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Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.

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Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to Cool People Did Cool Stuff. You're

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Speaker 2: a weekly reminder that when bad things are happening, there's

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Speaker 2: people trying to do good things. And this week, one

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Speaker 2: of the people trying to do good things, probably I

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Speaker 2: assume is Katie Golden. Who's my guest. Hi, how are you? Hi?

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Speaker 3: I I try to do good stuff.

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Speaker 2: You have to do at least three good things before

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Speaker 2: you're allowed on this show.

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Speaker 3: My proudest thing that I do that's good is when

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Speaker 3: my dog does a little peepee. I have a water

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Speaker 3: bottle and I live in a very like uh, it's

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Speaker 3: all cobblestones and pavement and stuff. There's not a lot

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Speaker 3: of grass. So when she does peepy on the cobblestones,

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Speaker 3: I like wash it with the water. So, you know,

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Speaker 3: because just like so that I'm doing a little cleaning

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Speaker 3: up after my Obviously I also clean up her poopoos.

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Speaker 3: That's a given, but yeah, just rinse make the cobblestones

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Speaker 3: like a little bit cleaner after my dog does her

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Speaker 3: little pissies on it.

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Speaker 2: I think that just based on the cobblestones thing that

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Speaker 2: people might infer that you don't live in America.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, so I do live in Italy. I'm not Italian

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Speaker 3: at all. I speak the language like a drunk toddler.

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Speaker 3: So yeah, but I live in a live in Turin Terino.

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Speaker 3: It's a northern Italian city. It's very nice. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Well, you also are the host of the podcast Creature Feature,

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Speaker 2: which is all about animals and science. Is that right?

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Speaker 3: That's right?

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: I when I was in school, I studied a psychology

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Speaker 3: and evolutionary biology, and I always loved animals and I

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Speaker 3: really enjoyed talking about their behavior, cool stuff and evolutionary biology.

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Speaker 3: I feel like I try to push against both overly

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Speaker 3: humanizing animals and not doing it enough where it's like, ah,

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Speaker 3: they're robots with no feelings, so kind of fine, kind

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Speaker 3: of a you know, are commonalities with them without making

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Speaker 3: it too much about people, too egocentrically human.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: I feel like even like dealing with a dog, you're like, ah,

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Speaker 2: the dog is doing the following thing, and I recognize it.

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Speaker 2: But then sometimes you're like, the dog is smiling and

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Speaker 2: you're like, no, that dog's having a panic.

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Speaker 3: Attack, right exactly, Yes, yes, looks very friendly. Yes, yeah.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: A lot of times animals will be smiling at you,

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Speaker 3: and that's not necessarily a good sign, especially even our

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Speaker 3: close primate relatives. You don't necessarily want to see that.

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Speaker 2: I can think of some people that I don't want

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Speaker 2: smiling at me.

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Speaker 3: That's a good point.

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Speaker 2: Okay. I have a question that's unrelated to the topic

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Speaker 2: of this episode. I read in an episode that I

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Speaker 2: did with Sophia as a guest about dogs. There's no

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Speaker 2: reason you need to know the answer to this. I read,

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Speaker 2: I'll try that the reason that dogs have white selera

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Speaker 2: the whites of their eyes is a coevolution everything with humans,

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Speaker 2: so that we can hunt together because we can see

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Speaker 2: where the other is looking. Have you heard this.

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Speaker 3: I don't know if I've heard this specifically, but I

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Speaker 3: do know that so they do have more of the

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Speaker 3: whites of their eyes showing than wolves, but there is

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Speaker 3: a little bit. So wolves also have a little bit

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Speaker 3: of the whites of their eyes showing, and it can

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Speaker 3: be instructive actually for so other dogs other wolves. There's

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Speaker 3: this sort of expression with dogs wolves called whale eye

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Speaker 3: where their head is down you can see the whites

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Speaker 3: of their eyes and you can kind of see their

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Speaker 3: iris sort of up floating at the top, and it

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Speaker 3: looks super cute. But it's actually a warning that they're

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Speaker 3: really stressed and they might snap at you. So there's

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Speaker 3: some So there's some communication with dogs and wolves and eyes.

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Speaker 3: But yeah, I mean there's definitely been a lot of

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Speaker 3: coevolution with dogs and humans. The fact that there's like

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Speaker 3: more of the whites of their eyes showing could definitely

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Speaker 3: be a communication thing between humans and dogs. They've certainly

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Speaker 3: learned how to follow our eyesight read our expressions a

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Speaker 3: lot better than wolves do. There's a lot of studies

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Speaker 3: comparing like wolf puppies raised by humans and dogs, and

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Speaker 3: the dogs just like really collaborate with us a lot more.

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Speaker 2: That makes sense to me. When I was more of

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Speaker 2: a street kid, there was always going to be someone

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Speaker 2: around who claimed that their dog was part wolf. Yeah

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Speaker 2: that's usually not the case, but usually it told you

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Speaker 2: something about the person who had the dog, which is

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Speaker 2: that you should avoid the person who has the dogs.

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Speaker 2: The dog itself might may or may not be fine,

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Speaker 2: but the person is probably to be avoided. This is

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Speaker 2: a thing that I have learned.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, So, like wolves are really really really big. I

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Speaker 3: think people underestimate how huge they are. So like if

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Speaker 3: someone's saying, like, oh, I've got a wolf and it's

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Speaker 3: like the size of a husky. Probably not like, uh,

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Speaker 3: you know, maybe it's possible that it has some small

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Speaker 3: amount of wolf many generations back or something. But for

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Speaker 3: true like half wolf half dog type situations, they're really big.

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Speaker 3: And they're also not very good pets because there's a

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Speaker 3: reason we bread out a lot of the wolf traits

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Speaker 3: in dogs because they're uh, they don't like to you know, necessarily.

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Speaker 3: It's not it's not always a balto situation. It's they're

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Speaker 3: often going to be like, but I could eat your

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Speaker 3: face though that's the thing you're telling me no to

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Speaker 3: the poopies in the house, But I could also eat

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Speaker 3: your face.

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Speaker 2: See, this is how I feel with like every large animal.

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Speaker 2: Is why I'm bad at riding horses is that horses

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Speaker 2: do not think they're in charge of me. But I

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Speaker 2: don't understand why they don't think they're in charge of

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Speaker 2: me because they're much larger than me. And so okay,

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Speaker 2: this is completely besides the point.

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Speaker 3: I went with you very much on horses, by the way,

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Speaker 3: Like I'm afraid of them because they're so powerful.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and I'm afraid that they'll discover their power, much

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Speaker 2: like the working class. This is going to be related

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Speaker 2: to today's time. So I thought this would be a

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Speaker 2: good excuse to tell a story about animals and science

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Speaker 2: that I have wanted to tell since I first started

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Speaker 2: the show. I'm excited, but since it's this particular show,

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Speaker 2: it's a story about animals and science, but it's also

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Speaker 2: going to include revolutionaries and prison escape and how animals,

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Speaker 2: including humans, appear to be just as hardwired for cooperation

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Speaker 2: as we are for competition. And I know that you

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Speaker 2: actually studied evolutionary biology in school, so I have this

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Speaker 2: terrifying fear I'm going to tell you a story you've

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Speaker 2: already heard, but I don't know, and I am hoping

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Speaker 2: to at least, if nothing else, you can fill in

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Speaker 2: some cracks in my own research.

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Speaker 3: Honestly, so much stuff happens that, like, I barely remember

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Speaker 3: what happened last week, so even if I learned it,

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Speaker 3: I've probably forgotten it. So fair enough, happy to hear it.

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Speaker 2: He's the best.

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Speaker 3: Person I know that went to Harvard.

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Speaker 2: Fair Enough, I don't.

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Speaker 3: I remember nothing from you.

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Speaker 2: Definitely led with what you studied and not where you studied,

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Speaker 2: and that's well of you.

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Speaker 3: I replaced it all with memes, but I still have

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Speaker 3: the degree, so it all worked out well in the end.

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Speaker 2: This week, I'm going to tell the story about Prince

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Speaker 2: Peter Kerpotkin and the scientific discovery of the concept of

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Speaker 2: mutual aid and how it factors into evolutionary theory.

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Speaker 3: Oh this is I have not heard this before, so

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Speaker 3: I'm excited.

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Speaker 2: Excellent. That's that was going to be my next question.

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Speaker 2: But that answers that the real basic argument that I'm

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Speaker 2: going to make can be summed up like this. Charles

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Speaker 2: Darwin was like, survival of the fittest produces evolution, and

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Speaker 2: a bunch of people took that and ran with it

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Speaker 2: and were like, on one side, oh, this justifies us

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Speaker 2: all being dicks to each other, and also capitalism and

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Speaker 2: nature's a war of one against all. And on the

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Speaker 2: other side you had people saying, this is why we

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Speaker 2: need strong government and civilization and these very strong control systems,

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Speaker 2: because we're all animals underneath and we need to completely

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Speaker 2: suppress that nature. Then a scientist came along, a literal

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Speaker 2: anarchist prince. He was a Russian prince like a member

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Speaker 2: of the nobility, as well as the founder of anarchist

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Speaker 2: communism as a political ideology, and this guy spent year

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Speaker 2: studying animals while being a geologist, but everyone just kind

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Speaker 2: of confused all of the disciplines at the time, and

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Speaker 2: he was like, he actually went out, we'll get to this, okay,

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Speaker 2: I'm trying to do a quick version. So he was like, sure,

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Speaker 2: competition is part of evolutionary biology, but honestly, what's amazing

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Speaker 2: is just how much animals cooperate with each other. In fact,

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Speaker 2: he would go so far as to say mutual aid

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Speaker 2: is a factor in evolution, which is the title of

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Speaker 2: his nineteen oh two book, Mutual Aid a Factor in Evolution.

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Speaker 2: And some people agreed with him at the time, especially

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Speaker 2: people who liked as politics, but modern science tends to

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Speaker 2: agree with him. Is what I have discovered in my reading.

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Speaker 3: That's what I gotsis now that's exciting. This is, I think,

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Speaker 3: for every really rough example you can get from evolutionary

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Speaker 3: biology where it's like, man, this is a messed up system.

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Speaker 3: Fish eating their own offspring, you know, your babies bursting

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Speaker 3: out of you and sucking the juices from your limbs.

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Speaker 3: There's also lovely stories about cooperative communes like bats having

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Speaker 3: essentially like you know, social safety nets for each other. Like,

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Speaker 3: so you see this a lot with the bad example.

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Speaker 3: It's really cute because it's vampire bats have a really

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Speaker 3: really fast metabolism, okay, and so they will die if

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Speaker 3: they can't feed regularly enough, like acause they're vampires. Well, yes,

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Speaker 3: so they do drink blood. They usually get a blood

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Speaker 3: meal from livestock, uh some feet on birds. But because

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Speaker 3: it's such a rapid yes, exactly, there, they are basically

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Speaker 3: Victorian waves. If they don't eat enough, they will they

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Speaker 3: will perish, but they, uh, they make friends with each other,

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Speaker 3: and they have these like close relationships. So they will

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Speaker 3: actually share blood meals with each other if someone's like

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Speaker 3: missed one, which make sure that they survive and so

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Speaker 3: and it's like mutually beneficial because like usually you'll find

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Speaker 3: like if one shares blood meals with one like, the

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Speaker 3: other will remember that and then share in the future.

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Speaker 3: And they form these really uh sweet little collaborative I mean,

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Speaker 3: they're they're vomiting blood at each other, but yeah, really sweet.

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Speaker 3: It's really nice.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. I've seen a lot of terrible horror romance novels,

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Speaker 2: book movies that are basically this, just with human empires.

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Speaker 3: So exactly vomiting blood.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the I mean, that's kind of the core

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Speaker 2: of Kroppawkin's argument, and a lot of you know, stuff

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Speaker 2: starting in the sixties and seventies starts looking at this

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Speaker 2: a lot more seriously too. But before we can talk

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Speaker 2: about evolution, we have to talk about context, because I

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Speaker 2: love talking about context. We have to start by talking

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Speaker 2: about geology, which I did not expect when I started

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Speaker 2: seeing this particular research topic, because the history of evolution

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Speaker 2: starts with geology, which is neat. For a long ass time,

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Speaker 2: people even learned people in the West tended to view

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Speaker 2: nature as essentially static, like God made the everything. It's

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Speaker 2: just been there. That mountain's been there since God made it. Whatever, right,

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Speaker 2: the weather has more or less always been the same

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Speaker 2: since the creation of the earth. The rivers are there,

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Speaker 2: the mountains are there, everything is already there. Obviously, a

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Speaker 2: literal interpretation of the Bible influences this, right, But then science.

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Speaker 3: You see, like, I'm I'm not a big Bible skullar,

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Speaker 3: but it was like it was supposed to be done

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Speaker 3: in a few days, which would not leave a lot

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Speaker 3: of room for staggering your animals.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, you're not like changing a lot of stuff slowly

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Speaker 2: if you're yeah, if you're just making it in a

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Speaker 2: couple of days.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: I remember once I had this nun aunt and I

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Speaker 2: was a little kid, and I was like, not into religion,

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Speaker 2: and I asked my nun aunt. I was like, yeah,

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Speaker 2: but what about evolution, and like because she taught science,

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Speaker 2: and so she taught evolution in school and I was like,

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Speaker 2: what about creation versus evolution? She's like, that's just not

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Speaker 2: worth worrying about. I love that Ellen. So science was

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Speaker 2: pretty quickly like, all right, there's clearly some changes that

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Speaker 2: have happened to nature over time. You know, fossils and

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Speaker 2: things were a big part of that. So in the

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Speaker 2: late seventeen hundreds, in the early eighteen hundreds, Western science

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Speaker 2: was into this idea called catastrophism, which was like, yeah,

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Speaker 2: nature changes, but really quickly. It happens in big catastrophes

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Speaker 2: like Noah's flood in that history book. We all read

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Speaker 2: the Bible, and as far as I can tell, the

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Speaker 2: flood was like the big geological event in the Western mind,

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Speaker 2: and so everything they were like, people are like, well,

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Speaker 2: how come earthquakes now? Don't do that? And they were like, ah,

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Speaker 2: earthquakes were bigger back then, was the theory then. But

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Speaker 2: even beyond that, people were like mountains spring up overnight,

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Speaker 2: valleys are caused by fuck off big floods. Everything happens

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Speaker 2: in big catastrophes. And then you've got an early geologist,

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Speaker 2: a Scottish guy named James Hutton, who was like, yeah,

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Speaker 2: but what actually, if the earth is old as fucking shit,

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Speaker 2: changes slowly And I have no idea if he cussed

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Speaker 2: this much. I haven't actually read his work.

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Speaker 3: I've only read, of course he did.

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Speaker 2: That's my theory. Yeah, exactly right, And I kind of

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Speaker 2: want to introduce a bad boy of science early on,

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Speaker 2: because we're gonna have some like shitty dudes for a

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Speaker 2: minute before we get to the other bad boy at

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Speaker 2: the end of the story. Right, So we.

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Speaker 3: Got a sandwich. It's a shit sandwich, but they are

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Speaker 3: really nice.

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Speaker 2: I know, exactly, And I don't know enough about this man.

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Speaker 2: I just know that the man who comes after him

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Speaker 2: as a racist. But oops, yeah, and who knows Howton might

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Speaker 2: have been to I don't fucking know. And he's like, actually,

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Speaker 2: earth old as fuck, things might change slowly. Another guy

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Speaker 2: who's on the same terrible island as Hotton, but in

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Speaker 2: the south of it. An English guy named Charles Lyle.

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Speaker 2: He comes along. He's the shit in the shit sandwich

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Speaker 2: only as a person.

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Speaker 3: Actually he's got he's also got two first names, so

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Speaker 3: that kind.

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Speaker 2: Of You know, what's funny is that I often complain

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Speaker 2: about people on the show who have two first names,

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Speaker 2: or people whose like name is like Chris Christopherson or

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Speaker 2: so whatever. You know.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, it's not. It's not a hard and fast rule.

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Speaker 3: There are plenty of decent people with two first names.

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Speaker 3: But a pattern emerges.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, uh huh yeah, causation, correlation, who knows right exactly?

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Speaker 3: Yeah, not nominative determinalism or whatever.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. So charge Arles Lyle came along and he built

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Speaker 2: up a whole big theory about this gradual change stuff,

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Speaker 2: and he called it uniformitarianism, the most annoying word I

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Speaker 2: had to type over and over again this week. And

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Speaker 2: uniformatarianism is the idea that this process of change has

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Speaker 2: been uniform across all time. It is the opposite of catastrophism.

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Speaker 2: And it's basically like everything is big, boring, slow motion change.

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Speaker 2: And he he did a lot of important geologies that

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Speaker 2: I think he's this is the guy I think has

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Speaker 2: seen as the father of geology. Rocks are cut by

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Speaker 2: the slow trickle of rain, Mountains rise slowly up because

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Speaker 2: of pressure and magma. And you know, we've learned since

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Speaker 2: that it's both of these things. It is both gradual

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Speaker 2: and catastrophic change. Gradual change does most of the big stuff,

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Speaker 2: but we do see massive floods and asteroid strikes and

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Speaker 2: volcanic eruptions and shit.

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Speaker 3: That this is really interesting because I certainly am not

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Speaker 3: I have not studied geology much, but like the this

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Speaker 3: is very similar to a lot of arguments in evolutionary biology,

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Speaker 3: where it's like do changes happen really gradually? Like do

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Speaker 3: you have really small evolutionary changes that like like basically

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Speaker 3: you have something with a like a fish and then

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Speaker 3: it's little fins very slowly turned into legs. Or do

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Speaker 3: you have a fish and then you have this like

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Speaker 3: Bonker's mutation that suddenly gives it joints and it's running

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Speaker 3: around after a couple of generations.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's like fuck, yeah, I get so many babies,

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Speaker 2: I have fucking joints, right, yeah, exactly, No, totally, Actually,

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Speaker 2: I mean, do you know where modern evolutionary biology is

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Speaker 2: on that stuff.

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Speaker 3: It's similar to the geology thing, where you do have

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Speaker 3: sometimes larger leaps in evolution, but like foundationally, a lot

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Speaker 3: of the stuff is, you know, slower, less dramatic mutations,

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Speaker 3: because a dramatic mutation usually just kills you. Yeah, so

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Speaker 3: the little ones are the ones that can kind of

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Speaker 3: sneak up on you. But sometimes you do have to

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Speaker 3: have like a dramatic mutation where, especially like when it

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Speaker 3: comes to limbs, you can have pretty huge changes with

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Speaker 3: like just tweaking a little gene and then you suddenly

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Speaker 3: lose a limb or gain a limb, lose a finger,

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Speaker 3: gain finger. So you can actually have pretty rapid changes

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Speaker 3: sometimes that end up working out well. But it's definitely

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Speaker 3: it's definitely a mix, and there's still a lot of

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Speaker 3: debate about how important each one is.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I know that. Like when I read anti evolution stuff,

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Speaker 2: it's like what about eyeballs, And I'm like, man, I

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Speaker 2: don't know, it seems possible to me.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's definitely possible. If you They argue that

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Speaker 3: you don't have like a you can't track the development

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Speaker 3: of the eye, but you can't. Actually you can see

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Speaker 3: all the steps from the really simple eyes to the

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Speaker 3: more complexes surprise me at all. Yeah, it's actually it's

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Speaker 3: actually all there.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. I love when the gotchas are just based on

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Speaker 2: those never having read anything love.

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Speaker 3: I love those websites. So there's one that has like

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Speaker 3: a picture of a guy that just has like he

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Speaker 3: has like a bunch of penises and nipples and like fingers,

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Speaker 3: and it's like, this is what evolution would say, because

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Speaker 3: you just have all these extra stuff, and it's like,

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Speaker 3: I mean, that'd be great, but yeah, no it doesn't.

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Speaker 3: It's it's yeah, it's like, you know, it's a very

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Speaker 3: simple concept. You can pass on your genetic material. That

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Speaker 3: genetic material gets passed on. It's it's kind of like

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Speaker 3: a it's a bit of a circular kind of thing

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Speaker 3: where it's like if you pass it on, then it

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Speaker 3: is passed on, right, and then that's it. That's all

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Speaker 3: it is.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. No, I just I love when their gotchas are nonsensical.

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Speaker 2: And one of the things I found while researching this

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Speaker 2: is a lot of what Christians were and weren't against

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Speaker 2: has changed. But we're gonna get to that when we

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Speaker 2: get to the climate change section. Exciting, and a bunch

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Speaker 2: of these early scientists were a Christian at least or

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Speaker 2: at least Deists of some variety, and they didn't see

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Speaker 2: what they were describing as anti religious. I think people

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Speaker 2: tend to project the modern right wing Christian war on

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Speaker 2: science backwards into history more than it deserves. Although there

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Speaker 2: was tension between rationalism and religion and all this shit,

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Speaker 2: a fuck ton of these scientists were coming from a

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Speaker 2: like I am proving that God loves us because of

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Speaker 2: evolution or whatever. We'll get to the evolution part later.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, because there was already I thought, even before Darwin,

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Speaker 3: there were already sort of like ideas in Christianity of

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Speaker 3: a god that just kind of set things in motion

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Speaker 3: and then stands back. Is like all right, an I said,

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Speaker 3: is giant Rube Goldberg machine of people and animals and stuff.

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Speaker 3: And so that just like kind of fit in really

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Speaker 3: nicely with evolutionary biologists going like, yeah, he like set

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Speaker 3: things in motion and then everything else is science.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, Like my aunt was right, if you want to

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Speaker 2: believe in God about it, you could just be like,

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Speaker 2: I don't know, man, it's fine, yeah, just don't worry

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Speaker 2: about it. And yeah, people were like, isn't it great

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Speaker 2: that God provides all these complex natural systems that work

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Speaker 2: together to make life flourish. Lyle is not really a

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Speaker 2: cool people. He was an asshole white dude. He relied

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Speaker 2: heavily on his wife to do the art for his

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Speaker 2: geological studies, but then refused to let women into his classes.

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Speaker 2: He was a racist who visited the United States and said, wow,

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Speaker 2: you're right, you all should really ban all the abolitionist

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Speaker 2: books because otherwise the slave owners might die. Yeah, which

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Speaker 2: I have a different opinion. Oh, actually, I agree the

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Speaker 2: abolitionist books might lead to the slave owner's death, but

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Speaker 2: that's not a problem for my point of view. It's

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Speaker 2: a well feature not Yeah.

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Speaker 3: I mean it's like if you've set up a system

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Speaker 3: where you have people who you've enslaved, and you're like, oh,

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Speaker 3: but if I don't free them, they might want to

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Speaker 3: free themselves violently. It's like, yeah, man, yeah, yeah.

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Speaker 2: But what if there was an answer there? You almost

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Speaker 2: sit on it.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, you almost got there.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. So Lyle not my favorite person in history. Charles

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Speaker 2: Darwin was a uniformitarianist. He went ahead and applied this

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Speaker 2: more broadly to after his origin of the species thing,

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Speaker 2: which we'll get to later. But in eighteen eighty one,

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Speaker 2: Charles Darwin published a book I think this is his

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Speaker 2: last book. It had the fascinating and timeless title The

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Speaker 2: Formation of Vegetable Mold through the Action of Worms.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, that's my favorite one of his.

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Speaker 2: And basically this is the argument that soil comes about gradually.

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Speaker 2: Top soil has all been shipped out on by worms,

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Speaker 2: or to quote him directly, quote although the conclusion may

401
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Speaker 2: appear at first startling, it will be difficult to deny

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Speaker 2: the probability that every particle of earth forming the bed

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Speaker 2: from which the turf and old pastureland springs has been

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Speaker 2: passed through the intestines of worms.

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Speaker 3: M Yeah, and go ahead, oh no, I mean it's

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Speaker 3: more or less true. Maybe not just all earthworms, but yeah,

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Speaker 3: like the trit divars are generally making the top soil

408
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Speaker 3: it in the ocean to a lot of animals making

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Speaker 3: the sand and this various substrate where it's usually usually

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Speaker 3: a two black animal like a worm, but it can

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Speaker 3: be another to try to war and they're just like

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Speaker 3: breaking down. You know, a tree falls down to try

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Speaker 3: to wars break it down. Now you've got more soil.

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Speaker 2: This is my new favorite word. I've never heard this

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Speaker 2: word before, but I immediately know what it means, because yes,

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Speaker 2: it's amazing.

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Speaker 3: It's a little guy that eats dead stuff.

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Speaker 2: That was me when I was a street kid. I

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Speaker 2: ate a lot of hit out of the trash all

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Speaker 2: the time to try to No, that's too long to

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Speaker 2: fit on your knuckles. Never mind. But do you know

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Speaker 2: what isn't to trite us?

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Speaker 3: Well, I mean no, no, I don't.

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Speaker 2: No, I don't either. But there's a bunch of ads

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Speaker 2: that may or may not be trash. Here they are

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Speaker 2: and for bec I for one, enjoyed all of those

427
00:23:04,359 --> 00:23:09,920
Speaker 2: products and services that supported this show. And how Yeah,

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Speaker 2: and so in the nineteenth century, all the sciences were

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Speaker 2: more interlinked than they are today. This is a sort

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Speaker 2: of my hypothesis, not my hypothesis. I've read people talk

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Speaker 2: about this, but I haven't actually read a study that

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Speaker 2: says this is how we know that they're like this.

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Speaker 2: But you have a lot of these and it's not

434
00:23:26,119 --> 00:23:29,120
Speaker 2: for great reasons. It's because science was done by these

435
00:23:29,119 --> 00:23:31,840
Speaker 2: like gentlemen and scientist explorer type dudes.

436
00:23:31,960 --> 00:23:34,639
Speaker 3: Right, they would like they would have like clubs and

437
00:23:34,680 --> 00:23:40,360
Speaker 3: they'd go and they'd smoke nasty cigars and drink nasty

438
00:23:40,440 --> 00:23:44,960
Speaker 3: shit and like talk about whether hom or erectus was

439
00:23:45,000 --> 00:23:45,320
Speaker 3: a thing.

440
00:23:45,720 --> 00:23:51,679
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally so. Because of this conflation of all the sciences,

441
00:23:51,760 --> 00:23:54,520
Speaker 2: or rather not conflation, but they hadn't split off as

442
00:23:54,560 --> 00:23:58,640
Speaker 2: much yet, natural science and political science were directly related

443
00:23:58,680 --> 00:24:02,720
Speaker 2: in folk's minds. And a lot of these guys are liberals,

444
00:24:03,080 --> 00:24:08,760
Speaker 2: the original liberals. In fact, uniformitarianism presents some ideas that

445
00:24:08,800 --> 00:24:12,240
Speaker 2: are both deeply radical and deeply liberal by today's meaning

446
00:24:12,280 --> 00:24:14,360
Speaker 2: of the words. I would say the more liberal part

447
00:24:14,480 --> 00:24:17,040
Speaker 2: is that they're really into gradualism. Some of these folks

448
00:24:17,040 --> 00:24:18,960
Speaker 2: are also total revolutionarism. We're going to get to some

449
00:24:18,960 --> 00:24:20,880
Speaker 2: of those two. But some of them are like, well,

450
00:24:20,920 --> 00:24:23,480
Speaker 2: rather than having a French Revolution, we should just slowly

451
00:24:23,520 --> 00:24:28,520
Speaker 2: make society better. But the radical part of this that

452
00:24:28,560 --> 00:24:31,600
Speaker 2: I had never really given credit to, of gradualism as

453
00:24:31,600 --> 00:24:35,560
Speaker 2: a scientific idea applied to human society is that rather

454
00:24:35,600 --> 00:24:39,399
Speaker 2: than hand power to the great man of history, like,

455
00:24:39,520 --> 00:24:41,400
Speaker 2: rather than being like, oh, Napoleon should get a bunch

456
00:24:41,400 --> 00:24:44,919
Speaker 2: of power. That's a good idea, right. Gradualism had this

457
00:24:45,040 --> 00:24:49,440
Speaker 2: idea that we can all be those worms and slowly

458
00:24:49,480 --> 00:24:52,040
Speaker 2: make the world better through the hard work of living

459
00:24:52,040 --> 00:24:55,720
Speaker 2: our lives and improving things where we can. And there's

460
00:24:55,720 --> 00:24:58,520
Speaker 2: a quote about this from a classic novel of the

461
00:24:58,560 --> 00:25:01,520
Speaker 2: era that I haven't read yet called March And which

462
00:25:01,520 --> 00:25:03,480
Speaker 2: is written by George Elliot, who's actually a woman named

463
00:25:03,480 --> 00:25:06,359
Speaker 2: Mary Ann Evans who's friends of Darwin. But I like

464
00:25:06,400 --> 00:25:09,920
Speaker 2: this quote. The growing good of the world is partly

465
00:25:09,960 --> 00:25:14,760
Speaker 2: dependent on unhistoric acts. And I like it because, like

466
00:25:15,680 --> 00:25:19,159
Speaker 2: I would expect these scientists to be all about the

467
00:25:19,160 --> 00:25:22,800
Speaker 2: great man of history, right, because history thinks they're the

468
00:25:22,800 --> 00:25:27,080
Speaker 2: great men of history, right right. They think Charles Darwin

469
00:25:27,200 --> 00:25:32,879
Speaker 2: is the man who discovered how everything works, right, But theoretically,

470
00:25:33,040 --> 00:25:36,040
Speaker 2: actually some of them kind of weren't about the I mean,

471
00:25:36,040 --> 00:25:37,520
Speaker 2: I'm sure they were all about their own egos and

472
00:25:37,520 --> 00:25:39,879
Speaker 2: stuff too, but like theoretically on a political level, they

473
00:25:39,880 --> 00:25:40,600
Speaker 2: weren't about that.

474
00:25:41,119 --> 00:25:43,240
Speaker 3: Right, And that's kind of a mot that's also like

475
00:25:43,280 --> 00:25:49,000
Speaker 3: a modern U. There are different ways to regard history,

476
00:25:49,000 --> 00:25:51,840
Speaker 3: Like modern historians do disagree on this as well. The

477
00:25:51,920 --> 00:25:54,920
Speaker 3: idea of like you have the like like the big

478
00:25:54,960 --> 00:25:59,879
Speaker 3: men essentially change, right exactly the big things that change it,

479
00:26:00,119 --> 00:26:04,400
Speaker 3: versus like how much of it is like some guy

480
00:26:05,320 --> 00:26:09,119
Speaker 3: you know, making a big change, like either an inventor

481
00:26:09,480 --> 00:26:13,320
Speaker 3: or a warlord or a king or whatever making these

482
00:26:13,320 --> 00:26:15,479
Speaker 3: big changes, and how much of it is sort of

483
00:26:15,520 --> 00:26:19,680
Speaker 3: a you know, inevitable thing because obviously, like you'll have

484
00:26:19,840 --> 00:26:23,840
Speaker 3: things like you know, Einstein will make all these discoveries

485
00:26:23,840 --> 00:26:26,080
Speaker 3: and it you know, does cause a lot of these

486
00:26:26,080 --> 00:26:29,960
Speaker 3: paradigm shifts. But there's a competing idea which is like, well,

487
00:26:30,200 --> 00:26:33,320
Speaker 3: once you build up enough of sort of background stuff,

488
00:26:33,359 --> 00:26:37,440
Speaker 3: it's not you will get an Einstein inevitably who will

489
00:26:37,440 --> 00:26:40,439
Speaker 3: make these discoveries. So it's like kind of like you

490
00:26:40,480 --> 00:26:44,720
Speaker 3: can swap out these these guys. And then there's like

491
00:26:45,560 --> 00:26:47,680
Speaker 3: I'm not a historian, but I think there's like various

492
00:26:47,680 --> 00:26:51,960
Speaker 3: different ways to kind of like where some sometimes it's

493
00:26:51,960 --> 00:26:54,800
Speaker 3: like mixing, Like yeah, like you have these pretty big

494
00:26:54,840 --> 00:26:57,240
Speaker 3: actors and yeah they do change the timing and the

495
00:26:57,240 --> 00:27:00,639
Speaker 3: course of events, but you also they are not the

496
00:27:00,640 --> 00:27:02,760
Speaker 3: only ones rousing these changes.

497
00:27:02,840 --> 00:27:04,520
Speaker 2: No, totally. And actually I mean it gets into this

498
00:27:04,640 --> 00:27:09,159
Speaker 2: like gradualism versus catastrophism thing, right, and it's just like

499
00:27:09,440 --> 00:27:15,200
Speaker 2: it's both and it's more gradualism. It's more the slowly

500
00:27:15,840 --> 00:27:19,720
Speaker 2: we build new ideas and then we have breakthroughs, and

501
00:27:19,760 --> 00:27:22,000
Speaker 2: the same with history and politics, like you know, we

502
00:27:22,840 --> 00:27:25,400
Speaker 2: you have revolt after revolt and then one of them sticks,

503
00:27:25,720 --> 00:27:27,440
Speaker 2: you know, right, and so people are like, ah, the

504
00:27:28,200 --> 00:27:30,080
Speaker 2: random person who's in charge of that one revolt or

505
00:27:30,119 --> 00:27:32,280
Speaker 2: the person that we've decided was in charge of that revolt,

506
00:27:32,600 --> 00:27:34,960
Speaker 2: you know. And some of the thing is just like

507
00:27:35,040 --> 00:27:37,880
Speaker 2: lazy writing, where it's like, you know, easier to pick

508
00:27:37,880 --> 00:27:38,879
Speaker 2: one name and stick to it.

509
00:27:39,640 --> 00:27:39,840
Speaker 1: Yeah.

510
00:27:39,880 --> 00:27:42,480
Speaker 3: Man, have you ever tried to read like a Russian

511
00:27:42,520 --> 00:27:45,239
Speaker 3: book or a Polish book and then like remember all

512
00:27:45,280 --> 00:27:45,640
Speaker 3: the names?

513
00:27:45,680 --> 00:27:50,399
Speaker 2: It's hard, No, it's true, it's very hard. Yeah, Tolstoy's

514
00:27:50,400 --> 00:27:53,760
Speaker 2: got to come into this story later, honestly, and yeah, yeah,

515
00:27:54,040 --> 00:27:57,680
Speaker 2: he's in everything. I know. There's even a tuberculosis that

516
00:27:57,720 --> 00:27:58,440
Speaker 2: I don't include.

517
00:27:59,720 --> 00:27:59,920
Speaker 3: Start.

518
00:28:00,000 --> 00:28:01,560
Speaker 2: There's a couple things that come up over and over

519
00:28:01,600 --> 00:28:02,600
Speaker 2: again in this show.

520
00:28:03,640 --> 00:28:05,800
Speaker 1: We ever did, if we ever did, like a live

521
00:28:05,880 --> 00:28:07,639
Speaker 1: show of this, that would have to be part of

522
00:28:07,680 --> 00:28:08,520
Speaker 1: the drinking.

523
00:28:08,240 --> 00:28:12,400
Speaker 2: Game, yeah, absolutely, or just literally pass out Bengo cards, yeah,

524
00:28:12,440 --> 00:28:14,880
Speaker 2: and then give prizes to people who like, yeah.

525
00:28:15,359 --> 00:28:18,920
Speaker 3: Do you mentioned tuberculos a lot?

526
00:28:19,080 --> 00:28:19,399
Speaker 2: Yeah?

527
00:28:19,480 --> 00:28:22,159
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know, sky.

528
00:28:22,920 --> 00:28:28,960
Speaker 2: Yeah, so now my favorite tangent in the entire research

529
00:28:29,000 --> 00:28:31,720
Speaker 2: I did this week. Did you know that belief in

530
00:28:31,840 --> 00:28:35,359
Speaker 2: man made climate change is thousands of years older in

531
00:28:35,400 --> 00:28:39,240
Speaker 2: the Western tradition than belief in naturally occurring climate change?

532
00:28:39,520 --> 00:28:40,960
Speaker 3: Wow? No, I did not know that.

533
00:28:41,120 --> 00:28:44,360
Speaker 2: It never would have occurred to me, right, But if

534
00:28:44,400 --> 00:28:47,400
Speaker 2: you had that for thousands of years. The Western thinkers

535
00:28:47,480 --> 00:28:50,160
Speaker 2: tended to assume that everything was the static thing, but

536
00:28:50,200 --> 00:28:52,880
Speaker 2: they could see the impact of their own actions, right,

537
00:28:54,160 --> 00:28:57,440
Speaker 2: And so going back to the ancient Greeks, they would

538
00:28:57,480 --> 00:28:59,280
Speaker 2: sit around and be like, oh shit, if you cut

539
00:28:59,320 --> 00:29:00,960
Speaker 2: down all the trees, the lake might dry up. And

540
00:29:00,960 --> 00:29:02,640
Speaker 2: if the lake dries up, it's going to get colder

541
00:29:02,640 --> 00:29:06,160
Speaker 2: around here. So they were aware of climate change, but

542
00:29:06,240 --> 00:29:10,680
Speaker 2: it was man made, and people understood how desertification happens.

543
00:29:10,760 --> 00:29:12,480
Speaker 2: If you cut down all the trees, you go from

544
00:29:12,520 --> 00:29:15,080
Speaker 2: forest to desert. Which is funny because there's still people

545
00:29:15,080 --> 00:29:17,480
Speaker 2: who were like, no, you just regrow them. And I'm like, yeah,

546
00:29:17,520 --> 00:29:19,920
Speaker 2: did you strip away all of the top soil And

547
00:29:19,920 --> 00:29:22,640
Speaker 2: they're like well yeah, you know, like did you remove

548
00:29:22,680 --> 00:29:25,000
Speaker 2: all of the biomass from the region, Because eventually you

549
00:29:25,040 --> 00:29:26,880
Speaker 2: don't get a forest anymore. You can cut down a

550
00:29:26,880 --> 00:29:29,880
Speaker 2: forest and replant it. Like two or three times, depending

551
00:29:29,880 --> 00:29:32,240
Speaker 2: on the soil. Yeah.

552
00:29:32,280 --> 00:29:34,800
Speaker 3: Also, like it's funny because it's like you remove all

553
00:29:34,840 --> 00:29:38,200
Speaker 3: the trees and then it's like and then you replace

554
00:29:38,280 --> 00:29:40,760
Speaker 3: them all at once. It's like, yeah, well, where do

555
00:29:40,800 --> 00:29:43,480
Speaker 3: you think that, like the new tree its come for

556
00:29:43,680 --> 00:29:46,800
Speaker 3: the trees is from the other plants and trees that

557
00:29:46,840 --> 00:29:48,880
Speaker 3: were there that you got rid of all of them

558
00:29:49,000 --> 00:29:49,560
Speaker 3: all at once.

559
00:29:49,800 --> 00:29:54,600
Speaker 2: Yeah, So desertification people were looking around and being like, oh,

560
00:29:54,600 --> 00:29:58,600
Speaker 2: all these like civilizations were like things have changed in

561
00:29:58,680 --> 00:30:02,959
Speaker 2: human history, right, right, And so it's funny that modern

562
00:30:03,000 --> 00:30:06,360
Speaker 2: conservatives are the ones who deny human impact on climate. Well,

563
00:30:06,360 --> 00:30:08,400
Speaker 2: funny would be the right word if they weren't in

564
00:30:08,440 --> 00:30:10,560
Speaker 2: power and doing all kinds of terrible things.

565
00:30:10,560 --> 00:30:13,600
Speaker 3: So it's also weird because this isn't like again, I'm

566
00:30:13,680 --> 00:30:16,880
Speaker 3: I was not raised with like any religion, so I'm

567
00:30:16,960 --> 00:30:18,760
Speaker 3: kind of talking out of my butt, But I thought

568
00:30:18,800 --> 00:30:21,800
Speaker 3: like a big part of Christianity was like you were

569
00:30:22,000 --> 00:30:24,400
Speaker 3: like God gives you the world and you're like the

570
00:30:24,520 --> 00:30:29,480
Speaker 3: stewards of the world. So like, if stuff is going awry,

571
00:30:30,080 --> 00:30:34,080
Speaker 3: such as animals going extinct, that's kind of on man

572
00:30:34,520 --> 00:30:39,320
Speaker 3: because we were supposed to be stewarding the world. I'm

573
00:30:39,360 --> 00:30:43,440
Speaker 3: not saying like I'm not necessarily endorsing this idea, but

574
00:30:43,640 --> 00:30:45,920
Speaker 3: that I thought that was the Christian idea. Is that

575
00:30:46,000 --> 00:30:49,000
Speaker 3: like you're the caretakers of the earth and all the

576
00:30:49,040 --> 00:30:50,600
Speaker 3: little animals and so on.

577
00:30:50,960 --> 00:30:54,520
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, that's exactly it. And that's now, that

578
00:30:54,640 --> 00:30:57,800
Speaker 2: was actually what I was going to Congratulations, that was it,

579
00:30:57,920 --> 00:31:01,880
Speaker 2: Like humans are the ones with agents, see in this viewpoint, right,

580
00:31:02,280 --> 00:31:06,160
Speaker 2: and so it should be the conservative position used to

581
00:31:06,200 --> 00:31:08,880
Speaker 2: believe in man made climate change and not the natural

582
00:31:08,880 --> 00:31:12,280
Speaker 2: climate change, and now we have, well, not the reverse.

583
00:31:12,520 --> 00:31:15,960
Speaker 2: I think anyone who actually understands climate science understands that yes,

584
00:31:16,000 --> 00:31:18,960
Speaker 2: they're natural ebbs and flows and also man make climate

585
00:31:19,040 --> 00:31:20,480
Speaker 2: changes what's happening right now.

586
00:31:20,400 --> 00:31:22,560
Speaker 3: And they feed into one another as well. So like

587
00:31:22,600 --> 00:31:27,440
Speaker 3: you have man made events that can cause a cascading effect,

588
00:31:27,480 --> 00:31:30,320
Speaker 3: and then you have you know, then like you'll have

589
00:31:30,440 --> 00:31:35,760
Speaker 3: natural like an example that would be you know, melt,

590
00:31:36,000 --> 00:31:38,400
Speaker 3: like if you have melt of a lot of the

591
00:31:38,480 --> 00:31:42,120
Speaker 3: perma frost, have a natural yeah, yeah, exactly, you'll have

592
00:31:42,480 --> 00:31:46,600
Speaker 3: a natural sort of release of methane from these things,

593
00:31:46,600 --> 00:31:51,360
Speaker 3: and something that may have eventually happened somewhat for certain things,

594
00:31:51,360 --> 00:31:56,360
Speaker 3: but then it creates a snowball effect. So yeah, it's

595
00:31:56,440 --> 00:32:00,280
Speaker 3: really it's a it's a complex thing, but it's the

596
00:32:00,280 --> 00:32:06,680
Speaker 3: there's not any really any debate among climate scientists that

597
00:32:07,600 --> 00:32:10,760
Speaker 3: this is a massive change that is caused by peoples.

598
00:32:10,920 --> 00:32:14,600
Speaker 2: Yeah. Even the founding fathers of the fucking United States

599
00:32:14,600 --> 00:32:18,320
Speaker 2: of America were writing about how clearcutting and colonialism were

600
00:32:18,360 --> 00:32:21,400
Speaker 2: affecting the climate. Libs, I know, I know. It was

601
00:32:21,400 --> 00:32:23,320
Speaker 2: just funny because I like one of the famous things

602
00:32:23,320 --> 00:32:27,160
Speaker 2: on the show that is that I actually don't like them. Yeah,

603
00:32:27,200 --> 00:32:29,520
Speaker 2: but they were aware of the impact that they were having,

604
00:32:29,720 --> 00:32:34,080
Speaker 2: and people believed in their power to change shit. And

605
00:32:34,160 --> 00:32:37,080
Speaker 2: these ideas found their way into political science too, because

606
00:32:37,120 --> 00:32:39,880
Speaker 2: politics are actually deeply woven through everything we do, despite

607
00:32:39,880 --> 00:32:42,880
Speaker 2: how hard modern Western society likes to pretend that everything

608
00:32:42,960 --> 00:32:48,240
Speaker 2: is a distinct field. And Frederick Engels of Marx and Engels,

609
00:32:48,320 --> 00:32:50,760
Speaker 2: who for full transparency, also not a huge fan of

610
00:32:50,840 --> 00:32:53,479
Speaker 2: but whatever he wrote about how humans impact nature, but

611
00:32:53,600 --> 00:32:57,520
Speaker 2: nature otherwise stays still. So this is like impacting all

612
00:32:57,560 --> 00:33:00,720
Speaker 2: of the science, is my point. He wrote, quote, there

613
00:33:00,760 --> 00:33:03,719
Speaker 2: is devilishly little left of nature as it was in

614
00:33:03,760 --> 00:33:06,880
Speaker 2: Germany at the time when the Germanic peoples immigrated into it.

615
00:33:07,360 --> 00:33:11,120
Speaker 2: The Earth's surface, climate, vegetation, fauna, and the human beings

616
00:33:11,160 --> 00:33:15,600
Speaker 2: themselves have infinitely changed, and all this owing to human activity,

617
00:33:15,920 --> 00:33:18,280
Speaker 2: while the changes of nature and Germany which have occurred

618
00:33:18,280 --> 00:33:22,640
Speaker 2: in this period of time without human interference are incalculably small.

619
00:33:23,520 --> 00:33:25,920
Speaker 2: And now he's this is wrong, right, This is an

620
00:33:26,000 --> 00:33:29,920
Speaker 2: incorrect assessment. Telling someone that their science is wrong in

621
00:33:29,920 --> 00:33:32,360
Speaker 2: the nineteen hundreds in the eighteen hundreds is like not

622
00:33:32,480 --> 00:33:37,440
Speaker 2: a whatever, everyone is wrong, you know, right, But there's

623
00:33:37,480 --> 00:33:41,280
Speaker 2: this argument happening about climate change and whether it's happening

624
00:33:41,360 --> 00:33:46,000
Speaker 2: on a human scale or not. Right, And angles actually

625
00:33:46,040 --> 00:33:48,760
Speaker 2: wrote this after and he wrote in eighteen eighty three,

626
00:33:48,840 --> 00:33:51,640
Speaker 2: which is after in the eighteen seventies Kripacken and other

627
00:33:51,640 --> 00:33:55,040
Speaker 2: people were proving that natural climate change was happening on

628
00:33:55,040 --> 00:33:59,200
Speaker 2: a timescale observable by us. But people understood man made

629
00:33:59,200 --> 00:34:02,840
Speaker 2: climate change. Well, what they didn't understand was that nature

630
00:34:02,920 --> 00:34:06,200
Speaker 2: changes on its own without us. Right to go back

631
00:34:06,200 --> 00:34:10,160
Speaker 2: to geology, So you have this. Everything has always been

632
00:34:10,160 --> 00:34:13,720
Speaker 2: the same vibe. Even the gradualists are like, this happens

633
00:34:13,719 --> 00:34:16,160
Speaker 2: so slow, it doesn't really affect us. As best as

634
00:34:16,160 --> 00:34:19,680
Speaker 2: I can tell, And then you have this Swiss naturalist

635
00:34:20,000 --> 00:34:24,040
Speaker 2: named Jean Louis Rudolph Augussi's and he shows up on

636
00:34:24,080 --> 00:34:28,160
Speaker 2: the scene and he mostly studies fossil fish, and in

637
00:34:28,200 --> 00:34:30,960
Speaker 2: eighteen thirty seven he's like, okay, but what if there

638
00:34:31,000 --> 00:34:35,040
Speaker 2: was a fucking ice age? And this was like a

639
00:34:35,120 --> 00:34:39,600
Speaker 2: real bold assertion, right, I really want to know whenever,

640
00:34:39,640 --> 00:34:42,080
Speaker 2: I'm like, and then science discovered this, I'm like, I

641
00:34:42,120 --> 00:34:44,560
Speaker 2: want to know what people in like Asia and Africa

642
00:34:44,600 --> 00:34:46,200
Speaker 2: and stuff like knew about this stuff, Like I want

643
00:34:46,200 --> 00:34:50,520
Speaker 2: to know, you know, whenever. Like literally, later in the story,

644
00:34:50,560 --> 00:34:54,520
Speaker 2: someone's going to discover plateaus as a geological thing, you know,

645
00:34:54,840 --> 00:34:57,399
Speaker 2: And I'm like, other people had to already know about

646
00:34:57,400 --> 00:35:01,600
Speaker 2: this shit. But yeah, Europeans figured out the ice age.

647
00:35:02,840 --> 00:35:06,879
Speaker 2: And he says glaciers carved out the valleys and people

648
00:35:06,920 --> 00:35:09,480
Speaker 2: are like, aren't you just a guy who studies fossil

649
00:35:09,480 --> 00:35:12,080
Speaker 2: fish And he's like, no, no, no, hear me out glaciers.

650
00:35:12,080 --> 00:35:15,239
Speaker 2: Better explain Also why there's like giant bowlders all over

651
00:35:15,239 --> 00:35:17,799
Speaker 2: the Alps and shit, And people are like, huh, well,

652
00:35:17,840 --> 00:35:19,640
Speaker 2: the farmer told me that a giant put it there,

653
00:35:19,680 --> 00:35:21,640
Speaker 2: But I see the glacier argument, I see where you're

654
00:35:21,640 --> 00:35:27,640
Speaker 2: coming from, and he studies a fun ton of glaciers. Lyle,

655
00:35:27,840 --> 00:35:32,439
Speaker 2: the uniform of the guy was like, no fucking way

656
00:35:32,480 --> 00:35:35,680
Speaker 2: could there have been ice covering Britain. But a legion

657
00:35:35,680 --> 00:35:39,280
Speaker 2: of geologists went out and tested things, and they're like, yeah,

658
00:35:39,640 --> 00:35:42,520
Speaker 2: there was an ice age, and they all thought it

659
00:35:42,560 --> 00:35:46,759
Speaker 2: had to be about fifty thousand years ago. Specifically, they

660
00:35:46,760 --> 00:35:51,240
Speaker 2: thought it had to happen before people. Obviously there were.

661
00:35:51,120 --> 00:35:55,479
Speaker 3: People, right, but like, yeah, the idea being, how could

662
00:35:55,520 --> 00:35:57,840
Speaker 3: we have possibly survived an ice age?

663
00:35:58,560 --> 00:35:58,880
Speaker 1: Yeah?

664
00:35:58,920 --> 00:36:01,759
Speaker 2: And also I think still this fundamental belief that like,

665
00:36:02,680 --> 00:36:07,120
Speaker 2: obviously while we were around, nothing could have changed. Interesting,

666
00:36:07,560 --> 00:36:10,440
Speaker 2: Like they're kind of clinging to this. Everyone's going to

667
00:36:10,520 --> 00:36:13,720
Speaker 2: start dropping that over the next couple decades. Even Lyle

668
00:36:13,800 --> 00:36:16,359
Speaker 2: is eventually going to come around to it. I don't

669
00:36:16,360 --> 00:36:17,880
Speaker 2: know how he changes on the race issue or not.

670
00:36:17,920 --> 00:36:22,600
Speaker 2: I couldn't find any updates. But and so, like people

671
00:36:22,600 --> 00:36:24,200
Speaker 2: are like the world has been the same as long

672
00:36:24,239 --> 00:36:26,960
Speaker 2: as people have been around. Don't get me wrong. Okay,

673
00:36:26,960 --> 00:36:32,880
Speaker 2: that's the geological context. Now evolution. I'm not going to

674
00:36:32,920 --> 00:36:35,239
Speaker 2: get as deep into the evolution thing. I'm not going

675
00:36:35,320 --> 00:36:38,040
Speaker 2: to tell you about Darwin going on a boat or whatever,

676
00:36:38,200 --> 00:36:39,279
Speaker 2: because that.

677
00:36:39,600 --> 00:36:41,200
Speaker 3: Ate a lot of rare species.

678
00:36:41,719 --> 00:36:42,960
Speaker 2: Yeah, fucking of course he did.

679
00:36:43,000 --> 00:36:46,839
Speaker 3: Oh my god, he was. He was a freak, like

680
00:36:46,960 --> 00:36:50,600
Speaker 3: he liked to take Like I think that there's this

681
00:36:50,600 --> 00:36:54,120
Speaker 3: this concept of him as like this like kindly old

682
00:36:54,200 --> 00:36:57,879
Speaker 3: grandfather of evolution, because that's we have the photo of him,

683
00:36:58,239 --> 00:37:00,480
Speaker 3: and he's old and the photo, but he was like,

684
00:37:00,760 --> 00:37:02,879
Speaker 3: you know, he was not that old when he was

685
00:37:02,920 --> 00:37:06,360
Speaker 3: on the boat going to you know, the glap ghosts

686
00:37:06,360 --> 00:37:08,760
Speaker 3: and like he's just like sweet a bunch of animals

687
00:37:08,800 --> 00:37:09,200
Speaker 3: to try.

688
00:37:12,040 --> 00:37:14,719
Speaker 2: I wish one of them had killed him. I mean whatever. Actually,

689
00:37:14,920 --> 00:37:17,480
Speaker 2: actually I actually don't come out of this haiding Darwin.

690
00:37:18,160 --> 00:37:20,080
Speaker 2: I come out of this aiding most of the people

691
00:37:20,080 --> 00:37:23,000
Speaker 2: who interpreted his ideas immediately after his death.

692
00:37:23,239 --> 00:37:26,160
Speaker 3: Just because he ate a few tortoises that he found

693
00:37:26,200 --> 00:37:28,560
Speaker 3: doesn't mean he's a bad guy.

694
00:37:29,400 --> 00:37:32,960
Speaker 2: Yeah, who amongst us? I mean I wouldn't, but most

695
00:37:32,960 --> 00:37:34,560
Speaker 2: people would probably been like.

696
00:37:34,800 --> 00:37:37,280
Speaker 3: Come to their own bulls, it says, if they're asking

697
00:37:37,360 --> 00:37:41,239
Speaker 3: us to eat them, like, look, it's in its own little.

698
00:37:41,000 --> 00:37:49,440
Speaker 2: Packaging proof of intelligent design. Right. So Darwin was really

699
00:37:49,440 --> 00:37:54,080
Speaker 2: into Lile the uniformitarianist. Darwin once said quote, I always

700
00:37:54,080 --> 00:37:56,760
Speaker 2: feel as if my books came half out of Lyle's brains.

701
00:37:57,000 --> 00:37:59,520
Speaker 2: And so this is why when I was saying that

702
00:37:59,560 --> 00:38:04,040
Speaker 2: evolution comes out of geology, it's because Darwin comes out

703
00:38:04,040 --> 00:38:07,799
Speaker 2: of the founder of geology as a science, right, and

704
00:38:07,800 --> 00:38:11,640
Speaker 2: this whole like catastrophism, gradualism, et cetera, like what happens

705
00:38:11,640 --> 00:38:13,480
Speaker 2: with rocks. People are like, oh, what about species.

706
00:38:14,040 --> 00:38:17,520
Speaker 3: It's also there's a very intimate relationship between fossil records

707
00:38:17,560 --> 00:38:21,200
Speaker 3: in terms of evolution and geology, and also in terms

708
00:38:21,239 --> 00:38:25,440
Speaker 3: of evolution and geology, because like, if you have geological changes,

709
00:38:25,840 --> 00:38:29,840
Speaker 3: that has a direct impact on the evolutionary course of animals.

710
00:38:29,920 --> 00:38:31,760
Speaker 3: So it's all very yeah.

711
00:38:31,640 --> 00:38:33,920
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it makes sense. Like Lyle, the way that

712
00:38:33,960 --> 00:38:38,239
Speaker 2: he was proving gradualism with volcanoes is that he was

713
00:38:38,360 --> 00:38:42,080
Speaker 2: looking at the amount of oysters were in between the layers,

714
00:38:42,160 --> 00:38:44,479
Speaker 2: and he was like, clearly this didn't happen all at once.

715
00:38:44,520 --> 00:38:47,400
Speaker 2: There are so many oysters here. Those oyster beds are

716
00:38:47,400 --> 00:38:51,960
Speaker 2: so deep, you know. But Lyele wasn't actually excited at

717
00:38:52,000 --> 00:38:55,000
Speaker 2: first about Darwin being really inspired by him. It took

718
00:38:55,080 --> 00:38:57,560
Speaker 2: until the tenth edition of his own book about geology

719
00:38:57,640 --> 00:39:01,880
Speaker 2: for him to accept that evolution was probably real. Lyle's

720
00:39:01,920 --> 00:39:04,960
Speaker 2: prior theory to quota write up from Strange Science dot

721
00:39:05,040 --> 00:39:09,440
Speaker 2: Net was quote. For much of his life, Lyle maintained

722
00:39:09,480 --> 00:39:12,359
Speaker 2: a steady state view of the Earth and its inhabitants,

723
00:39:12,920 --> 00:39:16,960
Speaker 2: arguing that as one species went extinct, another appeared. This

724
00:39:17,160 --> 00:39:19,480
Speaker 2: was partly because of his belief in a long standing

725
00:39:19,680 --> 00:39:23,879
Speaker 2: deep division between humans and animals, in which mankind's superiority

726
00:39:23,880 --> 00:39:26,400
Speaker 2: to animals was moral, not physical.

727
00:39:27,560 --> 00:39:30,799
Speaker 3: How where would like My question for him would be like,

728
00:39:30,880 --> 00:39:34,839
Speaker 3: if a species like it goes extene, like, how does

729
00:39:34,880 --> 00:39:37,200
Speaker 3: the other one just spawn? Is it sort of you're

730
00:39:37,200 --> 00:39:39,279
Speaker 3: playing call of duty? And then like, yeah, I think,

731
00:39:39,320 --> 00:39:43,840
Speaker 3: oh this species died spawn writed another species.

732
00:39:45,080 --> 00:39:48,160
Speaker 2: It's I honestly think so. I mean because Lyle is

733
00:39:48,800 --> 00:39:51,960
Speaker 2: fairly religious, right I see, Okay, And so he kind

734
00:39:51,960 --> 00:39:54,240
Speaker 2: of is like, ah, and then the magic thing snaps

735
00:39:54,280 --> 00:39:57,839
Speaker 2: its fingers, you know, right, got it? I think that's

736
00:39:57,840 --> 00:40:01,080
Speaker 2: my best understanding. But I think what's really I'm really

737
00:40:01,120 --> 00:40:04,520
Speaker 2: interested in this idea that he was like, people were

738
00:40:04,560 --> 00:40:06,319
Speaker 2: really caught up. The thing that was hard for people

739
00:40:06,360 --> 00:40:09,839
Speaker 2: to leave behind was this idea that what separates us

740
00:40:09,840 --> 00:40:13,759
Speaker 2: from the animals. Isn't like as people want that to

741
00:40:13,800 --> 00:40:17,320
Speaker 2: be a real black and white distinction, you know, especially

742
00:40:17,320 --> 00:40:19,640
Speaker 2: if you want to have a Western viewpoint and like

743
00:40:20,280 --> 00:40:23,440
Speaker 2: you're the master of every other thing. And obviously this

744
00:40:23,520 --> 00:40:26,120
Speaker 2: is going to play into race science and real sketchy ways.

745
00:40:27,280 --> 00:40:27,440
Speaker 3: Yeah.

746
00:40:27,560 --> 00:40:31,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, So he basically had a theological disagreement with the

747
00:40:31,040 --> 00:40:33,680
Speaker 2: idea of evolution, and he would not be the only one,

748
00:40:34,400 --> 00:40:38,200
Speaker 2: but he also it was a scientist, and he came

749
00:40:38,239 --> 00:40:41,399
Speaker 2: around when presented with enough evidence over enough decades where

750
00:40:41,440 --> 00:40:44,000
Speaker 2: he finally got over his shit. He even came around

751
00:40:44,000 --> 00:40:47,320
Speaker 2: to believe in the ice age too, but in terms

752
00:40:47,320 --> 00:40:52,719
Speaker 2: of species differentiation or like the way that animals change.

753
00:40:52,800 --> 00:40:56,080
Speaker 2: People believed in man made climate change but not natural

754
00:40:56,080 --> 00:40:59,319
Speaker 2: climate change. It was kind of like that for evolution too,

755
00:41:00,000 --> 00:41:03,080
Speaker 2: because people had done what was the name of the

756
00:41:03,120 --> 00:41:07,400
Speaker 2: monk who did the like flowers with mindel Yeah, I

757
00:41:07,600 --> 00:41:09,600
Speaker 2: remember this vaguely from seventh grade science.

758
00:41:09,440 --> 00:41:12,600
Speaker 3: And Mendelian genetics with the peapods and all that.

759
00:41:12,840 --> 00:41:18,680
Speaker 2: Business people were aware that humans could change animals and plants, right,

760
00:41:18,840 --> 00:41:21,800
Speaker 2: they would look at dogs and be like, we clearly

761
00:41:21,800 --> 00:41:22,120
Speaker 2: did that.

762
00:41:22,600 --> 00:41:24,960
Speaker 3: Yeah, we did a number on a lot of sophisticated

763
00:41:25,040 --> 00:41:25,359
Speaker 3: in him.

764
00:41:25,640 --> 00:41:30,640
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think people tended to believe that you couldn't

765
00:41:30,640 --> 00:41:36,360
Speaker 2: make new species through human changes, but like they certainly

766
00:41:36,360 --> 00:41:40,000
Speaker 2: believe that you could change within the species, right. But

767
00:41:40,160 --> 00:41:43,640
Speaker 2: Darwin was like, no, natural selection exists, and it makes

768
00:41:43,680 --> 00:41:46,279
Speaker 2: new species. So like saying natural selection rather than man

769
00:41:46,280 --> 00:41:50,440
Speaker 2: made selection was the big thing, much like saying natural

770
00:41:50,440 --> 00:41:53,160
Speaker 2: climate change is real. Do you know that there was this?

771
00:41:53,680 --> 00:41:55,560
Speaker 2: I'm actually curious. I only learned about this one at

772
00:41:55,560 --> 00:41:57,880
Speaker 2: the like eleventh hour. While I was researching this. There

773
00:41:57,920 --> 00:42:01,799
Speaker 2: was this predecessor to Darwin, Robert Chambers, who wrote anonymously,

774
00:42:01,840 --> 00:42:04,040
Speaker 2: who wrote a book called Vestiges of the Human Nature

775
00:42:04,080 --> 00:42:06,080
Speaker 2: of Creation or the Natural History of Creation.

776
00:42:07,080 --> 00:42:10,600
Speaker 3: This sounds like something I would have learned and forgot

777
00:42:10,719 --> 00:42:13,280
Speaker 3: about completely fair enough.

778
00:42:14,360 --> 00:42:18,080
Speaker 2: In eighteen forty four, this anonymous person wrote a book.

779
00:42:18,480 --> 00:42:20,000
Speaker 2: I think he was afraid of the backlash you would

780
00:42:20,000 --> 00:42:23,040
Speaker 2: get because it went against well again, he was also

781
00:42:23,040 --> 00:42:27,240
Speaker 2: a religious person, I think, but right still, he wrote

782
00:42:27,239 --> 00:42:30,760
Speaker 2: this book and it was speculation. Darwin went into some science,

783
00:42:31,200 --> 00:42:34,200
Speaker 2: right yeah, And Robert Chambers was like, I got an idea,

784
00:42:34,800 --> 00:42:37,440
Speaker 2: and his idea was like basically right, he drew out

785
00:42:37,480 --> 00:42:41,640
Speaker 2: trees of like branching off animals and shit right. Yeah,

786
00:42:42,000 --> 00:42:45,040
Speaker 2: and it was an international bestseller, Vestiges of the Natural

787
00:42:45,160 --> 00:42:49,440
Speaker 2: History of Creation And I know what you're thinking. You're thinking,

788
00:42:49,520 --> 00:42:52,520
Speaker 2: eighteen forty four book about the evolution. I wonder if

789
00:42:52,520 --> 00:42:54,600
Speaker 2: it was racist, And the answer to that is yes,

790
00:42:55,440 --> 00:42:59,240
Speaker 2: it was very racist. The white European is the pinnacle

791
00:42:59,320 --> 00:43:03,200
Speaker 2: of transi utation, which is what he was calling evolution. Okay,

792
00:43:04,320 --> 00:43:07,440
Speaker 2: this racist home laid the foundation for the public being

793
00:43:07,480 --> 00:43:11,439
Speaker 2: willing to consider evolution because it did the work of saying, like, hey,

794
00:43:11,440 --> 00:43:13,359
Speaker 2: you can still have a God and evolution. And that's

795
00:43:13,400 --> 00:43:17,040
Speaker 2: fine because there actually had been people even before him

796
00:43:17,040 --> 00:43:18,719
Speaker 2: who had been like, we think evolution, but they had

797
00:43:18,760 --> 00:43:24,480
Speaker 2: been more atheists. So he's one day, I'm gonna fully

798
00:43:24,600 --> 00:43:27,239
Speaker 2: under in order to understand Western history, I feel like,

799
00:43:28,040 --> 00:43:31,600
Speaker 2: actually have to understand the way that like theology and

800
00:43:31,680 --> 00:43:33,680
Speaker 2: science do and don't relate. You know.

801
00:43:34,120 --> 00:43:38,040
Speaker 3: Yeah, theology. It's interesting because like early theology, when you

802
00:43:38,120 --> 00:43:40,239
Speaker 3: kind of like think about the origins of religion, it's

803
00:43:40,280 --> 00:43:46,320
Speaker 3: a very early kind of crack at science right where

804
00:43:46,000 --> 00:43:51,840
Speaker 3: you're explaining you're trying to explain the world through observation.

805
00:43:54,560 --> 00:43:57,960
Speaker 3: It's not necessarily this it's not the same as science, right,

806
00:43:57,960 --> 00:44:02,760
Speaker 3: because you're missing a lot of the experimentation part. Maybe

807
00:44:02,760 --> 00:44:04,840
Speaker 3: there's like some of it, right, Like you pray and

808
00:44:04,880 --> 00:44:07,840
Speaker 3: then something good happens. You're like, that's empirical evidence. I

809
00:44:07,880 --> 00:44:10,200
Speaker 3: prayed something good happened, right, so like you but you

810
00:44:10,280 --> 00:44:12,600
Speaker 3: have it's like it is a it is a proto

811
00:44:12,880 --> 00:44:16,719
Speaker 3: sort of. It's similar to science in the sense that

812
00:44:16,760 --> 00:44:19,320
Speaker 3: it is a way that people are trying to explain

813
00:44:19,360 --> 00:44:24,240
Speaker 3: the world around them. Yeah, but the problem, the problem

814
00:44:24,320 --> 00:44:28,000
Speaker 3: is like the the evidence and the scientific method not

815
00:44:28,080 --> 00:44:28,520
Speaker 3: being there.

816
00:44:28,960 --> 00:44:32,680
Speaker 2: Yeah. Do you know what science can't explain?

817
00:44:34,320 --> 00:44:34,680
Speaker 3: Bees?

818
00:44:35,080 --> 00:44:35,319
Speaker 2: Oh?

819
00:44:35,360 --> 00:44:39,320
Speaker 3: They're two there. According to the B movie, we can't.

820
00:44:39,600 --> 00:44:43,479
Speaker 3: Science has never explained how bees can fly because they're

821
00:44:43,480 --> 00:44:46,680
Speaker 3: too fat for their little wings. I mean, that's not

822
00:44:46,719 --> 00:44:48,920
Speaker 3: true at all, But the B movie did say that

823
00:44:49,080 --> 00:44:49,720
Speaker 3: at the beginning.

824
00:44:50,920 --> 00:44:53,920
Speaker 2: Well, I was going to say, the products and services

825
00:44:53,920 --> 00:44:59,800
Speaker 2: of this show that were divinely chosen, divinely appointed.

826
00:45:00,400 --> 00:45:05,160
Speaker 3: Amen, right, Alilujah sponsored by B movie.

827
00:45:05,760 --> 00:45:17,040
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. So earlier I was saying I don't

828
00:45:17,080 --> 00:45:19,120
Speaker 2: have that much against Darwin. I'm a little bit I'm

829
00:45:19,160 --> 00:45:21,520
Speaker 2: gonna contradict that here. I'm gonna be mean to Darwin

830
00:45:21,560 --> 00:45:25,960
Speaker 2: for a minute. Because Darwin comes along and he's like,

831
00:45:26,360 --> 00:45:28,759
Speaker 2: all right, we're gonna take this idea, this evolution idea

832
00:45:28,760 --> 00:45:31,279
Speaker 2: that someone else called transmutation. We're gonna take this idea

833
00:45:31,280 --> 00:45:34,319
Speaker 2: and make a real mean And maybe I'm being unfair here,

834
00:45:34,600 --> 00:45:36,680
Speaker 2: and maybe I'm reading bias sources, but one of the

835
00:45:36,719 --> 00:45:41,120
Speaker 2: sources is his fucking diary. H Darwin started up by

836
00:45:41,200 --> 00:45:44,520
Speaker 2: applying a political science idea to the natural sciences rather

837
00:45:44,560 --> 00:45:46,920
Speaker 2: than the other way around. And that part surprised me, right,

838
00:45:46,960 --> 00:45:49,360
Speaker 2: because you have all of these moments of like scientists

839
00:45:49,360 --> 00:45:51,880
Speaker 2: will be like, ah, yes, because of Darwin and evolution,

840
00:45:52,000 --> 00:45:55,560
Speaker 2: we're going to apply this to political science. Darwin started

841
00:45:55,600 --> 00:45:59,160
Speaker 2: with a political science idea In eighteen thirty eight. Darwin

842
00:45:59,239 --> 00:46:03,680
Speaker 2: wrote in his diet quote, I happened to read for

843
00:46:03,760 --> 00:46:08,680
Speaker 2: amusement Malthus on population. Malthus is the guy who was like,

844
00:46:08,880 --> 00:46:10,640
Speaker 2: there's not enough food around, so we just let poor

845
00:46:10,680 --> 00:46:14,160
Speaker 2: people die. So the Malthusian is the right of order.

846
00:46:14,200 --> 00:46:17,920
Speaker 2: It comes from him and being well prepared to appreciate

847
00:46:18,000 --> 00:46:21,319
Speaker 2: the struggle for existence which everywhere goes on. It at

848
00:46:21,320 --> 00:46:25,879
Speaker 2: once struck me that under these circumstances favorable variations would

849
00:46:25,880 --> 00:46:29,959
Speaker 2: tend to be preserved and unfavorable ones to be destroyed. Here,

850
00:46:30,040 --> 00:46:32,600
Speaker 2: then I had at last got a theory by which

851
00:46:32,600 --> 00:46:36,160
Speaker 2: to work. So he went out and studied nature and

852
00:46:36,320 --> 00:46:39,920
Speaker 2: ate turtles in their turtle bulls, and he discovered survival

853
00:46:39,920 --> 00:46:43,480
Speaker 2: of the fittest. While his ideas weren't quite as cutthroat

854
00:46:43,480 --> 00:46:45,600
Speaker 2: as people represent them in the media, at least as

855
00:46:45,640 --> 00:46:50,920
Speaker 2: I understand, he tended to emphasize combat and battle and

856
00:46:50,960 --> 00:46:54,920
Speaker 2: direct and violent competition, either in his examples or in

857
00:46:54,960 --> 00:46:58,640
Speaker 2: the metaphors that he used in his big book on

858
00:46:58,719 --> 00:47:01,480
Speaker 2: the Origin of Species by nowatural selection or the preservation

859
00:47:01,520 --> 00:47:05,359
Speaker 2: of favored races and the struggle for survival. I do

860
00:47:05,360 --> 00:47:10,120
Speaker 2: miss nineteenth century title conventions. I have to admit. I'm

861
00:47:10,160 --> 00:47:13,520
Speaker 2: glad we no longer say preservation of the favored races,

862
00:47:13,560 --> 00:47:18,000
Speaker 2: but I heeds to talk about animals here. Yeah, he

863
00:47:18,080 --> 00:47:21,960
Speaker 2: wrote quote one general law leading to the advancement of

864
00:47:22,000 --> 00:47:26,680
Speaker 2: all organic beings, namely multiply vary, let the strongest live

865
00:47:26,800 --> 00:47:32,799
Speaker 2: and the weakest die. And so there's a again an

866
00:47:32,840 --> 00:47:35,400
Speaker 2: oversimplification you can have where you're like, ah, yes, this

867
00:47:35,440 --> 00:47:37,759
Speaker 2: means we should all be fucking terrible to each other

868
00:47:37,840 --> 00:47:40,479
Speaker 2: or whatever, which isn't actually I believe what Darwin was saying.

869
00:47:41,040 --> 00:47:47,280
Speaker 3: No, I mean it was so he really emphasized the

870
00:47:47,280 --> 00:47:52,840
Speaker 3: the kind of like competitive brutal nature of natural selection,

871
00:47:53,000 --> 00:47:58,160
Speaker 3: because one of the main things is that dying and

872
00:47:58,239 --> 00:48:04,040
Speaker 3: not reproducing are a major part of explaining natural selection, right,

873
00:48:04,160 --> 00:48:08,600
Speaker 3: so like if you don't pass on your genes, then

874
00:48:09,280 --> 00:48:12,520
Speaker 3: that's like an evolutionary dead end versus passing them on,

875
00:48:12,680 --> 00:48:16,920
Speaker 3: and that's like that whole Like getting that point across

876
00:48:17,239 --> 00:48:20,719
Speaker 3: and discover finding evidence of it is kind of like

877
00:48:21,600 --> 00:48:26,920
Speaker 3: an easier first step, right, versus sort of saying like well, yeah,

878
00:48:26,920 --> 00:48:28,839
Speaker 3: but it's not like you have a lot of other

879
00:48:29,600 --> 00:48:33,160
Speaker 3: interesting factors like if you were if Darwin not that

880
00:48:33,239 --> 00:48:35,560
Speaker 3: this was necessarily on its radar, but like talking about

881
00:48:35,640 --> 00:48:38,000
Speaker 3: like well, actually with a lot of bird species, they're

882
00:48:38,040 --> 00:48:41,040
Speaker 3: so pretty because like the females are just like they

883
00:48:41,200 --> 00:48:44,880
Speaker 3: like it, and it's not necessarily fitness, it's not necessarily survival.

884
00:48:44,920 --> 00:48:47,399
Speaker 3: It's just like this like weird preference that gets out

885
00:48:47,400 --> 00:48:49,120
Speaker 3: of control, and now you have a bird of paradise

886
00:48:49,160 --> 00:48:53,560
Speaker 3: with a giant tail that's really pretty and extravagant. It's

887
00:48:53,640 --> 00:48:58,440
Speaker 3: like I think that finding finding evidence of those things

888
00:48:59,480 --> 00:49:03,240
Speaker 3: is I think a lot harder, and it's probably harder

889
00:49:03,280 --> 00:49:08,560
Speaker 3: for people to kind of digest that versus like, yeah,

890
00:49:08,600 --> 00:49:11,759
Speaker 3: like if you have two big horned sheep and they

891
00:49:11,800 --> 00:49:14,760
Speaker 3: like smack each other in the head, one of them dies,

892
00:49:15,200 --> 00:49:17,560
Speaker 3: doesn't reproduce, the other one lives because it's got a

893
00:49:17,560 --> 00:49:21,200
Speaker 3: thicker skull. Right, that's evolution, baby, you know. I think

894
00:49:21,200 --> 00:49:24,880
Speaker 3: it's just it's like we're very we really like sort

895
00:49:24,880 --> 00:49:27,319
Speaker 3: of I mean we're all we're all kind of like

896
00:49:27,360 --> 00:49:30,239
Speaker 3: sports brained in a way, right, Like we like those

897
00:49:30,320 --> 00:49:36,080
Speaker 3: ideas are compelling, they're exciting, And it also doesn't necessarily

898
00:49:36,120 --> 00:49:40,640
Speaker 3: acknowledge like some autonomy on the part of actual organisms, right,

899
00:49:40,640 --> 00:49:43,440
Speaker 3: which I think is another thing that probably was a

900
00:49:43,480 --> 00:49:46,319
Speaker 3: little bit of a struggle too. I mean today it's

901
00:49:46,360 --> 00:49:49,480
Speaker 3: still there's still a lot of like assumption that an

902
00:49:49,520 --> 00:49:53,200
Speaker 3: animal would not have any kind of like quote unquote

903
00:49:53,960 --> 00:49:58,319
Speaker 3: say or autonomy in terms of selecting itself, if that

904
00:49:58,360 --> 00:50:00,920
Speaker 3: makes sense, except that we do actually see evidence that

905
00:50:01,000 --> 00:50:05,719
Speaker 3: there's like some self like self selection, not not that

906
00:50:05,760 --> 00:50:08,839
Speaker 3: the animal is planning its evolutionary course, but just that

907
00:50:09,080 --> 00:50:11,279
Speaker 3: it's like, I like that I like to see this

908
00:50:11,600 --> 00:50:16,600
Speaker 3: in Yeah, that bird's pretty yeah, totally, exactly exactly, yeah.

909
00:50:15,920 --> 00:50:19,120
Speaker 2: No, totally and like and I think it's like much

910
00:50:19,239 --> 00:50:22,040
Speaker 2: like with the catastrophism to gradualism, it's going to be

911
00:50:22,080 --> 00:50:26,600
Speaker 2: like a yes and right. I think that when we

912
00:50:26,880 --> 00:50:28,879
Speaker 2: when we start talking about cooperation, we start talking about

913
00:50:28,920 --> 00:50:31,000
Speaker 2: mutual aid in a bit, it's not going to be

914
00:50:31,040 --> 00:50:35,600
Speaker 2: saying like, no, the competitive thing isn't real, right, It's

915
00:50:35,600 --> 00:50:39,600
Speaker 2: basically saying like, this is over over emphasized.

916
00:50:40,520 --> 00:50:40,759
Speaker 3: Right.

917
00:50:40,920 --> 00:50:44,840
Speaker 2: And one of the odd by products of the way

918
00:50:45,239 --> 00:50:47,720
Speaker 2: that Darwin chose to write about this, which I actually

919
00:50:47,800 --> 00:50:50,480
Speaker 2: again it makes some sense that this is how Darwin

920
00:50:50,520 --> 00:50:53,279
Speaker 2: wrote about it. One of the odd by products is

921
00:50:53,280 --> 00:50:55,560
Speaker 2: that some of the early resistance was on a moral

922
00:50:55,640 --> 00:50:58,840
Speaker 2: level rather than a scientific level. You have a friend

923
00:50:58,840 --> 00:51:00,920
Speaker 2: of the pod Tolstoy, for example. It was a Christian

924
00:51:00,920 --> 00:51:03,919
Speaker 2: animist novelist. I told you, I promised you told Stoy,

925
00:51:05,320 --> 00:51:07,680
Speaker 2: and he talked about how we worried about belief and

926
00:51:07,719 --> 00:51:10,920
Speaker 2: evolution would degrade people's moral character. And he's wrong about this, right,

927
00:51:11,080 --> 00:51:14,760
Speaker 2: But like he believes that if we start talking about evolution,

928
00:51:14,960 --> 00:51:18,200
Speaker 2: especially around this like competitive war of one against all things,

929
00:51:18,520 --> 00:51:21,000
Speaker 2: it would degrade people's moral character. Because they would become

930
00:51:21,080 --> 00:51:23,799
Speaker 2: less caring and see this world built on competition, and

931
00:51:23,840 --> 00:51:27,120
Speaker 2: this is and once again you get this irony to

932
00:51:27,200 --> 00:51:29,960
Speaker 2: how the pro capitalist right wing Christians are the ones

933
00:51:29,960 --> 00:51:34,000
Speaker 2: who deny evolution these days when they like, I don't

934
00:51:34,040 --> 00:51:36,719
Speaker 2: know it. It fucks with me. It's just a really

935
00:51:36,760 --> 00:51:38,480
Speaker 2: interesting how everything's wrong right.

936
00:51:38,360 --> 00:51:42,399
Speaker 3: Because like, man, I feel like I keep talking about

937
00:51:42,520 --> 00:51:47,000
Speaker 3: Christianity despite that being about as far from my knowledge

938
00:51:47,040 --> 00:51:50,239
Speaker 3: base as possible. But yeah, like my understanding of like

939
00:51:50,280 --> 00:51:54,600
Speaker 3: there's a lot of ideas in Christianity about like charity

940
00:51:54,840 --> 00:51:58,520
Speaker 3: and taking care of the poor and like the weak, right,

941
00:51:58,640 --> 00:52:01,600
Speaker 3: like the idea being like we are good Christians because

942
00:52:01,640 --> 00:52:05,239
Speaker 3: we don't just let h you know, children on the

943
00:52:05,239 --> 00:52:09,040
Speaker 3: streets die like that that makes us good Christians, which

944
00:52:09,160 --> 00:52:12,560
Speaker 3: is and then you, like, to Tolstoy's credit, like there

945
00:52:12,560 --> 00:52:17,840
Speaker 3: were some kind of dark movements that emerged both from

946
00:52:18,000 --> 00:52:24,200
Speaker 3: and concurrently with these these ideas and evolution, like social Darwinism, eugenics.

947
00:52:25,320 --> 00:52:30,200
Speaker 3: So it's like, obviously, as someone who is big on

948
00:52:30,440 --> 00:52:35,360
Speaker 3: evolutionary biology, I do not think those are inevitable philosophical

949
00:52:35,400 --> 00:52:39,560
Speaker 3: outcomes of looking at evolution being like great like cause

950
00:52:39,560 --> 00:52:42,480
Speaker 3: otherwise be like look that frog eats its kids, we

951
00:52:42,560 --> 00:52:45,200
Speaker 3: should do that, right. It's a dumb it's a dumb

952
00:52:45,239 --> 00:52:46,400
Speaker 3: moral argument.

953
00:52:46,120 --> 00:52:51,520
Speaker 2: Totally and once again very the next paragraph I wrote

954
00:52:51,560 --> 00:52:53,879
Speaker 2: is about how people take Darwin's theories and they're like, fuck, yeah,

955
00:52:53,920 --> 00:52:56,440
Speaker 2: we could be mean as hell. And what's called social Darwinism,

956
00:52:56,680 --> 00:53:00,680
Speaker 2: which is not Darwin wasn't a social Darwinist, right No.

957
00:53:01,239 --> 00:53:05,160
Speaker 2: But then in contrast to social Darwinism.

958
00:53:04,840 --> 00:53:07,240
Speaker 3: Which is maybe we should just say, like we should

959
00:53:07,239 --> 00:53:09,160
Speaker 3: probably say really quickly what it is. It's like the

960
00:53:09,200 --> 00:53:13,760
Speaker 3: idea that I don't know that there's like good the best,

961
00:53:13,800 --> 00:53:17,240
Speaker 3: like survival of the fittest, but in terms of people

962
00:53:18,040 --> 00:53:21,520
Speaker 3: in a short time scale, where it's like that, that's

963
00:53:21,600 --> 00:53:24,200
Speaker 3: essentially it, right, Like, and also there's a lot of

964
00:53:24,239 --> 00:53:27,839
Speaker 3: weird science cy Schmayan see stuff that's not real real

965
00:53:27,880 --> 00:53:31,160
Speaker 3: science that came out of it, like phrenology, like you

966
00:53:31,200 --> 00:53:34,160
Speaker 3: can look at a guy's face and the Talli's a criminal.

967
00:53:34,280 --> 00:53:37,160
Speaker 3: You know, a lot of stupid, stupid stuff totally.

968
00:53:37,200 --> 00:53:40,320
Speaker 2: It It really did set off a lot of nonsense.

969
00:53:40,480 --> 00:53:42,440
Speaker 2: Now there was a lot of nonsense before it that

970
00:53:42,520 --> 00:53:43,120
Speaker 2: it replaced.

971
00:53:43,200 --> 00:53:46,520
Speaker 3: Right, But you can't not like, you can't not do

972
00:53:46,680 --> 00:53:50,560
Speaker 3: science and because like some stupid people are going to

973
00:53:50,680 --> 00:53:55,680
Speaker 3: use the science to like justify being bad people totally.

974
00:53:56,640 --> 00:53:59,840
Speaker 2: Then there's this guy who gets called Darwin's bulldog because

975
00:53:59,840 --> 00:54:04,640
Speaker 2: he is the man's fiercest defender, Thomas Henry Huxley. He

976
00:54:04,640 --> 00:54:08,239
Speaker 2: saw this struggle for survival that Darwin talked about and

977
00:54:08,400 --> 00:54:13,120
Speaker 2: called it literally gladiatorial. He really emphasized the like combat

978
00:54:13,600 --> 00:54:16,240
Speaker 2: violent nature of the bloody war nature.

979
00:54:16,520 --> 00:54:20,800
Speaker 3: Yes, we love yeah and football.

980
00:54:23,520 --> 00:54:27,120
Speaker 2: And he was not a social Darwinist, he was anything

981
00:54:27,160 --> 00:54:32,040
Speaker 2: but it. He believed that society, the goal of society

982
00:54:32,080 --> 00:54:35,000
Speaker 2: then is to protect us from our own animal nature.

983
00:54:35,640 --> 00:54:38,760
Speaker 2: He wrote that basically the quote chief end of social

984
00:54:38,840 --> 00:54:42,359
Speaker 2: organization was to mitigate or abolish the war of one

985
00:54:42,400 --> 00:54:45,720
Speaker 2: against all. We had to protect ourselves from our animal nature.

986
00:54:46,160 --> 00:54:50,239
Speaker 2: And this is still a very popular idea across the

987
00:54:50,280 --> 00:54:51,200
Speaker 2: political spectrum.

988
00:54:51,840 --> 00:54:55,839
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's two. There's two. Like big, I think naturalism

989
00:54:56,000 --> 00:54:58,279
Speaker 3: arguments that I very much disagree with and I think

990
00:54:58,280 --> 00:55:03,440
Speaker 3: are uh aren't really accurate both or I disagree with

991
00:55:03,440 --> 00:55:05,799
Speaker 3: both morally and from a scientific perspective. One is like

992
00:55:05,880 --> 00:55:09,120
Speaker 3: if it's natural, it's good, right, which is very easy

993
00:55:09,120 --> 00:55:12,239
Speaker 3: to disprove right. The other is that like we our

994
00:55:12,280 --> 00:55:18,279
Speaker 3: society protects us from our horrible nature, right, which I

995
00:55:18,280 --> 00:55:23,279
Speaker 3: also disagree with, uh, looking into evolutionary history and anthropology

996
00:55:23,320 --> 00:55:25,719
Speaker 3: and things like that, I don't think that's really well

997
00:55:26,480 --> 00:55:29,799
Speaker 3: scientifically or morally based, but you know, it's it's these

998
00:55:29,840 --> 00:55:33,120
Speaker 3: are these two ideas. If I had to pick between them,

999
00:55:33,160 --> 00:55:35,400
Speaker 3: obviously it'd be the one where like, yeah, we should

1000
00:55:35,480 --> 00:55:40,960
Speaker 3: do a society to prevent ourselves from being horrible, horrible monkeys.

1001
00:55:41,040 --> 00:55:44,960
Speaker 3: But like, I also don't think we have been in

1002
00:55:45,040 --> 00:55:49,760
Speaker 3: our revolutionary history that noddy of monkeys for a while totally.

1003
00:55:49,800 --> 00:55:52,960
Speaker 2: And this is good because the subject of this week,

1004
00:55:53,000 --> 00:55:54,600
Speaker 2: which is not going to we're not going to get

1005
00:55:54,600 --> 00:55:56,879
Speaker 2: to until next episode, because that's the way my brain works,

1006
00:55:56,880 --> 00:55:58,720
Speaker 2: as we do one episode of context and one episode

1007
00:55:58,760 --> 00:56:02,359
Speaker 2: about the meat of the subject. Is the guy who

1008
00:56:02,600 --> 00:56:04,960
Speaker 2: makes the argument that you're making. He is the guy

1009
00:56:05,000 --> 00:56:08,320
Speaker 2: who says, like, you're both wrong. This is obvious, here's

1010
00:56:08,360 --> 00:56:09,799
Speaker 2: my data, you know.

1011
00:56:10,040 --> 00:56:12,920
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, we're only we're only a little bit of

1012
00:56:13,280 --> 00:56:16,320
Speaker 3: a bunch of naughty monkeys. We're not monsters.

1013
00:56:16,000 --> 00:56:19,440
Speaker 2: Right, totally exactly, And so yeah, this is you have

1014
00:56:19,480 --> 00:56:21,600
Speaker 2: this setup, this is how things are. And then someone

1015
00:56:21,600 --> 00:56:25,000
Speaker 2: comes around and says, not only do you all misunderstand geology,

1016
00:56:25,040 --> 00:56:27,760
Speaker 2: but you also misunderstand what being fit in the animal

1017
00:56:27,840 --> 00:56:30,839
Speaker 2: kingdom really means. Mutual aid is in fact a major

1018
00:56:30,880 --> 00:56:34,960
Speaker 2: factor in evolution. Someone comes along like Prince Peter Kropotkin,

1019
00:56:36,200 --> 00:56:38,319
Speaker 2: or to quote my favorite T shirt about this guy,

1020
00:56:38,600 --> 00:56:42,440
Speaker 2: the anarchist formerly known as Prince because he doesn't he

1021
00:56:42,440 --> 00:56:45,200
Speaker 2: doesn't stay a prince very long. He ends up prison at.

1022
00:56:45,320 --> 00:56:47,600
Speaker 3: I was gonna like, I was gonna do some stupid

1023
00:56:47,680 --> 00:56:50,960
Speaker 3: joke when you were like an anarchist prince of like, well,

1024
00:56:51,000 --> 00:56:55,640
Speaker 3: that's an oxymoron, how it is? He knew it, but

1025
00:56:55,640 --> 00:56:57,719
Speaker 3: by I get it, Yeah, I get it.

1026
00:56:57,719 --> 00:57:00,239
Speaker 2: We don't control how we're born famously, Yeah you know.

1027
00:57:00,440 --> 00:57:01,720
Speaker 3: Yeah.

1028
00:57:01,760 --> 00:57:06,640
Speaker 2: And about this man and his study of glaciers and

1029
00:57:07,320 --> 00:57:09,120
Speaker 2: more interesting things than that. Actually I really like his

1030
00:57:09,160 --> 00:57:12,680
Speaker 2: study of glaciers. We're going to get to on Wednesday,

1031
00:57:13,920 --> 00:57:17,280
Speaker 2: but first, if people want to hear more of you

1032
00:57:17,600 --> 00:57:20,920
Speaker 2: talking about animals and which ones are tasty? Is there

1033
00:57:20,960 --> 00:57:22,080
Speaker 2: a podcast they can listen to?

1034
00:57:22,560 --> 00:57:29,320
Speaker 3: Yes, absolutely, a creature feature. It's an iHeart radio podcast.

1035
00:57:30,320 --> 00:57:34,520
Speaker 3: It is a bunch of fun conversations I have with

1036
00:57:34,640 --> 00:57:41,480
Speaker 3: people talking about evolutionary biology. Animal behavior. I really like

1037
00:57:41,640 --> 00:57:45,440
Speaker 3: to make it not like it's for anyone who's interested

1038
00:57:45,480 --> 00:57:49,520
Speaker 3: in animal behavior in evolutionary biology. You don't need to

1039
00:57:50,920 --> 00:57:55,000
Speaker 3: have a degree in biology to understand it. And it's yeah,

1040
00:57:55,040 --> 00:57:59,560
Speaker 3: I think it's it's really fun to look at animal

1041
00:57:59,560 --> 00:58:05,160
Speaker 3: behavior and evolution in terms of like we can really

1042
00:58:05,200 --> 00:58:08,480
Speaker 3: relate to it. It's okay to kind of to a

1043
00:58:08,480 --> 00:58:11,560
Speaker 3: certain extent as humans relate to animals. I think it's

1044
00:58:11,600 --> 00:58:13,800
Speaker 3: normal and natural. And sometimes there's a lot of pushback

1045
00:58:13,800 --> 00:58:17,040
Speaker 3: because it's like, well, it's not scientific to empathize with

1046
00:58:17,080 --> 00:58:20,600
Speaker 3: an ant doing something, But I think it's a really

1047
00:58:20,680 --> 00:58:24,440
Speaker 3: useful lens with which we view the world. And so

1048
00:58:25,080 --> 00:58:29,640
Speaker 3: we talk about just really really interesting animal behaviors and

1049
00:58:29,960 --> 00:58:33,880
Speaker 3: kind of try to try to like think about how

1050
00:58:34,360 --> 00:58:37,600
Speaker 3: all of these things in evolutionary biology are not really

1051
00:58:37,680 --> 00:58:42,520
Speaker 3: that alien from our experience while also being very distinct. So, yeah,

1052
00:58:42,960 --> 00:58:45,520
Speaker 3: if you're enjoying this conversation, I think you would enjoy

1053
00:58:45,600 --> 00:58:48,320
Speaker 3: the show. And if I talk about a lot of

1054
00:58:48,360 --> 00:58:52,640
Speaker 3: specific examples of cool, weird animals on the show.

1055
00:58:52,800 --> 00:58:56,240
Speaker 2: Hell yeah. And if you like podcasts, which do you

1056
00:58:56,280 --> 00:58:59,320
Speaker 2: probably do because you made it this far into this podcast,

1057
00:58:59,520 --> 00:59:02,360
Speaker 2: you should also check out the other Coolzone Media podcasts

1058
00:59:02,480 --> 00:59:05,080
Speaker 2: because they are good. And I've been listening to it

1059
00:59:05,120 --> 00:59:08,120
Speaker 2: could Happen here, especially Executive Whatever. I actually don't know

1060
00:59:08,160 --> 00:59:09,440
Speaker 2: the name of the show that I listened to all

1061
00:59:09,440 --> 00:59:12,560
Speaker 2: the time, thank you. I listened to it every Friday,

1062
00:59:12,640 --> 00:59:14,440
Speaker 2: and I get confused about the name because the first

1063
00:59:14,480 --> 00:59:16,560
Speaker 2: thing that happens in it is that Robert makes a

1064
00:59:16,600 --> 00:59:18,400
Speaker 2: joke about the name, and it makes me incapable of

1065
00:59:18,400 --> 00:59:20,640
Speaker 2: remembering the actual name. But it shows up in that

1066
00:59:20,680 --> 00:59:22,560
Speaker 2: it could happen here feed And so you could check

1067
00:59:22,560 --> 00:59:27,120
Speaker 2: it out there. And I don't know, SOPHI, you got

1068
00:59:27,120 --> 00:59:31,200
Speaker 2: anything you want to plug? You did it great. Well.

1069
00:59:31,680 --> 00:59:35,440
Speaker 2: Take care of each other. Cooperation is a factor in evolution.

1070
00:59:36,000 --> 00:59:39,360
Speaker 3: Always. Always, if you have a neighbor in need, vomit

1071
00:59:39,400 --> 00:59:40,720
Speaker 3: blood into their mouth.

1072
00:59:40,800 --> 00:59:41,320
Speaker 2: That's right.

1073
00:59:42,680 --> 00:59:43,560
Speaker 3: Community care.

1074
00:59:44,280 --> 00:59:49,800
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, hi everyone.

1075
00:59:50,840 --> 00:59:53,320
Speaker 1: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of

1076
00:59:53,360 --> 00:59:56,440
Speaker 1: cool Zone Media. For more podcasts and cool Zone Media,

1077
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Speaker 1: visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out

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Speaker 1: on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts.

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Speaker 2: Or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Speaker 3: M