 0:13:11.000 known scientist. Scientists because the whole time he's making all 0:13:11.040 --> 0:13:14.120 these findings, he's finding new species of animals that like 0:13:14.160 --> 0:13:18.719 Europeans didn't even know existed, like entire types of animals. Um, 0:13:18.720 --> 0:13:21.559 he's sending back specimens, which means he killed a lot 0:13:21.600 --> 0:13:24.480 of animals while he was on these islands, mailed them 0:13:24.480 --> 0:13:27.320 back to Europe, mailed back some of his findings. He's 0:13:27.320 --> 0:13:31.560 basically writing papers as he's doing this, this journey, so 0:13:32.559 --> 0:13:38.320 back in the jolly old England there um basically becomes 0:13:38.320 --> 0:13:41.400 his celebrity. Yeah. And he was, you know, like before 0:13:41.440 --> 0:13:44.320 he even returned. Yeah, he was looking at he had 0:13:44.360 --> 0:13:46.920 the idea of natural selection, but it was, like we said, 0:13:47.160 --> 0:13:49.200 it was already out there. It was known as the 0:13:49.240 --> 0:13:53.960 mystery of Mysteries or transmutation. And he called his his 0:13:54.080 --> 0:13:58.960 research at first the Transmutation Notebooks, so that yeah, he 0:13:59.000 --> 0:14:00.920 wasn't you know, his reach searching stuff that he had 0:14:00.960 --> 0:14:03.760 heard about. It was a working title. What was the 0:14:03.760 --> 0:14:07.520 working title actually? Um, what would later become on the 0:14:07.520 --> 0:14:10.559 origin of the species of course. Yeah, and uh, he 0:14:10.760 --> 0:14:12.520 and another guy will talk about a little bit. We're 0:14:12.559 --> 0:14:16.760 also UM inspired. Both were inspired by Thomas Malthus, who 0:14:16.760 --> 0:14:18.560 we've talked about, who came up with the idea of 0:14:18.559 --> 0:14:23.440 carrying capacity and basically introduced the idea that scarcity and 0:14:23.520 --> 0:14:28.760 competition forces adaptation and change. And then uh, Darwin and 0:14:28.840 --> 0:14:33.800 the guy Um, Alfred Wallace Russell or Alfred Russell Wallace 0:14:34.360 --> 0:14:37.680 UM both read this and said, well, wait, man, I 0:14:37.680 --> 0:14:42.000 wonder if that adaptation and change that's forced by scarcity 0:14:42.520 --> 0:14:47.120 is what creates the change and species that we're seeing here. Yeah, 0:14:47.160 --> 0:14:49.960 that was definitely UM. The book was called Essay on 0:14:50.200 --> 0:14:53.800 Principle of Population and that was like a super game 0:14:53.880 --> 0:14:56.720 changer because it really gave him, like the the notion 0:14:56.800 --> 0:15:00.240 that by studying our any species death, you can kind 0:15:00.240 --> 0:15:03.400 of study its life. Yeah. And it wasn't it wasn't 0:15:03.440 --> 0:15:06.880 just biology that it gave rise to. It gave rise 0:15:07.000 --> 0:15:13.720 to um economics, largely, a lot of anthropology, a lot 0:15:13.720 --> 0:15:17.280 of ecology. Like it was, like you say, a game changer. 0:15:18.280 --> 0:15:22.120 Thomas Malthis go back and listen to our population podcast. 0:15:22.280 --> 0:15:25.120 Is that where he appears I think he appears a 0:15:25.120 --> 0:15:27.160 few times, but that was a good one. Yeah, it's 0:15:27.160 --> 0:15:30.160 an oldie, but a goodie. Um. So, like we said, 0:15:30.160 --> 0:15:33.040 he came back sort of a celebrity of sorts, and 0:15:33.120 --> 0:15:35.880 he came back with a lot of information, uh, and 0:15:35.960 --> 0:15:41.120 settled in at the down House in Kent, and this 0:15:41.160 --> 0:15:45.440 place was He spent the next forty years there studying 0:15:45.560 --> 0:15:48.520 his property essentially, like he didn't need to go anywhere. 0:15:48.520 --> 0:15:51.480 He had plenty of nature there. Apparently there were forty 0:15:51.520 --> 0:15:56.280 different species per square meter on his property. Uh. He 0:15:56.320 --> 0:15:58.560 had ten kids and he used them as sort of 0:15:58.560 --> 0:16:03.040 a a little laboratory experiment because three of them died 0:16:03.120 --> 0:16:06.840 and he was fascinated with why things and people survive 0:16:06.920 --> 0:16:09.520 and some don't. So it was all sort of part 0:16:09.560 --> 0:16:12.640 of his Uh. It was just everything was part of 0:16:12.680 --> 0:16:16.640 his laboratory. Essentially. He had people sending him samples from 0:16:16.680 --> 0:16:18.920 all over the world, and there are some theories that 0:16:19.800 --> 0:16:22.520 if the postal service hadn't have been so good, he 0:16:22.560 --> 0:16:25.960 may have never been able to write the origin of 0:16:25.960 --> 0:16:29.360 the species because he relied on people sending him stuff 0:16:29.440 --> 0:16:32.520 in due time. Oh yeah, and also he was really 0:16:32.520 --> 0:16:37.280 big on corresponding, which kind of helped develop his UM, 0:16:37.320 --> 0:16:40.920 his ideas, flesh him out even further. Was he was 0:16:41.080 --> 0:16:43.960 huge on correspondence. Yeah. He had a UM area on 0:16:44.040 --> 0:16:46.240 his property called the Sandwalk that he had built. It 0:16:46.280 --> 0:16:50.320 was basically just a loop path through the woods and 0:16:50.400 --> 0:16:54.280 he would just spend like countless hours just walking this 0:16:54.440 --> 0:17:01.600 path and thinking and looking at everything everything right, nothing design. 0:17:01.720 --> 0:17:05.080 One of his favorite UM subjects was earthworms. Remember our 0:17:05.119 --> 0:17:08.440 Earthworm podcast. There was a quote from him in there 0:17:09.000 --> 0:17:13.320 UM where he said, it may be doubted whether there 0:17:13.320 --> 0:17:16.000 are many other animals which have played so important a 0:17:16.080 --> 0:17:18.280 part in the history of the world as these lowly 0:17:18.440 --> 0:17:22.600 organized creatures. So he was down with earthworms, downs and 0:17:22.760 --> 0:17:25.879 orchids very famously too. Yeah, he was. He was active. 0:17:25.920 --> 0:17:27.840 He wasn't just looking at things. He raised orchids. He 0:17:27.880 --> 0:17:30.840 was a beekeeper, he raised pigeons and like it was 0:17:30.880 --> 0:17:33.480 all just in the name of study. Right. One of 0:17:33.520 --> 0:17:37.320 the things though, we um He married his first cousin, 0:17:37.680 --> 0:17:42.560 his wife um and at the time they didn't really 0:17:42.560 --> 0:17:46.399 know much about the troubles with inbreeding, and he was 0:17:46.440 --> 0:17:49.000 one of the people who discovered the troubles with inbreeding, 0:17:49.119 --> 0:17:51.360 and it apparently had a really big effect on him. 0:17:51.400 --> 0:17:55.600 Like he felt kind of guilty and weird and wondered 0:17:55.640 --> 0:18:01.520 if maybe his kids early deaths had to do with that. Yeah, um, 0:18:01.880 --> 0:18:04.320 which has to be kind of startling if you're the 0:18:04.320 --> 0:18:09.040 guy who discovers the problems with inbreeding and you've inbred, 0:18:09.960 --> 0:18:13.400 you know, Yeah, it's gotta be a little jarring. Sure. Uh. 0:18:13.480 --> 0:18:17.720 Emma Wedgewood was his wife's maiden name, And one thing 0:18:17.760 --> 0:18:20.160 that happened when he married her was he got more 0:18:20.200 --> 0:18:23.280 money because she was also in the family fortune. So 0:18:23.320 --> 0:18:25.880 they were set up pretty nicely. Uh. And like I said, 0:18:25.880 --> 0:18:29.840 she was Christian and she was amazing though, like the 0:18:29.880 --> 0:18:33.520 Creation movie really like it's a great love story. Despite 0:18:33.560 --> 0:18:35.840 the fact that they had he was Agnostic and she 0:18:35.920 --> 0:18:39.440 was Christian. She spent her life caring for him because 0:18:39.440 --> 0:18:43.200 he was a very sickly man. Um may have had 0:18:43.240 --> 0:18:46.720 some sort of viral diseases entire life, maybe that he 0:18:46.720 --> 0:18:50.600 picked up in South America. Now he was a pennywaise 0:18:50.640 --> 0:18:55.240 on top of that, so he was just fraught with anxiety. Uh. 0:18:55.320 --> 0:18:57.600 And she cared for him and all the kids, and 0:18:57.920 --> 0:18:59.800 her life's worry was are we going to spend it 0:18:59.840 --> 0:19:02.920 turn nity together in the afterlife? Yeah, that was her 0:19:02.920 --> 0:19:06.240 big concern, Yeah, which is he didn't buy that stuff. No, 0:19:06.560 --> 0:19:09.800 he and he was you know, religious ish when he 0:19:09.840 --> 0:19:13.800 was younger, but as he grew older and no, the 0:19:13.880 --> 0:19:18.240 more he exposed himself to these ideas of evolution and 0:19:18.320 --> 0:19:23.000 natural selection, the less religious, the less he bought into it. Um. 0:19:23.080 --> 0:19:26.639 And it's funny that that divide first occurred in him 0:19:26.720 --> 0:19:28.800 and then it just kind of grew out from him 0:19:28.880 --> 0:19:33.359 to create this divide throughout the world. He was the 0:19:33.359 --> 0:19:36.359 epicenter of that divide. It first, if that crack in 0:19:36.400 --> 0:19:41.240 the world first appeared in him. Yeah, isn't that interesting? Yeah, 0:19:41.320 --> 0:19:44.600 for sure. Um, he's the one to blame pretty much. 0:19:44.920 --> 0:19:48.000 Or he was a patient zero, one of the two. Um. 0:19:48.119 --> 0:19:51.480 So he he comes back to down House, he gets married, 0:19:51.640 --> 0:19:57.280 settles down doubles his fortune by marrying Emma. Um and 0:19:57.280 --> 0:20:01.080 and his experimenting with orchids, earthworms. F he's his kids, 0:20:01.320 --> 0:20:04.520 all this stuff. Um. And he's also at the same 0:20:04.560 --> 0:20:09.440 time writing he's expanding that notebook into what he's calling 0:20:09.560 --> 0:20:14.199 a natural selection another working title. And um, he is 0:20:14.280 --> 0:20:16.840 taking his sweet time with it. One of the reasons 0:20:16.840 --> 0:20:20.240 he's taking his sweet time with this is one he 0:20:20.480 --> 0:20:23.479 is being very diligent. He's making sure he's crossing all 0:20:23.520 --> 0:20:25.320 of his teams, dotting his eyes, making sure he's not 0:20:25.359 --> 0:20:28.640 looking at it wrong, making sure he's backing up everything. 0:20:29.520 --> 0:20:33.359 And the second connected reason to that first one is 0:20:33.359 --> 0:20:39.000 that he is really not looking forward to the storm 0:20:39.040 --> 0:20:41.679 that this is going to create when he unleashes it 0:20:41.720 --> 0:20:43.760 on the public. He was well aware of it from 0:20:43.760 --> 0:20:46.360 the beginning, because there's a couple of things that are 0:20:46.359 --> 0:20:50.320 inherent in the theory of natural selection. I'm going to 0:20:50.359 --> 0:20:54.000 add a third reason, my friend, if you're studying natural selection, 0:20:54.040 --> 0:20:58.359 evolution takes a long time, well, yeah, you can't study 0:20:58.440 --> 0:21:01.000 something for a week and detect change is And like 0:21:01.000 --> 0:21:04.520 you said, he was thorough because he lived his life, uh, 0:21:04.760 --> 0:21:08.640 basically an anxiety of not being accepted by these peers 0:21:09.600 --> 0:21:11.080 and like these are people, these are friends of his. 0:21:11.520 --> 0:21:14.760 So his procrastination is definitely fear driven by his peers 0:21:14.800 --> 0:21:17.200 and by society at large, and by the fact that 0:21:17.280 --> 0:21:19.960 it just takes a long time to study something like this. Right. 0:21:20.080 --> 0:21:23.240 For instance, he left a area of his lawn unmode 0:21:23.280 --> 0:21:27.639 for twenty years just to study what would happen and 0:21:27.680 --> 0:21:34.600 out of that sounds like an excuse exactly, but out 0:21:34.600 --> 0:21:38.000 of like the twenty different species he studied, eleven survived 0:21:38.040 --> 0:21:41.520 and nine died away. So boom, natural selection right there, 0:21:41.520 --> 0:21:43.480 just in a portion of his lawn. Okay, but it 0:21:43.520 --> 0:21:45.600 took twenty years, is the point. Okay. So the time 0:21:46.000 --> 0:21:47.919 fear of his peers, fear of the public, and he 0:21:47.960 --> 0:21:52.280 had good reason to fear um or be anxious, because 0:21:53.359 --> 0:21:55.560 the world was a much different place than it is now, 0:21:56.240 --> 0:21:58.320 and he was well aware that what he was about 0:21:58.320 --> 0:22:01.920 to unleash on society was going to create some big 0:22:02.000 --> 0:22:05.040 changes in some big problems. And uh, we'll get into 0:22:05.040 --> 0:22:11.919 that right after this message. So chuck, um, we're talking 0:22:11.920 --> 0:22:16.200 about Darwin. He's at his house down house. Um, he's 0:22:16.240 --> 0:22:18.880 working on his manuscript. He's kind of procrastinating a little bit, 0:22:18.960 --> 0:22:22.360 and because it takes time to um, but he knows 0:22:22.440 --> 0:22:27.680 that he's about to unleash this complete change in paradigm, 0:22:27.720 --> 0:22:32.880 a poop storm, onto the world exactly. And Um, it's 0:22:32.960 --> 0:22:36.879 because the world was a much different place than it 0:22:37.000 --> 0:22:42.040 is today. Because Darwin hadn't talked about natural selection yet. Yeah, 0:22:42.040 --> 0:22:47.080 I mean, religion, religious biology was biology. They didn't call 0:22:47.119 --> 0:22:49.840 it religious biology, that was just biology. Yeah. So he 0:22:49.920 --> 0:22:52.679 was the first one to secularize it and make it 0:22:52.720 --> 0:22:58.080 just about the science. Um. Yeah, because before scientists thought like, well, 0:22:58.400 --> 0:23:02.439 God created this and that is our starting point. Like 0:23:02.560 --> 0:23:06.399 everything else, every other scientific explanation we have has to 0:23:06.440 --> 0:23:10.520 trace back to creation, which is kind of It can 0:23:10.560 --> 0:23:14.199 make science a little easier, um, but at the very 0:23:14.240 --> 0:23:19.040 at the same time, it leaves you open to a 0:23:19.200 --> 0:23:22.280 huge problem when somebody comes along and can fill in 0:23:22.280 --> 0:23:25.919 all these other gaps through a completely different explanation that 0:23:26.000 --> 0:23:28.560 doesn't use creationism. And that's what Darn was doing with 0:23:28.640 --> 0:23:32.000 natural selection. Yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and at a 0:23:32.000 --> 0:23:35.320 fourth thing. Man, you just keep them coming. Uh. There 0:23:35.320 --> 0:23:37.400 were two texts that were vital, and we talked about 0:23:37.440 --> 0:23:40.760 one of them, the mouths uh principle of population. In 0:23:41.680 --> 0:23:44.639 four there was a book written called The Vestiges of 0:23:44.640 --> 0:23:48.280 the Natural History of Creation and it was published anonymously 0:23:48.680 --> 0:23:50.240 for forty years. No one kne who wrote it because 0:23:50.280 --> 0:23:52.879