Speaker 1: Are you a Stuff to Blow your Mind fan? Are
Speaker 1: you a New Yorker? Do you plan to attend this
Speaker 1: year's New York Comic Con. If so, then you've got
Speaker 1: to check out our exclusive live show NYCC presents Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind Live Stranger Science. Join all three
Speaker 1: of us as we record a live podcast about the
Speaker 1: exciting science and tantalizing pseudo science underlying the hit Netflix
Speaker 1: show Stranger Things. It all goes down Friday, October six
Speaker 1: from seven pm to eight thirty pm at the Hudson
Speaker 1: Mercantile in Manhattan. Stuff You missed in History class has
Speaker 1: a show right before us, so you can really double down,
Speaker 1: learn more and buy your tickets today at New York
Speaker 1: Comic Con dot com slash NYCC hyphen presents Welcome to
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind from How Stuffworks dot com. Hey,
Speaker 1: are you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind? My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick and Robert
Speaker 1: I got a question. How often do you have this
Speaker 1: experience of finding out one subtle way that somebody is
Speaker 1: like you, and it's suddenly changing your whole attitude toward them.
Speaker 1: So you're talking to somebody new you haven't met before.
Speaker 1: You know, you're getting to know somebody who's been an
Speaker 1: acquaintance and you find out that they really like one
Speaker 1: movie that you like, or they really or they've traveled
Speaker 1: to one place you've traveled to, or something like this,
Speaker 1: and suddenly your brain just unlocks and you say, oh, okay,
Speaker 1: we're cool now. Yeah, I encountered this a lot. You know,
Speaker 1: they'll be I tend to be a little you know,
Speaker 1: distrusting of new people and uh. And then sometimes you know,
Speaker 1: you get to talk to them a little bit, or
Speaker 1: you check out their social media activity or something in
Speaker 1: your lies. Hey, they they really like this film, or
Speaker 1: they they really like this artist that not many of
Speaker 1: us are into, or they're into this h this other
Speaker 1: a kind of niche thing that I love and there
Speaker 1: and then you you you sort of give them the
Speaker 1: benefit of a doubt based on that information. You're like, well,
Speaker 1: they're they're probably pretty good, they're probably pretty cool, Like, babe,
Speaker 1: I should talk to them a little bit more. What
Speaker 1: else are they into that I like? But why why
Speaker 1: is that? I mean, why is it that just using
Speaker 1: like a shared favorite movie for example, Like what basis
Speaker 1: do you have for thinking that somebody who likes the
Speaker 1: same movie you like is a good person. Well, it
Speaker 1: falls apart under the scrutiny of other things, because, for instance, um,
Speaker 1: I'll use Tool as an example. Tool is one of
Speaker 1: my my my favorite bands and Uh and their band
Speaker 1: I loved in in high school and I've never I've
Speaker 1: never stopped loving. There's been a lot of bands that
Speaker 1: a lot of musical styles that have sort of come
Speaker 1: and gone that I'll rediscover and and or that I'll
Speaker 1: hate for a little home. But but but I've always liked Tool.
Speaker 1: So what you're saying is the best rubric for discovering
Speaker 1: whether a person is good or not is do they
Speaker 1: like Tool? Yes and no. So, for instance, here at work,
Speaker 1: Nathan our our our social media guru, uh, shortly after
Speaker 1: he started, he saw that I had some some Tool
Speaker 1: memorabilia at my desk, and we instantly struck up conversation
Speaker 1: about it, and that was like our initial uh uh,
Speaker 1: you know, bonding moment, or the fact that we both
Speaker 1: like this group. On the other hand, I've gone to
Speaker 1: enough Tool concerts to witness people that are also fans
Speaker 1: of Tool and sometimes interact with them where I end
Speaker 1: up getting a bit judge, and I think to myself, well,
Speaker 1: there's no there's no way that they are appreciating this
Speaker 1: music on the same level that I am. So it
Speaker 1: can kind of cut both ways. You can be very
Speaker 1: choosy about about how you feel regarding other people's appreciation
Speaker 1: of your stuff. But ideally it would mean that if
Speaker 1: if someone else is into something that that the that
Speaker 1: you dig, then they're they're going to be into some
Speaker 1: of the same ideas, some of the same values, some
Speaker 1: of the same you know, aesthetic quality days what have you,
Speaker 1: that that there's going to be more than just this
Speaker 1: one thing that lines up between the two of you, right,
Speaker 1: But you're using that one little detail, that one tiny
Speaker 1: thing is some kind of like totem. It's this one
Speaker 1: it's the signifier, this tiny flag flying above their head
Speaker 1: that you have decided, for whatever reason, is good enough
Speaker 1: evidence to open yourself up to this person and essentially
Speaker 1: give them a fair shake that you might not give
Speaker 1: to any other stranger. I've caught myself doing the same
Speaker 1: thing too, even though I realized it makes no sense.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think generally that you might be able
Speaker 1: to make some kind of case that in some cases
Speaker 1: shared aesthetics or shared values. Uh, you know that if
Speaker 1: you like the same movie as somebody, it might embody
Speaker 1: some kinds of values or intellectual predispositions that you would
Speaker 1: find in common with other people who tend to like it.
Speaker 1: But a lot of times that's not the case. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I mean, I love Blade Runner, but there's
Speaker 1: probably a lot of people who love Blade Runner who
Speaker 1: are just absolute vampire. You saying they don't appreciate it
Speaker 1: on the same level as you. Maybe that's it. I
Speaker 1: wonder if you don't appreciate it on the same level
Speaker 1: I do. I don't know. I've I've actually spoken about
Speaker 1: this a little bit, but my thoughts on Blade Run
Speaker 1: are mixed. But I do I do. I do love
Speaker 1: Blade Runner. So today we're gonna be talking about a
Speaker 1: hypothesis in genetics and genomics that is going to be
Speaker 1: a kind of weird analogy to the personality tests that
Speaker 1: we've just been discussing, and it's the concept of green
Speaker 1: beard genes or the green beard effect. Now that the
Speaker 1: sad news is that this episode does not really deal
Speaker 1: with actual green beards. If you're looking for if you go,
Speaker 1: if you're coming into this expecting an episode and a
Speaker 1: weird genetic anomaly that makes people grow green beards, or
Speaker 1: say a famous pirate with a green beard. Um, you're
Speaker 1: gonna be disappointed on those counts. But the but the
Speaker 1: underlying science we're going to discuss here in the genetics
Speaker 1: is pretty amazing and pretty fascinating. Now I wanted to
Speaker 1: come up with the backstory of the pirate green beard.
Speaker 1: I couldn't think of what it is. What it's like
Speaker 1: he's got algae in there or something. He just never
Speaker 1: cleans his beard. Yeah, you're just um, I'm guessing you
Speaker 1: probably have like really green teeth as well, you know,
Speaker 1: and just maybe he eats a lot of plant matter
Speaker 1: and it just kind of drolls down in his unwashed beard.
Speaker 1: But you know, this does bring if there was if
Speaker 1: there was a pirate with a green beard and he
Speaker 1: met another pirate with a green beard, perhaps he would
Speaker 1: have this effect. He would say, look, there is another
Speaker 1: pirate who shares my esthetic qualities, perhaps my diet. Maybe
Speaker 1: we have more thoughts on hygiene. Yeah. So the name
Speaker 1: of the green beard hypothesis, which we will explain, comes
Speaker 1: to us from Richard Dawkins, based on an example he
Speaker 1: used to illustrate the concept in his nineteen seventy six
Speaker 1: book The Selfish Gene. But the idea goes back to
Speaker 1: the influential English biologists of the twentieth century W. D.
Speaker 1: Hamilton's um And so the idea arises in the context
Speaker 1: of a question about explaining how biology creates social behavior. Now,
Speaker 1: this is one of the biggest, most difficult questions in biology, right,
Speaker 1: So humans and other animals display these complex things like culture,
Speaker 1: like aesthetic preferences, taste, uh, social behavior, all these things
Speaker 1: that are complicated and have all these weird semi coded rules,
Speaker 1: and we know at some level must be at least
Speaker 1: semi dictated by genetic predispositions. But it's hard to know
Speaker 1: what parts of culture and behavior are genetic and what
Speaker 1: parts are just happenstances that you know that that arise
Speaker 1: naturally and somewhat randomly. Well, we have all these levels
Speaker 1: of cognition and culture that are kind of an illusion
Speaker 1: and and and they're they're overriding the biology. But since
Speaker 1: we are the illusion, it's hard to it's it's often
Speaker 1: hard for us to really think about and in terms
Speaker 1: of underlying biological properties. Yeah, so let's let's explore this
Speaker 1: question that this problem with explaining social behavior through biology.
Speaker 1: So we all know that species arise from the propagation
Speaker 1: of self replicating molecules like DNA, the fundamental units of
Speaker 1: heredity and DNA or genes. These are the parts of
Speaker 1: your DNA that do something that are inherited from your parents.
Speaker 1: And because genes make copies of themselves, we find some
Speaker 1: of the same genes spread out across many different organisms
Speaker 1: in the same gene pool. Now, obviously, genes that cause
Speaker 1: an organism to die immediately at birth become less numerous
Speaker 1: and eventually disappear. Genes that help an organism survive and
Speaker 1: produce more offspring become more numerous in the gene pool.
Speaker 1: These are the fundamentals of evolution by natural selection. This
Speaker 1: is basic stuff. We we know it up to this point.
Speaker 1: But here's a question. Why would an organism produced by
Speaker 1: this process, that arises out of evolution by natural selection
Speaker 1: ever displayed behaviors that we would call selfless or generous
Speaker 1: or altruistic, for example, things like sharing food with another
Speaker 1: organism or defending another organism in a fight. Now, I
Speaker 1: do want to heavily qualify that by saying I think
Speaker 1: It's probably not hard to explain why humans in particular altruistic, because,
Speaker 1: after all, there appear to be a lot of ways
Speaker 1: in which our complex brains can generate motivation for behaviors
Speaker 1: that run contrary to our genetic fitness, and the simplest
Speaker 1: example one of thousands would be celibacy. Whether for religious
Speaker 1: reasons or philosophical reasons, or simply out of personal preference,
Speaker 1: some people voluntarily choose never to have sexual relationships. This
Speaker 1: runs absolutely counter to our genetic programming. Another more common
Speaker 1: example would be the use of contraception. Many people who
Speaker 1: are sexually active still choose to have no children, or
Speaker 1: choose to have far fewer children than they technically could,
Speaker 1: for a variety of reasons. So obviously there are some
Speaker 1: ways in which the complex human brain has acquired the
Speaker 1: capacity to override the genes that programmed it well, I think.
Speaker 1: One one example that comes to mind is say, for instance,
Speaker 1: my own son UH has adopted and so he is
Speaker 1: not my biological offspring, but he he fulfills all the
Speaker 1: needs and desires that that I had that I have
Speaker 1: as a human for for offspring, for a son, right,
Speaker 1: your genes don't care about him, but you do. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's there in your brain, it is there in
Speaker 1: your personality. So if you were only wondering about humans,
Speaker 1: it might not be so hard to explain why we
Speaker 1: would share scarce resources with a stranger, or risk our
Speaker 1: own safety to intervene in somebody else's defense, or any
Speaker 1: number of other selfless acts. We're smart enough to recognize,
Speaker 1: maybe philosophical or religious reasons why we think we should
Speaker 1: to help other people and override those selfish instincts to
Speaker 1: act on those reasons. Or if you look at it
Speaker 1: from another angle, maybe the more cynical person would say, well,
Speaker 1: our complex, language obsessed brains are highly vulnerable to memes
Speaker 1: that have the power to override the optimization of our
Speaker 1: genetic fitness. Either way, human mentality appears to be fairly
Speaker 1: unique on Earth, and it can account for behavior that
Speaker 1: you wouldn't expect to find in other animals. But altruism
Speaker 1: isn't only present in human beings with their religions and
Speaker 1: moral philosophy and complex cognition. Altruism seems to be robustly
Speaker 1: observed in other animals, from like complex mammals all the
Speaker 1: way down to insects. Right, yeah, yeah, we have. We
Speaker 1: have a few I think very illustrative examples here to
Speaker 1: run through. Here's a crazy one. Vampire bats will regurgitate
Speaker 1: blood for other bats who were unable to find a meal,
Speaker 1: sacrificing their own immediate nutrition to keep another bat in
Speaker 1: their community from starving. And this has been documented since
Speaker 1: it was discovered in the nineteen eighties by a biologist
Speaker 1: named Gerald Wilkinson. And that that's no small feat because
Speaker 1: these bats are sort of operating constantly near the edge
Speaker 1: of starvation. As we've talked about before. You know, if
Speaker 1: a vampire bat goes a few days without food, it's
Speaker 1: in a bad place. It can it can starve um.
Speaker 1: And so sharing food like this is a significant sacrifice
Speaker 1: for the good of another uh not necessarily related bat.
Speaker 1: And you have to ask yourself, would your friends and
Speaker 1: coworkers be selfless enough to vomit up blood in your
Speaker 1: mouth if you've missed a meal. None of them have
Speaker 1: ever offered, And it makes me feel rather sour. But
Speaker 1: it's not even just the mammals, right, We see classic
Speaker 1: altruistic behaviors in in uh animals that are thought of
Speaker 1: as less complex. Right, Oh yeah, I mean bees are
Speaker 1: a prime example of altruism, and I mean you social
Speaker 1: insects in general have pretty much perfected altruism in many respects.
Speaker 1: So worker bee works for the benefit of the queen's
Speaker 1: offspring while for going reproduction herself. Genetically speaking, she is
Speaker 1: not the genetic future the hive. The queen is, the
Speaker 1: drones are, but the workers do all the work. In
Speaker 1: a weird way, you can almost think about the insects
Speaker 1: like this, being that the queen is the organism and
Speaker 1: the worker bees are like fingers or appendages of the
Speaker 1: major organism. Yeah, exactly, and it's just completely completely selfless
Speaker 1: if you look at it from the right angle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but how about birds too, well, ravens who we've talked
Speaker 1: about ravens a bit when we talked about bird intelligence. Uh,
Speaker 1: Ravens have been observed to call in additional ravens when
Speaker 1: they happen upon food, so like a mouse or something,
Speaker 1: which doesn't make any sense that they have it, but
Speaker 1: they have apparently have a special call that they use,
Speaker 1: so they raise the alarm and say, hey, other ravens
Speaker 1: that are not me or my children, come in here
Speaker 1: and get part of this mouse. Why would you do that?
Speaker 1: It doesn't seem to make sense. But some ravens even
Speaker 1: return to their roost and recruit more eaters to come
Speaker 1: and share in the feast. Yet again, so your friends
Speaker 1: and co workers, they've never offered to vomit blood in
Speaker 1: your mouth. They've also probably never offered to share a
Speaker 1: dead mouse with you. Well, no, but on the rare,
Speaker 1: on the on the instances where we've had catered dead mouse, Uh,
Speaker 1: then it certainly people will come around and say, hey,
Speaker 1: there's food on the question mark table, come and eat
Speaker 1: with us. So, well, that's just their moral philosophy or
Speaker 1: their religion or whatever. Alright, Well we have some some
Speaker 1: other just quick examples throughout. Dolphins and elephants are fairly
Speaker 1: complex social animals and display uh various forms of altruism.
Speaker 1: They form social bonds, and then then they seem to
Speaker 1: make conscious decisions to help members of their group. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so we have all these examples of these are
Speaker 1: by far not the only examples. There are just tons
Speaker 1: of documented examples of animals in the wild or in
Speaker 1: a conditions seeming to help other animals who are not
Speaker 1: their direct offspring at their own at their own expense.
Speaker 1: And obviously we can see why evolution would select for
Speaker 1: genes that cause organisms to be altruistic towards their own children. Right,
Speaker 1: that's kind of the whole point. Your genes optimize your
Speaker 1: body to have lots of children that can carry as
Speaker 1: many copies of those genes into the future as possible.
Speaker 1: But why would evolution produce creatures that sacrifice some of
Speaker 1: their own safety or resources to help save another creature
Speaker 1: that wasn't their direct offspring? I mean, wouldn't wouldn't genes
Speaker 1: that promoted selfishness and cowardice produce the most grandchildren on average? Well?
Speaker 1: I mean one obvious answer here is that there's an
Speaker 1: individual survival advantage in groups, right, Right, The group kind
Speaker 1: of becomes the meta organism, and natural selection encourages the
Speaker 1: pro group members of the metal organism and not and
Speaker 1: not the lone wolves. Now, this is attempting direction to
Speaker 1: go in, but there are critic of this type of thinking,
Speaker 1: So lots of scientists have tried to go in this direction,
Speaker 1: including EO. Wilson in later years. Uh. And this is
Speaker 1: sort of related to the concept known as group selection. Right.
Speaker 1: The idea that natural selection can select for not just
Speaker 1: the survival of individual genes or the survival of individual organisms,
Speaker 1: but groups of organisms together. This is also known as
Speaker 1: multi level selection. But, like I mentioned, this idea has
Speaker 1: a lot of harsh critics, including Dawkins. I mean, he's
Speaker 1: criticized this idea. And here's one potential snag. It's true
Speaker 1: that teamwork pays off, right, But you know what pays
Speaker 1: off even more than teamwork? Letting other people do the
Speaker 1: team Ah. This is the This is the classic um
Speaker 1: A classroom situation where you've been assigned to groups and
Speaker 1: you're gonna have somebody in the group who's a real
Speaker 1: hard work, are very dedicated. You have some other individuals,
Speaker 1: and you can have at least one person who's just
Speaker 1: gonna coast right right, Yeah, So you let the rest
Speaker 1: of the team do the work while you sand bag
Speaker 1: and reap the rewards. So if you imagine if you've
Speaker 1: got wild dogs that have a gene that causes cooperative
Speaker 1: pack hunting behavior where every dog chips in and does
Speaker 1: their share of work in the hunt, and in turn,
Speaker 1: this increases the group's chances of catching prey and then
Speaker 1: they all share the benefits. That would be great. Everything's
Speaker 1: going great if you've got dogs with those genes, But
Speaker 1: then one of the dogs in the pack acquires a
Speaker 1: mutation that says, actually, don't help with the hunt, just
Speaker 1: hang around until your pack mates catch something, and then
Speaker 1: show up and plunge your face into that delicious viscera.
Speaker 1: A dog with this trait would spend less energy hunting,
Speaker 1: and it would risk less injury, and it would still
Speaker 1: get the rewards of the hunt, so it would ultimately
Speaker 1: benefit more than any of the team players, and on
Speaker 1: average that that freeloader dog would have more offspring, meaning
Speaker 1: that over time the freeloader gene would become more common
Speaker 1: than the team player gene, and the pack hunting system
Speaker 1: would sort of fall apart. So systems that rely on
Speaker 1: benefits of group cooperation for the sake of the group
Speaker 1: as a whole are sort of pervasively undermined by the
Speaker 1: interests of individual organisms and individual genes within the group,
Speaker 1: which will sort of inevitably find ways to run counter
Speaker 1: to the success of the group as a whole. So
Speaker 1: to sum up, we can show that in general, natural
Speaker 1: selection will tend to push organisms to favor their own
Speaker 1: success at the expense of others and at the expense
Speaker 1: of their groups. And yet at the same time, group
Speaker 1: cooperation and selflessness is present in nature, so there must
Speaker 1: be some way to reconcile these observations, right, yes, and
Speaker 1: I imagine this is where the green beard comes in. Well,
Speaker 1: the green beard is going to be one weird way
Speaker 1: of branching off of this question. Actually, the main answers
Speaker 1: to this question are not going to be the focus
Speaker 1: of today's episode, but we should mention them. So two
Speaker 1: of the main answers that emerged in the twentieth century
Speaker 1: to answer this question, or what's known as kin selection
Speaker 1: and what's known as reciprocal altruism. So reciprocal altruism is
Speaker 1: basically another way of summing it up, is just the
Speaker 1: phrase tip for tat. And while in many cases it
Speaker 1: can be hard to verify outside of lab conditions, you
Speaker 1: can sort of build models of organisms that behave on
Speaker 1: this principle and it does appear to be stable if
Speaker 1: and the way this works is like this, So if
Speaker 1: a member of the pack is mean to you, or
Speaker 1: if they try to cheat and be selfish, you repay
Speaker 1: them back the same way you're mean to them back
Speaker 1: you you don't share with them. But if another member
Speaker 1: of the pack is nice to you, you're nice back.
Speaker 1: So essentially you just mirror. You start with the basis
Speaker 1: of being nice, and then you mirror the you mirror
Speaker 1: the behavior that people display towards you. Okay, well that
Speaker 1: that makes sense. I think everybody can fall fall behind that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And if you run models like this, it is mathematically stable.
Speaker 1: Genes that encourage this type of behavior don't tend to
Speaker 1: get eliminated from the gene pool, but they can reach
Speaker 1: a kind of stable equilibrium. But the other main idea
Speaker 1: is what's known as kin selection, and this was explored
Speaker 1: in the nineteen sixties by the English biologist we mentioned earlier, W. D. Hamilton's.
Speaker 1: Now Hamilton's used these quantitative genetics modeling methods, which is
Speaker 1: like math about how genes are inherited and distributed to
Speaker 1: show something interesting, It makes mathematical sense for genes to
Speaker 1: optimize for altruism toward blood relatives other than our own offspring.
Speaker 1: So it turns out that for a sexually reproducing species
Speaker 1: like us, you share the same percent of your genes
Speaker 1: with each of your children that you do with your
Speaker 1: full brothers and sisters and with your parents. In each case,
Speaker 1: you share fifty percent of your genes with them, and
Speaker 1: to a lesser extent, the same goes for other members
Speaker 1: of your family. Further removed, you'll share more genes with
Speaker 1: your aunts and uncles and nieces and nephews than you
Speaker 1: do with the general population and so forth. And given
Speaker 1: this calculus, you can work out how genes that direct
Speaker 1: organisms to be generous and altruistic toward family members become
Speaker 1: more numerous in the gene pool than genes that direct
Speaker 1: organisms to be exclusively selfish and unhelpful to anybody. So
Speaker 1: if I have a cousin that appears on America's Got Talent,
Speaker 1: I'm going to root for them in part because they
Speaker 1: share more of my genes than anybody else that's contestant
Speaker 1: on that show. I mean, on average, they probably do.
Speaker 1: You might have like a secret unknown brother or sister,
Speaker 1: but yeah, yeah, on average, that's going to be the case. Now.
Speaker 1: And of course, there are lots of weird ways that
Speaker 1: maybe things like kin selection or reciprocal altruism uh could
Speaker 1: be could be sort of modified in various circumstances to
Speaker 1: generate the mechanisms that create altruism that get applied in
Speaker 1: other ways. But it is in the context of discussing
Speaker 1: this this whole question about altruism and biology in the
Speaker 1: Selfish Gene that Dawkins also came up with this weird
Speaker 1: hypothetical idea for one weird type of selective altruism, the
Speaker 1: green Beard. All Right, we're gonna take a quick break
Speaker 1: and when we come back we will join back up
Speaker 1: with Captain green Beard and discuss the details of of
Speaker 1: of this idea. Alright, we're back. So we were mentioning
Speaker 1: how the name of the green Beard gene comes from
Speaker 1: an example given by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene
Speaker 1: in n So, Dawkins is pointing out how any arbitrary
Speaker 1: gene will become more numerous if it makes carriers of
Speaker 1: that gene friendly and helpful toward other carriers, right, and
Speaker 1: that sort of makes sense. It says like, if you've
Speaker 1: got gene A in your body, gene A does especially
Speaker 1: well if it makes your body give food and night,
Speaker 1: you know, nice behavior toward other carriers of gene A. Right,
Speaker 1: it's just a boost for gene A across the board.
Speaker 1: So he starts talking about the example of the gene
Speaker 1: for albinism, which is a genetic condition that causes the
Speaker 1: carrier to have unusually low levels of the pigment melanin,
Speaker 1: leading to paleness of skin, hair, and eyes. And hypothetically,
Speaker 1: a really successful version of this gene for albino traits
Speaker 1: would not only produce the visible traits, but it would
Speaker 1: motivate a carrier to be helpful toward other people who
Speaker 1: have these visible traits. Now keep in mind, this is
Speaker 1: not how the albino traits work in in reality. This
Speaker 1: is just a hypothetical alternate version of them um And
Speaker 1: if this were to exist that way, everyone who has
Speaker 1: this particular gene would have more offspring and the gene
Speaker 1: would become even more abundant. But would we find something
Speaker 1: like that in nature? That's the question, and Dawkins writes
Speaker 1: the following quote. It is theoretically possible that a gene
Speaker 1: could arise which conferred an externally visible label, say a
Speaker 1: pale skin or a green beard, or anything conspicuous, and
Speaker 1: also attendance to be specially nice to bearers of that
Speaker 1: conspicuous label. It is possible, but not particularly likely. Green
Speaker 1: beardedness is just as likely to be linked to a
Speaker 1: tendency to develop ingrown toenails or any other trait, and
Speaker 1: a fondness for green beards is just as likely to
Speaker 1: go together with an inability to smell frieze is it
Speaker 1: is not very probable that one and the same gene
Speaker 1: would produce both the right label and the right sort
Speaker 1: of altruism. Nevertheless, what may be called the green beard
Speaker 1: altruism effect is a theoretical possibility. So this is where
Speaker 1: the green beard idea comes from. And to be clear,
Speaker 1: Dawkins is not saying that he expected to find anything
Speaker 1: like this in nature, right, I mean, it would be
Speaker 1: it would be a tough sell to say that there's
Speaker 1: just one gene or one tightly linked group of genes
Speaker 1: and that does all that work. It's got to produce
Speaker 1: the externally detectable trait. It's got to detect that trait
Speaker 1: in other people, and it's got to make you a special,
Speaker 1: really nice or in some way manage a positive interaction
Speaker 1: with other people who have that externally detectable trade. And
Speaker 1: uh so, so he wasn't saying you'd expect to find it,
Speaker 1: just that it was an interesting hypothetical possibility, Like he's saying,
Speaker 1: it's possible that the murder was committed in the library
Speaker 1: with the candlestick by Colonel Mustard with a green beard
Speaker 1: by Colonel ver dear Beard. But but it's just a
Speaker 1: hypothetical situation, Yeah, and one thing one that would be
Speaker 1: difficult to come about. But if it did exist, it
Speaker 1: would be encouraged by natural selection. Right, he's sort of
Speaker 1: pointing out how natural selection would favor this. You just
Speaker 1: wouldn't expect it to arise in the first place. But
Speaker 1: nature is stranger than our imagination. Ah, and this is
Speaker 1: where we get into actual examples in nature, the green beard.
Speaker 1: So this was not what we originally expected, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: geneticist didn't think that you you discover things like this
Speaker 1: in nature. But man, the actual world is always surprising us.
Speaker 1: So let's meet a species. Solenopsis invicta. It sounds pretty serious,
Speaker 1: it sounds pretty pretty indomitable. It's like the it's like
Speaker 1: the you know, the Roman Emperor species, And it kind
Speaker 1: of is because that is the name of the red
Speaker 1: imported fire ant, which is native South America. It has
Speaker 1: spread everywhere from Australia to Asia, the United States. It's
Speaker 1: all over the place now, and woe to us for
Speaker 1: that fact. They were first introduced to the United States
Speaker 1: sometime in the nineteen thirties or forties, and now they
Speaker 1: are known as an invasive pest with hot needle venom
Speaker 1: and a ferocious fighting response when their nests are disturbed.
Speaker 1: In fact, in our episode about the biophelia hypothesis, we
Speaker 1: talked about that great video of EO. Wilson trudging through
Speaker 1: the woods until he finds a red fire ant nest
Speaker 1: and shoving his hand into it so he can show
Speaker 1: you how much it hurts. Oh, yes, this is this
Speaker 1: wonderful footage. I love that he just he stirs them
Speaker 1: up less and krawling hand lets them sting him in
Speaker 1: almost like a religious moment. For Yeah, he's so happy
Speaker 1: about it. If only people in general could find something
Speaker 1: that they love as much as this man loves these
Speaker 1: ants that are furiously pumping their venom into his body. Anyway,
Speaker 1: another perhaps interesting thing about these fire ants they exist
Speaker 1: in two sub populations. So they've got so they've got
Speaker 1: this species, and then two subpopulations have very distinct ways
Speaker 1: of making a living. One tolerates only one queen per
Speaker 1: colony and the other has multiple queens per colony. Uh,
Speaker 1: and those are known as the mono guy in versus
Speaker 1: the polygone types. You know, one one queen multiple queens.
Speaker 1: So in Lauren Keller and Kenneth g Ross published an
Speaker 1: interesting report in Nature about Solenopsis invicta, and Keller and
Speaker 1: Ross were studying red fire ants of the polygone variety,
Speaker 1: that's the kind that has multiple queens. So within the
Speaker 1: genome of these polyguine sol Anopsis invicta, there is a
Speaker 1: gene locust called g P nine and a couple of
Speaker 1: terms to explain real quick. In genetics, a locus is
Speaker 1: just the location on a chromosome where you know you
Speaker 1: can look to find something, where you know you can
Speaker 1: look to find a gene or one of its alleles.
Speaker 1: And allele's are variable forms of a gene appearing at
Speaker 1: the same locus. So, for a simple example, at the
Speaker 1: locusts q x one, you might contain a gene that
Speaker 1: regulates the speed at which your toneails grow. And if
Speaker 1: you have one allele at q x one, your toneails
Speaker 1: grow fast, and if you've got a different allele at
Speaker 1: q x one, your tone nails grow slow. Now back
Speaker 1: to the fire ants. They've got this gene locust called
Speaker 1: g P nine with two allele's big B and little B.
Speaker 1: And because they have two sets of chromosomes. The ants
Speaker 1: can have three different types of arrangements at g P nine.
Speaker 1: They can have big B, big B, Big B little
Speaker 1: B or little by little by. All right, now, if
Speaker 1: you were to watch these colonies up close, where a
Speaker 1: new queen reaches sexual maturity and starts trying to mate
Speaker 1: and lay eggs, you notice something weird. Only the queens
Speaker 1: with the two different alleles, the big B little be
Speaker 1: jeans at g P nine live long enough to reproduce.
Speaker 1: Why is that what happens to the others. So first,
Speaker 1: it appears that queens with little be little bee die
Speaker 1: very young of natural complications. This just appears to be
Speaker 1: a lethal recessive combination. And we see this a lot
Speaker 1: of times in nature where if you've got two copies
Speaker 1: of this recessive gene, it's it's bad news for you
Speaker 1: and it can lead to a genetic condition that kills you.
Speaker 1: But what happens to the big B big B queens. Well,
Speaker 1: Keller and Ross found out they get violently executed by
Speaker 1: their own workers. The ants of the colony tear their
Speaker 1: soul apart. So furthermore, they discovered that it was primarily
Speaker 1: workers bearing the little bee allele that did the any
Speaker 1: work of killing the queens without it. So if you've
Speaker 1: got a queen that's big B big B, the workers
Speaker 1: that have a little bee allele will surround it, bite
Speaker 1: it and kill it because it is it's essentially in
Speaker 1: some respects, it's like a foreign queen. It does not
Speaker 1: share the same allegals as it does. Yeah, that's what
Speaker 1: appears to be going on. But how how does that happen?
Speaker 1: I mean, normally you wouldn't be able to look at
Speaker 1: somebody and say you're missing one particular gene that I
Speaker 1: have and I'm going to kill you. So what's going on?
Speaker 1: So the worker ants with that little bijeene at g
Speaker 1: P nine tend to violently massacre any potential queens that
Speaker 1: don't carry the little bee gene at g P nine.
Speaker 1: Uh So it sounds like we might have a slightly
Speaker 1: modified version of the green beer gene on our hands.
Speaker 1: But here's a question. How how do those workers know
Speaker 1: when the new queen has the right a leal or not?
Speaker 1: Here's a clue. The author's noticed that sometimes after a
Speaker 1: worker ant took part in a mob executing a big
Speaker 1: B big B queen, the worker aunt would then be
Speaker 1: attacked by other ants in the colony. So you take
Speaker 1: part in the mob, you kill that big Bi big
Speaker 1: b queen, then you walk away. Then other worker ants
Speaker 1: kill you and you know it. And there's no politics
Speaker 1: in the insect world, so you know, it's not just
Speaker 1: some sort of a situation where the assassin has to
Speaker 1: absorb the blame for the regicide, right right, right, It's
Speaker 1: not like the king slayer is now being you know,
Speaker 1: talking to me, like, so what was going on? You
Speaker 1: have to wonder was something rubbing off on the killer
Speaker 1: worker And this led the authors to suspect the culprit
Speaker 1: is pheromone based. So they tested this by rubbing worker
Speaker 1: ants against two different types of queens, the big b
Speaker 1: big be queens and the big Bee little bee queens,
Speaker 1: and then releasing those workers to their colleagues, and sure enough,
Speaker 1: the the other workers tended to a hack the ants
Speaker 1: that have been rubbed against the doom big Bi big
Speaker 1: Bee queens, but not against the queens with a copy
Speaker 1: of the little be allele. So to know that we're
Speaker 1: looking at an actual green beer gene, we've got to
Speaker 1: remember the gene should be doing three things. It's got
Speaker 1: to produce an externally detectable trade. It's got to detect
Speaker 1: that trade and other individuals, and it's got to provide
Speaker 1: preferential treatment to individuals bearing that trade. So it looks
Speaker 1: like maybe maybe what's going on here is this ants
Speaker 1: with the little bee gene at g P nine will
Speaker 1: attack and kill anything that smells like a sexually mature
Speaker 1: queen unless it also carries the chemical signature generated by
Speaker 1: the little bee gene, which switches off that kill drive
Speaker 1: in the workers. Interesting. Okay, so this looks like, if
Speaker 1: these findings are correct, a genuine green beer gene found
Speaker 1: in nature, there's this one gene or some incredibly tightly
Speaker 1: linked group of genes going off the g P nine locusts.
Speaker 1: That says, if the queen doesn't have this one gene
Speaker 1: killer al Right, well, we're gonna take a quick break
Speaker 1: and when we come back, we have some more possible
Speaker 1: examples of the green beard gene going on, and we
Speaker 1: will talk about the wood mouse and the sperm train.
Speaker 1: All right, we're back. So, Robert, you promised before we
Speaker 1: left that you were going to tell me about sperm trains. Yes,
Speaker 1: Uh so I'm gonna gonna go ahead and back up
Speaker 1: here a little bit for everybody before we get into
Speaker 1: just you know, full on with the sperm train. If
Speaker 1: you were like us, then you've probably read and viewed
Speaker 1: a great deal of science content about sperm over the years. Uh.
Speaker 1: This is a topic that pops up in nature documentaries,
Speaker 1: science news articles, and seemingly endless academic papers. Well, the
Speaker 1: sperm it kind of creates a microcosm of the whole
Speaker 1: natural world, right, Yeah, it is because you know, it's
Speaker 1: a situation where when when the sperm are competing against
Speaker 1: each other to go after the goal that's happening on
Speaker 1: the inside. On the outside, of course, we have all
Speaker 1: these various uh mating competition scenarios that factor into our
Speaker 1: nature documentaries, you know, where different males are competing uh
Speaker 1: to mate with the female, or multiple males mating with
Speaker 1: the female, what have you. Uh. So it's interestingly we
Speaker 1: have kind of this outer war of mating war going on,
Speaker 1: and then there is an intermating war as well. Because
Speaker 1: we have all these examples of of sperm uh playing
Speaker 1: a role in this outer war. We we learned, um,
Speaker 1: you know, the violent details of copulation and how sometimes
Speaker 1: they can deter females from acquiring additional males um. There's
Speaker 1: also the interesting hypothesis regarding Kama kaze uh spermatozoa in
Speaker 1: rats and humans, with the hypothetical primary function in these
Speaker 1: particular sperm of incapacitating sperm of arrival male. It's kind
Speaker 1: of like dog fighting sperm or It also makes me
Speaker 1: think of say a miniature Star Wars space battle taking
Speaker 1: place inside and that the egg is quite ironically the
Speaker 1: death star maybe the life star. Well yeah, if you're
Speaker 1: a sperm, you don't want to blow up the egg.
Speaker 1: You want to join in harmony with the egg. Well yeah,
Speaker 1: but but but you have that one individual sperm wants
Speaker 1: to do it, and it's it's it's a race. It's
Speaker 1: a competition life star like that. Yeah, now you kind
Speaker 1: of grow used to this trend, right, there's competition, ruthless aggression.
Speaker 1: Sperm is the life seeking missiles at war with their rivals.
Speaker 1: Multiple matings resultant sperm competition and even mixed paternity. But
Speaker 1: sperm are also competing against all of their their brethren. Uh.
Speaker 1: And therefore it's a bit shocking when you realize that
Speaker 1: there are cases of sperm cooperation. So most examples of
Speaker 1: this occurs in the let's face it, freaky world of mosques,
Speaker 1: as well as the the aforementioned politics free realm of insects.
Speaker 1: But there's actually an example in the mammal realm as well,
Speaker 1: as demonstrated in the two thousand two paper. And I
Speaker 1: love this title, exceptional sperm cooperation in the wood mouse
Speaker 1: exceptional A plus sperm cooperation. So the wood mouse this
Speaker 1: is a you know, a Western European rodent. It's small,
Speaker 1: but it has tremendous sperm output. The mice in general,
Speaker 1: uh that they have rather large test these tests or
Speaker 1: five percent of their body. And if we were if
Speaker 1: this were the case with humans, to put that in perspective,
Speaker 1: a male human would have seven points points seven pounds
Speaker 1: or three point five ms of tests. So these uh,
Speaker 1: the fact that they're over sexed, it would seem this
Speaker 1: is helpful because they engage in quote scramble competition, uh
Speaker 1: to mate polygamously with promiscuous females. As such, you would
Speaker 1: expect a lot of sperm competition going on there. Race
Speaker 1: to the life star. And this is where the train
Speaker 1: comes in because the wood mouth sperm feature quote extremely
Speaker 1: long apical hooks and they use these hooks to form
Speaker 1: together into a store to sort of think of it
Speaker 1: as a sperm vultron, or, as the paper puts it,
Speaker 1: motile trains of spermatozoa comprising hundreds to several thousands of cells.
Speaker 1: These trains these sort of you know hooked together, you know,
Speaker 1: wheels of sperm. Uh. These trains allow the bound sperm
Speaker 1: to travel at greater speeds up to fifty faster than
Speaker 1: loan sperm out there going on their own. But as
Speaker 1: they do that, they've got to be given a leg
Speaker 1: up to these other sperm that they're in competition with.
Speaker 1: That's the thing, because ultimately only one sperm can get
Speaker 1: in there. But they're they're all working together. It's it
Speaker 1: makes me think of these scenarios where a bunch of
Speaker 1: villains team up, uh, and then they're all going to
Speaker 1: turn in turn on each other at the end, but
Speaker 1: for a little while they're working together, like a sinister
Speaker 1: six situation. Right. I thought you were going to say
Speaker 1: suicide squad. Well, I guess that's a similar example. They're
Speaker 1: all villains, right, are they so untold? I I didn't
Speaker 1: see it. I I tried to check it out on HBO,
Speaker 1: uh to see what everyone was talking about and made
Speaker 1: it made it just about like five minutes in. But
Speaker 1: maybe it's a great film. I could be wrong. So
Speaker 1: in these cases, the hook up occurs one to two
Speaker 1: minutes after ejaculation, and that's when head to head or
Speaker 1: tail tail to head hookups occur. So they have hooks
Speaker 1: on their heads as well in this scenario. But again,
Speaker 1: only one sperm may enter the life star. It's it's
Speaker 1: it's like the scene with the you know, trying to
Speaker 1: shoot the bolts into the death Star. Uh. So the
Speaker 1: train starts to decouple about twenty to thirty minutes after forming,
Speaker 1: and in doing this, many of the individual sperms seemed
Speaker 1: to sacrifice themselves and uh and some might be even
Speaker 1: marked for death ahead of time, or there might be
Speaker 1: competition there at the end. So again, think of a
Speaker 1: group of supervillains. They've they've worked together so far, but
Speaker 1: after they kill the Batman or the Superman, they're just
Speaker 1: gonna turn on each other. So how do the researchers
Speaker 1: connect this to the idea of the green beer gene. Well,
Speaker 1: this is what they say. Quote a green beer gene
Speaker 1: might evoke such cellular cooperation, although other genetic mechanisms cannot
Speaker 1: be excluded at this stage. A green beard is a
Speaker 1: gene that recognizes copies of itself and other individuals and
Speaker 1: directs benefits to those individuals. So the idea, here's the
Speaker 1: green beer gene would be the deciding and factor with
Speaker 1: which sperm you're going to team up with in this battle,
Speaker 1: because you certainly are not gonna gonna want to hook
Speaker 1: up with sperm from other uh individual mice that have
Speaker 1: made it with this particular female. Right. Interesting, So so
Speaker 1: they're saying this could be one explanation of the behavior
Speaker 1: they're seeing here. Yeah, this is Life Race two thousand.
Speaker 1: All the cars are heading out, but some of these
Speaker 1: cars are realizing that they can work together and form
Speaker 1: a train uh to to to out maneuver and and
Speaker 1: uh and and outperform their competitors because some of the
Speaker 1: cars have exact copies of the driver in each one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like multiple Frankenstein's that was a deep cut. I scared
Speaker 1: somebody off there. Roger Corman's Death Rays two thousand, if
Speaker 1: you want to want to get all of that, Okay,
Speaker 1: So that's another So there really does appear to be
Speaker 1: a green beer, you know, if the observations are correct,
Speaker 1: there really does appear to be a green beer gene
Speaker 1: working in the fire ants. Uh. It looks like green
Speaker 1: beer jeans are a good candidate to explain what's going
Speaker 1: on here in the sperm trains, but it's not a
Speaker 1: sure thing. Other mechanisms might explain it. In two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight, I should just mention quickly there was one
Speaker 1: paper that seemed to identify a green beer gene that
Speaker 1: was driving cooperation in yeast cells, and that that gene
Speaker 1: was called f l O one. But just recently I
Speaker 1: was reading about how there is apparently green beer gene
Speaker 1: activity in slime molds. Our old friends. Oh yes, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: this was pretty interesting. So to refresh slime molds, which
Speaker 1: which I like to compare to science itself at times.
Speaker 1: I think it's a good metaphor for it. Slime molds
Speaker 1: are microbes that live as single celled organisms, but they
Speaker 1: kind of vultron together into a great communal metal organism
Speaker 1: that quests after food. It's a two vulturo on episode. Yeah. Uh,
Speaker 1: and you know, there's some fabulous experiments that show the
Speaker 1: sort of communal intelligence that it has, like a very
Speaker 1: non non non human form of intelligence. So it's problem
Speaker 1: solving ability. Yeah. Well, in March of this year, geneticists
Speaker 1: from the Universities of Manchester and Bath discovered that these
Speaker 1: individual cells are capable of choosing who they joined forces with.
Speaker 1: So it's not just you know, every um slime mold
Speaker 1: individual is gonna come together like they're gonna be a
Speaker 1: little bit choosy and uh. And it seems that green
Speaker 1: beer jeans factor into it. Oh okay, So you're a
Speaker 1: slime mold cell and you've got this one gene that says,
Speaker 1: if there's another slime slime mold cell that has this
Speaker 1: same gene, join with them and conquer the maze. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's so it's pretty straightforward in that regard that the
Speaker 1: gene in question encodes a molecule on the surface of
Speaker 1: a slime mold cell and it can bind to the
Speaker 1: same molecule of another slime mold cell. Now, most my
Speaker 1: slime molds strains have a unique version of the gene. Okay. Now,
Speaker 1: there's a great deal of diversity in slime mold green
Speaker 1: beer genes, according to the study, but individuals show a
Speaker 1: preference for cells with like or similar green beer genes,
Speaker 1: and the assembled whole the resulting you know, larger mental
Speaker 1: organism slime mold. Um, it actually performs better. It does
Speaker 1: better if it's formed of preferred partners as opposed to
Speaker 1: you know, non preferred partners. As such, these beer genes
Speaker 1: listening to govern in a particular specific cooperative behavior in
Speaker 1: the slime molds. So the way it works is it
Speaker 1: just makes you sticky for other slime mold cells that
Speaker 1: have this same gene. Yeah, basically like on a very
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of just like the real pro gloves. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like the simplified version of why liking the same
Speaker 1: band um binds you to somebody else. So to summarize
Speaker 1: going off the paper here, Uh, the green beer genes
Speaker 1: achieved the following in the slime mold. So they predict
Speaker 1: partners specific patterns of cooperation by underlying variation in partner
Speaker 1: specific protein protein binding strength and recognition specificity. Uh. They
Speaker 1: also increase fitness because they help avoid potential costs of
Speaker 1: cooperating with incompatible partners. And also they generate a homophilic
Speaker 1: binding spectrum that allows individuals to identify appropriate partners with
Speaker 1: whom to engage in cooperation. And its states that it
Speaker 1: also serves to stabilize cooperation in the face of selective
Speaker 1: pressure for the emergence of quote false bearded cheaters who
Speaker 1: by providing information that can be used to differentiate compatible
Speaker 1: from incompatible partners. So this is a new ripple. This
Speaker 1: is a new ripple. So we started with this hypothetical
Speaker 1: idea that Hamilton and Dawkins talked about, saying that it's
Speaker 1: not necessarily going to be found in nature. It's just
Speaker 1: one hypothetical thing that could work if it ever were
Speaker 1: to arise. Now we're finding examples of it in nature.
Speaker 1: The green beard gene, the gene that says, hey, I
Speaker 1: see you have this gene too. I like you. I'm
Speaker 1: going to treat you right. But now we see that
Speaker 1: there are false beard pretenders. You could have a gene
Speaker 1: that in fact signals the same thing as having the gene,
Speaker 1: or something that could easily trick you into thinking they
Speaker 1: have the gene but they don't have it. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm reminded of the slime mold moving through the maize
Speaker 1: that you know, our scientific uh quest to understand the universe.
Speaker 1: So anytime we find something new, there's always some new ripple,
Speaker 1: some new complication, uh. And and and some new level
Speaker 1: of the complexity of life. So what is the what
Speaker 1: is the liking the same band equivalent of the false
Speaker 1: spirited cheaters? Somebody who you think signals liking the same band,
Speaker 1: but in fact they do not really like them. Is
Speaker 1: that the the fake tool fans you were talking about
Speaker 1: at the beginning, maybe, or maybe a better example would be,
Speaker 1: like there might be a band that was really popular
Speaker 1: and you dig them, somebody else doesn't. Really they're not
Speaker 1: They're not a true fan. They just they're maybe a
Speaker 1: little nostalgic for it. Or they remember listening to this
Speaker 1: band in high school. But where have they been, you know,
Speaker 1: the subsequent decades. So they've got the bumper sticker on
Speaker 1: the back of their car. But if you started talking
Speaker 1: to them, you would find that the compatibility you were
Speaker 1: seeking is not really. It's all superficial, right, or maybe
Speaker 1: it's Uh. It also reminds me I think it was
Speaker 1: Kids in the Hall skit where somebody's trying to buy
Speaker 1: a copy of The Door's Greatest Hits at the CD
Speaker 1: store and this guy comes in Elections and was like, no,
Speaker 1: you have to start with the first album, and then
Speaker 1: you have to listen to it, like there's very specific
Speaker 1: instructions about where you listen to it, how long you
Speaker 1: listen to it, and then only then can you move
Speaker 1: on to the second album, and you have to go
Speaker 1: in order. So he's instructing him how to be a
Speaker 1: true long term fan and not like a cheap skip
Speaker 1: to the greatest hits fan. How to be a true
Speaker 1: pretentious jerk. Do pretentious jerks glom onto each other in
Speaker 1: the same way that Greenbeard slime mold cells do? I
Speaker 1: don't know, or maybe I mean I guess they do.
Speaker 1: But you could also argue that they don't have the
Speaker 1: binding factor. They're just too pretentious about their their stuff.
Speaker 1: They can't actually enjoy it with other people because they
Speaker 1: have to be the they have to be the biggest
Speaker 1: fan in the room. They have to be the smartest
Speaker 1: fan in the room. But we're getting into the human
Speaker 1: complexities here of of of sharing and things. I think
Speaker 1: we've run more fild with our metaphors and we've gone
Speaker 1: off the deep end. Anyway, picking up from our intro
Speaker 1: to this episode, where we had to lay the context
Speaker 1: about the discussion about altruism and biology and the idea
Speaker 1: about the different levels of selection I've been thinking that
Speaker 1: this would be daunting because it makes biologists uh ruffle
Speaker 1: their feathers and get very upset. I think maybe in
Speaker 1: the future we should try to do a big episode
Speaker 1: or maybe a two partter on the levels of selection
Speaker 1: debate in biology, like this big controversy over whether group
Speaker 1: selection is a real thing or not, or whether whether
Speaker 1: there's also arguments about the arguments, like whether the argument
Speaker 1: is real or whether it's just semantic um and so
Speaker 1: I think I think there's a lot of interesting stuff there,
Speaker 1: but I know it's a big, thorny, controversial issue that
Speaker 1: has a lot of uh petty sub issues. Well, no,
Speaker 1: that could be fun. I mean, who knows. Maybe it's
Speaker 1: a topic that it would be Uh it would be
Speaker 1: sensible to bring in a guest to help us and
Speaker 1: navigate all the controversies. Well, maybe we need to bring
Speaker 1: to two guests, one that take each side. Ah, and
Speaker 1: then we turned into a debate show, but we're not
Speaker 1: we're not going to do that. Well anyway, if that's
Speaker 1: something you would like to hear, maybe you should let
Speaker 1: us know. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Hey, before we close
Speaker 1: out here, Uh, this is one of the first episodes
Speaker 1: that we're recording after the total solar eclipse here in
Speaker 1: North America. Uh And, as previously stated, you went up
Speaker 1: to Tennessee to to check it out, to be within
Speaker 1: the line of totality, and and I went up to
Speaker 1: Blue Ridge, Georgia in the North Georgia Mountains and observed
Speaker 1: it as well. So what are your thoughts? It was?
Speaker 1: It was amazing. I was trying to uh convince everyone
Speaker 1: that we should go up to the path of totality,
Speaker 1: and they were like, but hey, isn't it like totality
Speaker 1: here in Atlanta. And I was trying to explain the
Speaker 1: difference between like ninety nine point nine and is is
Speaker 1: apparently huge. And I'm glad we went. I'm glad we
Speaker 1: did it. It's I don't want to sound flip when
Speaker 1: I say this, but it was a religious experience. I mean,
Speaker 1: it was a really truly astonishing thing. I've never seen
Speaker 1: anything like it before. It was amazing watching all the
Speaker 1: different physical changes going on around us. As the totality approached.
Speaker 1: There was this moment where it was probably about as
Speaker 1: the sun was about seventy covered, maybe a little bit more,
Speaker 1: that I started to notice that there was still still
Speaker 1: the appearance of sunlight all around me. So it was
Speaker 1: like a bright summer day, but suddenly there was I
Speaker 1: didn't feel the heat anymore. The sunlight felt cool, and
Speaker 1: I could stand in the direct sun and my skin
Speaker 1: didn't have that that radiation reaction it normally does when
Speaker 1: you're standing out in the direct sunlight. There. I don't
Speaker 1: know that. The colors became so strange as it came on,
Speaker 1: and then once the totality hit it was true what
Speaker 1: I read in advance that said, you know, it can
Speaker 1: feel like it's over in seconds. It totally did. I
Speaker 1: was just standing there gaping at it, and then I
Speaker 1: after almost no time at all, it was over. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was really impressed by it as well. I mean,
Speaker 1: aside from just the the the actual spectacle of the
Speaker 1: full eclipse, just seeing the ring there in the sky. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, all the subtle stuff was very in a
Speaker 1: way unnerving, and and and and he felt like you
Speaker 1: were kind of crossing over into, uh, you know, an
Speaker 1: abnormal realm because that you had this sense that it
Speaker 1: was it was dusk, but there was no sunset on
Speaker 1: the horizon, you know, there was this uh this also,
Speaker 1: I certainly observed the changes in the animals because I
Speaker 1: was in the forest in the mountains, So the cicadas
Speaker 1: all died down, and it suddenly the cicadas stopped making
Speaker 1: their noises and the crickets started up. Yeah, I observed
Speaker 1: that too. Up in Tennessee. We heard the nighttime insects
Speaker 1: begin to whir to life. Another thing when we saw
Speaker 1: moths as well, Like suddenly there were moths flying around.
Speaker 1: So I got to see because I knew in advance
Speaker 1: to look to the west, like we talked about in
Speaker 1: our eclipse episode, there were some clouds in the sky
Speaker 1: to the west of where we were, and I kept
Speaker 1: my eyes focused to the west right as the last
Speaker 1: of the Bailey's beads were fading, and as it was
Speaker 1: coming on, and I saw the shadow pass over the
Speaker 1: clouds to the west of us, and it was so
Speaker 1: cool to see like that, we had white clouds and
Speaker 1: then suddenly black straight over them. And of course everyone
Speaker 1: experienced the drop in temperature, but we also witnessed what
Speaker 1: I believe was, you know, weather changes because of that,
Speaker 1: because the it was a little bit cloudy, and the
Speaker 1: clouds were on the just teasing with us with the
Speaker 1: possibility of obscuring the total eclipse, but it held off.
Speaker 1: But then right after the eclipse occurred and was and
Speaker 1: and and the moon was big getting to move out
Speaker 1: of the way of getting away again. Uh, there was
Speaker 1: this um suddenly a lot of cloud cover moved in
Speaker 1: and then it almost immediately started raining. Yeah. I think
Speaker 1: we had some strange weather the rest of the day.
Speaker 1: How about your dog, Charlie? Was he there? No, we
Speaker 1: left him at home. I we thought about bringing him,
Speaker 1: but the place we were going was it was a
Speaker 1: college campus up in up In, Tennessee, and we didn't
Speaker 1: know how many people would be there, and we didn't
Speaker 1: want him to get upset if there was a big crowd. Um,
Speaker 1: so we we just left him at home and he
Speaker 1: was fine. Well, Uh, my son came. He really enjoyed it.
Speaker 1: It was just a great experience. So uh, And I
Speaker 1: know I reached out on the Facebook on social media.
Speaker 1: A number of our followers there, our listeners there, they
Speaker 1: chimed in those that either experienced the partial or the
Speaker 1: total eclipse. And certainly we'd love to hear from anybody
Speaker 1: else who has particular observations about how the environment reacted
Speaker 1: or or how you reacted to the total eclipse. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, we would love to hear your experience as well.
Speaker 1: One last thought, photos don't do it justice. Yeah, absolutely not.
Speaker 1: I mean I've seen tons of photos of past solar eclipses,
Speaker 1: but it's not like seeing it in person for yourself.
Speaker 1: So if you ever get a chance in the future,
Speaker 1: if you want to, you know, if you're in South America,
Speaker 1: or you want to fly to where one of those
Speaker 1: total eclipses in upcoming years is coming, or if you're
Speaker 1: in the United States and you just want to go
Speaker 1: ahead and start planning for it's really worth it. It's
Speaker 1: something unlike anything else you'll see in your life. All right, Hey,
Speaker 1: In the meantime, waiting for the as you wait for
Speaker 1: the next episode of Stuff to Blow your Mind to
Speaker 1: come out, head on over to Stuff to Blow your
Speaker 1: Mind dot com. That's where you'll find all the podcast episodes,
Speaker 1: including our episode on the on the the the solar
Speaker 1: eclipse then that came out in the last week or two.
Speaker 1: Be sure to check that out. Also, you'll find links
Speaker 1: out to all our various social media accounts such as Instagram, Twitter, Um, Tumbler,
Speaker 1: and Facebook. Hey, and on Facebook, we have a group
Speaker 1: now the discussion module. Be sure to check that out
Speaker 1: because that's a great place to have more long form
Speaker 1: form discussions with other listeners and UH and sometimes the
Speaker 1: hosts as well. And you can also just bring up
Speaker 1: like cool ideas, cool articles, et cetera, and there'll be
Speaker 1: some some other like minded individuals to bounce that off of.
Speaker 1: And hey, if you want to get in touch with
Speaker 1: us directly, as always the old fashioned way, you can
Speaker 1: email us at blow the Mind at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Speaker 1: Does it how stuff works dot com. He graduated in
Speaker 1: the part of proper