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Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media. Hello, and welcome to cool people who

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Speaker 1: did cool stuff like studying glaciers. I am your host,

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Speaker 1: Marta Kiljoy, and with me today is Katie Golden, host

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Speaker 1: of the podcast How Glaciers Move.

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Speaker 2: That's oh close enough.

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Speaker 1: Creature Feature, Ah, the science of organic things instead of

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Speaker 1: inorganic things.

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Speaker 2: Yes, I mean I talk about glaciers sometimes every so often.

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Speaker 1: Okay, see, and that's what I was saying. That's why

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Speaker 1: I definitely knew that people should check out Creature Feature.

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Speaker 1: And I think we, as you pointed out, if you

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Speaker 1: like stories about animals and science like this episode, you'll

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Speaker 1: probably like it. How are you doing today?

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Speaker 2: I'm doing great. I'm excited to talk about this topic

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Speaker 2: because we get to talk about a prince of evolution.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, totally. I ended up like kind of emotional researching

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Speaker 1: this more than I expected, and not in the parts

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Speaker 1: where I expect. I'm actually barely going to talk about

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Speaker 1: the time he breaks out of prison, even though that's

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Speaker 1: like normally what I would talk about. But just actually

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Speaker 1: the stuff about mutual aid it got me. It got

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Speaker 1: me real much.

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Speaker 2: Are you emotional about mutual aid? That's so crazy?

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Speaker 1: I know, I know, no one would have ever expected that.

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Speaker 1: We also have a producer who's Sophie Hi. Sophie Hi,

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Speaker 1: So this is not the Kropotkin episode, because one day

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Speaker 1: I'm gonna just be so overwhelmed by the world that

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Speaker 1: I'm just going to do like an eight parter about

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Speaker 1: this man. Sorry everyone in advance or something to look

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Speaker 1: forward to in advance, depending on your opinions of anarchy. Santa,

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Speaker 1: much like how Darwin is, like these dudes, if they

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Speaker 1: live long enough, people only remember these old photos of him.

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Speaker 2: Right, they all end up looking like Santa, either seremone

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Speaker 2: or Santa.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, totally. Yeah. I heard an anecdote that might not

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Speaker 1: be true that he wants dressed up as Santa because

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Speaker 1: you're sick of everyone calling him Santa. But I don't

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Speaker 1: know if that's true. Anyway, This is part two. In

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Speaker 1: Part one, we laid out all of this kind of

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Speaker 1: context and precursor about geology and evolution and the kind

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Speaker 1: of scene that Peter Kropotkin is coming on too. Peter

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Speaker 1: Alexeyevich Kropotkin was born in eighteen forty two in Moscow

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Speaker 1: into the aristocracy. He is literally a prince. His father

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Speaker 1: was a prince. His family owned twelve hundred serfs, which

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Speaker 1: is a lot of people to own.

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Speaker 2: See, I've never owned his serfs, so I don't really

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Speaker 2: know what's like a high or a low number of

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Speaker 2: serfs to own.

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Speaker 1: You know. I actually didn't do a comparison to like

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Speaker 1: how many serfs the average prince in this artum was calling.

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Speaker 2: Like are those middling numbers for serfs? Is that? You know?

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Speaker 1: I think it's high. He's not like when you hear

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Speaker 1: prince and you only read fantasy books, you're like, this

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Speaker 1: guy is the next zar, right, But he's not. It's

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Speaker 1: because the zar is kind of like even higher than

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Speaker 1: like someone under him would be, So you can still

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Speaker 1: be a prince if you're like aristocracy lower. I sometimes

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Speaker 1: refuse to learn all this. I read a lot of fantasy,

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Speaker 1: and I write fantasy, but I get really frustrated thinking

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Speaker 1: that I should care about the difference between a baron

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Speaker 1: an account and a viscount and a blah blah blah

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Speaker 1: blah blah, because I hate all of them. So I

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Speaker 1: couldn't tell you. I think it's a lot of.

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Speaker 2: People, Okay, I mean it sounds like a lot to me.

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Speaker 1: He's going to end up a page like he's going

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Speaker 1: to personally attend to the czar at some point in

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Speaker 1: his life. Cool, Yeah, I mean sort of. Yeah, it's interesting.

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Speaker 1: I think that's how we'd probably think of it. Right,

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Speaker 1: We've covered Russian serfdom before on the show, but it's

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Speaker 1: been a while. Basically, serfs are enslaved, but not in

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Speaker 1: an American chattel slavery way. They are owned by the property,

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Speaker 1: like the land. I own this estate and it has

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Speaker 1: serfs who live there, and they can't leave and they

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Speaker 1: have to work for me.

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Speaker 2: Right, it's kind of like indentured.

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Speaker 1: Servitude, Yeah, but like seen as like part of the

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Speaker 1: property instead.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, like you're on a deed.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and you're stuck that way your whole life, and

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Speaker 1: your kids are that way your whole life. But you're

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Speaker 1: still not as the American chattel slavery system was a

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Speaker 1: uniquely brutal form of being unfree. Yeah, this one wasn't

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Speaker 1: good either. Russia has always been sort of backwards by

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Speaker 1: European standards in terms of technological development and social development

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Speaker 1: and stuff, and everywhere else had freed the serfs a

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Speaker 1: long as time before, and not the United States that

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Speaker 1: had chattel slavery at this time. But you know, young

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Speaker 1: Peter Kopakin is not really a fan of his people

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Speaker 1: owning people. But it's going to be a while before

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Speaker 1: he's truly a radical woke. He's going to suffer for

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Speaker 1: being woke at various points.

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Speaker 2: Woke Prince.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm mostly going to be talking about him as

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Speaker 1: a scientist and not as him as a person or

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Speaker 1: political figure. So I'm going to fast forward more than

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Speaker 1: I would normally. He goes to a military academy in

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Speaker 1: Saint Petersburg. He's a page for the fucking Czar. He

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Speaker 1: was very high up in various military and state positions,

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Speaker 1: but he mostly just wanted to do science, which was,

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Speaker 1: you know, a thing that rich aristocratic people could do.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 1: So when the Czar managed to annex a bunch of

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Speaker 1: territory in Siberia and I think into Manchuria, Krpakin was like, oh, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I'll totally go take a military commission over there. Absolutely.

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Speaker 1: It's not so that I can just go study glaciers

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Speaker 1: and dried up lakes in Asia. I don't know what

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Speaker 1: you're talking about. Totally going to do military stuff for you.

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Speaker 2: Man, it is a good country to be in if

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Speaker 2: you like glaciers.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, totally. Well, nowhere is anymore, but now Rusha's a

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Speaker 1: good place to be if you like exploding methane pockets.

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Speaker 1: Have you read about this?

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Speaker 2: Ah? No, I haven't.

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Speaker 1: I was reading about this, like, there was a New

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Speaker 1: York Times article about it a couple of days ago

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Speaker 1: as I as we record this, that was like the

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Speaker 1: methane pockets that are being exposed by the warming permafrost.

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Speaker 2: Right, like, yeah, you have all that organic material in there, Yeah,

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Speaker 2: and then it usually should just slowly decay, not necessarily explode.

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Speaker 1: Well, so they're blowing up and like leaving like huge craters.

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Speaker 2: Fun.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's good. We live in the best possible world.

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Speaker 1: I can't imagine how anything could be better.

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Speaker 2: No, no exploding earth farts.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. He's mostly in a geography right, and he wants to

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Speaker 1: go explore geography in Siberia. But also, this new book

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Speaker 1: has just dropped on the origin of the species, and

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Speaker 1: he wants to go test that hypothesis a bunch, and

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Speaker 1: not in an antagonistic way. He is a young he's

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Speaker 1: in his twenties. He's like, fuck, yeah, I'm gonna go

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Speaker 1: find more evidence in a different place rather than the tropics.

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Speaker 1: I'm going to say, I'm going to find all the

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Speaker 1: animals competing. This is going to be great. I've read

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Speaker 1: this presented him going to Siberia as a voluntary exile

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Speaker 1: because it was so far away from the Imperial core.

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Speaker 1: He joined a eunuch of Cossacks, who are the nomadic

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Speaker 1: horseback people who largely served as shock troops and cavalry

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Speaker 1: for the czar at this point, and he headed off

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Speaker 1: to Siberia and then for five years in his twenties

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Speaker 1: he just like wandered around with a couple of guys

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Speaker 1: and did science and ostensibly also like government stuff in Siberia.

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Speaker 1: In Siberia and down into Manchuria, he wandered thirty thousand

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Speaker 1: miles on foot and horseback over this time, which is like,

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Speaker 1: I mean, that's not a lot of miles to put

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Speaker 1: on a car in five years, but it's not a

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Speaker 1: low number of miles to put on a five years.

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Speaker 2: No, I mean that's a lot of walking in horse trotting.

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Speaker 1: And it's not unexplored paths, even like locals and stuff

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Speaker 1: will be like I guess there was like one guy

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Speaker 1: who knows how to go over there. We'll send him

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Speaker 1: with you, you know, the like articles about this are

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Speaker 1: like and they had a map drawn on bark with

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Speaker 1: a knife. And he keeps discovering shit, and I hate

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Speaker 1: the way that we talk about discovery by Westerners, but

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Speaker 1: he keeps adding to Western science new things to understand.

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Speaker 1: Because Kropact is seen as the guy who this one

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Speaker 1: just doesn't make sense to me. He's seen as the

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Speaker 1: guy who discovered the plateau as a geological feature.

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Speaker 2: I mean, I'm pretty sure there were people who were like,

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Speaker 2: they looked at a plateau and they're like, they probably

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Speaker 2: didn't call it a plateau because they had a different language,

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Speaker 2: but you're they're like, yeah, that's a flat topped hill

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Speaker 2: right there.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and people like lived on them and they're all

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Speaker 1: over the world. But I think the idea here I

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Speaker 1: read a couple of different things trying to get the

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Speaker 1: sense of what the fuck this means is that plateaus

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Speaker 1: were seen as sort of aberrations. They're like, oh, there's

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Speaker 1: this place, since it's a flat mountain, right And Kropaken,

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Speaker 1: reporting back about geology, said that they're quote a basic

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Speaker 1: and independent type of the Earth's relief, and so he's

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Speaker 1: kind of distinguishing them geologically from mountains and other formations.

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Speaker 1: But it still is like one of those things where

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Speaker 1: I'm like, I have to get really into the science

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Speaker 1: before I'm like, oh, yeah, this man discovered plateaus that

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Speaker 1: doesn't make any sense to me.

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Speaker 2: He observed them, yeah, and told people about them.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, totally. He started studying the dried up lake beds

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Speaker 1: all over Asia and writes about the desiccation of Asia,

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Speaker 1: about you know, it was drying out, and he starts

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Speaker 1: thinking about glaciers an awful lot, and about this ice

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Speaker 1: age thing that people have been theorizing about. The journey

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Speaker 1: East wasn't purely for science, of course. He would do

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Speaker 1: shit like find passages across mountains and blaze the trail

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Speaker 1: that railroads soon for followed doing the grunt work of

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Speaker 1: colonization essentially, or the I guess he was saying the

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Speaker 1: spread of empire. And he ends up retiring from his

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Speaker 1: post out East for political reasons. Basically, he's like becoming

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Speaker 1: more and more aware of the thing that he's doing,

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Speaker 1: and he gets more and more involved in radical politics.

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Speaker 1: But he's still a scientist, So he signs up with

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Speaker 1: the Russian Geographical Society to go look at the glacial

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Speaker 1: lakes and shit in Scandinavia. There he made a discovery

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Speaker 1: that this is one when I'm like, oh, I understand

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Speaker 1: this is a discovery more clearly. One source will say

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Speaker 1: that is his most important contribution to science. I think

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Speaker 1: mutual aid is a bigger deal. But whatever. He's the

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Speaker 1: guy who was looking at glaciers and how they moved

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Speaker 1: and said, oh, they don't move like a solid. This

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Speaker 1: is a super viscous fluid. In terms of how glaciers

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Speaker 1: themselves move.

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Speaker 2: What is like the difference between a solid and a

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Speaker 2: super viscous fluid.

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Speaker 1: A little bit beyond me. But it's essentially, like I

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Speaker 1: was reading that, it like moves essentially like plastic y right,

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Speaker 1: Like ause glaciers do flow, right, like when you imagine

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Speaker 1: like a block of metal that's like a version of

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Speaker 1: a solid, where it would it moved, it would just

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Speaker 1: like the whole thing would move in one piece, you know,

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Speaker 1: right right, I am under the impression that glaciers flow. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's like basically, but I don't know beyond.

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Speaker 2: That as far as I understand it, that's it really,

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Speaker 2: It's just a it is a very slow flowing yeah,

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Speaker 2: large thing.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. I've never been on a glacier. I went to

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Speaker 1: Glacier National Park and I saw a glacier through binoculars.

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Speaker 1: But Glacier National Park spoiler well, spoiler for the future

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Speaker 1: in the future doesn't have any glaciers, and it currently

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Speaker 1: has so many fewer glaciers than it did when it

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Speaker 1: got named.

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Speaker 2: I've never been on a glacier and I've never seen

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Speaker 2: a glacier. Like, I don't know. I have a bad feeling.

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Speaker 2: I'm my opportunity to do so.

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Speaker 1: I know, climate grief is so real, Like sometimes I

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Speaker 1: get lost thinking about all the like species of fish

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Speaker 1: that we literally drove extinct before we even saw them.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, if you want to get sad, there's one that's

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Speaker 2: that really sticks in my crowitch is the well. It's

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Speaker 2: the one that hurts me the most, both as like

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Speaker 2: someone who loves evolutionary biology and animals and has gurd

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Speaker 2: It's the loss of the gastric brooding frog. It's this

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Speaker 2: frog that is able to like swallow its own offspring.

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Speaker 2: They'd be safe inside of its stomach and basically like

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Speaker 2: it would brood the offspring and its stomach like actual

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Speaker 2: stomach where the gastric acids are. Whoa not a uterus. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: and then it would when the little froglets were ready,

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Speaker 2: they'd come right back out, all safe and sound, all good.

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Speaker 2: And this frog when extinct, and if we had it

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Speaker 2: and it was alive, there's so many we could like

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Speaker 2: discover from it. First of all, it's really cool that

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Speaker 2: it does this, but also the fact that it was

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Speaker 2: able to have the stomach acid not to kill its

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Speaker 2: offspring how that worked and we don't know, And if

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Speaker 2: we were able to study them, I don't know, maybe

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Speaker 2: they'd be like, there's not really a cure for gurd

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Speaker 2: and the treatments all have downsides to them. So it's

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Speaker 2: like there's a really specific, tangible way in which like

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Speaker 2: climate change and extinctions have have messed up my life personally,

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Speaker 2: which is what is most important. No.

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Speaker 1: Absolutely, Oh, what a cute frog.

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Speaker 2: That makes me so sad, horible, it's very sad. Sorry,

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Speaker 2: I don't mean to.

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Speaker 1: Well, you know what would be a good palette cleanser.

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Speaker 2: Ads? Wow?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm a pro, here's the ads.

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Speaker 2: Er back.

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Speaker 1: It didn't work. I'm still sad about climate change. I

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Speaker 1: would have thought that that would have worked. I've been

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Speaker 1: told my whole life, this is the way to solve sadness. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: in order for the ads to survive, they actually need

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Speaker 1: to confront climate shy.

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Speaker 2: Maybe if you buy one more thing then you'll be happy.

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Speaker 1: Oh that's a good idea, it is. Yeah. So Peter Kerpakin,

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Speaker 1: he's in Scandinavia, Finland and Sweden. I don't know why

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Speaker 1: not Norway, but the thing I read said Finland and Sweden.

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Speaker 1: But now that I think about it, I can never

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Speaker 1: keep track of when Russia owned which parts of Scandinavia.

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Speaker 1: I don't know whatever. So he's up there, he's looking

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Speaker 1: at glaciers, he's looking at glacial lakes, and he ends

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Speaker 1: up providing all sorts of evidence about the ice age,

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Speaker 1: and he predicted that glaciers went down much further south

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Speaker 1: and specifically therefore that desiccation has been happening for thousands

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Speaker 1: of years across Eurasia. And he was I believe the

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Speaker 1: one who suggest that it was desiccation was causing the

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Speaker 1: lower rainfall, not the other way around. Through climatological things

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Speaker 1: that are slightly too complex for me. I read them

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Speaker 1: twice and then decided not to write them into my

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Speaker 1: script because I wouldn't be able explain them properly.

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Speaker 2: I do that a lot.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, totally. You're like, ah, yes, this one I

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Speaker 1: can understand and explain, and this one I would just

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Speaker 1: be able to quote. And there's a bunch of important

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Speaker 1: stuff in what he's saying here. He's saying that the

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Speaker 1: ice Age happened while humans were still around, and that

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Speaker 1: the receding glaciers impacted human society because the impacted are climate,

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Speaker 1: and that natural climate change was still impacting human society.

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Speaker 1: And so was maybe the first person to write about this,

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Speaker 1: to write about how climate change is affecting us and

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Speaker 1: how we need to fight it, even though he's talking

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Speaker 1: about natural climate change. And he's like, well, we must

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Speaker 1: stop nature cause climate change, and he wrote, quote, now,

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Speaker 1: we are fully in the period of a rapid desiccation

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Speaker 1: accompanied by the formation of dry prairies and steps, and

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Speaker 1: man has to find out the means to put a

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Speaker 1: check on the desiccation to which Central Asia has fallen

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Speaker 1: a victim and which menaces southeastern Europe. And he was like, look,

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Speaker 1: we all got to come together across national borders and

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Speaker 1: shit and plant a million trees and stop desertification.

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Speaker 2: And everybody listened to him, and yes, why that's why

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Speaker 2: we're cool now.

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Speaker 1: God, if people had listen to him about it, even

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Speaker 1: like a tenth of the shit he said, the world

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Speaker 1: will be ah, oh well yeah, so it goes. And

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Speaker 1: his theory was just a theory, right, he had evidence,

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Speaker 1: but he was backing up. He was presenting theories. He

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Speaker 1: was wrong about a lot of it. He had this

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Speaker 1: whole theory that he was wrong about about the desication

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Speaker 1: of Central Asia because he would go and he would

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Speaker 1: see these like dried up lake beds and like abandoned

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Speaker 1: cities and shit, right and be like, oh, climate change

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Speaker 1: killed the city. And he also presented a theory that

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Speaker 1: the Mongol invasions of Europe were the results of the

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Speaker 1: desertification of Asia and the pressures of climate change. And

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Speaker 1: this is incorrect, I believe. I tried to look it

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Speaker 1: up a lot and did not find supportive for this.

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Speaker 1: He also, you know, he wrote about these abandoned cities,

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Speaker 1: but the city of Petra is an example, and it

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Speaker 1: fell apart because trade routes changed, and then in the

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Speaker 1: year three point thirty three and earthquake fucked up all

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Speaker 1: its water infrastructure. So you know, nineteenth century scientists get

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Speaker 1: things wrong, unlike twenty first century.

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Speaker 2: You win some, you lose some. Sometimes you declare entire

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Speaker 2: races of people not human. Yeah, but it doesn't sound

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Speaker 2: like this guy's going down that route.

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Speaker 1: No, Actually, he very specifically doesn't. And there's a whole

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Speaker 1: other piece that I want to do eventually about radical anthropology,

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Speaker 1: because anthropology from the start as a Western science has

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Speaker 1: either been wildly racist or an attempt to be anti

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Speaker 1: colonial and anti racist. And a guy who fought in

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Speaker 1: the Paris commune named Alee Raclue, who I covered an

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Speaker 1: episode about Paris Commune years ago, was mostly famous as

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Speaker 1: a geographer, and he wrote about indigenous peoples of areas

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Speaker 1: I believe the first time I, like white Western European

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Speaker 1: was like, hey, they're like people, right, Like they actually

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Speaker 1: just are people, right, right? And Kropakin is from that

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Speaker 1: lineage of it, and the way he writes about he

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Speaker 1: calls them savages and barbarians and medieval cities when he

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Speaker 1: talks about mutual aid in his books that he writes

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Speaker 1: decades later, like some of the ways that they are

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Speaker 1: written about would not necessarily be the language we'd use today, right,

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Speaker 1: But specifically he is writing an anti racist piece.

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Speaker 2: Right about it? Right, He's using the common word that

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Speaker 2: was used at the time. But he's not not what

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Speaker 2: you would think, it would imply necessarily.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, he's trying to be like, look, they're people. It's

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Speaker 1: a different stage of things, you know, is my best

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Speaker 1: understanding of it. I'll one day do a deep dive

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Speaker 1: into that particular topic. But but yeah, he's right about

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Speaker 1: a lot of this stuff. And actually he's kind of

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Speaker 1: funny because the first ice Age guy said, oh, it

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Speaker 1: happened fifty thousand years ago, long before people, whereas Kerpawkin

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Speaker 1: is like, no, no, no, what happened when there's people?

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Speaker 1: It happened fourteen thousand years ago. And then I looked

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Speaker 1: it up, the peak of the last ice Age was

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Speaker 1: more like thirty thousand years ago. So they were both.

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Speaker 2: Wrong but right, just people were around, yeah exactly, yeah

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Speaker 2: years ago.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, they've been around for a real long time by

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Speaker 1: yeah that point. So Kropacket's like more right in terms

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Speaker 1: of what it means, which is that there's people around,

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Speaker 1: But they were both off on their numbers. I mean,

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Speaker 1: we're still kind of guessing about a lot of those

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Speaker 1: numbers too well.

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Speaker 2: I mean one of the issues is that, like I mean,

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Speaker 2: until you really had like carbon dating like evidence of

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Speaker 2: human sort of like tools and things are not necessarily

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Speaker 2: going to go all the way back to you know,

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Speaker 2: the origin of humans, because we weren't making those for

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Speaker 2: a while. There's a good while where we were sort

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Speaker 2: of like not advancing really quickly techno logically. Yeah, and

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Speaker 2: then suddenly kind of advanced quite quickly, and then you

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Speaker 2: had all this archaeological evidence, but maybe not as much

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Speaker 2: before then. And there's other reasons for that too, like

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Speaker 2: that you don't have a record of like everything going

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Speaker 2: throughout all of human history.

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Speaker 1: No, that makes sense, and it's even wild to see

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Speaker 1: how much like as I'm trying to learn more about

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Speaker 1: anthropology that studies early humans and things like that, you're like, oh,

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Speaker 1: if a place didn't write things down, it like practically

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Speaker 1: doesn't exist, you know. Yeah, and like most places weren't

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Speaker 1: writing things down.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, we've discovered like more mod like techniques of like

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Speaker 2: being able to take things. And now if you have

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Speaker 2: like a human skull, you could potentially look at like

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Speaker 2: stuff in the teeth to be able to determine diet

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Speaker 2: things like that, right, but we probably around cop Potkin's time,

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Speaker 2: you couldn't.

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Speaker 1: Really do that yeah, totally. There's gonna be some stuff

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Speaker 1: where like he's like, I think future scientists are going

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Speaker 1: to be able to do the following, and then they could,

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Speaker 1: and it was cool but nice. He writes all this

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Speaker 1: stuff about climate change, he studies all this shit about glaciers,

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Speaker 1: and he goes back to Russia. He's actually been going

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Speaker 1: back to Russia fairly often. Wasn't like he just was

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Speaker 1: gone for years in this case. But he goes back

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Speaker 1: and he has a problem because in eighteen seventy one,

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Speaker 1: the people of Paris had thrown themselves a revolution. The

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Speaker 1: Paris Commune is one of the first things I ever

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Speaker 1: covered on the show because it is the sort of

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Speaker 1: foundational thing for most Western leftism, and the people of

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Speaker 1: Paris took over their own city. Did I say nineteen

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Speaker 1: seventy one? SOFI just highlighted the noight, I just oh,

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Speaker 1: I just assume I got it wrong. I always say

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Speaker 1: nineteen seventy one instead of eighteen seventy one, or vice versa.

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Speaker 1: Sometimes I talk about modern events and think they're in

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Speaker 1: the past because I live in the past. No, it's

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Speaker 1: just my script. I touched my mouth and it went

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Speaker 1: back to the beginning. Cool so the people of Paris

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Speaker 1: are like, we're fucking done with all this being ruled shit.

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Speaker 1: And also the people who ruled us did a really

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Speaker 1: bad job during the last war, and you're under siege

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Speaker 1: and we're all unhappy. They take over the city, they

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Speaker 1: declare for socialism. They get real confused about which version

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Speaker 1: of it they want to be because there's a lot

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Speaker 1: of different I don't know, if you've ever met leftists,

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Speaker 1: there's a lot of disagreement about exactly how it should happen.

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Speaker 2: No, they all agree on one thing and don't do

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Speaker 2: that really effectively.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, totally. And they set up a city council and

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Speaker 1: the militia and they transform society and suspend rent and

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Speaker 1: then they're all put down in a bloody soldiers versus

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Speaker 1: citizens war, And we don't know whether that they would

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Speaker 1: have worked out their interpersonal squabbles or not.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: They inspired people from all over the world, especially all

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Speaker 1: over Europe, mostly working class people, especially labor unions in Switzerland. Kripakin,

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Speaker 1: he's visiting Switzerland and he falls in with an anarchist

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Speaker 1: watchmakers union and he is like, oh, y'all rule, like

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Speaker 1: you all treat each other as equals. This is cool

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Speaker 1: as hell. I'm an anarchist.

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Speaker 2: Now, did he start marking watches? Though?

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Speaker 1: I know, I know that's the thing. He didn't big

433
00:23:00,359 --> 00:23:03,600
Speaker 1: up on that. Although there is this movie I haven't seen.

434
00:23:03,640 --> 00:23:06,040
Speaker 1: There's apparently this movie that came out recently that's about

435
00:23:06,040 --> 00:23:10,680
Speaker 1: his time hanging out with watchmakers. Yeah, but I don't

436
00:23:10,720 --> 00:23:12,359
Speaker 1: think he wanted to do that kind of work. He

437
00:23:12,400 --> 00:23:14,320
Speaker 1: wanted to do the thinking kind of work, not the

438
00:23:14,640 --> 00:23:15,880
Speaker 1: yeah small gears.

439
00:23:16,400 --> 00:23:19,440
Speaker 2: Yeah, well it's you know, bad for the rest Anyways.

440
00:23:20,040 --> 00:23:22,160
Speaker 2: It's just like I feel like this is actually around

441
00:23:22,200 --> 00:23:26,439
Speaker 2: the time my great because like my family is from Odessa,

442
00:23:27,240 --> 00:23:31,639
Speaker 2: which used to be part of Russia, and they had

443
00:23:31,680 --> 00:23:34,199
Speaker 2: to get out of there for a couple reasons. One

444
00:23:34,320 --> 00:23:38,040
Speaker 2: my great grandfather was he was like a trade unionist

445
00:23:38,760 --> 00:23:40,600
Speaker 2: and also Jewish.

446
00:23:40,680 --> 00:23:43,280
Speaker 1: So yeah, those are two things that are hard to

447
00:23:43,280 --> 00:23:44,439
Speaker 1: be at that time in Russia.

448
00:23:44,560 --> 00:23:47,679
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was very hard to do. So, yeah, he

449
00:23:47,800 --> 00:23:51,520
Speaker 2: might have been hanging out with anarchist watchmakers. I don't

450
00:23:51,520 --> 00:23:53,639
Speaker 2: really know. My grandma told me so much stuff, like

451
00:23:53,680 --> 00:23:57,320
Speaker 2: she claimed he like met Lennon once. I'm like, I

452
00:23:57,359 --> 00:24:01,200
Speaker 2: don't think he probably told you that, But I don't

453
00:24:01,240 --> 00:24:01,760
Speaker 2: think he did.

454
00:24:03,880 --> 00:24:05,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe you know before Lenin was a big deal.

455
00:24:05,960 --> 00:24:07,600
Speaker 1: Who fucking knows, I don't know.

456
00:24:08,040 --> 00:24:10,800
Speaker 2: That's like the story. It's like, yeah, this was like before,

457
00:24:10,840 --> 00:24:12,719
Speaker 2: and I was like, yeah, I'm sure he said that,

458
00:24:13,119 --> 00:24:14,040
Speaker 2: but yeah, you know.

459
00:24:16,200 --> 00:24:19,880
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then that area had a huge anarchist stuff.

460
00:24:19,920 --> 00:24:23,720
Speaker 1: We talked about the bial Stock Jewish anarchists at some point,

461
00:24:24,080 --> 00:24:26,920
Speaker 1: probably when we were talking about Ukraine during the Russian Revolution.

462
00:24:28,560 --> 00:24:31,040
Speaker 1: Sokpakin he hangs out with the watchmakers. He's like, I'm

463
00:24:31,040 --> 00:24:33,119
Speaker 1: an anarchist now, and he becomes the primary theorist of

464
00:24:33,119 --> 00:24:36,960
Speaker 1: anarchist communism. And to be blunting up front about my biases,

465
00:24:37,040 --> 00:24:40,440
Speaker 1: that's Kripakin laid the foundation for what I believe politically,

466
00:24:40,440 --> 00:24:44,480
Speaker 1: I'm an anarchist. Communist is the closest label to what

467
00:24:44,560 --> 00:24:49,280
Speaker 1: I believe. And it's cool and fun to be a revolutionary.

468
00:24:49,600 --> 00:24:51,760
Speaker 1: But then when you're one of the tsar's top men, right,

469
00:24:51,920 --> 00:24:55,479
Speaker 1: you're like this prince right, and you don't exactly live

470
00:24:55,520 --> 00:25:00,159
Speaker 1: in a free speech area in Tsarist Russia. Not really, It

471
00:25:00,240 --> 00:25:02,600
Speaker 1: is really dangerous to be as radical as Kripakin is getting.

472
00:25:03,119 --> 00:25:06,640
Speaker 1: He joins a group called the Circle of Daikovsky, which

473
00:25:06,680 --> 00:25:10,800
Speaker 1: is actually a less radical group of nihilists. These are

474
00:25:10,840 --> 00:25:14,680
Speaker 1: not the like, let's blow up thozar nihilists. These are

475
00:25:14,680 --> 00:25:19,000
Speaker 1: the let's print band books and talk to workers right

476
00:25:19,160 --> 00:25:25,320
Speaker 1: group people. But that doesn't save you, right, No. And

477
00:25:25,400 --> 00:25:27,760
Speaker 1: so he spends like half of his time abroad and

478
00:25:27,760 --> 00:25:29,920
Speaker 1: in half of his time in Russia living in disguise,

479
00:25:29,960 --> 00:25:33,240
Speaker 1: and he disguises himself as a peasant organizer named Borodin.

480
00:25:33,800 --> 00:25:36,560
Speaker 1: And I love that his disguise is one a little

481
00:25:36,560 --> 00:25:41,240
Speaker 1: bit of like poverty LARPing, right, m he's slumming it, Yeah,

482
00:25:41,240 --> 00:25:45,920
Speaker 1: he's slumming it. But also he's like still doing something

483
00:25:45,960 --> 00:25:50,080
Speaker 1: that's wildly illegal and dangerous. Yeah, he's just not doing

484
00:25:50,119 --> 00:25:52,840
Speaker 1: it as Prince Peter Kikpakin. And I wonder whether it's

485
00:25:52,840 --> 00:25:54,919
Speaker 1: to hide from the fucking cops or whether it's he

486
00:25:54,920 --> 00:25:56,239
Speaker 1: doesn't want his friends to know.

487
00:25:57,160 --> 00:25:59,439
Speaker 2: Well, I mean probably a little both, right, But like

488
00:25:59,480 --> 00:26:01,600
Speaker 2: I guess you're you're probably a bigger target if you're

489
00:26:01,640 --> 00:26:04,000
Speaker 2: a prince, right, because you don't want to make the

490
00:26:04,040 --> 00:26:07,920
Speaker 2: nobility feel like they can go and join, yeah, totally,

491
00:26:08,200 --> 00:26:10,160
Speaker 2: the revolutionaries, because that would be really big. You don't

492
00:26:10,160 --> 00:26:13,760
Speaker 2: want to like a cross class solidarity like that. That'd

493
00:26:13,840 --> 00:26:16,760
Speaker 2: be fucking bad for Bizar, So then you know. But

494
00:26:16,800 --> 00:26:19,040
Speaker 2: then on the other hand, man, but I'm looking at

495
00:26:19,080 --> 00:26:21,720
Speaker 2: like this photo of him in eighteen seventy six.

496
00:26:21,840 --> 00:26:22,280
Speaker 1: Uh huh.

497
00:26:22,320 --> 00:26:24,640
Speaker 2: He looks like one of those optical illusions where it's

498
00:26:24,680 --> 00:26:26,760
Speaker 2: like when you flip it's like either a guy with

499
00:26:26,800 --> 00:26:28,720
Speaker 2: a really big beard or a guy with a really

500
00:26:28,800 --> 00:26:32,000
Speaker 2: big hair, depending on or that you flip it up.

501
00:26:32,240 --> 00:26:35,119
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, huh. He could have just like taken

502
00:26:35,200 --> 00:26:37,160
Speaker 2: his beard and put it on his head and he'd

503
00:26:37,200 --> 00:26:38,320
Speaker 2: be like a whole new guy.

504
00:26:38,480 --> 00:26:40,439
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally. Evelnd have that Russian hat. He is. This

505
00:26:40,520 --> 00:26:42,280
Speaker 1: man has a magnificent beard.

506
00:26:42,119 --> 00:26:44,840
Speaker 2: Throughout his life, like not just the Santa stage like,

507
00:26:44,880 --> 00:26:48,320
Speaker 2: it looks like he cultivated it. Yeah, when he was

508
00:26:48,400 --> 00:26:49,200
Speaker 2: younger as well.

509
00:26:49,320 --> 00:26:52,360
Speaker 1: Totally. And that photo that you're looking at I think

510
00:26:52,600 --> 00:26:57,080
Speaker 1: was taken by veteran of the pod Nadare, who was

511
00:26:57,600 --> 00:27:03,000
Speaker 1: the inventor of aerial photography and also air mail and

512
00:27:03,080 --> 00:27:06,040
Speaker 1: took a lot of the finals of radicals at the time.

513
00:27:06,840 --> 00:27:09,600
Speaker 1: So I wish there was a photo of him when

514
00:27:09,600 --> 00:27:11,479
Speaker 1: he was cosplaying as a poor person.

515
00:27:11,560 --> 00:27:16,280
Speaker 2: Though yeah, I can't, I say young, I don't. He

516
00:27:16,440 --> 00:27:19,879
Speaker 2: looks pretty princely and these young fuddy Yeah, to be

517
00:27:19,920 --> 00:27:23,320
Speaker 2: honest with you, Yeah, he's got a nutcracker outfit on,

518
00:27:23,920 --> 00:27:26,199
Speaker 2: so I don't think that one's it.

519
00:27:28,200 --> 00:27:33,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, he grew up to be the nutcracker basically, and

520
00:27:34,040 --> 00:27:37,840
Speaker 1: so he's doing all this crazy illegal shit. But he

521
00:27:37,960 --> 00:27:41,920
Speaker 1: wants to talk to the Geographical Society of Russia in

522
00:27:41,960 --> 00:27:44,600
Speaker 1: March eighteen seventy four. He's like, but I have to

523
00:27:44,640 --> 00:27:46,320
Speaker 1: give a talk. I have to go be part of

524
00:27:46,320 --> 00:27:50,919
Speaker 1: the scientific establishment, right, But all of his friends have

525
00:27:51,080 --> 00:27:54,760
Speaker 1: just been arrested. The crackdown is coming for his scene,

526
00:27:54,880 --> 00:27:56,800
Speaker 1: and he like thinks through his options and he's like,

527
00:27:56,800 --> 00:28:00,960
Speaker 1: all right, I could flee the country, or hear me out,

528
00:28:02,160 --> 00:28:04,960
Speaker 1: I could go give my science talk, right.

529
00:28:05,200 --> 00:28:08,080
Speaker 2: Yeah. It's really tough to make that decision.

530
00:28:08,240 --> 00:28:10,320
Speaker 1: So he decides to go give a science talk.

531
00:28:10,760 --> 00:28:14,720
Speaker 2: He already did his slides. I know exactly, he wrote

532
00:28:14,720 --> 00:28:15,520
Speaker 2: all his slides.

533
00:28:15,560 --> 00:28:18,560
Speaker 1: He's like, ah, yeah, what's a couple of years in prison.

534
00:28:19,359 --> 00:28:21,600
Speaker 1: And so he goes and he gives us talk about

535
00:28:21,960 --> 00:28:24,680
Speaker 1: the ice age and climate change and all of this stuff,

536
00:28:25,640 --> 00:28:31,680
Speaker 1: and then they come and arrest him. Yeah, and he

537
00:28:31,680 --> 00:28:34,639
Speaker 1: apparently like a friend of mine who studies grip hawking

538
00:28:35,320 --> 00:28:37,680
Speaker 1: much more closely than I do. I was talking about

539
00:28:37,680 --> 00:28:40,120
Speaker 1: how it's doing this episode, and my friend was like,

540
00:28:40,440 --> 00:28:42,040
Speaker 1: and then he gets home and he's burning all of

541
00:28:42,080 --> 00:28:44,240
Speaker 1: his papers because he's like, I gotta you know. He's like,

542
00:28:44,320 --> 00:28:46,480
Speaker 1: he knows he's about to go down, so he's like

543
00:28:46,480 --> 00:28:49,480
Speaker 1: burning all of his records and this is our secret police.

544
00:28:49,520 --> 00:28:53,320
Speaker 1: The third section arrest him and throw him into the

545
00:28:53,320 --> 00:28:57,960
Speaker 1: most notorious prison in the country, and he spends two

546
00:28:58,040 --> 00:29:01,400
Speaker 1: years in that prison. While he's in that prison, he

547
00:29:01,400 --> 00:29:03,640
Speaker 1: starts writing a two volume book. He's still kind of

548
00:29:04,040 --> 00:29:06,040
Speaker 1: I think this is where he still gets to kind

549
00:29:06,040 --> 00:29:07,400
Speaker 1: of be a prince a little bit. I mean, like

550
00:29:07,520 --> 00:29:09,360
Speaker 1: they have no intention of ever letting him see the

551
00:29:09,400 --> 00:29:12,720
Speaker 1: light of day again. But I think he's like allowed

552
00:29:12,720 --> 00:29:14,880
Speaker 1: to get his books and papers and stuff in and

553
00:29:15,000 --> 00:29:18,080
Speaker 1: like write, you know, And he starts writing was supposed

554
00:29:18,080 --> 00:29:20,800
Speaker 1: to be a two volume book. What the Trends National

555
00:29:20,920 --> 00:29:25,480
Speaker 1: Institute of Social Ecology says is, quote the first scientific

556
00:29:25,520 --> 00:29:28,760
Speaker 1: attempt to make a comprehensive case for natural climate change

557
00:29:28,760 --> 00:29:33,080
Speaker 1: as a prime mover in the history of civilization. And

558
00:29:33,120 --> 00:29:36,600
Speaker 1: so he's doing his geography and how it affects the

559
00:29:36,640 --> 00:29:40,520
Speaker 1: political world. The first volume of it his brother helps

560
00:29:40,560 --> 00:29:44,320
Speaker 1: him publish. The second volume gets confiscated. I think it

561
00:29:44,320 --> 00:29:49,160
Speaker 1: doesn't get published till nineteen ninety eight. Whoa, yeah, because

562
00:29:49,520 --> 00:29:52,000
Speaker 1: the Bolsheviks don't like this man either.

563
00:29:52,360 --> 00:29:57,000
Speaker 2: Yeah. I've made a few attempts to completely understand all

564
00:29:57,040 --> 00:29:58,920
Speaker 2: of the politics of the Russian Revolution.

565
00:29:59,200 --> 00:29:59,880
Speaker 1: Oh, it's rough.

566
00:30:00,320 --> 00:30:03,160
Speaker 2: I think the sort of popular notion, certainly, my notion

567
00:30:03,200 --> 00:30:06,480
Speaker 2: of it before I made an attempt to understand it

568
00:30:06,560 --> 00:30:08,280
Speaker 2: is that it's like, you know, you just have like

569
00:30:09,080 --> 00:30:11,920
Speaker 2: you have the uprising against the czar, and like the

570
00:30:11,960 --> 00:30:15,000
Speaker 2: uprising is this sort of unified front of you know, yeah,

571
00:30:15,080 --> 00:30:16,800
Speaker 2: people revolutioning.

572
00:30:17,200 --> 00:30:19,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, huh, and no, it's really no.

573
00:30:20,520 --> 00:30:23,960
Speaker 2: And then later Stalin kind of like takes it too

574
00:30:24,000 --> 00:30:26,440
Speaker 2: far and starts turning around on people and stuff. But

575
00:30:26,560 --> 00:30:29,040
Speaker 2: like when you actually like you look into it, it's like, no,

576
00:30:29,640 --> 00:30:33,520
Speaker 2: you had a lot of really gentle natured people at

577
00:30:33,520 --> 00:30:37,200
Speaker 2: the beginning of the revolution, like a lot of feminists

578
00:30:37,200 --> 00:30:40,320
Speaker 2: and anarchists who are like like, hey, I have this

579
00:30:40,440 --> 00:30:43,479
Speaker 2: really lovely vision for our country. And then it's like

580
00:30:44,240 --> 00:30:46,840
Speaker 2: if you were like the early politics of it were

581
00:30:46,920 --> 00:30:50,080
Speaker 2: really really brutal. Yeah it's really nasty.

582
00:30:50,640 --> 00:30:54,080
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, absolutely, it took me a very long time

583
00:30:54,120 --> 00:30:57,880
Speaker 1: to even get a basic sense of it. And and

584
00:30:57,920 --> 00:30:59,600
Speaker 1: I think part of it is that because we get told,

585
00:30:59,640 --> 00:31:01,360
Speaker 1: especially if we grew up in like Cold War the

586
00:31:01,440 --> 00:31:05,200
Speaker 1: United States, you just have like there's two political ideologies.

587
00:31:05,200 --> 00:31:08,840
Speaker 1: There's capitalism and communism, and capitalism is flawed and good,

588
00:31:09,000 --> 00:31:14,360
Speaker 1: and communism is idealistic and evil, you know, and like

589
00:31:15,240 --> 00:31:18,920
Speaker 1: it's just those are just unrelated to the actual truth.

590
00:31:19,200 --> 00:31:22,760
Speaker 1: Like and it it doesn't set you up to understand

591
00:31:22,800 --> 00:31:27,280
Speaker 1: what the SRS want versus the anarchists versus the Green Army,

592
00:31:27,640 --> 00:31:30,320
Speaker 1: versus the Bolsheviks versus the Mensheviks.

593
00:31:30,840 --> 00:31:34,880
Speaker 2: Like it was so complicated, like the basic thing that

594
00:31:34,960 --> 00:31:38,760
Speaker 2: I cannot remember all the different factions and everything that

595
00:31:38,800 --> 00:31:41,800
Speaker 2: they were called. But my understanding of it is like

596
00:31:42,880 --> 00:31:48,520
Speaker 2: it went awry because the politically savvy people had more

597
00:31:48,560 --> 00:31:53,920
Speaker 2: of a killer instinct and ended up being a lot

598
00:31:53,960 --> 00:31:56,080
Speaker 2: more successful in a lot of ways. But that's like.

599
00:31:56,720 --> 00:32:01,280
Speaker 1: Would say, the survival of the fittest, that's.

600
00:32:01,240 --> 00:32:05,080
Speaker 2: Rough, man, I mean, it's uh, yeah, I would say

601
00:32:05,120 --> 00:32:09,320
Speaker 2: that if you look at fitness in a self destructive way, Yeah,

602
00:32:09,320 --> 00:32:12,560
Speaker 2: I know exactly, Yeah, because like they did, because you'd

603
00:32:12,640 --> 00:32:14,800
Speaker 2: have them, like you know, you'd have the Bolsheviks, and

604
00:32:14,920 --> 00:32:17,680
Speaker 2: you know, they did really well and then but then

605
00:32:17,800 --> 00:32:19,800
Speaker 2: they got you know obviously.

606
00:32:19,480 --> 00:32:22,800
Speaker 1: Oh yeah the Bolsviks out of the Bolsheviks, yeah, all

607
00:32:22,840 --> 00:32:24,280
Speaker 1: the early Bolsheviks all died.

608
00:32:24,400 --> 00:32:27,600
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, it was not but yeah there were

609
00:32:27,920 --> 00:32:30,480
Speaker 2: I think that, like, yeah, because like I was when

610
00:32:30,520 --> 00:32:34,520
Speaker 2: I was really trying to learn about it, it's like, yeah,

611
00:32:34,560 --> 00:32:37,120
Speaker 2: there were a lot of it's it's it's a lot

612
00:32:37,240 --> 00:32:40,000
Speaker 2: sadder like when when you go into it, because it's

613
00:32:40,000 --> 00:32:43,680
Speaker 2: like there's like a lot of really nice there are

614
00:32:43,680 --> 00:32:45,680
Speaker 2: a lot of really nice people, I know at the

615
00:32:45,720 --> 00:32:47,400
Speaker 2: beginning who got very killed.

616
00:32:47,760 --> 00:32:50,080
Speaker 1: I know, there's this story I read once about how

617
00:32:50,120 --> 00:32:54,440
Speaker 1: there was this this anarchist unit fighting against the capitalists

618
00:32:54,480 --> 00:32:56,800
Speaker 1: and the revolution and they named themselves after a dead

619
00:32:56,840 --> 00:32:59,360
Speaker 1: Bolshevik comrade, like one of their friends had died, so

620
00:32:59,400 --> 00:33:02,520
Speaker 1: they named their unit after him. And then in the

621
00:33:02,520 --> 00:33:04,400
Speaker 1: middle of the night, the Bolsheviks came into the camp

622
00:33:04,400 --> 00:33:05,760
Speaker 1: and caught all our throats.

623
00:33:05,960 --> 00:33:11,200
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, and you're just like, oh, yeah, it's

624
00:33:12,600 --> 00:33:15,000
Speaker 3: so like if you're a modern day leftist and you're

625
00:33:15,040 --> 00:33:18,440
Speaker 3: annoyed at leftist discourse where we're always like attacking each other.

626
00:33:18,560 --> 00:33:20,480
Speaker 2: At least it's not that.

627
00:33:21,000 --> 00:33:23,400
Speaker 1: It's not the Russian Civil War, right.

628
00:33:24,200 --> 00:33:24,320
Speaker 2: Uh.

629
00:33:25,120 --> 00:33:27,640
Speaker 1: Oh, Kropawkin is going to live to see some of

630
00:33:28,040 --> 00:33:30,520
Speaker 1: and it is going to break his heart. Spoiler for

631
00:33:30,520 --> 00:33:32,440
Speaker 1: the end of this episode. He does get to play

632
00:33:32,440 --> 00:33:37,160
Speaker 1: piano a lot at the end of his life. Yeah.

633
00:33:37,440 --> 00:33:43,160
Speaker 1: So he's in prison. And while he's in prison, what

634
00:33:43,240 --> 00:33:45,320
Speaker 1: does he have to spend his time with? But ads

635
00:33:45,680 --> 00:33:49,760
Speaker 1: just constantly blaring over loud no, no, I don't know

636
00:33:49,760 --> 00:33:51,920
Speaker 1: how they would get there. Probably in like some of

637
00:33:51,920 --> 00:33:53,280
Speaker 1: the newspapers.

638
00:33:52,680 --> 00:33:55,520
Speaker 2: Pigeon Oh yeah, pigeon pigeon ads.

639
00:33:55,280 --> 00:33:58,400
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally. Like some of the pigeons bring you news,

640
00:33:58,440 --> 00:33:59,920
Speaker 1: and some of the pigeons.

641
00:33:59,480 --> 00:34:03,880
Speaker 2: Pay you as spam pigeons with like little like like

642
00:34:04,120 --> 00:34:09,400
Speaker 2: do you want more commotion in the bedroom spam pigeons?

643
00:34:09,520 --> 00:34:14,040
Speaker 1: Uh huh. And we are brought to you by spam pigeons,

644
00:34:15,880 --> 00:34:20,600
Speaker 1: and we're back. So in eighteen seventy six, in the

645
00:34:20,640 --> 00:34:22,120
Speaker 1: story that I thought was going to be central to

646
00:34:22,120 --> 00:34:24,400
Speaker 1: this and then instead I'm going to collapse into one sentence.

647
00:34:24,480 --> 00:34:27,360
Speaker 1: With the help of his comrades, he escaped prison and escaped.

648
00:34:27,120 --> 00:34:31,799
Speaker 2: Russian say, and he like burst through a picture of

649
00:34:32,080 --> 00:34:37,759
Speaker 2: Rita Hayworth. Yeah, and then another picture of like a glacier.

650
00:34:38,040 --> 00:34:42,279
Speaker 1: Yeah, and his friends get him out of prison. He

651
00:34:42,280 --> 00:34:44,160
Speaker 1: gets out of Russia, he makes it to Europe. He's

652
00:34:44,160 --> 00:34:46,080
Speaker 1: imprisoned in France in eighteen eighty three.

653
00:34:46,960 --> 00:34:48,280
Speaker 2: Yep, what do he do there?

654
00:34:48,800 --> 00:34:51,640
Speaker 1: I think that in the post, this is a part

655
00:34:51,680 --> 00:34:53,640
Speaker 1: that like, literally right before the wire, I was like, oh,

656
00:34:53,680 --> 00:34:55,000
Speaker 1: I should look up what he was arrested for in

657
00:34:55,040 --> 00:34:57,040
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty three, and I didn't find it in time,

658
00:34:57,360 --> 00:35:01,359
Speaker 1: but I do know that post the Harris Commune, there

659
00:35:01,400 --> 00:35:05,239
Speaker 1: was this massive backlash for about fifteen years, and so

660
00:35:05,440 --> 00:35:09,120
Speaker 1: being a leftist in France was actually really hard during

661
00:35:09,120 --> 00:35:13,359
Speaker 1: that period. Right, but he is going to get let

662
00:35:13,440 --> 00:35:16,080
Speaker 1: out because of an international He doesn't have to escape

663
00:35:16,239 --> 00:35:18,200
Speaker 1: instead the pressure campaign from like.

664
00:35:18,520 --> 00:35:20,919
Speaker 2: Right, he just choose his way through the bars because

665
00:35:20,960 --> 00:35:22,000
Speaker 2: they're made out a bag at.

666
00:35:22,320 --> 00:35:24,879
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly. That is the thing that people don't

667
00:35:24,880 --> 00:35:27,040
Speaker 1: tell you about French prison. The problem is that the

668
00:35:27,080 --> 00:35:29,759
Speaker 1: bagettes are really stale, so no one wants to eat them.

669
00:35:30,000 --> 00:35:31,920
Speaker 2: It's over a day old, so you can't.

670
00:35:32,000 --> 00:35:33,759
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, why would you eat a dale?

671
00:35:34,040 --> 00:35:36,000
Speaker 2: No French person would be hot dead.

672
00:35:36,120 --> 00:35:40,640
Speaker 1: Yeah, but he's Russian and he's used to horrible ways

673
00:35:40,680 --> 00:35:43,280
Speaker 1: of now he grew up feasting. He absolutely grew up feasting,

674
00:35:43,719 --> 00:35:46,920
Speaker 1: but by this point he's actually been He doesn't exactly

675
00:35:46,960 --> 00:35:48,880
Speaker 1: have access to his family money at this point.

676
00:35:49,480 --> 00:35:51,239
Speaker 2: Yeah, it didn't seem that way.

677
00:35:52,000 --> 00:35:54,800
Speaker 1: And while he's in prison this time. Last time he

678
00:35:54,840 --> 00:35:57,399
Speaker 1: wrote about geology while he was in prison, this time

679
00:35:57,440 --> 00:36:01,399
Speaker 1: he's going to start writing about evolution because while he'd

680
00:36:01,400 --> 00:36:04,920
Speaker 1: been off studying geology, he'd taken an interest in zoology

681
00:36:04,960 --> 00:36:08,800
Speaker 1: and anthropology. And this was in many ways his attempts

682
00:36:08,840 --> 00:36:12,400
Speaker 1: to prove Darwin correct. And this is what radicalized him

683
00:36:12,400 --> 00:36:15,200
Speaker 1: in his youth, because he had gone out looking for

684
00:36:15,280 --> 00:36:19,000
Speaker 1: evidence of animals competing for resources. But what he found,

685
00:36:19,360 --> 00:36:23,560
Speaker 1: literally to his disappointment, was that instead animals were helping

686
00:36:23,600 --> 00:36:28,799
Speaker 1: each other. Within species, struggle was collective more often than

687
00:36:28,800 --> 00:36:33,080
Speaker 1: it was individual. He wrote, quote, we saw plenty of

688
00:36:33,160 --> 00:36:37,800
Speaker 1: adaptations for struggling, very often in common against the adverse

689
00:36:37,840 --> 00:36:42,200
Speaker 1: circumstances of climate, or against various enemies. But facts of

690
00:36:42,239 --> 00:36:45,479
Speaker 1: real competition and struggle between higher animals of the same

691
00:36:45,560 --> 00:36:49,920
Speaker 1: species came very seldom under my notice, although I eagerly

692
00:36:50,000 --> 00:36:54,600
Speaker 1: searched for them. And so he thinks at first, he's like, well,

693
00:36:54,600 --> 00:36:59,920
Speaker 1: I'm in Siberia, right, this isn't the tropical areas that

694
00:37:00,239 --> 00:37:03,720
Speaker 1: Darwin was looking at that are teeming with life. Maybe

695
00:37:03,719 --> 00:37:06,480
Speaker 1: this is because of where I am. Maybe cooperation is

696
00:37:06,560 --> 00:37:09,879
Speaker 1: only a rule in the frozen north. But the more

697
00:37:09,920 --> 00:37:12,120
Speaker 1: he looked, the more he saw animals of the same

698
00:37:12,160 --> 00:37:15,719
Speaker 1: species helping one another all over the world. He's got

699
00:37:15,719 --> 00:37:18,759
Speaker 1: some downtime in prison because he's in prison, and he

700
00:37:18,760 --> 00:37:22,359
Speaker 1: starts focusing on this stuff, and he is pissed as

701
00:37:22,400 --> 00:37:26,560
Speaker 1: hell at two different bad interpretations of evolution. He's pissed

702
00:37:26,600 --> 00:37:29,160
Speaker 1: at hell at the survival of the fittest social Darwinists

703
00:37:29,200 --> 00:37:32,680
Speaker 1: who are using Darwinism to promote capitalism and cutthroat politics

704
00:37:32,680 --> 00:37:33,400
Speaker 1: and slavery.

705
00:37:34,239 --> 00:37:36,759
Speaker 2: Right, that's essentially that, like in nature, you can be

706
00:37:36,800 --> 00:37:38,279
Speaker 2: a dick, so why can't we.

707
00:37:38,480 --> 00:37:41,719
Speaker 1: Right totally, which is like, oh nature, we can kill

708
00:37:41,760 --> 00:37:43,120
Speaker 1: you for being a dick too. I don't know where

709
00:37:43,120 --> 00:37:44,279
Speaker 1: you're going with this, you know.

710
00:37:44,480 --> 00:37:47,040
Speaker 2: Yeah, are you eating your placenta? Like what are you doing?

711
00:37:47,239 --> 00:37:49,360
Speaker 1: Yeah? Totally. Yeah.

712
00:37:49,760 --> 00:37:51,800
Speaker 2: Also, by the way, don't eat your placenta.

713
00:37:51,920 --> 00:37:54,239
Speaker 1: Oh okay, I know some hippies, so I've met people

714
00:37:54,239 --> 00:37:54,799
Speaker 1: who've done this.

715
00:37:55,760 --> 00:37:59,160
Speaker 2: If you do, be careful don't just eat it without

716
00:37:59,200 --> 00:37:59,960
Speaker 2: knowing what you're doing.

717
00:38:00,040 --> 00:38:03,239
Speaker 1: Okay, fair enough, I don't know anything about it. I

718
00:38:03,280 --> 00:38:07,000
Speaker 1: will take your word for it. So he's mad at that,

719
00:38:07,080 --> 00:38:10,719
Speaker 1: he's mad to social Darwinists, but he's also mad at Huxley,

720
00:38:11,120 --> 00:38:13,640
Speaker 1: Darwin's bulldog, the guy who was like, we have to

721
00:38:13,640 --> 00:38:16,040
Speaker 1: become civilized to deny our animal nature.

722
00:38:16,840 --> 00:38:17,040
Speaker 2: Right.

723
00:38:18,360 --> 00:38:21,560
Speaker 1: So when international pressure forces France to freak er pokin,

724
00:38:21,840 --> 00:38:24,800
Speaker 1: he moves to England and he starts writing about evolution,

725
00:38:25,000 --> 00:38:28,000
Speaker 1: and he specifically starts writing about mutual aid in response

726
00:38:28,040 --> 00:38:29,080
Speaker 1: to Huxley.

727
00:38:29,400 --> 00:38:32,200
Speaker 2: Right, And they're like, you got loistned for that, and

728
00:38:32,239 --> 00:38:34,400
Speaker 2: then they arrest him again because he's not got a

729
00:38:34,440 --> 00:38:36,240
Speaker 2: license for writing about evolution.

730
00:38:37,960 --> 00:38:41,239
Speaker 1: He spends his entire life both talking to like tens

731
00:38:41,280 --> 00:38:43,520
Speaker 1: and hundreds of thousands of people at a time and

732
00:38:43,640 --> 00:38:45,320
Speaker 1: fleeing countries from the police.

733
00:38:45,880 --> 00:38:47,480
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, like that's awesome.

734
00:38:48,520 --> 00:38:52,160
Speaker 1: I struggle to find a science guy who's more like

735
00:38:52,560 --> 00:38:54,120
Speaker 1: adventure man, you know.

736
00:38:54,320 --> 00:38:54,560
Speaker 2: Right.

737
00:38:56,040 --> 00:38:58,480
Speaker 1: He even started off as like almost the right wing

738
00:38:58,520 --> 00:39:01,279
Speaker 1: adventure man that everyone dreams of. He was a rich

739
00:39:01,360 --> 00:39:04,000
Speaker 1: guy who went around with just a horse and ten

740
00:39:04,080 --> 00:39:05,839
Speaker 1: of his closest friends who all have to do whatever

741
00:39:05,840 --> 00:39:12,080
Speaker 1: he says, and explored the world. You know, yeah, yeah,

742
00:39:12,120 --> 00:39:14,959
Speaker 1: And so he writes about how white tailed eagles cry

743
00:39:15,000 --> 00:39:17,560
Speaker 1: out to one another when they see food. He writes

744
00:39:17,600 --> 00:39:21,840
Speaker 1: about how pelicans hunt together, how penguins stick together for warmth,

745
00:39:22,200 --> 00:39:24,640
Speaker 1: how crabs turn each other back over when they get

746
00:39:24,640 --> 00:39:28,880
Speaker 1: turned upside down, which I think Darwin's grandfather also wrote about.

747
00:39:29,840 --> 00:39:33,359
Speaker 1: But he writes about how the lower animals help each

748
00:39:33,360 --> 00:39:36,359
Speaker 1: other instinctively and the higher animals use reason to care

749
00:39:36,440 --> 00:39:40,600
Speaker 1: for each other. He writes extensively about burying beetles, which

750
00:39:40,640 --> 00:39:42,640
Speaker 1: is a type of beetle that I'd never heard of

751
00:39:42,960 --> 00:39:47,480
Speaker 1: that burries dead matter. And the reason he liked these ones,

752
00:39:47,480 --> 00:39:50,440
Speaker 1: and the reason I like these ones because they live alone,

753
00:39:50,480 --> 00:39:54,200
Speaker 1: this is not a social animal. But when they get

754
00:39:54,400 --> 00:39:56,800
Speaker 1: but when they have to bury a really large chunk

755
00:39:56,800 --> 00:40:00,319
Speaker 1: of a dead meat thing for their larvae, they get

756
00:40:00,320 --> 00:40:05,560
Speaker 1: together with their friends. Kripawkin wrote quote. As a rule,

757
00:40:05,719 --> 00:40:08,200
Speaker 1: they live in isolated life. But when one of them

758
00:40:08,239 --> 00:40:10,360
Speaker 1: has discovered a corpse of a mouse or a bird

759
00:40:10,560 --> 00:40:13,480
Speaker 1: which it could hardly manage to bury itself, it calls four,

760
00:40:13,600 --> 00:40:16,279
Speaker 1: six or ten other beetles to perform the operation with

761
00:40:16,400 --> 00:40:17,520
Speaker 1: united efforts.

762
00:40:18,400 --> 00:40:24,759
Speaker 2: You actually see this, like in animals that are often solitary,

763
00:40:24,920 --> 00:40:28,319
Speaker 2: but then they are in some circumstance they have to

764
00:40:28,360 --> 00:40:31,319
Speaker 2: do stuff together and they can kind of work it out.

765
00:40:31,360 --> 00:40:35,240
Speaker 2: Like octopuses are usually very solitary, but then when they're

766
00:40:35,280 --> 00:40:40,000
Speaker 2: sometimes an area where it's like really richly populated by nutrients,

767
00:40:40,000 --> 00:40:42,560
Speaker 2: like they might hang out and they still are like

768
00:40:42,760 --> 00:40:44,839
Speaker 2: kind of like this is what's funny is they're still

769
00:40:44,880 --> 00:40:47,640
Speaker 2: kind of loners. Like they're not like suddenly like hugging

770
00:40:47,680 --> 00:40:51,560
Speaker 2: each other and cuddling, and but they're like tolerating each

771
00:40:51,560 --> 00:40:55,520
Speaker 2: other fine, and you know, trying to like be sort

772
00:40:55,560 --> 00:40:58,480
Speaker 2: of neighborly with like sometimes they throw things at each

773
00:40:58,480 --> 00:41:01,600
Speaker 2: other when they're annoyed, but other than that, they're like, yeah,

774
00:41:01,640 --> 00:41:03,399
Speaker 2: I mean we can just like hang out together because

775
00:41:03,400 --> 00:41:05,200
Speaker 2: this is a good area. Like if you want to

776
00:41:05,239 --> 00:41:08,400
Speaker 2: get really tiny, there's this really weird I mean this

777
00:41:08,800 --> 00:41:13,280
Speaker 2: involves a lot of different kind of like evolutionary biology weirdness.

778
00:41:13,520 --> 00:41:16,400
Speaker 2: There are certain slime molds that can like basically there

779
00:41:16,400 --> 00:41:21,800
Speaker 2: are these unicellular organisms, but then like they can congeal

780
00:41:21,920 --> 00:41:27,000
Speaker 2: together and then form like a slug, and that slug

781
00:41:27,040 --> 00:41:31,719
Speaker 2: then who will develop like a stock that has like

782
00:41:31,760 --> 00:41:35,560
Speaker 2: a fruiting body that releases like some of these like

783
00:41:36,000 --> 00:41:40,879
Speaker 2: spores essentially, and it's like these are unicellular organisms. They're

784
00:41:40,920 --> 00:41:44,319
Speaker 2: not thinking like this isn't really a moral kind of

785
00:41:44,320 --> 00:41:47,759
Speaker 2: thing because it's like it's also not necessarily like they

786
00:41:47,760 --> 00:41:50,640
Speaker 2: don't necessarily have a chance to go off and find

787
00:41:51,360 --> 00:41:55,759
Speaker 2: a better environment or colonize somewhere else unless they do this.

788
00:41:56,360 --> 00:41:58,960
Speaker 2: The ones at the top of the fruiting body are

789
00:41:59,120 --> 00:42:02,719
Speaker 2: the winners essentially, and it's more or less luck that

790
00:42:02,800 --> 00:42:06,480
Speaker 2: they get there. This is not really a case of like, uh, yeah,

791
00:42:06,480 --> 00:42:09,680
Speaker 2: they got there because they just rock the hardest necessarily,

792
00:42:10,080 --> 00:42:12,040
Speaker 2: like a lot of it's luck. And then the ones

793
00:42:12,080 --> 00:42:13,920
Speaker 2: that are part of the stock actually like die off.

794
00:42:13,920 --> 00:42:16,040
Speaker 2: They don't get to go off and do this thing.

795
00:42:16,600 --> 00:42:22,040
Speaker 2: But it still is a successful strategy because some of

796
00:42:22,040 --> 00:42:26,440
Speaker 2: the ones who do this and have this behavior you

797
00:42:26,480 --> 00:42:30,800
Speaker 2: know in their genetic library, do go off and survive.

798
00:42:31,000 --> 00:42:33,719
Speaker 2: And so like I think that it's like it's not

799
00:42:33,800 --> 00:42:38,600
Speaker 2: always something where it's like animals doing this because they're empathetic, right,

800
00:42:39,120 --> 00:42:43,560
Speaker 2: unicellular organism doesn't really have empathy, like not take I

801
00:42:43,600 --> 00:42:47,360
Speaker 2: don't think they have empathy, but it's doing it because

802
00:42:47,360 --> 00:42:51,600
Speaker 2: there is a successful strategy, you could still say like, oh, well,

803
00:42:51,640 --> 00:42:55,400
Speaker 2: it's still selfish because it's still genetic information trying to

804
00:42:55,440 --> 00:42:58,080
Speaker 2: propagate itself. It's like, yeah, yeah, but when you have

805
00:42:58,160 --> 00:43:02,960
Speaker 2: a complex system of that, you have altruistic behaviors, either

806
00:43:03,560 --> 00:43:08,799
Speaker 2: consciously or done by unicellular organisms that don't have morality.

807
00:43:09,120 --> 00:43:11,359
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm really really excited that you were the guests

808
00:43:11,360 --> 00:43:15,160
Speaker 1: for this episode. I already was. But this is exactly

809
00:43:15,760 --> 00:43:19,399
Speaker 1: Kropowkin's point on a bunch of these levels, including when

810
00:43:19,400 --> 00:43:21,440
Speaker 1: I was saying that he theorized stuff that couldn't be

811
00:43:21,480 --> 00:43:24,359
Speaker 1: proven yet. He specifically was like, I bet this will

812
00:43:24,400 --> 00:43:27,160
Speaker 1: even be true for microbial life once we can actually

813
00:43:27,200 --> 00:43:30,640
Speaker 1: study microbial life. And now we've studied it and it's true.

814
00:43:30,760 --> 00:43:34,759
Speaker 1: And also this idea that like because if you take

815
00:43:34,800 --> 00:43:37,719
Speaker 1: a certain Darwinistic approach, you're like, the only winner is

816
00:43:37,760 --> 00:43:44,000
Speaker 1: the one that fox right. But yeah, solidarity, there's so

817
00:43:44,120 --> 00:43:49,200
Speaker 1: many examples in the natural world where participating in a

818
00:43:50,200 --> 00:43:53,320
Speaker 1: participating in a thing that's even maybe dangerous to yourself

819
00:43:53,760 --> 00:43:57,040
Speaker 1: is still an overall winning strategy for the larger community.

820
00:43:57,360 --> 00:44:01,080
Speaker 1: And so therefore, like you said, things that have an

821
00:44:01,120 --> 00:44:07,600
Speaker 1: instinct towards community propagate even if the individual doesn't. Right.

822
00:44:07,920 --> 00:44:11,600
Speaker 2: There is like a huge debate in evolutionary biology about

823
00:44:12,000 --> 00:44:15,520
Speaker 2: group selection, and like there's a lot of back and forth,

824
00:44:15,600 --> 00:44:18,200
Speaker 2: Like I mean, like, for instance, EO. Wilson like going

825
00:44:18,280 --> 00:44:19,880
Speaker 2: back on his old stuff, and so I think, no,

826
00:44:19,960 --> 00:44:22,560
Speaker 2: I was actually wrong about this. I don't think that

827
00:44:22,640 --> 00:44:25,040
Speaker 2: group selection is a thing. But I'm not like an

828
00:44:25,040 --> 00:44:29,480
Speaker 2: expert on this whole debate. Like, but from my understanding

829
00:44:29,760 --> 00:44:33,279
Speaker 2: is that what we can't deny is that you have

830
00:44:34,040 --> 00:44:37,640
Speaker 2: social groups and animals that act altruistically. That's not like

831
00:44:37,960 --> 00:44:41,600
Speaker 2: a question, right, The question is like is evolution acting

832
00:44:42,200 --> 00:44:44,520
Speaker 2: on the individual or on the group level. There's a

833
00:44:44,560 --> 00:44:47,879
Speaker 2: lot of like kind of debate about that. I think

834
00:44:47,920 --> 00:44:52,000
Speaker 2: that it's really important to note that you can have

835
00:44:52,120 --> 00:44:55,200
Speaker 2: like a selfish gene right, Like the idea that that

836
00:44:55,320 --> 00:44:58,960
Speaker 2: like your genes or your your genetics, like there's like

837
00:44:59,040 --> 00:45:02,600
Speaker 2: selfish pressures for that to propagate. There's not necessarily there

838
00:45:02,640 --> 00:45:06,240
Speaker 2: couldn't be such a thing as like a self sacrificing

839
00:45:06,800 --> 00:45:09,680
Speaker 2: genetic composition because that would die out. But the problem

840
00:45:09,760 --> 00:45:14,160
Speaker 2: with that is that once you incorporate group dynamics, right,

841
00:45:14,200 --> 00:45:16,839
Speaker 2: it makes things a lot more complicated, so that when

842
00:45:16,920 --> 00:45:21,799
Speaker 2: you do have altruistic behavior in a group, those behaviors

843
00:45:21,800 --> 00:45:25,200
Speaker 2: in general can be rewarded and can get passed on.

844
00:45:25,360 --> 00:45:27,759
Speaker 2: So there's like a lot of debate about at sort

845
00:45:27,760 --> 00:45:32,600
Speaker 2: of like which level the evolution is like influencing, right,

846
00:45:32,680 --> 00:45:36,799
Speaker 2: But it's not really a question that you do end

847
00:45:36,880 --> 00:45:43,520
Speaker 2: up having altruistic behaviors, either consciously altruistic or quote unquote altruistic,

848
00:45:43,520 --> 00:45:45,840
Speaker 2: which is like when it's a slime mold and it

849
00:45:45,840 --> 00:45:47,000
Speaker 2: doesn't know what it's doing.

850
00:45:47,360 --> 00:45:49,400
Speaker 1: But that's like, I mean, this is something that I

851
00:45:49,400 --> 00:45:52,960
Speaker 1: remember really consciously thinking about because I came from more

852
00:45:53,000 --> 00:45:56,319
Speaker 1: of a like self interested perspective when I was younger,

853
00:45:56,360 --> 00:45:59,040
Speaker 1: which I'm not really proud of, but like the appeal

854
00:45:59,360 --> 00:46:02,640
Speaker 1: of something like socialism or communism or anarchism or whatever

855
00:46:02,680 --> 00:46:07,000
Speaker 1: for me has always been like, well, actually, by participating

856
00:46:07,120 --> 00:46:11,200
Speaker 1: in a group that believes in solidarity, other people have

857
00:46:11,280 --> 00:46:15,320
Speaker 1: my back. And so even though in the most individual moment,

858
00:46:15,719 --> 00:46:19,640
Speaker 1: in the most individual moment, watching my own skin feels

859
00:46:19,680 --> 00:46:22,040
Speaker 1: like the most selfish thing to do, that's like a

860
00:46:22,160 --> 00:46:25,240
Speaker 1: lower version of it. Whereas I when I actually want,

861
00:46:25,920 --> 00:46:28,680
Speaker 1: what I want is to be happy and taken care

862
00:46:28,719 --> 00:46:30,560
Speaker 1: of and stuff like that, right, and have other people

863
00:46:30,600 --> 00:46:32,799
Speaker 1: on my back, and that means that I have to

864
00:46:32,840 --> 00:46:35,440
Speaker 1: participate in a culture where we all have each other's backs.

865
00:46:35,840 --> 00:46:38,920
Speaker 1: And so it's counterintuitive, but I believe it and I

866
00:46:38,920 --> 00:46:42,600
Speaker 1: think it's real that the best way for me to

867
00:46:42,640 --> 00:46:45,200
Speaker 1: live a full and free and happy and healthy life

868
00:46:46,200 --> 00:46:50,600
Speaker 1: is to care for other people. And not even because

869
00:46:50,600 --> 00:46:53,000
Speaker 1: one for one they'll take care of me, but rather

870
00:46:53,160 --> 00:46:56,319
Speaker 1: by participating in a society that does that, by all

871
00:46:56,360 --> 00:46:59,520
Speaker 1: of us having the instinct to send out slime mold spores,

872
00:47:01,000 --> 00:47:02,520
Speaker 1: I might get to be one of those spores, whereas

873
00:47:02,560 --> 00:47:03,680
Speaker 1: otherwise I just like straight.

874
00:47:03,520 --> 00:47:06,560
Speaker 2: Up won't right exactly, Yeah, And I.

875
00:47:06,560 --> 00:47:08,880
Speaker 1: Don't know, I'm really excited about it. And so what

876
00:47:08,920 --> 00:47:11,480
Speaker 1: Kapakkin does and Darwin did this too, and they're just

877
00:47:11,520 --> 00:47:16,719
Speaker 1: actually changing which emphasis where they emphasize things. But Kapakin

878
00:47:16,760 --> 00:47:19,560
Speaker 1: is saying, there's two kinds of struggle in the natural world.

879
00:47:20,000 --> 00:47:23,759
Speaker 1: There's a struggle of one against another for limited resources,

880
00:47:24,280 --> 00:47:27,759
Speaker 1: like the you know, the two animals fighting to the

881
00:47:27,800 --> 00:47:29,440
Speaker 1: death in the woods or whatever, right.

882
00:47:29,360 --> 00:47:31,200
Speaker 2: Right, which certainly happened.

883
00:47:30,880 --> 00:47:35,319
Speaker 1: Absolutely, and that's like real and it causes competition, but

884
00:47:35,360 --> 00:47:37,880
Speaker 1: it is not the defining form of struggle. According to Kopotkin,

885
00:47:38,360 --> 00:47:41,560
Speaker 1: then there is the struggle against the harsh environment, which

886
00:47:41,640 --> 00:47:45,799
Speaker 1: causes cooperation. And this actually gets it a thing that

887
00:47:45,840 --> 00:47:48,640
Speaker 1: you also said. He's really specific that this isn't a

888
00:47:48,719 --> 00:47:53,600
Speaker 1: moral decision, right, this is actually like a he's not

889
00:47:53,719 --> 00:47:55,600
Speaker 1: being like, ah, yes, the best thing for evolution is

890
00:47:55,640 --> 00:47:58,640
Speaker 1: if we're all saintly, you know. He's like, no, it

891
00:47:58,800 --> 00:48:01,840
Speaker 1: just this is actually the strategy. This is the fittest.

892
00:48:01,920 --> 00:48:04,480
Speaker 1: To be fittest is to be participating in this, you know.

893
00:48:05,040 --> 00:48:06,960
Speaker 1: And I love it because I'm like, I'm like that beetle.

894
00:48:07,080 --> 00:48:09,000
Speaker 1: I'm like, no, I want to be left the fuck alone.

895
00:48:09,080 --> 00:48:12,560
Speaker 1: But sometimes you gotta bury a body, I mean, take

896
00:48:12,600 --> 00:48:12,960
Speaker 1: care of.

897
00:48:12,960 --> 00:48:17,720
Speaker 2: Something, and right, gotta feed your babies.

898
00:48:17,360 --> 00:48:21,800
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, which is the actual purpose of burying that body? Yes,

899
00:48:22,360 --> 00:48:26,120
Speaker 1: And he's writing in response to Huxley, and he writes

900
00:48:26,160 --> 00:48:28,839
Speaker 1: that we shouldn't go against our nature to build these

901
00:48:28,880 --> 00:48:33,480
Speaker 1: civilized structures and these power structures, you know, which Huxley

902
00:48:33,480 --> 00:48:35,640
Speaker 1: believes we have to live in tension with ourselves and

903
00:48:35,680 --> 00:48:39,520
Speaker 1: build these things. Right. Instead, our goal is to nurture

904
00:48:39,560 --> 00:48:42,200
Speaker 1: the part of ourselves that naturally rely on mutual aid

905
00:48:42,239 --> 00:48:45,080
Speaker 1: He's not saying that there isn't competition. He's not saying

906
00:48:45,080 --> 00:48:47,920
Speaker 1: that humans are just naturally good. He's saying that humans

907
00:48:47,920 --> 00:48:50,960
Speaker 1: are naturally good and bad, and we can instead build

908
00:48:51,000 --> 00:48:56,840
Speaker 1: social structures that foster and nurture the better parts of ourselves.

909
00:48:57,840 --> 00:49:01,479
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, especially like there are of animals where

910
00:49:01,520 --> 00:49:05,239
Speaker 2: you don't see this sort of like collectivism or mutualism.

911
00:49:05,719 --> 00:49:09,800
Speaker 2: It's war just kind of frank competition. But like I

912
00:49:09,840 --> 00:49:13,160
Speaker 2: would say, particularly humans, and I mean there's many many

913
00:49:13,160 --> 00:49:16,239
Speaker 2: other animals like this as well, like across philums. So,

914
00:49:16,960 --> 00:49:20,920
Speaker 2: but humans like we are I think there was like

915
00:49:21,280 --> 00:49:26,880
Speaker 2: our evolutionary history does seem to favor the model of

916
00:49:28,000 --> 00:49:31,520
Speaker 2: collective animal behavior, where it's like, yeah, we're cooperative, that's how,

917
00:49:32,440 --> 00:49:36,520
Speaker 2: that's how it works, like because we're not necessarily when

918
00:49:36,520 --> 00:49:40,840
Speaker 2: you have a social animal, you can have really weird

919
00:49:40,920 --> 00:49:44,520
Speaker 2: hierarchical structures, like you look at ants. On one hand,

920
00:49:44,560 --> 00:49:46,680
Speaker 2: you can look at that as like it's like a

921
00:49:46,800 --> 00:49:48,239
Speaker 2: royal hierarchy the queen.

922
00:49:48,360 --> 00:49:50,319
Speaker 1: The queen has the best life and everyone else's life

923
00:49:50,400 --> 00:49:52,319
Speaker 1: sucks or whatever it's I.

924
00:49:52,280 --> 00:49:55,000
Speaker 2: Mean, when you're actually looking at quality of life, I

925
00:49:55,000 --> 00:49:58,240
Speaker 2: wouldn't necessarily say that's true in an ant colony because

926
00:49:58,239 --> 00:50:03,600
Speaker 2: the queen is like this breeding factory for young. It's

927
00:50:03,680 --> 00:50:08,080
Speaker 2: not not necessarily easy, but the ants aren't. They aren't

928
00:50:08,160 --> 00:50:12,839
Speaker 2: really thinking at all about their lifestyle. It's it's when

929
00:50:12,880 --> 00:50:16,120
Speaker 2: you look into ant genetics it gets really weird because

930
00:50:16,160 --> 00:50:21,600
Speaker 2: you're basically the way their sort of royal society works

931
00:50:21,880 --> 00:50:26,920
Speaker 2: is through a lot of weird genetic shenanigans where you're

932
00:50:27,480 --> 00:50:30,759
Speaker 2: basically pumping out things that are we'll say, like so

933
00:50:30,880 --> 00:50:33,640
Speaker 2: haploid and diploid is. I don't want to get too

934
00:50:33,680 --> 00:50:35,880
Speaker 2: much into the weeds on this, but it's like you

935
00:50:35,920 --> 00:50:38,840
Speaker 2: can like basically pass on one set of genes or

936
00:50:38,840 --> 00:50:42,200
Speaker 2: two set of genes, and through some of these shenanigans

937
00:50:42,200 --> 00:50:48,360
Speaker 2: you end up creating a like genetic relatedness that makes

938
00:50:48,880 --> 00:50:52,719
Speaker 2: it like sustainable. So like when you look at like

939
00:50:52,760 --> 00:50:57,560
Speaker 2: a an animal system, right where you have interactions among animals,

940
00:50:57,600 --> 00:51:02,920
Speaker 2: there's usually some need for an equal and that can

941
00:51:03,000 --> 00:51:06,000
Speaker 2: arise in many different ways. Can be sort of the

942
00:51:06,040 --> 00:51:12,080
Speaker 2: classic like purely pure competition, but in many many cases

943
00:51:12,640 --> 00:51:18,040
Speaker 2: you have cooperation within the species, often you know, outside

944
00:51:18,040 --> 00:51:24,120
Speaker 2: of the species, certainly with animals that form complicated social groups.

945
00:51:24,520 --> 00:51:27,920
Speaker 2: This is also often the case, and like, there's this interesting.

946
00:51:28,760 --> 00:51:31,719
Speaker 2: I'm not like an expert on human anthropology. There's a

947
00:51:31,760 --> 00:51:34,920
Speaker 2: lot of concepts in terms of human evolutionary history where

948
00:51:34,960 --> 00:51:37,080
Speaker 2: it's like we kind of like it's a weird way

949
00:51:37,120 --> 00:51:39,359
Speaker 2: to put it, but the idea of like we domesticated

950
00:51:39,400 --> 00:51:47,880
Speaker 2: ourselves where we selected for less aggression because like you know,

951
00:51:48,520 --> 00:51:53,200
Speaker 2: just it was easier to have a chiller social group.

952
00:51:53,560 --> 00:51:57,440
Speaker 2: Even with competitive animals, they will try to find ways

953
00:51:58,280 --> 00:52:02,920
Speaker 2: not to hurt each other when they can because they

954
00:52:02,920 --> 00:52:03,680
Speaker 2: don't want to get.

955
00:52:03,560 --> 00:52:05,839
Speaker 1: Hurt, right, It is almost more of a sport than

956
00:52:05,880 --> 00:52:08,560
Speaker 1: a like gladiatorial death match. I see, even like the

957
00:52:08,600 --> 00:52:10,520
Speaker 1: gladiator fights were actually more of a sport than a

958
00:52:10,560 --> 00:52:11,759
Speaker 1: death match historically.

959
00:52:11,800 --> 00:52:16,160
Speaker 2: But yeah, there's certainly gladiatorial death matches in the animal

960
00:52:16,239 --> 00:52:19,040
Speaker 2: Kingdom that happens all the time, but more often you

961
00:52:19,120 --> 00:52:21,399
Speaker 2: may not see this as much on Animal Planet because

962
00:52:21,400 --> 00:52:24,359
Speaker 2: it's not as exciting. They'll like measure each other up

963
00:52:24,520 --> 00:52:27,560
Speaker 2: and be like no, no, you're you would totally kill

964
00:52:27,600 --> 00:52:29,440
Speaker 2: me and I don't want anything to do with that.

965
00:52:29,480 --> 00:52:32,680
Speaker 2: And the one that would be the victor like lets

966
00:52:32,800 --> 00:52:37,360
Speaker 2: the future loser go because like the victor also doesn't

967
00:52:37,400 --> 00:52:40,840
Speaker 2: like even if it could win, it doesn't want to

968
00:52:40,880 --> 00:52:43,960
Speaker 2: sustain an injury. And then you get really funny, Like

969
00:52:44,040 --> 00:52:47,480
Speaker 2: there's this fish called the sarcastic fringe head and it

970
00:52:47,520 --> 00:52:51,279
Speaker 2: has this really weird it's a weird little fish that's

971
00:52:51,320 --> 00:52:55,320
Speaker 2: got a giant head and a weird tiny body, and

972
00:52:55,400 --> 00:52:59,239
Speaker 2: they kind of compete for burrows and stuff. But the

973
00:52:59,280 --> 00:53:02,120
Speaker 2: way they do it instead of like fighting each other

974
00:53:02,800 --> 00:53:05,840
Speaker 2: is they can unfold their mouths, kind of like predator

975
00:53:06,040 --> 00:53:06,759
Speaker 2: in alien vis.

976
00:53:06,880 --> 00:53:08,480
Speaker 1: I've been looking at a picture of this. Now, this

977
00:53:08,520 --> 00:53:09,719
Speaker 1: is what nightmares are made of.

978
00:53:10,480 --> 00:53:13,640
Speaker 2: It's nightmarish. But like they unfurl their mouth and kind

979
00:53:13,640 --> 00:53:16,839
Speaker 2: of do this like competitive kissing on each other where

980
00:53:16,880 --> 00:53:20,440
Speaker 2: they like sort of smash into each other. I just

981
00:53:20,480 --> 00:53:25,400
Speaker 2: had Karagaimo, she's a science writer, and she's talking about

982
00:53:25,440 --> 00:53:29,520
Speaker 2: like this competitive kissing of theirs. But it's like researchers

983
00:53:29,560 --> 00:53:32,520
Speaker 2: don't necessarily know exactly why they do this, but the

984
00:53:32,719 --> 00:53:38,800
Speaker 2: idea is that it is a symbolic method of resolving

985
00:53:38,840 --> 00:53:44,320
Speaker 2: conflict without hurting each other because that makes it easier

986
00:53:44,360 --> 00:53:45,000
Speaker 2: on both of them.

987
00:53:45,120 --> 00:53:47,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, that I mean that makes sense. And like

988
00:53:48,360 --> 00:53:52,279
Speaker 1: I think people want to believe in the specific cut

989
00:53:52,320 --> 00:53:55,440
Speaker 1: and dry gladiatorial death match. And again, the fact that

990
00:53:55,800 --> 00:53:58,799
Speaker 1: gladiatorial matches weren't death matches by and large is like

991
00:53:59,320 --> 00:54:01,160
Speaker 1: even a way which we look at our own human

992
00:54:01,239 --> 00:54:03,759
Speaker 1: history and are like, ah, right, we used to kill

993
00:54:03,800 --> 00:54:06,640
Speaker 1: each other all the time, you know. And I mean, yes,

994
00:54:06,840 --> 00:54:08,920
Speaker 1: that's true, but not to the degree that people think

995
00:54:08,960 --> 00:54:12,320
Speaker 1: it is. And I never found this article again, and

996
00:54:12,360 --> 00:54:15,360
Speaker 1: I'm annoyed. But decades ago, when I was a what

997
00:54:15,520 --> 00:54:19,160
Speaker 1: was the word detrite war detritivar, Yes, I was digging

998
00:54:19,160 --> 00:54:21,719
Speaker 1: through trash cans in New York City and I found

999
00:54:21,760 --> 00:54:24,319
Speaker 1: a science magazine the big article about why there are

1000
00:54:24,400 --> 00:54:27,560
Speaker 1: so many gay animals, and the article was basically this

1001
00:54:27,680 --> 00:54:30,719
Speaker 1: long form Well, it turns out this kooky evolutionary biologist

1002
00:54:30,760 --> 00:54:35,439
Speaker 1: named Peter Kropotkin was right, oh wow, because mutual aid

1003
00:54:35,480 --> 00:54:38,920
Speaker 1: is often about a community survival, not individual survival, and

1004
00:54:39,000 --> 00:54:42,640
Speaker 1: gay animals make a great adoptive parents. And also like

1005
00:54:43,000 --> 00:54:45,520
Speaker 1: kind of just make everyone in the community happier because

1006
00:54:45,520 --> 00:54:50,359
Speaker 1: there's like gender variation essentially, and like, yeah, so people

1007
00:54:50,400 --> 00:54:53,239
Speaker 1: who are living these longer, happier reproductive lives, even if

1008
00:54:53,239 --> 00:54:56,799
Speaker 1: they don't themselves have offspring. It's the argument that this

1009
00:54:56,920 --> 00:54:59,120
Speaker 1: article made again that I've never been able to find. Again.

1010
00:54:59,440 --> 00:55:01,839
Speaker 1: I found articles about gay animals, but it's like it's

1011
00:55:01,880 --> 00:55:05,480
Speaker 1: really hard to find articles from like two thousand and

1012
00:55:05,520 --> 00:55:08,840
Speaker 1: four by using search. You know, there is some irony

1013
00:55:09,040 --> 00:55:11,360
Speaker 1: to say the one negative thing I will say about Kropawkin.

1014
00:55:11,520 --> 00:55:14,800
Speaker 1: There's irony in Kerpawkin's ideas being used to defend homosexuality

1015
00:55:15,360 --> 00:55:18,439
Speaker 1: because Kripakin was slightly conservative on that issue. I've found

1016
00:55:18,520 --> 00:55:21,720
Speaker 1: nothing of him attacking say negative things about gay people.

1017
00:55:22,200 --> 00:55:27,040
Speaker 1: But the anarchist movement was much more pro homosexuality than

1018
00:55:27,080 --> 00:55:30,160
Speaker 1: most other leftists at the time. But I can find

1019
00:55:30,200 --> 00:55:34,080
Speaker 1: instances of him not offering solidarity to persecuted queer folks.

1020
00:55:34,320 --> 00:55:37,080
Speaker 1: When Oscar Wilde was on trial, he was a big

1021
00:55:37,120 --> 00:55:40,320
Speaker 1: fan of Kropotkin. He wrote Kropakin to support his case

1022
00:55:40,640 --> 00:55:45,200
Speaker 1: and Kerpokin didn't. I've since read that the feminist Emma

1023
00:55:45,239 --> 00:55:47,239
Speaker 1: Goldman got him to turn around on the issue, but

1024
00:55:47,320 --> 00:55:49,360
Speaker 1: I haven't found the source on that yet, so I

1025
00:55:49,400 --> 00:55:49,759
Speaker 1: don't know.

1026
00:55:50,880 --> 00:55:56,040
Speaker 2: Would you say his progress in that regard was somewhat glacial.

1027
00:55:57,560 --> 00:56:03,719
Speaker 1: I would indeed slow moving, viscous fluid. His ideas about

1028
00:56:03,760 --> 00:56:07,239
Speaker 1: evolution were incredibly influential in Russia more than anywhere else,

1029
00:56:07,520 --> 00:56:11,160
Speaker 1: partly because Russian scientists just couldn't resonate with the like

1030
00:56:11,239 --> 00:56:15,200
Speaker 1: Malthusian obsession with overpopulation that Darwin was basing a lot

1031
00:56:15,200 --> 00:56:18,200
Speaker 1: of his stuff on. Russia at the time was vast

1032
00:56:18,200 --> 00:56:22,440
Speaker 1: and empty. To quote Daniel P. Toad's quote, for a

1033
00:56:22,520 --> 00:56:26,960
Speaker 1: Russian to see an inexorably increasing population inevitably straining potential

1034
00:56:27,000 --> 00:56:30,600
Speaker 1: supplies of food and space required quite a leap of imagination.

1035
00:56:31,120 --> 00:56:32,200
Speaker 1: There's a lot of Russia.

1036
00:56:33,360 --> 00:56:38,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like for Russians, I think like when they had famine,

1037
00:56:38,080 --> 00:56:42,120
Speaker 2: they were able to connect it really clearly to policy

1038
00:56:42,239 --> 00:56:45,920
Speaker 2: like war, Like when there's like a war against Sweden

1039
00:56:46,000 --> 00:56:48,399
Speaker 2: and then you have a famine in there, like, hey,

1040
00:56:48,480 --> 00:56:51,560
Speaker 2: this famine is man made. It's not because there's too

1041
00:56:51,560 --> 00:56:51,960
Speaker 2: many of.

1042
00:56:51,960 --> 00:56:56,720
Speaker 1: Us, right, totally, totally. The argument that Kerpawkin had against

1043
00:56:56,800 --> 00:57:00,360
Speaker 1: Huxley was actually the same he had against Marx Arcs

1044
00:57:00,400 --> 00:57:02,799
Speaker 1: was like, we must reach the highest stage of development,

1045
00:57:03,200 --> 00:57:06,279
Speaker 1: whereas Korpawkin was like, we're actually already great. We just

1046
00:57:06,280 --> 00:57:09,640
Speaker 1: need to get better organizational systems and encourage our cooperative nature.

1047
00:57:11,040 --> 00:57:14,400
Speaker 1: Kropakin was one of the world's first international celebrities. His

1048
00:57:14,520 --> 00:57:17,360
Speaker 1: ideas about how society might work, about who we can

1049
00:57:17,400 --> 00:57:21,240
Speaker 1: be were wildly popular. Tens of thousands of people would

1050
00:57:21,280 --> 00:57:23,440
Speaker 1: come to his talks all over the world while he's

1051
00:57:23,480 --> 00:57:29,480
Speaker 1: dodging police everywhere. And when the Tsar was deposed in

1052
00:57:29,560 --> 00:57:33,680
Speaker 1: February nineteen seventeen in Russia, before the Bolsheviks sort of

1053
00:57:33,800 --> 00:57:37,600
Speaker 1: from my position stage a coup against the revolution, Kropakin

1054
00:57:37,640 --> 00:57:39,920
Speaker 1: and his family moved back to Russia. They're like, hooray,

1055
00:57:40,360 --> 00:57:42,880
Speaker 1: no more Czar. We don't know exactly what's going to happen,

1056
00:57:42,960 --> 00:57:44,760
Speaker 1: but no more Czar, We're going home.

1057
00:57:45,760 --> 00:57:46,040
Speaker 2: Right.

1058
00:57:46,120 --> 00:57:47,200
Speaker 1: He's not a young man at.

1059
00:57:47,080 --> 00:57:50,360
Speaker 2: This point, is he solidly in his Santa yes stage.

1060
00:57:50,440 --> 00:57:52,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's only got a couple of years left to live.

1061
00:57:53,040 --> 00:57:56,520
Speaker 1: And when the Bolsheviks take power, they really want to

1062
00:57:56,640 --> 00:57:59,120
Speaker 1: kind of have Kropotkin on their side. Some of the

1063
00:57:59,120 --> 00:58:01,760
Speaker 1: anarchists douce which over and joined the Bolsheviks because it's

1064
00:58:01,800 --> 00:58:04,080
Speaker 1: kind of the best thing going. They wanted to pay

1065
00:58:04,120 --> 00:58:05,920
Speaker 1: lip service to Krapakin because he's one of the most

1066
00:58:05,920 --> 00:58:08,320
Speaker 1: famous men in the world, but he hated them and

1067
00:58:08,360 --> 00:58:11,880
Speaker 1: they hated him. They confiscated his apartment and moved his

1068
00:58:11,920 --> 00:58:15,240
Speaker 1: family into a barely heated house in the country. The

1069
00:58:15,280 --> 00:58:17,800
Speaker 1: family survived off of milk from the cow in the

1070
00:58:17,880 --> 00:58:22,120
Speaker 1: yard and the food brought to them by anarchists. And

1071
00:58:22,160 --> 00:58:24,440
Speaker 1: I've read that he spent his last few years watching

1072
00:58:24,480 --> 00:58:26,760
Speaker 1: the revolution that he had been working his whole life

1073
00:58:26,800 --> 00:58:30,360
Speaker 1: for be torn apart by Bolsheviks, and he despaired. Younger

1074
00:58:30,400 --> 00:58:33,320
Speaker 1: comrades would visit and be like, what should we do,

1075
00:58:33,440 --> 00:58:37,760
Speaker 1: and he was like, it's over, We've lost, We're doomed.

1076
00:58:39,240 --> 00:58:44,840
Speaker 2: Yeah, He's like, it's more like bullshit, and then he dies.

1077
00:58:45,640 --> 00:58:49,960
Speaker 1: His last words, he spends the last years of his

1078
00:58:50,000 --> 00:58:53,200
Speaker 1: life playing piano, living in a tiny and barely heated house.

1079
00:58:53,480 --> 00:58:55,360
Speaker 1: There's still like kind of a beauty to like I

1080
00:58:55,400 --> 00:58:58,120
Speaker 1: think about the like, all right, he can't do anything anymore.

1081
00:58:58,120 --> 00:58:59,320
Speaker 1: It's just going to make art. He's just going to

1082
00:58:59,360 --> 00:59:00,360
Speaker 1: play music, you know.

1083
00:59:00,880 --> 00:59:01,680
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.

1084
00:59:02,080 --> 00:59:05,320
Speaker 1: He died on February eighth, nineteen twenty one, and the

1085
00:59:05,320 --> 00:59:08,520
Speaker 1: Bolsheviks tried again to co opt his legacy, but his

1086
00:59:08,640 --> 00:59:11,880
Speaker 1: daughter Alexandra fought them tooth and nail. Basically, they were like,

1087
00:59:11,920 --> 00:59:14,680
Speaker 1: we want to bury him in the like martyr hero

1088
00:59:14,840 --> 00:59:17,960
Speaker 1: Bolshevik zone, and she was like, there is no way

1089
00:59:18,120 --> 00:59:21,160
Speaker 1: he will be buried. There tens of thousands or one

1090
00:59:21,240 --> 00:59:24,120
Speaker 1: hundred thousand people marched at his funeral, the last time

1091
00:59:24,160 --> 00:59:26,960
Speaker 1: in anarchist demonstration was permitted in Russia until the fall

1092
00:59:27,000 --> 00:59:32,280
Speaker 1: of the USSR, you know, seventy years later. But for

1093
00:59:32,600 --> 00:59:36,560
Speaker 1: just who gets the last laugh? That guy that Kropakin

1094
00:59:36,680 --> 00:59:39,520
Speaker 1: used to argue with Huxley. I only made this connection

1095
00:59:39,560 --> 00:59:43,360
Speaker 1: while researching this episode, that Huxley is the grandfather of

1096
00:59:43,400 --> 00:59:46,880
Speaker 1: the author Aldous Huxley, who's famous for writing A Brave

1097
00:59:46,920 --> 00:59:52,560
Speaker 1: New World. Yeah, Alice Huxley was a Kropakinist. In the

1098
00:59:52,560 --> 00:59:55,440
Speaker 1: introduction to was My Island, he wrote, and I'm paraphrasing

1099
00:59:55,480 --> 00:59:58,640
Speaker 1: from memory here, he wrote, what the world needs now

1100
00:59:58,720 --> 01:00:03,440
Speaker 1: is decentralization Kropotkinesque manner. So Kropawkin may not have convinced

1101
01:00:03,520 --> 01:00:07,080
Speaker 1: Huxley the grandfather, but he got the youth.

1102
01:00:08,040 --> 01:00:13,760
Speaker 2: He got the youth nice. That's like the bearing beetles

1103
01:00:14,280 --> 01:00:17,120
Speaker 2: of philosophy. Okay, hang on, I can do this. I

1104
01:00:17,160 --> 01:00:20,400
Speaker 2: can do this. Everyone hang on right right the philosophical

1105
01:00:21,280 --> 01:00:25,800
Speaker 2: paradigm shift. Bearing beetles took his body, buried it, and

1106
01:00:25,840 --> 01:00:30,479
Speaker 2: then the young men upon his ideas. So the young

1107
01:00:30,560 --> 01:00:34,400
Speaker 2: Huxley was like the larva feeding on his corpse of

1108
01:00:34,480 --> 01:00:38,400
Speaker 2: ideas so he could become a beautiful beetle.

1109
01:00:38,520 --> 01:00:39,560
Speaker 1: Yeah.

1110
01:00:39,920 --> 01:00:40,280
Speaker 2: Yeah.

1111
01:00:40,640 --> 01:00:45,160
Speaker 1: By like the sixties and seventies, evolutionary biology started studying

1112
01:00:45,200 --> 01:00:49,960
Speaker 1: more actively cooperation, including cooperation where like an individual squirrel

1113
01:00:50,040 --> 01:00:53,480
Speaker 1: will announce when a predator is near, just warn its

1114
01:00:53,520 --> 01:00:57,439
Speaker 1: fellow squirrels, even though that gets that squirrel eaten, right,

1115
01:00:57,760 --> 01:01:00,480
Speaker 1: because all of the squirrels are safer if they live

1116
01:01:00,480 --> 01:01:04,320
Speaker 1: in a squirrel society where you do. That is the argument.

1117
01:01:04,640 --> 01:01:07,760
Speaker 2: I think this is a behavior I think specific to

1118
01:01:07,840 --> 01:01:10,920
Speaker 2: ground squirrels. There might be some of that behavior also

1119
01:01:11,000 --> 01:01:14,439
Speaker 2: for other kinds of squirrels, but ground squirrels live there's

1120
01:01:14,480 --> 01:01:17,720
Speaker 2: sort of the mirrorkats of North America because like they

1121
01:01:17,760 --> 01:01:20,919
Speaker 2: live in these communal dens and stuff. So you see

1122
01:01:20,920 --> 01:01:22,800
Speaker 2: that a lot in ground squirrels, and you see it

1123
01:01:22,800 --> 01:01:26,520
Speaker 2: in a lot of rabbits, you see it in meerkats, groundhogs.

1124
01:01:26,920 --> 01:01:29,640
Speaker 2: They live in like either a warren or a communal

1125
01:01:30,080 --> 01:01:32,960
Speaker 2: set of burrows and dens, and then they will warn

1126
01:01:33,000 --> 01:01:37,120
Speaker 2: the entire colony and then which puts them at risk.

1127
01:01:37,520 --> 01:01:41,720
Speaker 2: And you also see kind of interesting like cross species

1128
01:01:42,160 --> 01:01:45,479
Speaker 2: like other species will give out warning signs and then

1129
01:01:45,760 --> 01:01:49,600
Speaker 2: sometimes like other species like learn each other's warning signals

1130
01:01:50,040 --> 01:01:53,800
Speaker 2: and benefit from each other. So like they're not necessarily

1131
01:01:53,840 --> 01:01:56,720
Speaker 2: trying to help out this other species. But then sometimes

1132
01:01:56,760 --> 01:02:00,360
Speaker 2: they end up learning each other's warning signs and then

1133
01:02:00,600 --> 01:02:03,440
Speaker 2: they both benefit from this interaction.

1134
01:02:04,120 --> 01:02:08,200
Speaker 1: That's cool. So watching science have come around a lot

1135
01:02:08,240 --> 01:02:12,520
Speaker 1: to his ideas makes me happy. I hope we can

1136
01:02:12,880 --> 01:02:22,560
Speaker 1: understand better mutual aid is good for us. That's my thesis. Yeah, well,

1137
01:02:23,240 --> 01:02:25,880
Speaker 1: thanks for listening to me talk about anarchy, Santa.

1138
01:02:26,760 --> 01:02:29,000
Speaker 2: No, this is this is real fun for me. I'm

1139
01:02:29,000 --> 01:02:31,320
Speaker 2: not much of a history buff. I get very much

1140
01:02:31,320 --> 01:02:34,640
Speaker 2: into the specific weeds about stuff. So I really love

1141
01:02:34,800 --> 01:02:38,240
Speaker 2: kind of zooming out and actually looking into the history

1142
01:02:38,280 --> 01:02:41,800
Speaker 2: because like, a lot of my understanding of evolutionary biology

1143
01:02:41,840 --> 01:02:44,440
Speaker 2: probably comes from this guy and I didn't even know it.

1144
01:02:44,560 --> 01:02:48,160
Speaker 1: Yeah, and like people who are then influenced by him

1145
01:02:48,360 --> 01:02:50,320
Speaker 1: or yeah, like it's and I love that right because

1146
01:02:50,320 --> 01:02:52,840
Speaker 1: it's not even though I started off episode one by

1147
01:02:52,880 --> 01:02:54,880
Speaker 1: being like, ah, fuck the great man history thing, and

1148
01:02:54,880 --> 01:02:56,680
Speaker 1: then then part two I'm like, this is the man

1149
01:02:56,720 --> 01:02:59,640
Speaker 1: who discovered that glaciers move, This is the guy who

1150
01:02:59,640 --> 01:03:02,760
Speaker 1: figured out the ice ages, you know, and he would

1151
01:03:02,760 --> 01:03:05,520
Speaker 1: be so mad about being great man, because yeah, like

1152
01:03:05,640 --> 01:03:09,760
Speaker 1: we all learn things and develop things and and build

1153
01:03:09,840 --> 01:03:11,320
Speaker 1: upon what all of us do.

1154
01:03:12,680 --> 01:03:14,600
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think it's you know, I think

1155
01:03:14,600 --> 01:03:18,360
Speaker 2: it's fair enough to say that, Like, sure someone probably

1156
01:03:18,440 --> 01:03:21,920
Speaker 2: would have come up with this, but he did totally

1157
01:03:22,160 --> 01:03:24,760
Speaker 2: and that's cool. And maybe he did it sooner than

1158
01:03:24,800 --> 01:03:28,440
Speaker 2: if someone else said done it later, And maybe he

1159
01:03:28,480 --> 01:03:31,040
Speaker 2: did it in a way like the way he introduced

1160
01:03:31,040 --> 01:03:34,480
Speaker 2: these ideas might have been good in specific ways. So yeah,

1161
01:03:34,520 --> 01:03:37,160
Speaker 2: I mean, I think, you know, I think certainly individuals

1162
01:03:37,880 --> 01:03:42,040
Speaker 2: do have an impact. Then we're all we're all worms essentially.

1163
01:03:41,720 --> 01:03:45,880
Speaker 1: Totally eating dirt. Well, glad to be in the podcast

1164
01:03:46,160 --> 01:03:49,600
Speaker 1: dirt Eating with you. But if people want to see

1165
01:03:49,640 --> 01:03:52,240
Speaker 1: the remnants of the dirt that you eat for a podcast,

1166
01:03:52,400 --> 01:03:53,440
Speaker 1: where can they do that? Right?

1167
01:03:53,800 --> 01:03:57,240
Speaker 2: Where do you listen to my poop that turns into

1168
01:03:57,360 --> 01:03:57,920
Speaker 2: pop soil?

1169
01:03:58,000 --> 01:03:58,760
Speaker 1: Yeah?

1170
01:03:58,800 --> 01:04:03,200
Speaker 2: So, Creature Feature is an evolutionary biology podcast. You certainly

1171
01:04:03,200 --> 01:04:06,480
Speaker 2: do not need to be an evolutionary biologist or scientist

1172
01:04:06,600 --> 01:04:10,400
Speaker 2: to listen to it. It's casual conversations where we talk

1173
01:04:10,440 --> 01:04:13,680
Speaker 2: about really cool stuff and evolutionary biology and just lots

1174
01:04:13,680 --> 01:04:18,720
Speaker 2: of like fun animal facts like the sarcastic French head

1175
01:04:18,720 --> 01:04:20,400
Speaker 2: thing I was talking about on this episode. I just

1176
01:04:20,400 --> 01:04:23,200
Speaker 2: did an episode. I don't know when this one comes out,

1177
01:04:23,240 --> 01:04:26,919
Speaker 2: but you know, maybe recently with Kara Jaim we talked

1178
01:04:27,000 --> 01:04:32,200
Speaker 2: about weird deep sea creatures and their behaviors. So yeah,

1179
01:04:32,240 --> 01:04:34,720
Speaker 2: if you enjoyed this, you probably enjoy that. And if

1180
01:04:34,760 --> 01:04:39,120
Speaker 2: you like history. There's another podcast I'm on called Secretly

1181
01:04:39,160 --> 01:04:43,400
Speaker 2: Incredibly Fascinating, with Elec Schmidt, who does all the work,

1182
01:04:43,720 --> 01:04:49,040
Speaker 2: and I sit there and listen and learn to him

1183
01:04:49,120 --> 01:04:50,040
Speaker 2: and sometimes.

1184
01:04:49,720 --> 01:04:51,280
Speaker 1: Say, thing, you get to be the podcast idiot.

1185
01:04:52,280 --> 01:04:55,640
Speaker 2: I do it. It's beautiful. I love it so much.

1186
01:04:56,320 --> 01:04:58,320
Speaker 2: And he does a really good job doing a deep

1187
01:04:58,360 --> 01:05:04,560
Speaker 2: dive on things that see boring, like paper clips, WD forty,

1188
01:05:04,800 --> 01:05:09,280
Speaker 2: popcorn ceilings, and every time I'm like, Alex, there's no

1189
01:05:09,360 --> 01:05:12,280
Speaker 2: way you're gonna get me interested in this, and then

1190
01:05:12,280 --> 01:05:13,600
Speaker 2: he gosh darn it, he does it.

1191
01:05:13,640 --> 01:05:15,200
Speaker 1: Well. Now I want to listen to the popcorn ceiling

1192
01:05:15,200 --> 01:05:19,280
Speaker 1: one because I hate popcorn ceilings, but right, yeah, yeah.

1193
01:05:19,040 --> 01:05:21,640
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's one on popcorn ceilings.

1194
01:05:21,960 --> 01:05:26,320
Speaker 1: If you want to follow me and places that aren't audio,

1195
01:05:26,600 --> 01:05:29,680
Speaker 1: I write a substack almost every week. Margat kildroid at

1196
01:05:29,720 --> 01:05:32,040
Speaker 1: substock dot com. I talk a lot about things I've

1197
01:05:32,080 --> 01:05:34,840
Speaker 1: learned from history, hope in the face of bad stuff,

1198
01:05:35,120 --> 01:05:38,680
Speaker 1: and sometimes my dog. Almost everything I post there is

1199
01:05:38,720 --> 01:05:42,720
Speaker 1: free and Sophie, what do you got? Sophie's like I'm

1200
01:05:42,720 --> 01:05:43,400
Speaker 1: dealing with the doctor.

1201
01:05:43,480 --> 01:05:44,720
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was picking up Truman.

1202
01:05:46,200 --> 01:05:49,600
Speaker 3: Coolson Media dot com.

1203
01:05:49,640 --> 01:05:51,439
Speaker 1: All right, see y'all next week.

1204
01:05:55,560 --> 01:05:58,040
Speaker 2: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of

1205
01:05:58,080 --> 01:05:59,000
Speaker 2: cool Zone Media.

1206
01:05:59,360 --> 01:06:01,160
Speaker 1: The more podcas cast on Google zone Media.

1207
01:06:01,320 --> 01:06:04,520
Speaker 2: Visit our website Goolezonmedia dot com, or check us out

1208
01:06:04,680 --> 01:06:08,000
Speaker 2: on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get

1209
01:06:08,080 --> 01:06:08,960
Speaker 2: your podcasts.