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Speaker 1: Hello friends, It's Josh and I'm back with the Select

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Speaker 1: and this week I've selected our twenty fourteen episode on extinction.

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Speaker 1: In this episode, we go over all the big extinctions

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Speaker 1: and what probably caused them, including the one we're most

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Speaker 1: likely in right now, which was probably caused by humans.

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Speaker 1: And if you pay attention, you can start to notice

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Speaker 1: a little glimmers, a little beginnings of what would become

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Speaker 1: my side podcast, The End of the World with Josh Clark.

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Speaker 1: And although we don't talk about any movies, I'm betting

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Speaker 1: there's some glimmers of Chuck's long running side podcast movie

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Speaker 1: Crush in here too. Hope you enjoy this episode. It's

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Speaker 1: a good one.

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Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's

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Speaker 1: Charles W. Chuckers Bryant. Jerry is over there. I'mosa said

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Speaker 1: your last name, Jerry, how weird. And then today we

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Speaker 1: have a fourth character in the in the studio with

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Speaker 1: this Chuck. This a cent, yeah, scent coming together to

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Speaker 1: make like a tangible human being. So you are wearing Petuli,

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Speaker 1: uh not wearing well, you have Petulia on you as

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Speaker 1: a result of one of Emily's sugar scrubs right from Mama. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and it's love Yourmama dot Com. Yeah, okay, and then

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Speaker 1: Jerry is contributing to that with an enchilada. So all

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Speaker 1: of them combined, I would say, there's like there's an

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Speaker 1: extra person in the seat right here. Uh, what kind

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Speaker 1: of person is that? Just another person? Okay, a viable

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Speaker 1: living organism, one that when we leave the studio will

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Speaker 1: probably become extinct. That's a good one. Did you like that? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I've had that plan since probably two weeks ago. Nice.

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Speaker 1: How are you doing, man, I'm good.

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Speaker 2: I've been thinking of Buster Rhymes all day.

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Speaker 1: Why did he have a song about extinction?

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Speaker 2: He had an album called Extinction Level Event. Oh yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 2: and that was in one of the songs.

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Speaker 1: That sounds super nineties.

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Speaker 2: Well it's Buster Rhymes, it has to be nineties.

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Speaker 1: But I mean even those words extinction level Event. People

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Speaker 1: were worried about stuff because of like the Turn of

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Speaker 1: the Millennium, you remember, is a huge hit. Sure, Deep

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Speaker 1: Impact and Armageddon came out like on the same day basically,

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Speaker 1: and both were hits. Like people were just nervous. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: And as a result, Buster Rhymes was very popular. That's right.

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Speaker 2: Although he's not anymore, he's still good though he hadn't

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Speaker 2: been doing much.

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Speaker 1: No, but his body of work is oh for sure. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: leaders in the New School and his early work with

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Speaker 1: Trip Call Quest.

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Speaker 2: Oh yeah, he guessed it on one of my favorite songs.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, what's the scenario? Was that the one? I think? So?

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Speaker 1: I mean, it was definitely on that one. Yeah, but

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Speaker 1: they that was the one also where I think, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: he makes fun of people with saggy pants because it

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Speaker 1: was so new. Apparently Buster Rhymes wasn't down with it yet, yeah,

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Speaker 1: which is pretty ironic because he got hardcore into that.

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Speaker 2: That was like a dungeon dragon, right right, right, that's

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Speaker 2: pretty awesome.

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Speaker 1: It's a good song. Yeah. So extinction is clearly what

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Speaker 1: we're talking about today. Uh and uh, I guess we

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Speaker 1: should probably give a shout out to some of the

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Speaker 1: extra reading material. Yeah, man, we picked up on There's

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Speaker 1: a woman named Elizabeth Colbert or Colbert depending on what

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Speaker 1: if you watch The Colbert Apoor and she is basically

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Speaker 1: a leading expert as far as journalists go on extinction.

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Speaker 1: She wrote a book called The Sixth Extinction. That's it's

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Speaker 1: a good article. Yeah, and like they she wrote an

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Speaker 1: article in the New York or she's a New Yorker

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Speaker 1: journalist that was basically the predecessor to the book, you

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Speaker 1: know how they do. Sure, They're like, oh, I need

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Speaker 1: an extra twenty grand, so I'll just write a synopsis

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Speaker 1: of the book I'm writing. Yeah, And it's a good article,

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Speaker 1: and we work from that. There's another one from the

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Speaker 1: New York Review of Books called They're taking Over about

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Speaker 1: the explosion of jellyfish. On How Stuff Works, there's one

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Speaker 1: that I wrote years back called will We Soon Be Extinct?

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Speaker 1: And there's another House Stuff Works one that we've done

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Speaker 1: an episode on called why is Biodiversity Important? Yeah?

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Speaker 2: And I found one in an Io nine h huh

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Speaker 2: for animals that we thought were extinct but miraculously pop.

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Speaker 1: Back up nice. Which it's always a good story. Oh yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's a heartwarming story of triumph of diversity and coming

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Speaker 1: back when everybody thought you were down.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, some of them like basically rocky, hundreds of millions

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Speaker 2: of years later. Even Yeah, it's crazy, like the silicamt

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Speaker 2: I think that's when it was at the Big Fish. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: they just caught that thing one day. Yeah, and said, hey,

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Speaker 2: wait a minute, Yeah, this thing's extinct.

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Speaker 1: It's supposed to be, and we'll talk about how and

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Speaker 1: why things fall off. But things do fall off, and

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Speaker 1: it seems that there is a that the whole thing

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Speaker 1: is a very natural process. Extinction is. But for a

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Speaker 1: very long time, I guess, scientists believe that the God

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Speaker 1: created all of the animals yeah on Earth, and that

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Speaker 1: his will was too perfect, his creation was too divine

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Speaker 1: to even allow for extinction. So because they were aware

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Speaker 1: of the fossil record, they rationalized these huge bones of

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Speaker 1: animals they didn't see anywhere as we just haven't found

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Speaker 1: them yet.

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Speaker 2: Well yeah, and this was all the way up and

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Speaker 2: you know, into the nineteenth century, and some really smart

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Speaker 2: people like Thomas Jefferson thought, for instance, when he sent

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Speaker 2: Lewis and Clark out west, that they might come across

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Speaker 2: the great Mastodon. Right, He's like, it's found to be

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Speaker 2: out there somewhere, guys, to be careful. But there were

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Speaker 2: some other smarter people like George Cuvier in eighteen twelve,

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Speaker 2: he was pretty ahead of his time. In fact, in

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Speaker 2: eighteen twelve he was way ahead of his time because

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Speaker 2: he published an essay called revolutions on the surface of

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Speaker 2: the globe, and he kind of asserted that now things

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Speaker 2: can go extinct, and he called them a species perduce

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Speaker 2: lost species and basically hypothesize that there have been cataclysmic

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Speaker 2: events that have caused extinctions.

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Speaker 1: Right. In so many words, this is basically flew in

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Speaker 1: the face of this that not only was their extinction,

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Speaker 1: but there were huge events that caused it. And so

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Speaker 1: the religious thinkers of the day said, okay, wait, wait, wait,

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Speaker 1: we can work with this, because buddy, what you're talking

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Speaker 1: about is like Noah's flood. So you, my friend, just

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Speaker 1: the Bible correct using science.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, Darwin wasn't on board though, although he did believe

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Speaker 2: in extinction, he thought it was the only way it

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Speaker 2: could happen is the gradual extinction.

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Speaker 1: Right, That is also true, and we'll talk about that

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Speaker 1: as well. And of course Darwin is this huge hero

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Speaker 1: of biology, so everybody's like, well, Darwin's right about just

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Speaker 1: about everything. So literally, until the nineteen nineties, Darwin's view

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Speaker 1: that extinction happens extremely slowly, slower than speciation events, so

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Speaker 1: ultimately you should always have more species new species coming

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Speaker 1: up than you have going extinct. Until the nineteen nineties.

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Speaker 1: That's the way that it was, That's the way it seemed. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: So Chuck, like I said, all of this stayed around

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Speaker 1: until nineteen ninety one. Yeah, and it was a result

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Speaker 1: of like, think about it, think about how you think

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Speaker 1: of mass extinctions. Now, you think of an asteroid hitting Earth,

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Speaker 1: destroying everything. And it wasn't until nineteen ninety one that

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Speaker 1: that view became widely accepted. And it was because of

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Speaker 1: this dude named Alvarez. He was a geologist, I believe,

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Speaker 1: Walter Alvarez, and in the seventies he started studying this

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Speaker 1: clay layer that was basically in the fossil record right

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Speaker 1: at the time the dinosaur suddenly died out right, and

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Speaker 1: no one could quite explain what was going on here.

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Speaker 1: They just knew that this must have happened gradually, so

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Speaker 1: it must be a problem with the actual fossil record,

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Speaker 1: not our way of thinking.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and there are plenty of problems with the fossil record,

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Speaker 2: which we'll get into as.

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Speaker 1: Well, right, But Walter Alvarez said, let me look at

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Speaker 1: this in a little more detail, and he looked at

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Speaker 1: the iridium and found that the iridium levels were off

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Speaker 1: the charts. Which shouldn't be because it's very very rare,

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Speaker 1: and we associate iridium on Earth as being brought here by, say,

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Speaker 1: like an asteroid or whatever.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's superabundant asteroids.

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Speaker 1: So all of a sudden, this guy goes, oh, wait

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Speaker 1: a minute, maybe we can explain this dying out of

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Speaker 1: dinosaurs where the dinosaurs went sixty five million years ago

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Speaker 1: by an asteroid. And that was in nineteen eighty that

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Speaker 1: they proposed a hypothesis, and they ran into a lot

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Speaker 1: of resistance, and then finally in nineteen ninety one, a

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Speaker 1: year after a crater was discovered under the Yucatan Peninsula

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Speaker 1: in Mexico, they dated it and said, yeah, it just

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Speaker 1: so happens that this crater was formed just at the

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Speaker 1: moment the dinosaurs died out. So yeah, the Alvarez hypothesis

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Speaker 1: is probably right, and extinction can happen on a mass

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Speaker 1: sudden scale, just as it can also happen on a

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Speaker 1: very long term scale too.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that crater was one hundred and twelve miles wide,

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Speaker 2: so it fit the profile and basically ended the Cretaceous

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Speaker 2: period in the Mesozoic era, and for a while they

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Speaker 2: called it the Cretaceous Tertiary event. But now they call

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Speaker 2: it the Cretaceous Paleogene event.

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Speaker 1: And did you notice that thing KPg right, they noticed that.

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Speaker 1: Did you notice the Cretaceous, which is spelled with the

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Speaker 1: sea is denoted with a K? Yeah? Did you see why?

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Speaker 1: It's just German? It's just a German translation for it.

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Speaker 1: I figured it was something like that. Yeah, it was

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Speaker 1: just bugging me.

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Speaker 2: So now we now believe an asteroid brought us into

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Speaker 2: the Cinazoic era that we that we enjoyed today.

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Speaker 1: Love the Sinazoic. It's pretty good, pretty awesome. It's a

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Speaker 1: good era. I mean, it's our era. Yeah, you gotta

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Speaker 1: love it. You gotta love it. So Chuck, like I said,

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Speaker 1: the extinction, extinction can happen, and it does happen, and

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Speaker 1: it's a natural process. If you talk to people about

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Speaker 1: extinction today, though, they say, yeah, we're kind of in

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Speaker 1: a huge extinction event.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and it makes sense. I mean when you look

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Speaker 2: at our past. They estimate maybe up to five billion

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Speaker 2: species have lived on Earth, and more than ninety nine

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Speaker 2: percent of those are gone.

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Speaker 1: And I love how the New Yorker put it.

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Speaker 2: I think that there's an old joke that all of

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Speaker 2: life on Earth today could be accounted for with a

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Speaker 2: simple rounding error.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, like everything we know.

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Speaker 2: So, yeah, we've lost ninety nine percent of things that

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Speaker 2: have ever lived on this planet due to extinction.

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Speaker 1: Right, which again is like it has such a terrible

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Speaker 1: connotation these days, extinction, extinction, but it happens naturally. Apparently.

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Speaker 1: What they've found from looking at the fossil record from

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Speaker 1: studying life on Earth is that a species tends to

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Speaker 1: have about a ten million year lifespan, and the a

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Speaker 1: speciation event occurs where it branches off from one specie

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Speaker 1: and produces an entirely new species, and that species on

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Speaker 1: average will stick around for about ten million years and

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Speaker 1: then something happens and it dies out and other species

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Speaker 1: take its place. This is the natural course of life

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Speaker 1: from what we can tell. The thing is, it normally

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Speaker 1: happens on a very slow time scale, like when it's

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Speaker 1: so what it's called background extinction, right.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, the background rate is supposed to be between one

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Speaker 2: and five species per year, but they think that now

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Speaker 2: it could be like one hundred times that.

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Speaker 1: I've seen up to a thousand times the normal rate,

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Speaker 1: And I saw another study from twenty fourteen, so it's

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Speaker 1: fresh and it said that they these researchers calculated the

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Speaker 1: normal rates and they found that there's between point zero

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Speaker 1: two to three and point one three five extinct species

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Speaker 1: per million species per year. That doesn't really mean much.

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Speaker 1: It means so much that it boggles the mind. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: you know, like that's a really strange way of putting it.

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Speaker 1: But basically they're saying, like, for every million species on

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Speaker 1: Earth at any given point in time during a year,

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Speaker 1: as low as point zero two three species will die out.

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Speaker 1: So in a year you shouldn't necessarily have that main

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Speaker 1: species in current times though, like you said, between a

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Speaker 1: one hundred and a thousand times that rate is what

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Speaker 1: we're seeing right now, which is you could say, alarming.

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Speaker 1: It is alarming.

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Speaker 2: The reason they don't have hard numbers on this stuff

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Speaker 2: is because, like we said, it's a tough thing to study,

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Speaker 2: because the fossil record is well, there's a lot of problems.

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Speaker 2: One is it's incomplete. We don't really know how many

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Speaker 2: fossor species have been on Earth since the beginning of Earth.

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Speaker 2: It's just impossible to tell fossil's forum under really specific conditions.

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Speaker 2: So you may think something is gone because it has

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Speaker 2: disappeared from the fossil record. But all that means is

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Speaker 2: there wasn't a fossil. It doesn't necessarily mean it's gone right,

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Speaker 2: So that's why things will pop back up that they'll think, hey,

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Speaker 2: we haven't seen a fossil of this guy in two

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Speaker 2: thousand years, but here it is all of a sudden.

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Speaker 1: And even if it has gone extinct, just where it

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Speaker 1: stopped showing up in the fossil record doesn't mean, like

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Speaker 1: you said, that's when it went extinct, right, then it

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Speaker 1: could have been millions of years later.

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Speaker 2: Well, because then you're supposed that the last thing of

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Speaker 2: that species happened to make a fossil.

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Speaker 1: Yes, which is just silly. Yeah, and also it makes

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Speaker 1: you wonder how many species have lived and died on

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Speaker 1: Earth that just never showed up in the fossil record. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: just weren't fossils at all. Right.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, if it never crawled into amber or you know,

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Speaker 2: was buried by ash or something, that's luck.

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Speaker 1: Or got trapped in Bronosaurus poop. I don't know if

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Speaker 1: that's good luck or bad luck. It's just it is

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Speaker 1: what it is. It's nature.

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Speaker 2: So because of all these gaps in the fossil record,

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Speaker 2: these Researchers that love this topic tend to do a

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Speaker 2: lot of math, right, and a lot of speculating with

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Speaker 2: algorithms and mathematical formulas.

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Speaker 1: They love this stuff out, sure, and that's.

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Speaker 2: The only way to do it, really, to speculate with numbers.

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Speaker 2: It also helps them define things like the minimum viable population,

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Speaker 2: which if you go below that, then it's bad news

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Speaker 2: for the species. It's the minimum amount you can have

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Speaker 2: to still be considered to have a bright future.

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Speaker 1: Right as a thing, or to just survive as a species.

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Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, that's what I mean. Yeah, dim future if

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Speaker 2: you're not surviving.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, math is pretty grim. It can be in this

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Speaker 1: case for sure. So we'll talk about exactly what makes

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Speaker 1: an extinction and then what makes up mass extinctions. But

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Speaker 1: first let's do a little breakage. Huh okay, So, Chuck,

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Speaker 1: you've been talking about animals, animal species going extinct and

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Speaker 1: then showing up again like the Sela cant Yeah, or

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Speaker 1: at least disappearing right from the record, But we as

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Speaker 1: humans assumed they were extinct. Like again, the Sela cant

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Speaker 1: is this fish that they caught off the coast of

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Speaker 1: South Africa. When did we talk about it? Was it

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Speaker 1: end of this day in history. I don't remember. We

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Speaker 1: definitely hit on that though. I think it was because

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Speaker 1: it's huge, right, Yeah, it's a big, ugly fish. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and it looks like an old dinosaur. But they thought

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Speaker 1: it had died out like like fifty sixty million years ago.

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Speaker 2: Actually way longer. They thought it disappeared four hundred million

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Speaker 2: years ago.

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Speaker 1: Even more impressive. Yeah. So then they caught one off

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Speaker 1: the coast of South Africa in the thirties. Then they

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Speaker 1: caught another one a couple decades later in Madagascar or

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Speaker 1: Mauritius or something, and that made the selacanth a Lazarus species,

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Speaker 1: even though it hadn't really gone anywhere. We just thought

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Speaker 1: it did. So we humans having the most important perspective

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Speaker 1: on the entire planet, possibly in the entire universe. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it was a Lazarus species to us.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, Lazarus from the Bible, right, raised from the dead. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: like the Seila cant.

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Speaker 1: Again with the Biblical connotations with extinction. Yeah, there's a

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Speaker 1: lot at stake here, that's true.

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Speaker 2: Another way something might disappear and you might think it's

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Speaker 2: gone is if it actually evolves into a new species.

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Speaker 2: That's called pseudo extinction, and that's a great success story

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Speaker 2: as well.

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Speaker 1: It is, but it also I don't understand why that's

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Speaker 1: not just a speciation event. I mean, why is that

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Speaker 1: pseudo extinction? Why is that any different from regular extinction?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe just because it's didn't die out, it actually

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Speaker 2: just changed and evolved.

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Speaker 1: Those are two different things. Yeah, it seems like a

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Speaker 1: gray area to me. Yeah. But for the most part,

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Speaker 1: when an animal just disappears, and we should say, like

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Speaker 1: even today, we're still finding things that we thought were extinct,

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Speaker 1: so called Lazarus species, which goes to make the point

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Speaker 1: we have no idea how many living species there are

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Speaker 1: on the planet today, Yeah, or have been. It's all

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Speaker 1: just a good guess it is using math, yeah, grim,

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Speaker 1: grim math. But for the most part, we understand that

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Speaker 1: when a species goes away, suddenly it went extinct. And

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Speaker 1: as we've been saying again and again, extinction is kind

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Speaker 1: of this natural process, or it is a very natural process,

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Speaker 1: and it typically results from a change in the habitat yeah,

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Speaker 1: of a species, and it's inability to adapt so it

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Speaker 1: dies out.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, competition with other species, hunting by humans, or perhaps

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Speaker 2: the environment has been tainted by humans.

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Speaker 1: Humans or a new bacteria or a new virus. The

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Speaker 1: thing is, though, is so these these big factors, habitat loss,

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Speaker 1: competition with new species, hunting, and contaminous in the environment.

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Speaker 1: Those are the big four reasons that something goes extinct, right, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: Humans can and are responsible for all four of those.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and the and these are This is the extinction

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Speaker 2: that happens over time. Obviously not a big asteroid hit

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Speaker 2: in the planet.

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Speaker 1: No, but it can't happen pretty quickly. In this this

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Speaker 1: is a Tracy Wilson joint and in the introduction she

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Speaker 1: mentions the stellar sea cow, which was an Arctic resident.

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Speaker 1: It was a big old manatee basically. Yeah, and they

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Speaker 1: were first described by Arctic explorers in seventeen forty one.

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Speaker 1: By seventeen sixty eight they were extinct. So it can't

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Speaker 1: happen on a pretty rapid scale, Yeah, especially when you

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Speaker 1: introduce humans.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and it you know, it has a domino effect too,

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Speaker 2: because we talked about and everyone knows about the dangers

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Speaker 2: of losing bees. It's not just like, oh, well they're

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Speaker 2: no more bees. That's going to affect pollination and plants,

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Speaker 2: and those plants are being fed on by other animals

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Speaker 2: and it.

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Speaker 1: Tends to have a snowball effect.

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Speaker 2: Like for example, at the end of the last Ice age, mammals,

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Speaker 2: small mammals started to go extinct and because of that,

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Speaker 2: large animals started to go extinct because they like to

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Speaker 2: eat the small animals exactly.

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Speaker 1: Which is the answer to the question why is biodiversity important? Well,

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Speaker 1: because ecosystems thrive and survive on a wide number of

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Speaker 1: species that exist pretty much naturally in balance. Yeah. You know,

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Speaker 1: a pretty good example of that stuff falling out of

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Speaker 1: balance is the passenger pigeon. Are you familiar.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, they're trying to de extinct that thing.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, you want to talk about de extinction.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, the extinction is exactly what it sounds like.

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Speaker 2: It is sort of Jurassic parky it is. In two

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Speaker 2: thousand and three, some scientists revived the Bercardo Bucardo and

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Speaker 2: that's a Spanish mountain goat, and they did it just

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Speaker 2: sort of like Jurassic Park from DNA that was frozen

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Speaker 2: in time. Unfortunately, although it did work initially, the DNA

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Speaker 2: only survived a matter of minutes, but they did it

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Speaker 2: did count as a de extinction.

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Speaker 1: I think there was a live birth that survived a

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Speaker 1: few minutes, wasn't it.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, the animal itself only survived a few minutes.

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Speaker 1: Though, right, It was like, I should not be.

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Speaker 2: That's true, And I mean they basically said, it's happening now,

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Speaker 2: and we have the capabilities, and we may not be

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Speaker 2: able to bring the wooly mammoth back, but we might

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Speaker 2: be able to bring back something.

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Speaker 1: Kind of close, right. So, and that raises in this

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Speaker 1: article that you sent, just this moral question, like should

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Speaker 1: we be doing this just because we can? Does that

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Speaker 1: mean we should? And so like, if you bring back

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Speaker 1: an animal that has been extinct for so long that

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Speaker 1: its habitat is now gone, you know where they gonna live,

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Speaker 1: exactly where you're gonna put it a zoo, that doesn't

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Speaker 1: seem like a good reason to bring an animal back.

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Speaker 1: So we could put it in a zoo.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, And just like maybe this is my opinion here,

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Speaker 2: which we don't do a lot of, but it seems

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Speaker 2: like concentrating on the problems we face now with the

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Speaker 2: extinction rates is something that we should concentrate on, not

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Speaker 2: bringing back the wily mammoth.

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Speaker 1: Right, And that also kind of details of the point

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Speaker 1: that if we have this ability and routinely exercise it.

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Speaker 1: We may be less inclined to protect the stuff we

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Speaker 1: have now for like, oh it's important enough, we'll just

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Speaker 1: genetically re engineer it and bring it back later. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: I think they in the CNN article they like in

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Speaker 2: it to just thinking we have an undue.

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Speaker 1: Button right on the world controls Z. Yeah, no, good, No,

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Speaker 1: it's funny because the author doesn't realize that control Z

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Speaker 1: works outside of Microsoft Word too. I don't know he

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Speaker 1: specifically mentioned control Z and Microsoft word, oh word, specifically

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Speaker 1: Microsoft word. He said, Yeah, that's a little weird. He

400
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Speaker 1: could be a shill and he was just working it

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Speaker 1: in maybe you know, well.

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Speaker 2: On max though it's not control Maybe he just meant

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Speaker 2: Microsoft and awkwardly put in word maybe, or maybe.

404
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Speaker 1: That's the only program he knows. Maybe you know, how

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Speaker 1: do I work this? So you were saying that they're

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Speaker 1: trying to bring back the passenger pigeon, right, Yeah, so

407
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Speaker 1: the passenger pigeon? Is this really neat example of what

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00:23:01,720 --> 00:23:07,960
Speaker 1: happens when you have a lack of biodiversity. There were

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Speaker 1: when European settlers came to the New World. Apparently, like

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Speaker 1: one out of every four birds in North America was

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Speaker 1: a passenger pigeon. A quarter of the entire bird population

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Speaker 1: was passenger pigeons. It's a lot of pigeons. There's a

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Speaker 1: ton of pigeons. There are so many that you could

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Speaker 1: just like shoot into like a flock, and you would

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Speaker 1: kill a couple hundred. Literally, it was there were that many.

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Speaker 1: The thing is is, if you read fourteen ninety three

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Speaker 1: or fourteen ninety one, I can't remember which one it is,

418
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Speaker 1: but both are excellent books by Charles C. Mann. He

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Speaker 1: talks about the passenger pigeon and how they've recently realized

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Speaker 1: that there were so many passenger pigeons because a century before,

421
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Speaker 1: one of their great predators, the native American, had been

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Speaker 1: wiped out by disease that had been introduced to the

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Speaker 1: continent about a century before that. So by the time

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Speaker 1: the Europeans got here and really started to settle an

425
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Speaker 1: encounter the passenger pigeon, they're like, God, look at all

426
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Speaker 1: these pigeons, and didn't realize that the pigeon population had

427
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Speaker 1: exploded because their natural predator had died off right, and

428
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Speaker 1: so we in turn hunted them into extinction. So because

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Speaker 1: of one near extinction, another species was allowed to thrive

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Speaker 1: and explode, and then that when they were faced with

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Speaker 1: their their predator again, humans, they were eventually wiped out

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Speaker 1: and went extinct.

433
00:24:33,040 --> 00:24:36,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, the American Buffalo. We almost sunned them out of existence.

434
00:24:36,240 --> 00:24:37,639
Speaker 1: Yeah, were it not for Ted Turner.

435
00:24:37,720 --> 00:24:39,960
Speaker 2: Yeah, we tried our best too. They were just shooting

436
00:24:40,000 --> 00:24:40,840
Speaker 2: those things for fun.

437
00:24:41,000 --> 00:24:43,680
Speaker 1: Yeah at one point, man, that's disgusting. It is disgusting.

438
00:24:43,720 --> 00:24:46,680
Speaker 2: You hear about the trains, Yeah, just going through the

439
00:24:46,720 --> 00:24:48,600
Speaker 2: West and just shooting out the windows at the Buffalo

440
00:24:48,680 --> 00:24:49,240
Speaker 2: for no reason.

441
00:24:49,320 --> 00:24:52,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, and doing nothing, just leaving them there to rot. Unbelievable.

442
00:24:52,240 --> 00:24:55,000
Speaker 1: Remember we did an episode on the Buffalo that was

443
00:24:55,000 --> 00:24:55,480
Speaker 1: a good one.

444
00:24:55,600 --> 00:24:59,920
Speaker 2: So sad, No, it was good. Well it was sad, dude.

445
00:25:00,160 --> 00:25:00,480
Speaker 1: Okay.

446
00:25:00,920 --> 00:25:05,440
Speaker 2: So if you want to talk about extinction level events,

447
00:25:05,520 --> 00:25:06,600
Speaker 2: that's a whole different deal.

448
00:25:06,960 --> 00:25:08,600
Speaker 1: You want to talk buster rhymes.

449
00:25:08,720 --> 00:25:14,440
Speaker 2: That's not a slow gradual extinction. That is some big

450
00:25:14,480 --> 00:25:17,240
Speaker 2: thing that happens that wipes out a lot of living

451
00:25:17,280 --> 00:25:20,720
Speaker 2: things all at once. And they estimate there's been more

452
00:25:20,720 --> 00:25:23,800
Speaker 2: than twenty of these in the history of the world, but.

453
00:25:25,320 --> 00:25:25,880
Speaker 1: Five of them.

454
00:25:25,880 --> 00:25:28,000
Speaker 2: They call them the Big Five, right for a reason,

455
00:25:28,080 --> 00:25:30,960
Speaker 2: for good reason. And we'll just go through those kind

456
00:25:30,960 --> 00:25:35,720
Speaker 2: of quickly. Now, the Ordo Vissian extinction. It's about four

457
00:25:35,800 --> 00:25:38,959
Speaker 2: hundred and ninety million years ago, and that wiped out

458
00:25:39,040 --> 00:25:41,440
Speaker 2: about half of all animal families.

459
00:25:41,560 --> 00:25:44,200
Speaker 1: And the reason it wiped out about half was because

460
00:25:44,600 --> 00:25:46,720
Speaker 1: at the time, most of the stuff on Earth still

461
00:25:46,760 --> 00:25:50,160
Speaker 1: lived in the sea. Glaciers formed at this time, lowering

462
00:25:50,160 --> 00:25:52,760
Speaker 1: sea levels, which meant that animals that lived in a

463
00:25:52,800 --> 00:25:56,800
Speaker 1: certain depth of the sea, usually toward the surface, lost

464
00:25:56,840 --> 00:26:01,640
Speaker 1: their habitat boiled yeah maybe yeah, or were brought down

465
00:26:01,760 --> 00:26:03,680
Speaker 1: to the level where their predators like to hang out

466
00:26:03,720 --> 00:26:07,720
Speaker 1: and we're eaten on mass. But that accounted for that extinction,

467
00:26:07,880 --> 00:26:10,040
Speaker 1: which is kind of rare because, as you'll see when

468
00:26:10,040 --> 00:26:12,919
Speaker 1: we're talking about the Big Five or mass extinctions in general,

469
00:26:13,200 --> 00:26:16,160
Speaker 1: it's very difficult to pinpoint exactly what happened. So that's

470
00:26:16,160 --> 00:26:18,439
Speaker 1: one of the rare ones that were like, pretty sure,

471
00:26:18,800 --> 00:26:21,679
Speaker 1: this is why all these all this life went extinct

472
00:26:21,720 --> 00:26:22,680
Speaker 1: all of a sudden. Yeah.

473
00:26:22,680 --> 00:26:24,280
Speaker 2: And one reason it's difficult it is because it was

474
00:26:24,320 --> 00:26:25,760
Speaker 2: almost five hundred million years ago.

475
00:26:25,840 --> 00:26:27,640
Speaker 1: That's another reason it's kind of tough.

476
00:26:27,680 --> 00:26:31,600
Speaker 2: Here in twenty fourteen, number two, I feel like Letterman

477
00:26:32,520 --> 00:26:36,880
Speaker 2: number two on the top five extinction, the Late Devonian extinction.

478
00:26:37,200 --> 00:26:40,199
Speaker 2: They're still debating about that, and about a quarter of

479
00:26:40,200 --> 00:26:43,040
Speaker 2: the marine families. And by the way, we should mention

480
00:26:43,119 --> 00:26:46,280
Speaker 2: when they research these things, they home in on family

481
00:26:46,320 --> 00:26:50,960
Speaker 2: and genera in the big classification group.

482
00:26:51,760 --> 00:26:51,920
Speaker 1: Right.

483
00:26:52,000 --> 00:26:54,320
Speaker 2: They don't say, like, oh, look at these kingdoms that

484
00:26:54,359 --> 00:26:57,240
Speaker 2: have disappeared or these phylum. They go down to the

485
00:26:57,280 --> 00:26:58,440
Speaker 2: smaller levels.

486
00:26:58,280 --> 00:27:01,879
Speaker 1: Right, and family and jena are just above species as

487
00:27:01,920 --> 00:27:04,720
Speaker 1: far as the taxonomy is concerned, exactly.

488
00:27:05,680 --> 00:27:08,640
Speaker 2: So what I say about half of the marine genera

489
00:27:09,200 --> 00:27:11,679
Speaker 2: and that was three hundred and sixty million years.

490
00:27:11,560 --> 00:27:14,639
Speaker 1: Ago, right, No idea what caused that one? No idea?

491
00:27:14,680 --> 00:27:16,040
Speaker 1: At least you and I have no idea.

492
00:27:16,200 --> 00:27:18,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't think they care about that one too much.

493
00:27:19,840 --> 00:27:23,720
Speaker 1: The Permian Triassic extinction, this is a This is a

494
00:27:23,760 --> 00:27:25,800
Speaker 1: pretty big one. This is the biggest one ever. This

495
00:27:25,960 --> 00:27:28,639
Speaker 1: is the one they call the great Dying, right, I

496
00:27:28,640 --> 00:27:31,280
Speaker 1: think so. I've seen estimates of as much as ninety

497
00:27:31,320 --> 00:27:35,160
Speaker 1: five to ninety six percent of all life that's crazy

498
00:27:35,359 --> 00:27:40,119
Speaker 1: died off during this this extinction event. In this article,

499
00:27:40,200 --> 00:27:43,399
Speaker 1: it says eighty five percent of marine genera and seventy

500
00:27:43,440 --> 00:27:46,520
Speaker 1: percent of land species when extinct, And that was two

501
00:27:46,600 --> 00:27:49,800
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty million years ago. There's a lot of

502
00:27:49,960 --> 00:27:52,919
Speaker 1: people who have different ideas about what did it, but

503
00:27:53,240 --> 00:27:57,800
Speaker 1: they think it's possible as volcanic activity creating acid rain. Yeah,

504
00:27:57,840 --> 00:28:00,280
Speaker 1: that's a big one that possibly happened more than once.

505
00:28:00,800 --> 00:28:02,400
Speaker 2: Was that the one where I don't know, I think

506
00:28:02,440 --> 00:28:05,960
Speaker 2: that was the the KPg event was the one where

507
00:28:05,960 --> 00:28:08,760
Speaker 2: they think they're not exactly how it happened, but they

508
00:28:08,800 --> 00:28:09,359
Speaker 2: might have been.

509
00:28:09,320 --> 00:28:12,200
Speaker 1: Just broiled and then awesome broiled on the face of

510
00:28:12,240 --> 00:28:16,120
Speaker 1: the Earth. Yeah, which would have happened pretty quickly too, actually.

511
00:28:15,760 --> 00:28:17,960
Speaker 2: And I think that one is if because they think

512
00:28:18,000 --> 00:28:20,800
Speaker 2: it may have burst through the atmosphere, right, Yeah, so

513
00:28:21,320 --> 00:28:22,840
Speaker 2: just rained hot debris everywhere.

514
00:28:22,880 --> 00:28:24,920
Speaker 1: That's the one that got rid of the dinosaurs. Yeah,

515
00:28:24,960 --> 00:28:27,720
Speaker 1: sixty five million years ago. What is it called the

516
00:28:27,840 --> 00:28:29,120
Speaker 1: k hyphen PG.

517
00:28:29,119 --> 00:28:31,520
Speaker 2: Yeah, the Cretaceous Paleogene event now.

518
00:28:31,440 --> 00:28:34,000
Speaker 1: And that's the one where they are pretty sure that

519
00:28:34,080 --> 00:28:40,440
Speaker 1: an asteroid hit Central America, Yeah, and sent all of

520
00:28:40,480 --> 00:28:45,960
Speaker 1: this rock yeah, like basically vaporized rock with away from

521
00:28:45,960 --> 00:28:48,120
Speaker 1: Earth with so much force that this stuff made it

522
00:28:48,160 --> 00:28:50,520
Speaker 1: out of the atmosphere yeah, and then started to come

523
00:28:50,560 --> 00:28:53,760
Speaker 1: back down and as it did, it generated thermal heat

524
00:28:54,400 --> 00:28:58,240
Speaker 1: enough to bring the broil down on Earth.

525
00:28:58,400 --> 00:29:01,600
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's the one of two sub explanations. The

526
00:29:01,680 --> 00:29:08,040
Speaker 2: other is that the old familiar ash basically kept photosynthesis

527
00:29:08,040 --> 00:29:09,480
Speaker 2: from it, like it blacked out the sun.

528
00:29:09,560 --> 00:29:13,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, like a nuclear winner. Yeah, yeah, pretty nuts. But

529
00:29:13,640 --> 00:29:15,960
Speaker 1: we skipped number four. Yeah, for no good reason.

530
00:29:16,840 --> 00:29:20,720
Speaker 2: The end Triassic extinction killed about twenty percent of marine families,

531
00:29:21,160 --> 00:29:24,480
Speaker 2: about half of marine genera, and that was two hundred

532
00:29:24,520 --> 00:29:25,160
Speaker 2: million years ago.

533
00:29:25,360 --> 00:29:29,760
Speaker 1: Yeah. And again, like with a mass extinction, there's there's

534
00:29:29,800 --> 00:29:33,000
Speaker 1: no real definition for it. I found I was looking

535
00:29:33,040 --> 00:29:36,040
Speaker 1: to see, Okay, who's the body that says, like, okay,

536
00:29:36,040 --> 00:29:41,840
Speaker 1: a mass extinction event took place. It's again, the fossil

537
00:29:41,880 --> 00:29:45,200
Speaker 1: record is incomplete enough, and we're making guesses in mathematical guesses,

538
00:29:45,200 --> 00:29:48,280
Speaker 1: but still guesses to the extent that we don't have

539
00:29:48,320 --> 00:29:53,720
Speaker 1: a real definition for what constitutes a mass extinction. But

540
00:29:53,840 --> 00:29:58,160
Speaker 1: those five were so massive, yeah, that there's virtually no

541
00:29:58,280 --> 00:30:05,160
Speaker 1: debate whatsoever that those account for mass extinction events. Yeah,

542
00:30:05,520 --> 00:30:07,680
Speaker 1: it's kind of like you know it when you see

543
00:30:07,720 --> 00:30:09,959
Speaker 1: it kind of thing. But there's no agreement on how

544
00:30:10,000 --> 00:30:14,280
Speaker 1: paragraphy pretty much, Yeah, there's no agreement on how fast

545
00:30:14,520 --> 00:30:17,200
Speaker 1: it happened. It has to happen, or how widespread it

546
00:30:17,200 --> 00:30:21,280
Speaker 1: has to happen. But typically it's like a large percentage

547
00:30:21,320 --> 00:30:25,280
Speaker 1: of all of the animals alive. Yeah, something like twenty percent, say,

548
00:30:25,520 --> 00:30:29,240
Speaker 1: of all living animal species, not just animals. Animal species

549
00:30:29,320 --> 00:30:33,760
Speaker 1: just die off. Yeah, and it's worldwide. That's another that

550
00:30:33,840 --> 00:30:37,360
Speaker 1: seems to be another factor in defining a massive stec.

551
00:30:37,520 --> 00:30:42,240
Speaker 1: How widespread. Yeah, sure, so these events were pretty big. Yeah.

552
00:30:42,280 --> 00:30:44,560
Speaker 2: And one of the I think one of the researchers

553
00:30:44,600 --> 00:30:46,400
Speaker 2: in the article you sent made a pretty good point

554
00:30:46,400 --> 00:30:50,080
Speaker 2: that the current mass extinct extinction that we're in now,

555
00:30:50,080 --> 00:30:52,000
Speaker 2: which we're going to talk about in depth here in

556
00:30:52,040 --> 00:30:56,120
Speaker 2: a minute, he said, these are way more dangerous because

557
00:30:56,240 --> 00:30:58,840
Speaker 2: in the event of an asteroid, let's say, while it

558
00:30:59,040 --> 00:31:04,640
Speaker 2: might really it's one bad event, and right afterward, the

559
00:31:04,640 --> 00:31:06,960
Speaker 2: world starts to try and recoup. It may take a

560
00:31:07,000 --> 00:31:10,160
Speaker 2: million years, but it tries its best to start reforming

561
00:31:10,200 --> 00:31:12,720
Speaker 2: life and get going again. Where in now there's no

562
00:31:12,800 --> 00:31:16,640
Speaker 2: stress relief, it's just a constant. There's no recuperation because

563
00:31:17,080 --> 00:31:18,160
Speaker 2: it's not over.

564
00:31:18,440 --> 00:31:21,360
Speaker 1: Right, or the recuperation will come, but we won't be

565
00:31:21,400 --> 00:31:24,800
Speaker 1: around to see it, because the breaking point will be

566
00:31:25,040 --> 00:31:29,840
Speaker 1: us wiping ourselves out. By wiping out the biodiversity, and

567
00:31:29,920 --> 00:31:32,160
Speaker 1: there is a kind of this whole moralistic thing to

568
00:31:32,640 --> 00:31:36,800
Speaker 1: the idea of extinction. There's this whole human guilt. But

569
00:31:36,840 --> 00:31:38,680
Speaker 1: if you just kind of take a step back and

570
00:31:38,720 --> 00:31:44,920
Speaker 1: look at mass extinction intellectually, it doesn't wipe out life.

571
00:31:45,000 --> 00:31:51,719
Speaker 1: It just changes everything. Right, So for one species it

572
00:31:51,800 --> 00:31:55,600
Speaker 1: might be a boom time. For everybody else it's a

573
00:31:55,720 --> 00:31:58,520
Speaker 1: dying off time. But it's all in your perspective.

574
00:31:58,680 --> 00:32:01,280
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, this beautiful Earth that we know and love

575
00:32:01,320 --> 00:32:04,320
Speaker 2: now isn't anything like it was one hundred million years.

576
00:32:04,120 --> 00:32:08,080
Speaker 1: Ago exactly, And there's not necessarily a set level that

577
00:32:08,280 --> 00:32:11,520
Speaker 1: or a baseline that Earth is supposed to be at.

578
00:32:11,640 --> 00:32:15,640
Speaker 2: Right, because nature doesn't care, right, and nature's not like,

579
00:32:15,720 --> 00:32:17,760
Speaker 2: oh well, we got all these people here now and

580
00:32:18,040 --> 00:32:21,320
Speaker 2: things seem pretty modern and they got smartphones, so maybe

581
00:32:21,360 --> 00:32:23,080
Speaker 2: we should just protect this version.

582
00:32:24,080 --> 00:32:26,440
Speaker 1: They're like, what, what's the cycle? Every what? Ten million

583
00:32:26,480 --> 00:32:29,600
Speaker 1: years for a species? For species? Okay, it's a life

584
00:32:29,600 --> 00:32:31,560
Speaker 1: span of a species on average.

585
00:32:31,240 --> 00:32:36,280
Speaker 2: So basically every what ten thousand, ten million years? The

586
00:32:36,360 --> 00:32:37,760
Speaker 2: Earth it just doesn't care.

587
00:32:38,200 --> 00:32:41,120
Speaker 1: No, The point is is, for a species, it's lifespan

588
00:32:41,200 --> 00:32:43,360
Speaker 1: is ten million years, and the Earth is not caring

589
00:32:43,520 --> 00:32:46,000
Speaker 1: every day of that. Yeah, it doesn't care.

590
00:32:46,200 --> 00:32:50,440
Speaker 2: It's just stumbling toward the next event, basically exactly that

591
00:32:50,720 --> 00:32:51,880
Speaker 2: will one day probably happen.

592
00:32:52,080 --> 00:32:54,719
Speaker 1: The thing is is all of this is not to

593
00:32:54,760 --> 00:32:57,680
Speaker 1: say that humans are off the hook. All evidence that's

594
00:32:57,720 --> 00:33:00,520
Speaker 1: coming in now is showing that we are doing a

595
00:33:00,600 --> 00:33:05,120
Speaker 1: lot to speed up extinction events and create a mass extinction,

596
00:33:05,200 --> 00:33:08,120
Speaker 1: so much so that the Big Five is possibly the

597
00:33:08,120 --> 00:33:10,760
Speaker 1: Big six, and we may be in the very beginning

598
00:33:10,800 --> 00:33:13,959
Speaker 1: stages of the sixth one. And we'll talk about that

599
00:33:14,120 --> 00:33:29,600
Speaker 1: right after this. So, Chuckers, we've been talking about mass

600
00:33:29,600 --> 00:33:33,200
Speaker 1: extinction events. There's a Big five, and a lot of

601
00:33:33,200 --> 00:33:35,880
Speaker 1: people are saying, now there's six, and the six to

602
00:33:35,920 --> 00:33:39,720
Speaker 1: one is human caused, so much so that geologists are

603
00:33:39,720 --> 00:33:44,960
Speaker 1: proposing that we call our current epoch the anthropos scene,

604
00:33:45,080 --> 00:33:48,479
Speaker 1: because humans are having such an impact on Earth that

605
00:33:48,800 --> 00:33:52,080
Speaker 1: they imagine ten thousand years from now, geologists will be

606
00:33:52,160 --> 00:33:54,160
Speaker 1: able to look and point to this layer and say,

607
00:33:54,280 --> 00:33:58,080
Speaker 1: here's where humans started. Yeah, let's get in the way

608
00:33:58,080 --> 00:34:00,600
Speaker 1: back machine. Oh yeah, let's crank this pace up. Does

609
00:34:00,640 --> 00:34:01,800
Speaker 1: it have enough charisine?

610
00:34:01,920 --> 00:34:04,240
Speaker 2: Oh, it's got enough kerosene, buddy, Because we're going back

611
00:34:04,320 --> 00:34:06,200
Speaker 2: about fifty thousand years Well.

612
00:34:06,120 --> 00:34:08,560
Speaker 1: You got okay, and we're bringing spiritual.

613
00:34:08,239 --> 00:34:11,480
Speaker 2: And we're going to go to Australia even because it's

614
00:34:11,520 --> 00:34:14,160
Speaker 2: just nice down there. And what I see around me

615
00:34:14,239 --> 00:34:17,080
Speaker 2: are these huge wombat like things that are.

616
00:34:17,000 --> 00:34:18,760
Speaker 1: As big as hippos. Huge.

617
00:34:18,840 --> 00:34:21,640
Speaker 2: And I see a tortoise over there that's the size

618
00:34:21,640 --> 00:34:27,120
Speaker 2: of a VW beetle, and this weird short faced kangaroo

619
00:34:27,200 --> 00:34:28,359
Speaker 2: and it's ten feet tall.

620
00:34:28,600 --> 00:34:31,040
Speaker 1: Ten foot tall kangaro. Look at the size of that thing.

621
00:34:30,960 --> 00:34:34,840
Speaker 2: And everything is crazy. But let's just unpack here and

622
00:34:34,920 --> 00:34:36,799
Speaker 2: let's start propagating you and me.

623
00:34:37,000 --> 00:34:39,640
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm going to make a boy beer just for safety,

624
00:34:40,040 --> 00:34:41,840
Speaker 1: all right, it sounds like I need to defend you

625
00:34:41,920 --> 00:34:42,399
Speaker 1: off too.

626
00:34:42,640 --> 00:34:46,120
Speaker 2: And you know what, it's weird. Things are starting to

627
00:34:46,160 --> 00:34:49,880
Speaker 2: disappear around us as we grow and as we expand,

628
00:34:50,560 --> 00:34:53,440
Speaker 2: and and scene.

629
00:34:53,680 --> 00:34:55,919
Speaker 1: That was nice. Can we get out of here because

630
00:34:55,960 --> 00:35:04,680
Speaker 1: that ten foot tall kangaroo's eyeing us, Well not anymore,

631
00:35:04,719 --> 00:35:05,399
Speaker 1: but he's dead.

632
00:35:05,680 --> 00:35:09,400
Speaker 2: Oh, because they'd believe a lot of people think that

633
00:35:09,520 --> 00:35:13,880
Speaker 2: around fifty thousand years ago, when human started expanding their footprint,

634
00:35:15,239 --> 00:35:20,759
Speaker 2: that it was a very inconvenient correlation with species dying

635
00:35:20,800 --> 00:35:22,680
Speaker 2: out as we've spread about the Earth.

636
00:35:22,920 --> 00:35:28,319
Speaker 1: Yeah, this sixth mass extinction. I apologize for not being

637
00:35:28,320 --> 00:35:33,520
Speaker 1: able to say sixth correctly. That's right, But there's a

638
00:35:33,640 --> 00:35:36,400
Speaker 1: huge debate and it's still it's not settled. Both sides

639
00:35:36,400 --> 00:35:40,040
Speaker 1: are like, we're right, right, another one is like, we're right.

640
00:35:40,280 --> 00:35:42,279
Speaker 1: The thing is both sides agree like, yeah, we're in

641
00:35:42,320 --> 00:35:46,120
Speaker 1: the midst of a sixth extinction, and isn't that what matters?

642
00:35:46,160 --> 00:35:48,480
Speaker 1: But is it human caused or is the result of

643
00:35:48,520 --> 00:35:51,960
Speaker 1: climate change? And just because it's the result of climate

644
00:35:52,040 --> 00:35:54,319
Speaker 1: change doesn't mean that if you take the trail back

645
00:35:54,360 --> 00:35:58,120
Speaker 1: far enough, it isn't necessarily human cause. Yeah, but these

646
00:35:58,120 --> 00:36:01,359
Speaker 1: are the two debates. So one is the theory of overkill,

647
00:36:01,600 --> 00:36:03,400
Speaker 1: which is the one you were just describing.

648
00:36:03,719 --> 00:36:07,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that was describing Australia fifty thousand years ago.

649
00:36:07,360 --> 00:36:09,319
Speaker 2: If we want to get back in the way back

650
00:36:09,360 --> 00:36:12,040
Speaker 2: machine and go to North America eleven thousand years ago,

651
00:36:12,920 --> 00:36:17,239
Speaker 2: three quarters of our largest animals started to die out,

652
00:36:17,280 --> 00:36:19,720
Speaker 2: like the mastodon and the wooly mammoth and the giant beaver,

653
00:36:20,280 --> 00:36:24,520
Speaker 2: sabertooth tiger, and not coincidentally, probably that's right around the

654
00:36:24,560 --> 00:36:27,680
Speaker 2: time where we first walked over the bearing land Bridge

655
00:36:27,719 --> 00:36:29,320
Speaker 2: and set up shop here in North America.

656
00:36:29,480 --> 00:36:31,600
Speaker 1: Yeah. The thing is is you can also say, well

657
00:36:31,640 --> 00:36:34,000
Speaker 1: that kind of gives or takes a few thousand years,

658
00:36:34,040 --> 00:36:37,560
Speaker 1: and yeah, you can. That's definitely stretchable, but it's just

659
00:36:37,719 --> 00:36:41,880
Speaker 1: not been proven. So there is a huge correlation between

660
00:36:41,920 --> 00:36:43,759
Speaker 1: the spread of humans and the death of what are

661
00:36:43,800 --> 00:36:47,319
Speaker 1: called MegaFon a huge land animals. Yeah, and they say

662
00:36:47,320 --> 00:36:50,080
Speaker 1: that that theory of overkill says that we came along

663
00:36:50,360 --> 00:36:54,560
Speaker 1: with our smart little toolkits, which included like spearheads and

664
00:36:54,760 --> 00:36:58,840
Speaker 1: arrows and axes and clubs and domesticated dogs after a

665
00:36:58,880 --> 00:37:02,120
Speaker 1: certain point in time, sure, and over hunted either these

666
00:37:02,200 --> 00:37:09,719
Speaker 1: huge like hippo sized marsupials, yeah, or we hunted things

667
00:37:09,719 --> 00:37:13,839
Speaker 1: that were slightly smaller that the huge hippo sized marsupials. Eight.

668
00:37:14,520 --> 00:37:19,439
Speaker 1: Either way, we contributed directly to their mass extinction. Yeah.

669
00:37:19,480 --> 00:37:23,719
Speaker 2: And they think generally that overhunting isn't the very least,

670
00:37:23,760 --> 00:37:26,680
Speaker 2: it's not the sole cause, because you probably just can't

671
00:37:26,760 --> 00:37:29,960
Speaker 2: hunt enough. The amount of people that we had, especially

672
00:37:29,960 --> 00:37:34,320
Speaker 2: in a place like Australia which wasn't super heavily founded.

673
00:37:34,480 --> 00:37:36,480
Speaker 2: You know, it wasn't like ten million people moved to

674
00:37:36,480 --> 00:37:40,600
Speaker 2: Australia overnight, you know, right, So they say overhunting is

675
00:37:40,600 --> 00:37:43,600
Speaker 2: probably not the sole cause, but maybe a factor. But

676
00:37:43,760 --> 00:37:46,840
Speaker 2: other things humans did, like maybe in Australia they started

677
00:37:47,320 --> 00:37:51,400
Speaker 2: burning shrubs to clear land, and maybe those shrubs were

678
00:37:51,440 --> 00:37:53,680
Speaker 2: eaten by a certain species, right, and then that caused

679
00:37:53,719 --> 00:37:54,520
Speaker 2: that domino effect.

680
00:37:54,520 --> 00:37:57,920
Speaker 1: Again. Another the other camp that basically says, no, it's

681
00:37:57,920 --> 00:38:01,360
Speaker 1: climate change and it's fairly natural. Other people might say

682
00:38:02,000 --> 00:38:04,799
Speaker 1: it's human caused climate change. But for the most part,

683
00:38:05,320 --> 00:38:10,920
Speaker 1: if you are a climate change extinction proponent, you're probably

684
00:38:10,960 --> 00:38:13,560
Speaker 1: just believe that this is a natural process that the

685
00:38:13,640 --> 00:38:16,920
Speaker 1: Earth is undergoing and humans didn't have enough of an

686
00:38:16,960 --> 00:38:19,759
Speaker 1: impact early on to account for the loss of a

687
00:38:19,760 --> 00:38:22,799
Speaker 1: lot of these species. Yeah. This one study pointed to

688
00:38:23,040 --> 00:38:27,480
Speaker 1: a place called Sahul, which was Australia, New Guinea and

689
00:38:27,520 --> 00:38:31,360
Speaker 1: Tasmania all joined together in this mega continent. That was

690
00:38:31,360 --> 00:38:34,200
Speaker 1: a crazy place. There was several tens of thousands of

691
00:38:34,239 --> 00:38:36,360
Speaker 1: years ago, and they were saying that by the time

692
00:38:36,920 --> 00:38:41,120
Speaker 1: humans arrived in Sahul or Australia, most of the megaphone

693
00:38:41,239 --> 00:38:43,719
Speaker 1: was already gone. It was gone as a result of

694
00:38:43,760 --> 00:38:46,680
Speaker 1: climate change, and there's no evidence that we had a

695
00:38:46,719 --> 00:38:52,840
Speaker 1: toolkit capable of killing these animals, you know at this time. Yeah. True,

696
00:38:52,920 --> 00:38:54,359
Speaker 1: So the debate still rages on.

697
00:38:54,600 --> 00:38:57,200
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know, there's been several ice ages that

698
00:38:57,320 --> 00:39:00,920
Speaker 2: didn't make things go extinct, right, People point to that

699
00:39:01,000 --> 00:39:04,880
Speaker 2: as maybe another counter argument. But the researchers you sent

700
00:39:04,960 --> 00:39:07,400
Speaker 2: along did this pretty cool thing. They did the first

701
00:39:07,560 --> 00:39:13,960
Speaker 2: global analysis of mapping large animals during this period one

702
00:39:14,040 --> 00:39:16,680
Speaker 2: hundred and thirty two thousand to one thousand years ago,

703
00:39:17,200 --> 00:39:18,680
Speaker 2: and it was the first time they were able to

704
00:39:18,719 --> 00:39:22,000
Speaker 2: really get a fine point on this geographical variation and

705
00:39:22,800 --> 00:39:25,440
Speaker 2: species loss. And they did find that one hundred and

706
00:39:25,520 --> 00:39:29,240
Speaker 2: seventy seven species of large mammals disappeared during that period

707
00:39:29,560 --> 00:39:34,160
Speaker 2: where we were starting to spread out as a species.

708
00:39:34,600 --> 00:39:38,279
Speaker 1: Which apparently is, as it's put in this article, a

709
00:39:38,320 --> 00:39:40,640
Speaker 1: massive loss. Yeah.

710
00:39:40,640 --> 00:39:42,640
Speaker 2: And they said, you know, they expect these kind of

711
00:39:42,680 --> 00:39:44,360
Speaker 2: things to happen on an island, like if you go

712
00:39:44,400 --> 00:39:47,120
Speaker 2: to Hawaii or you know, any island. They say that

713
00:39:47,560 --> 00:39:51,040
Speaker 2: survival is the exception when humans invade an island exactly,

714
00:39:51,080 --> 00:39:54,759
Speaker 2: but to happen on like a continent, it's pretty it's

715
00:39:54,760 --> 00:39:56,320
Speaker 2: pretty amazing to think about the human.

716
00:39:56,160 --> 00:39:59,560
Speaker 1: Impact still an island. Well, yeah, I guess that's a

717
00:39:59,560 --> 00:40:03,840
Speaker 1: good point. But the jury is still out though, and

718
00:40:03,960 --> 00:40:08,160
Speaker 1: exactly what's causing this. Most scientists agree that we are

719
00:40:08,480 --> 00:40:13,440
Speaker 1: in an mass extinction event, and it's happening pretty quickly.

720
00:40:15,560 --> 00:40:18,600
Speaker 1: Something like I think a third of all coral reefs

721
00:40:18,920 --> 00:40:24,040
Speaker 1: are in danger of extinction, a third of amphibians, I believe.

722
00:40:24,080 --> 00:40:25,879
Speaker 2: Yeah, and a quarter of all mammals and an eighth

723
00:40:25,960 --> 00:40:28,760
Speaker 2: of all birds are all classified as threatened with extinction.

724
00:40:29,000 --> 00:40:32,320
Speaker 1: And this is happening around the world, So it's fitting

725
00:40:32,360 --> 00:40:34,240
Speaker 1: the criteria for a mass extinction.

726
00:40:34,360 --> 00:40:37,839
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're basically chalking up to the pace of human expansion.

727
00:40:38,000 --> 00:40:42,200
Speaker 2: And you know, if you consider that farming and logging

728
00:40:42,440 --> 00:40:46,280
Speaker 2: and building roads and buildings, and most of the world's

729
00:40:46,400 --> 00:40:48,759
Speaker 2: waterways have been diverted or damned at this point or

730
00:40:48,800 --> 00:40:53,160
Speaker 2: manipulated somehow. Only two percent of rivers in the United

731
00:40:53,160 --> 00:40:56,840
Speaker 2: States run unimpeded. Two percent everything else has been altered

732
00:40:56,840 --> 00:41:02,520
Speaker 2: in some way. Chemical plants affecting CO two in the atmosphere,

733
00:41:03,200 --> 00:41:05,080
Speaker 2: it's having an effect.

734
00:41:04,840 --> 00:41:07,760
Speaker 1: And that CO two actually in the atmosphere is having

735
00:41:07,800 --> 00:41:12,200
Speaker 1: another effect called ocean acidification, which has been described as

736
00:41:12,760 --> 00:41:16,480
Speaker 1: global warming's evil twin. As more and more CO two

737
00:41:16,760 --> 00:41:21,399
Speaker 1: gets released in the atmosphere. The oceans scramble to keep

738
00:41:21,480 --> 00:41:24,799
Speaker 1: up by absorbing more and more, and it stores some

739
00:41:24,880 --> 00:41:27,680
Speaker 1: of that by turning some of it into acid, which

740
00:41:27,719 --> 00:41:30,400
Speaker 1: lowers the pH of the ocean, which is making the

741
00:41:30,480 --> 00:41:35,160
Speaker 1: ocean unfit for a lot of life. But as to

742
00:41:35,280 --> 00:41:39,120
Speaker 1: kind of demonstrate how mass extinctions is bad for one

743
00:41:39,840 --> 00:41:44,960
Speaker 1: species great for another, jellyfish populations are booming really so

744
00:41:45,040 --> 00:41:47,960
Speaker 1: probably because they like the lower pH. Yeah, they like

745
00:41:48,000 --> 00:41:50,719
Speaker 1: it more acidic, and they're like seriously starting to cause

746
00:41:50,760 --> 00:41:53,440
Speaker 1: some real problems. And we're just seeing the beginning of this.

747
00:41:53,560 --> 00:41:57,279
Speaker 1: So it's entirely possible that the next thousand years will

748
00:41:57,280 --> 00:41:59,400
Speaker 1: see the rise of the jellyfishes the rest of the

749
00:41:59,520 --> 00:42:01,280
Speaker 1: life on Earth starts to die off.

750
00:42:01,480 --> 00:42:05,080
Speaker 2: Well, here's a staggering stat the drop in ocean pH

751
00:42:05,200 --> 00:42:08,200
Speaker 2: levels that have occurred in the past fifty years. They

752
00:42:08,200 --> 00:42:11,200
Speaker 2: think might exceed what has happened in the past previous

753
00:42:11,239 --> 00:42:12,360
Speaker 2: fifty million years.

754
00:42:12,560 --> 00:42:14,880
Speaker 1: Wow, So in the past fifty years.

755
00:42:14,760 --> 00:42:17,640
Speaker 2: They've changed the basically changed the chemical makeup of the

756
00:42:17,719 --> 00:42:19,320
Speaker 2: ocean more than the past fifty million.

757
00:42:19,600 --> 00:42:23,760
Speaker 1: And speaking of fifty years, apparently in the next fifty

758
00:42:23,840 --> 00:42:29,720
Speaker 1: years and estimated half half of all species on Earth

759
00:42:30,480 --> 00:42:31,400
Speaker 1: could be extinct.

760
00:42:33,040 --> 00:42:34,680
Speaker 2: Sucks, man, I want to see a sloth as big

761
00:42:34,680 --> 00:42:35,400
Speaker 2: as an elephant.

762
00:42:35,719 --> 00:42:40,279
Speaker 1: Hey, get into de extinction. Well here you just saw

763
00:42:40,280 --> 00:42:44,240
Speaker 1: and we were in sahul Well yeah it was nice.

764
00:42:44,920 --> 00:42:47,120
Speaker 2: But I want to, like, I want it to come

765
00:42:47,160 --> 00:42:48,920
Speaker 2: in the way back machine and bring it to Atlanta.

766
00:42:49,120 --> 00:42:52,080
Speaker 1: No, I don't think that's a good idea, man. That

767
00:42:52,080 --> 00:42:53,799
Speaker 1: thing looked like it would go berserk.

768
00:42:54,520 --> 00:42:57,200
Speaker 2: And finally, unless you have anything else.

769
00:42:57,280 --> 00:42:58,920
Speaker 1: I don't think so. I'm looking at everything.

770
00:42:59,719 --> 00:43:03,200
Speaker 2: We have a few highlights of extinct animals that have

771
00:43:03,280 --> 00:43:06,080
Speaker 2: been rediscovered, which is not the same thing as.

772
00:43:05,920 --> 00:43:08,280
Speaker 1: Being re engineered. What was this an io nine?

773
00:43:08,760 --> 00:43:11,920
Speaker 2: Iine, And some of those are pretty good. The Bermuda

774
00:43:12,040 --> 00:43:16,600
Speaker 2: petrel and disappeared. They fought in the sixteen hundreds, but

775
00:43:16,680 --> 00:43:19,560
Speaker 2: rediscovered nineteen fifty one. There's about one hundred and eighty

776
00:43:19,560 --> 00:43:22,960
Speaker 2: of those alive today. Let me see here what else

777
00:43:23,000 --> 00:43:24,680
Speaker 2: is good? Well, we also we already talked about the

778
00:43:24,680 --> 00:43:30,400
Speaker 2: Cela camp. The Cuban solan don Solenodon excuse me, discovered

779
00:43:30,440 --> 00:43:35,920
Speaker 2: in eighteen sixty one, has only been caught thirty seven

780
00:43:35,960 --> 00:43:39,320
Speaker 2: times in the history of the world. In nineteen seventy

781
00:43:39,360 --> 00:43:41,759
Speaker 2: they thought it was extinct. It's like a weird rat

782
00:43:41,840 --> 00:43:44,800
Speaker 2: like species. But then they found one in the seventies,

783
00:43:44,800 --> 00:43:46,880
Speaker 2: and then another one in two thousand and three. Huh,

784
00:43:47,320 --> 00:43:49,680
Speaker 2: So like welcome back Cuban Solenodon.

785
00:43:49,840 --> 00:43:52,680
Speaker 1: So it was like caught during the seventies and then

786
00:43:52,800 --> 00:43:55,520
Speaker 1: during the period of the seventies revival in the early

787
00:43:55,560 --> 00:43:56,360
Speaker 1: two thousands.

788
00:43:56,480 --> 00:44:00,839
Speaker 2: That's right, nice Gilbert's poach turu man.

789
00:44:00,880 --> 00:44:03,840
Speaker 1: These have weird names. That's why they went extinct because

790
00:44:03,960 --> 00:44:06,600
Speaker 1: you couldn't say, ye, sloth, you know that we should

791
00:44:06,680 --> 00:44:11,239
Speaker 1: save the the what Gilbert, Yeah.

792
00:44:11,320 --> 00:44:14,560
Speaker 2: In eighteen forty one, this is a rabbit size marsupial

793
00:44:14,680 --> 00:44:18,239
Speaker 2: in Australia and it last appeared in eighteen seventy nine,

794
00:44:18,360 --> 00:44:20,839
Speaker 2: and they thought, well, this thing's gone up until nineteen

795
00:44:20,920 --> 00:44:24,120
Speaker 2: ninety four. Came back out and poked his head around

796
00:44:24,120 --> 00:44:26,839
Speaker 2: and got caught in a few traps. But currently less

797
00:44:26,840 --> 00:44:29,040
Speaker 2: than one hundred of those in the world. So those

798
00:44:29,040 --> 00:44:30,839
Speaker 2: are just a few of the ten, and there's more

799
00:44:30,840 --> 00:44:34,200
Speaker 2: than ten, obviously, But it's always a good story.

800
00:44:34,360 --> 00:44:38,160
Speaker 1: Sure, it is heartwarming. We think this thing's dead. It's like, yeah,

801
00:44:38,239 --> 00:44:41,719
Speaker 1: welcome back to the mass extinction exactly. So going on.

802
00:44:43,200 --> 00:44:45,280
Speaker 1: If you want to know more about extinction, you should

803
00:44:45,320 --> 00:44:47,800
Speaker 1: read each and every one of the articles we cited.

804
00:44:48,280 --> 00:44:51,439
Speaker 1: And you can also read this article on HowStuffWorks dot

805
00:44:51,440 --> 00:44:54,360
Speaker 1: com by typing extinction into the handy search bar. And

806
00:44:54,400 --> 00:44:56,280
Speaker 1: since I said that it's time for a listener mail,

807
00:44:58,360 --> 00:45:00,759
Speaker 1: I'm going to call this police interrogation follow up.

808
00:45:01,040 --> 00:45:06,440
Speaker 2: Okay from Matt Pope a in Victoria, British Columbia. All right,

809
00:45:06,600 --> 00:45:09,520
Speaker 2: thank you to Vancouver, by the way, for two great shows.

810
00:45:09,760 --> 00:45:11,880
Speaker 2: Yeah after our great shows in Toronto.

811
00:45:12,040 --> 00:45:15,920
Speaker 1: Yepkay in Toronto and Vancouver. Very supportive people.

812
00:45:16,239 --> 00:45:21,720
Speaker 2: And boy that second crowd Vancouver was drunk and rowdy. Hey, guys,

813
00:45:21,800 --> 00:45:24,040
Speaker 2: just listen to police interrogation. I thought i'd share a

814
00:45:24,040 --> 00:45:27,000
Speaker 2: couple of quick personal stories that illustrate the pitfalls of

815
00:45:27,040 --> 00:45:30,439
Speaker 2: relying on nonverbal cues to see if someone's guilty. I've

816
00:45:30,440 --> 00:45:32,160
Speaker 2: never been in trouble with a law myself, but several

817
00:45:32,239 --> 00:45:34,480
Speaker 2: years ago I witnessed a crime, called nine to one

818
00:45:34,520 --> 00:45:36,960
Speaker 2: one to report it. The cop snabbed the perpetrator and

819
00:45:36,960 --> 00:45:39,040
Speaker 2: a few days later asked me to come down to

820
00:45:39,080 --> 00:45:42,000
Speaker 2: provide a witness statement. When I arrived, an officer led

821
00:45:42,000 --> 00:45:43,680
Speaker 2: me into a tiny room that was every bit as

822
00:45:43,719 --> 00:45:45,640
Speaker 2: bleak as the ones you see on TV. It was

823
00:45:45,640 --> 00:45:47,920
Speaker 2: a weird experience, even though I wasn't accused of a

824
00:45:47,960 --> 00:45:50,040
Speaker 2: crime and the cop was polite and is questioning. The

825
00:45:50,080 --> 00:45:53,400
Speaker 2: interrogation room setting and the power differential between the uniform

826
00:45:53,440 --> 00:45:56,239
Speaker 2: cop with a gun and my unarmed self made me

827
00:45:56,239 --> 00:45:59,680
Speaker 2: feel really nervous. I started sweating, my voice shook, and

828
00:45:59,719 --> 00:46:01,640
Speaker 2: if you been watching my body language through the one

829
00:46:01,680 --> 00:46:03,520
Speaker 2: way mirror, you would have thought I was guilty.

830
00:46:03,640 --> 00:46:06,080
Speaker 1: Wow, and he was just a witness. Yeah. The second

831
00:46:06,120 --> 00:46:07,080
Speaker 1: story is very similar.

832
00:46:07,239 --> 00:46:09,719
Speaker 2: Every year, our local courthouse as a public event where

833
00:46:09,719 --> 00:46:11,799
Speaker 2: they give tours and put on a mock trial and

834
00:46:11,880 --> 00:46:12,840
Speaker 2: actually hang someone.

835
00:46:14,000 --> 00:46:16,520
Speaker 1: Kidding. I made up that part. That was pretty good.

836
00:46:17,200 --> 00:46:18,799
Speaker 1: It's supposed to be educational and fun.

837
00:46:18,920 --> 00:46:20,680
Speaker 2: My father is a lawyer and one year asked me

838
00:46:20,960 --> 00:46:23,719
Speaker 2: I'd like to play the defendant in the trial. I'm

839
00:46:23,760 --> 00:46:26,440
Speaker 2: no actor, but I said sure. My character was accused

840
00:46:26,440 --> 00:46:28,000
Speaker 2: of a minor drug offense, and I went through the

841
00:46:28,000 --> 00:46:31,560
Speaker 2: whole ordeal, being on trial and testifying my own defense.

842
00:46:31,920 --> 00:46:34,600
Speaker 2: I'll spare you the details, but afterward my mom said, wow,

843
00:46:34,719 --> 00:46:36,000
Speaker 2: you looked really guilty up there.

844
00:46:36,360 --> 00:46:37,160
Speaker 1: I hope you never.

845
00:46:37,080 --> 00:46:39,719
Speaker 2: Actually are on trial for anything, because they'll lock you

846
00:46:39,800 --> 00:46:42,400
Speaker 2: up and throw away the key. I learned from these

847
00:46:42,440 --> 00:46:44,760
Speaker 2: situations the very act of treating someone like a criminal

848
00:46:44,960 --> 00:46:47,600
Speaker 2: and make him appear guilty. Yeah, reminds me of the

849
00:46:47,719 --> 00:46:50,520
Speaker 2: Stanford prison study that we've talked about.

850
00:46:50,680 --> 00:46:54,719
Speaker 1: And there's a Psychology's Nuts about that Psychology's Nuts video

851
00:46:54,760 --> 00:46:57,600
Speaker 1: on our YouTube channel about the Stanford prison experiment. Yeah,

852
00:46:57,600 --> 00:46:58,920
Speaker 1: that's a good one. You should check that out.

853
00:46:59,480 --> 00:47:01,560
Speaker 2: I hope you guys never have to find out the

854
00:47:01,600 --> 00:47:04,520
Speaker 2: hard way you'll react to police interrogation.

855
00:47:04,560 --> 00:47:06,000
Speaker 1: If you do, I hope you find a good lawyer.

856
00:47:06,320 --> 00:47:08,680
Speaker 2: That's from Matt Pope once again in Victoria, BC.

857
00:47:08,960 --> 00:47:13,000
Speaker 1: H Well, thanks a lot, Matt. That's kooky about your

858
00:47:13,040 --> 00:47:15,560
Speaker 1: town doing mock trials and stuff like that. Yeah, like

859
00:47:15,640 --> 00:47:19,440
Speaker 1: hanging a guy, Yeah crazy, he said, it's fun. The

860
00:47:20,080 --> 00:47:22,399
Speaker 1: only thing that's okay about is they make the guy

861
00:47:22,400 --> 00:47:25,719
Speaker 1: look like Hitler, right, So it's like hanging Hitler every year,

862
00:47:25,760 --> 00:47:27,759
Speaker 1: which everybody can get behind. Yeah, they call it the

863
00:47:27,800 --> 00:47:32,160
Speaker 1: Hitler hang. If you want to send us an email

864
00:47:32,200 --> 00:47:35,160
Speaker 1: that Chuck feels the need to make up stuff about

865
00:47:35,680 --> 00:47:38,600
Speaker 1: you can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at

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00:47:38,600 --> 00:47:44,600
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio dot com Stuff you Should Know is a production

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Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

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Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.