WEBVTT - Part One: The Russian Scientist Who Helped Kill 30 Million People 0:00:00.040 --> 0:00:08.920 Mmm, Hello everybody. I'm Robert Evans and this is once 0:00:08.960 --> 0:00:10.960 again Behind the Bastards, the show where we tell you 0:00:11.000 --> 0:00:13.280 everything you don't know about the very worst people in 0:00:13.320 --> 0:00:15.480 all of history. Now, this is a show where I 0:00:15.520 --> 0:00:19.439 read a tale about someone or someone's terrible in history 0:00:19.480 --> 0:00:21.080 to a guest who is coming in cold. And this 0:00:21.079 --> 0:00:24.200 week my guest is Max Silvestri. He is a comedian. 0:00:24.520 --> 0:00:26.960 He is a Netflix special as part of the comedy 0:00:27.000 --> 0:00:30.400 lineup out right now, how you doing. Nice to be here. 0:00:30.440 --> 0:00:32.479 Thanks for bringing me in from the cold, you know, 0:00:32.680 --> 0:00:37.400 yeah right right like that before I was alive. Yes, yes, 0:00:37.479 --> 0:00:40.760 it was a too excellent Yeah. Yeah, but that's me 0:00:40.800 --> 0:00:42.720 and I'm happy to be here. Well, it's funny Mark 0:00:42.800 --> 0:00:45.280 you talk about spies because we're not talking about spies 0:00:45.360 --> 0:00:47.320 or anything related to spies today, but we are talking 0:00:47.360 --> 0:00:49.960 about something related to the Soviet Union, which is where 0:00:50.000 --> 0:00:54.880 spies were invented. If my James Bond history let sounds right? Yeah, 0:00:54.920 --> 0:00:57.400 you know, deceitful people. I don't know. I'm not going 0:00:57.480 --> 0:01:00.440 to deceitful time. Yeah, every everyone was to seitful in 0:01:00.440 --> 0:01:02.080 the Cold War. That's what made it fun. Yes, so 0:01:02.120 --> 0:01:04.520 we're talking pre Cold War and then post Cold War 0:01:04.600 --> 0:01:06.760 history here I'll just get into it. But the rough 0:01:06.800 --> 0:01:09.560 title for this episode is the Scientist who Killed Everyone, 0:01:09.600 --> 0:01:11.479 So that should give you. Yeah, you know, we all 0:01:11.520 --> 0:01:14.360 have we all have political views in this is a 0:01:14.400 --> 0:01:16.880 polarized time, right. I think I believe that scientists shouldn't 0:01:16.920 --> 0:01:20.240 kill people. That's one main views. Yeah, well this is 0:01:20.240 --> 0:01:22.520 there not gonna be a fun episode for you. Yeah, 0:01:22.560 --> 0:01:24.720 so everybody's got their own political views. I think my 0:01:25.080 --> 0:01:27.120 regular listeners of this show will pick up on some 0:01:27.160 --> 0:01:29.200 of my political views from time to time. They're far 0:01:29.200 --> 0:01:31.160 from hidden, but I try not to make my my 0:01:31.240 --> 0:01:34.479 personal politics the center of any given episode. I think 0:01:34.520 --> 0:01:37.160 it's important to criticize and understand terrible people on all 0:01:37.160 --> 0:01:40.720 sides of the of the political spectrum um and today's 0:01:40.760 --> 0:01:43.200 story is I think a good explanation of why. I 0:01:43.240 --> 0:01:45.360 think that's so important, because this is a tale about 0:01:45.360 --> 0:01:48.760 where unreasoning devotion to an ideology can lead. It's about 0:01:48.800 --> 0:01:51.360 what happens when ideas matter more than human lives. Today, 0:01:51.360 --> 0:01:52.880 we're going to talk about a man who set up 0:01:52.920 --> 0:01:55.080 to feed the world and wound up starving it. But 0:01:55.120 --> 0:01:57.160 before we get into that, I'd like to provide some 0:01:57.200 --> 0:02:01.360 backstory on genetic science in early twentieth century Russia. Don't worry, 0:02:01.400 --> 0:02:03.360 it's not gonna be boring. It's actually going to start 0:02:03.440 --> 0:02:06.000 with a story about monkey semen. So, yeah, this is 0:02:06.000 --> 0:02:08.040 the fun kind of genetic science. Yeah. So it may 0:02:08.080 --> 0:02:10.040 surprise you to learn that for all the many things 0:02:10.240 --> 0:02:13.360 rus Russia sucked at, science was actually not one of them. 0:02:13.360 --> 0:02:15.760 In the late eighteen hundreds, in early nineteen hundreds, most 0:02:15.840 --> 0:02:18.640 Russians still lived more or less like medieval serfs. Actual 0:02:18.639 --> 0:02:21.520 serfdom wasn't abolished until eighteen sixty one, and things were 0:02:21.520 --> 0:02:25.760 still pretty primitive after that. Russia's class structure was stiflingly strict, 0:02:25.800 --> 0:02:27.640 and science was one of the very few means of 0:02:27.680 --> 0:02:29.880 social mobility. If you were good enough at science, you 0:02:29.880 --> 0:02:32.680 could become a member of the aristocracy. So one of 0:02:32.720 --> 0:02:35.720 these zarist era scientists was a guy named ilia Ivanov, 0:02:36.040 --> 0:02:39.160 and starting in nineteen ten, Iliyah became a tireless advocate 0:02:39.200 --> 0:02:42.079 of trying to cross breed human beings and apes. Oh 0:02:42.520 --> 0:02:46.239 to make like a doctor moreau, I didn't really his hope, 0:02:46.360 --> 0:02:48.360 No one knew. He didn't know what was going to happen. 0:02:48.480 --> 0:02:50.520 What are the best parts of monkeys? He was trying 0:02:50.520 --> 0:02:52.960 to put into humans. It was even more primitive than that. 0:02:53.040 --> 0:02:56.040 He just thought that it might work. Like he was 0:02:56.040 --> 0:02:58.800 really just like people were just starting to understand genetics 0:02:58.800 --> 0:03:00.440 at this point. He was like, I bet humans and 0:03:00.480 --> 0:03:02.840 monkeys can fuck, and I bet they can give birth 0:03:02.880 --> 0:03:05.320 to hybrids. So let's see what the reason it hasn't 0:03:05.360 --> 0:03:07.560 happened yet is because a monkey and human even fallen 0:03:07.560 --> 0:03:11.120 in love constantly, or the right monkey, the right monkey 0:03:11.120 --> 0:03:13.400 and human not fallen in love. So yeah, he's looking 0:03:13.400 --> 0:03:15.160 at like, you know, you've got I forget what you 0:03:15.240 --> 0:03:20.760 breed together to make mules? Is it like donkeys? And 0:03:20.400 --> 0:03:23.320 uh yeah, and you get this animal that is sterile, 0:03:23.360 --> 0:03:25.400 but it's useful, like we we do stuff with meals. 0:03:25.400 --> 0:03:26.919 So he was thinking like, okay, well maybe if you 0:03:27.000 --> 0:03:29.720 breed human beings and monkeys together, something useful will come 0:03:29.720 --> 0:03:31.760 out of it. I heard that like l A, California 0:03:31.840 --> 0:03:35.560 used to get rid of like fly population problems by 0:03:35.640 --> 0:03:38.440 basically breeding more of the flies, radiating them so that 0:03:38.480 --> 0:03:41.240 they were sterile, and then releasing more out so that 0:03:41.320 --> 0:03:43.320 for like six months or more flies, but they wouldn't 0:03:43.360 --> 0:03:44.960 make babies and would all die and it would like 0:03:45.000 --> 0:03:47.560 kill out the population. They're trying something similar with like 0:03:47.600 --> 0:03:50.560 a disease that they spread through mosquitoes and some South 0:03:50.600 --> 0:03:52.960 American country to like try to wipe out all the mosquitoes. 0:03:52.960 --> 0:03:54.560 So like, yeah, that's been tried a couple of times 0:03:54.560 --> 0:03:56.800 and an easy way to go wrong. I mean, yeah, 0:03:56.840 --> 0:03:59.560 it seems like, but this was a little bit different. 0:03:59.600 --> 0:04:02.200 This was um because you're talking, you know, the night 0:04:02.240 --> 0:04:05.080 early nine, You're talking a really optimistic era of science 0:04:05.120 --> 0:04:07.560 because because people have learned enough to know that like 0:04:08.120 --> 0:04:10.800 things are possible that haven't been done yet, but they 0:04:10.800 --> 0:04:13.120 haven't learned enough to know what isn't really possible. And 0:04:13.120 --> 0:04:14.840 I'm sure the rate at that time was like a 0:04:14.880 --> 0:04:17.720 lot of things were being discovered and figured out randomly 0:04:17.800 --> 0:04:20.400 constantly now that they had like a method, and because 0:04:20.440 --> 0:04:23.920 they they're just now starting to really understand genetics and stuff. 0:04:23.960 --> 0:04:26.119 And so Elia at first in nineteen ten, he doesn't 0:04:26.160 --> 0:04:28.479 really get many people on board with his research, but 0:04:28.520 --> 0:04:32.919 he he continues to be an advocate for making human 0:04:32.920 --> 0:04:36.520 beings and monkeys breed. Uh, well, he does other stuff. 0:04:36.560 --> 0:04:39.440 And in nineteen twenty four, seven years after the revolution 0:04:39.440 --> 0:04:41.720 that brings the Bolsheviks into power, ely Is working as 0:04:41.760 --> 0:04:44.360 a sperm disinfector. I don't know what that job as 0:04:44.400 --> 0:04:47.000 I couldn't find any detail, but he's disinfecting sperm, the 0:04:47.080 --> 0:04:48.920 dirty sperm out there. Yeah, it's kind of a dead 0:04:49.000 --> 0:04:52.719 end scientific job. But the Institute Pasteur in France offers 0:04:52.760 --> 0:04:56.040 to support his attempt to hybridize man apes um so, 0:04:56.120 --> 0:04:59.920 according to Russian scientific historian Kirol Russianof, they offered Ivan 0:05:00.040 --> 0:05:02.839 off free access to animals at the institute's recently organized 0:05:02.920 --> 0:05:06.039 chimpanzee facility in the village of Kindia, French Guinea, but 0:05:06.120 --> 0:05:08.680 could not pay for other operational and travel expenses of 0:05:08.680 --> 0:05:11.360 the project. So fortunately for Ilia, he found someone who 0:05:11.400 --> 0:05:13.400 did have money to pay for the operational costs of 0:05:13.440 --> 0:05:16.960 his project, the Soviet Financial Commission. They offered him ten 0:05:16.960 --> 0:05:19.919 thousand dollars to cross breed human beings and apes. He 0:05:19.960 --> 0:05:23.880 got approval for his project or just total total. That's 0:05:23.880 --> 0:05:25.560 a good amount of money. Then it was still kind 0:05:25.560 --> 0:05:27.800 of a shoestring budget, but it was enough to do 0:05:27.880 --> 0:05:30.640 some research and he gets official approval from the Soviet 0:05:30.680 --> 0:05:34.839 Academy of Sciences. Ivan Pavlov the the dog guy. Everybody 0:05:34.880 --> 0:05:36.839 knows about Ivan Pavlov. He was one of the scientists 0:05:36.880 --> 0:05:39.919 who signed off on this monkey man come project. So 0:05:40.000 --> 0:05:42.160 it's like, this could really work. Every time I hear 0:05:42.200 --> 0:05:44.920 a bell ring, I find monkeys attractive. Yeah, like it's 0:05:45.080 --> 0:05:48.479 wired into me. Probably something we should talk about with therapists. Um. 0:05:48.560 --> 0:05:50.160 It's important to point out that this was not seen 0:05:50.240 --> 0:05:52.640 yet as a ludicrous project. At the time. A number 0:05:52.680 --> 0:05:55.280 of luminaries in the scientific field had suggested variations on 0:05:55.320 --> 0:05:57.920 this research theme already. Ilia was just proposing to test 0:05:58.040 --> 0:06:01.000 several other scientists hypotheses. So he's not the original that's 0:06:01.080 --> 0:06:03.400 mixed man and monkey together. It was kind of like 0:06:03.440 --> 0:06:05.719 a race to the moon. But who's like, we're all 0:06:06.040 --> 0:06:07.800 you need to do it because it's out there. Yeah, 0:06:07.839 --> 0:06:11.120 we choose to put human sperm inside of a chimpanzee, 0:06:11.520 --> 0:06:14.920 We'll put a man in a monkey. By nineteen sixty three, 0:06:15.160 --> 0:06:17.719 you go, uh So, I'm gonna quote from a Scientific 0:06:17.720 --> 0:06:21.000 American article here that kind of summarizes the early research 0:06:21.080 --> 0:06:24.080 into whether or not human beings and apes can get 0:06:24.080 --> 0:06:26.880 it down. One such hypothesis was that of the German 0:06:26.920 --> 0:06:29.440 scientist Hans Freuden Tall, whose analysis of blood cells in 0:06:29.480 --> 0:06:33.240 nineteen hundred between chimpanzees guerrillas orangutangs and humans should that 0:06:33.279 --> 0:06:36.560 they were serologically far more similar than him been previously expected. 0:06:36.760 --> 0:06:39.520 As a result, Freud and Tall proposed that anthropoid reproductive 0:06:39.520 --> 0:06:41.520 cells could be similar enough to result in a hybrid 0:06:41.520 --> 0:06:44.120 between humans and other apes. In the following two decades, 0:06:44.160 --> 0:06:47.320 other researchers, such as the Dutch zoologist Herman Marie Bernoulet 0:06:47.440 --> 0:06:50.839 Moans and the German sixologist Herman Reudler, sought to test 0:06:50.839 --> 0:06:54.360 this prediction by insimidating chimpanzee females with human sperm. However, 0:06:54.360 --> 0:06:56.640 their attempts never got beyond the planning stage, and in 0:06:56.680 --> 0:06:59.280 the case of Moans, his research plans resulted in him 0:06:59.279 --> 0:07:03.200 being fired from his teaching position. So other people have 0:07:03.400 --> 0:07:07.600 this idea and it's pretty controversial, but the Soviet scientist 0:07:07.640 --> 0:07:09.080 is going to be the guy who gets to finally 0:07:09.120 --> 0:07:11.600 test this out, because over in the West people have 0:07:11.680 --> 0:07:13.760 this idea, but they're like, no, that's fucked up. Is 0:07:13.800 --> 0:07:17.640 it that? Like there's a sort of more like humanistic 0:07:17.720 --> 0:07:22.480 morality in the West. That's like, well, there's certain yeah, yeah, 0:07:22.720 --> 0:07:25.440 and that Russia was just like anything for were not 0:07:25.480 --> 0:07:30.880 found my tradition anymore. Yeah, we can try anything science. 0:07:30.920 --> 0:07:33.240 So that it's important to get the idea of the time. 0:07:33.280 --> 0:07:35.520 So Iliya Ivanov heads off to French Guinea in West 0:07:35.560 --> 0:07:38.640 Africa and starts his research. The other researchers there don't 0:07:38.680 --> 0:07:40.840 like him, and Elia claims that this is because the 0:07:40.880 --> 0:07:43.000 station was a disgusting mess and they were getting their 0:07:43.040 --> 0:07:45.840 monkeys killed before he could inseminate them. The station had 0:07:45.840 --> 0:07:48.240 brought in roughly seven hundred chimpanzees from hunters in the 0:07:48.320 --> 0:07:50.640 year before he arrived, but over half of them had died, 0:07:50.840 --> 0:07:53.320 so may have had a point there. But he got 0:07:53.320 --> 0:07:57.320 to work anyway, and he tried to insmidate three juvenile chimpanzees. Tragically, 0:07:57.320 --> 0:07:59.640 that did not work. Since his funds were limited, This 0:07:59.720 --> 0:08:01.640 failure or convinced Elia that he needed to try a 0:08:01.640 --> 0:08:04.720 different tactic. This is like a superhero story, like roll 0:08:04.800 --> 0:08:06.720 up your sleeves. I've got to test out the antidote 0:08:06.720 --> 0:08:09.600 on myself, is it? You know? It would actually be 0:08:09.480 --> 0:08:11.240 better if that had been what he tried. So his 0:08:11.280 --> 0:08:14.440 original plan was to insimilate three female chimpanzees, and since 0:08:14.480 --> 0:08:18.040 that didn't work, his next plan is to implant chimpanzee 0:08:18.040 --> 0:08:20.520 semen into African women without telling them what he was 0:08:20.560 --> 0:08:23.880 doing worse. Yeah, that's a cartoon villain one that I 0:08:23.920 --> 0:08:26.320 was suggesting. Yeah, now the really good news. This is 0:08:26.320 --> 0:08:29.600 the only instance in this podcast where colonial Africa is 0:08:29.640 --> 0:08:31.960 not as terrible as it could have been, because the 0:08:32.000 --> 0:08:35.120 governor of French Guinea finds out about Ilia's rape women 0:08:35.160 --> 0:08:38.080 with chimpanzee, spurn plan and shuts it down, and it's like, no, 0:08:38.280 --> 0:08:41.079 you can't do that, this is a crime against humanity. 0:08:41.320 --> 0:08:43.760 So Ilia gets sent home to Russia after one month 0:08:43.800 --> 0:08:46.760 in Africa, and the Soviet Academy of Scientists finds out 0:08:46.800 --> 0:08:49.520 that he had essentially tried to do something terrible and 0:08:49.600 --> 0:08:52.760 black balls him, so he gets pretty much shut down. 0:08:53.000 --> 0:08:55.320 Was this kind of like in England the royal societies 0:08:55.360 --> 0:08:57.520 of X y Z, where you kind of couldn't operate 0:08:57.600 --> 0:09:00.320 if you were like not part of you know. Yeah, 0:09:00.440 --> 0:09:02.720 it's less formal than that, and we'll get to why 0:09:02.760 --> 0:09:04.880 in a little bit. It had been previous when the 0:09:04.880 --> 0:09:07.679 czar was in charge things. We're getting more radical, but 0:09:07.720 --> 0:09:12.920 Ilia in nine is too radical for the Soviet Academy 0:09:12.960 --> 0:09:17.320 of Sciences because he's again essentially trying to assault people 0:09:17.559 --> 0:09:20.439 with Champion. Yeah, but in his mind it's punk rock 0:09:20.559 --> 0:09:23.280 it's you know, yeah, we just need to try it. Yeah, 0:09:23.400 --> 0:09:25.839 and this is really the end of of Ilia's tale 0:09:25.880 --> 0:09:27.800 for today. But I think telling it sets up the 0:09:27.840 --> 0:09:30.320 intellectual atmosphere of Soviet Russian And then I open your 0:09:30.320 --> 0:09:33.000 eye sheeple. Also, I want to make cheap all that's 0:09:33.040 --> 0:09:36.440 the other thing I want to do. It's cheap a man. 0:09:36.520 --> 0:09:39.880 That would have been less horrifying, right, yeah, you for 0:09:39.920 --> 0:09:43.480 whatever reason, if you're like sneaking sheep sperm into human beings, 0:09:43.520 --> 0:09:46.160 that's less awful than monkey spur because there's a cuddly aspect. 0:09:46.200 --> 0:09:49.160 There's some sort of yeah. Yeah. I also this is 0:09:49.320 --> 0:09:50.920 very dumb. And if you were to ask me, do 0:09:50.960 --> 0:09:53.720 you believe that a monkey can bear a human child 0:09:53.800 --> 0:09:56.400 or vice versa, I would be like no. Otherwise would 0:09:56.400 --> 0:09:58.520 hear about it all the time. But I don't know why, 0:09:58.720 --> 0:10:01.760 Like why if you can make a mule, I don't know. 0:10:01.960 --> 0:10:04.720 We're just too different. Like yeah, I mean I couldn't 0:10:04.760 --> 0:10:07.559 explain it scientifically, but I mean he did try the 0:10:07.800 --> 0:10:10.120 Planet of the Apes trilogy. I understand that, like we're 0:10:10.280 --> 0:10:12.800 it would be cool if we could. If we could, 0:10:12.840 --> 0:10:15.600 I would support it um, although I would want everyone 0:10:15.720 --> 0:10:20.400 involved to consent to the experiment, but it would be cool. Yes, 0:10:20.559 --> 0:10:22.640 And you long asked the question on this podcast, kind 0:10:22.640 --> 0:10:25.240 of monkey give consents to what I have planned? I 0:10:25.240 --> 0:10:27.680 asked that question regularly, often on the street corner, just 0:10:27.720 --> 0:10:29.600 to people passing by. I'd like to scream it at 0:10:29.600 --> 0:10:32.360 police officers. That's what the Scope's monkey trial was about. Right, 0:10:32.559 --> 0:10:37.160 as far as I've read, which is the titles from 0:10:37.160 --> 0:10:40.040 the movie where an actor yelled, now I'm imagining inherit 0:10:40.080 --> 0:10:42.640 the wind, but with like a guy banging a chimpanzee. 0:10:42.679 --> 0:10:47.439 Like right, it's going to work anyway. This was all 0:10:47.480 --> 0:10:49.880 to set up sort of the state of science in 0:10:49.920 --> 0:10:52.800 the Soviet Union in the nineteen twenties. Anything was seen 0:10:52.800 --> 0:10:55.439 as possible. Human beings and living beings were seen as 0:10:55.559 --> 0:10:59.880 very malleable, and in spite of how crazy ilyas plan 0:11:00.040 --> 0:11:03.079 to crossbreed humans and chimpanzees sounded, a lot of really 0:11:03.120 --> 0:11:05.599 good science was being done in the Soviet Union in 0:11:05.640 --> 0:11:07.720 the early part of the Soviet Union, and in fact, 0:11:07.720 --> 0:11:10.160 for a while the Soviet State was the world center 0:11:10.200 --> 0:11:13.040 of genetic science. I'm asking this because I'm reading the 0:11:13.120 --> 0:11:15.280 right stuff right now in the space race and the 0:11:15.320 --> 0:11:17.720 idea of it being like nationalistic. Was there any element 0:11:17.760 --> 0:11:20.920 of like they had this attitude in competition with the 0:11:20.960 --> 0:11:22.760 rest of the world or the West, or is it 0:11:22.760 --> 0:11:25.480 more just its own like the Soviets own at this 0:11:25.559 --> 0:11:28.920 point that the Cold War hasn't started, so they're less competitive, 0:11:28.920 --> 0:11:30.720 although there is still a factor of that, but it 0:11:30.840 --> 0:11:32.600 is not I mean it bumps up to the nth degree, 0:11:32.760 --> 0:11:35.160 you know, in the late forties. So in this era, 0:11:35.240 --> 0:11:38.480 the nineteen twenties and early thirties, the most brilliant scientist 0:11:38.559 --> 0:11:40.360 in the Soviet Union as a guy named Nikolai v 0:11:40.360 --> 0:11:43.839 Avalov now Vavilov was born in Moscow in eighteen eighties seven. 0:11:43.880 --> 0:11:46.280 He came from a bougie middle class family. In nineteen 0:11:46.320 --> 0:11:49.199 o six he started at the Petrovskaya Agriculture Academy, which 0:11:49.240 --> 0:11:51.839 had been founded to improve Russian agricultural science after a 0:11:51.920 --> 0:11:54.880 terrible famine in eighteen ninety two. Vavilov had been five 0:11:54.960 --> 0:11:57.120 years old during that famine, and its hars were imprinted 0:11:57.160 --> 0:11:59.560 into his brain. He described his life goal as quote 0:11:59.720 --> 0:12:02.000 to work for the benefit of the poor, the enslaved 0:12:02.000 --> 0:12:04.840 classified country to raise their level of knowledge. He wanted 0:12:04.920 --> 0:12:07.400 to discover better farming methods that no Russian peasant would 0:12:07.400 --> 0:12:09.680 ever starve again, and he was apparently a pretty great guy. 0:12:09.960 --> 0:12:12.760 Vavalov just wanted to save lives, so when he graduated 0:12:12.760 --> 0:12:14.800 from the academy, he traveled around Europe, working with great 0:12:14.840 --> 0:12:18.280 geneticists all around you know, Western Europe, and then he 0:12:18.320 --> 0:12:20.440 returned to Russia and got sent out to Persia, where 0:12:20.440 --> 0:12:22.600 some of the czar soldiers had gotten sick from bad bread. 0:12:22.920 --> 0:12:26.160 During his downtime, Vavilov hiked through the really deadly mountains 0:12:26.160 --> 0:12:28.280 of modern day Iran, collecting the seeds of plants that 0:12:28.320 --> 0:12:30.160 thrived in the extreme cult. His hope was that he 0:12:30.160 --> 0:12:32.160 could plant these seeds in Russia and grow more food 0:12:32.160 --> 0:12:34.959 for his people. When he got back from Persian nineteen sixteen. 0:12:35.040 --> 0:12:37.920 World War One was kind of a thing at that 0:12:37.960 --> 0:12:41.200 point and not going well. Uh. The Bolshevik uprising happened 0:12:41.240 --> 0:12:43.080 not long after that, and suddenly Russia was the U 0:12:43.120 --> 0:12:45.080 s s R. At the beginning, the scene fine for 0:12:45.120 --> 0:12:48.040 Vavlov's career. Lennon and Trotsky were all about science, and 0:12:48.040 --> 0:12:50.720 then the years before Stalin took over, Vavolov thrived. He 0:12:50.760 --> 0:12:53.040 took up a professorship and continued traveling the world in 0:12:53.080 --> 0:12:55.120 search of plants and farming wisdom that could help the U. S. 0:12:55.240 --> 0:12:57.880 S R. Grow more food. According to Gary Navam, an 0:12:57.880 --> 0:13:00.560 ethno biologist who wrote a book about Vavolov, he traveled 0:13:00.559 --> 0:13:03.320 to sixty four countries on five continents collecting seeds. He 0:13:03.400 --> 0:13:06.160 learned fifteen languages. He was one of the first scientists 0:13:06.160 --> 0:13:09.000 to really listen to farmers, traditional farmers, peasant farmers around 0:13:09.000 --> 0:13:11.319 the world and why they felt seed diversity was important 0:13:11.320 --> 0:13:14.400 in their fields. All of our notions about biological diversity 0:13:14.440 --> 0:13:16.920 and needing diversity of food on our plates to keep 0:13:17.000 --> 0:13:19.440 us healthy sprung from his work. He was the world's 0:13:19.480 --> 0:13:22.600 greatest plant explorer. He collected more seeds, tubers, and fruits 0:13:22.600 --> 0:13:25.760 from around the world than any other person in human history. Wow, 0:13:25.880 --> 0:13:28.120 sounds great, right, Yeah. You want to hear how he 0:13:28.160 --> 0:13:31.360 gets sucked over. Is he's trying to breed wheat with 0:13:31.400 --> 0:13:35.720 a monkey? No? No, no, he's betrayed and dies starving. Um, yeah, 0:13:35.840 --> 0:13:38.120 that's this tale. Yeah, it's a dark one. Yeah. No, 0:13:38.200 --> 0:13:40.479 as soon as you hear about someone awesome on this podcast, 0:13:40.640 --> 0:13:42.360 it's because I'm going to tell you how they get 0:13:42.360 --> 0:13:47.560 sucked over. Yeah. He's a great guy. He never did 0:13:47.640 --> 0:13:50.640 anything wrong that I read about. So yeah. By nineteen thirty, 0:13:50.679 --> 0:13:52.959 Viavalov had assembled a collection of more than two d 0:13:53.080 --> 0:13:55.960 and fifty thousand different seeds, the largest seed bank in 0:13:56.040 --> 0:13:59.360 human history. He was made director of the Institute of Genetics, 0:13:59.360 --> 0:14:01.240 and he immediately he set to work building a network 0:14:01.240 --> 0:14:04.400 of research institutes and experimental stations all across the USSR. 0:14:04.800 --> 0:14:08.600 Bavlov's network eventually included more than twenty thousand genetic scientists. 0:14:09.080 --> 0:14:12.040 One of those scientists was a man named Trophim Lashenko. 0:14:12.400 --> 0:14:15.680 You ever heard of Tshenka? I have not heard? Okay, 0:14:16.000 --> 0:14:19.280 Well like the name. It's a solid name. Yeah, it's 0:14:19.280 --> 0:14:24.840 it's very Soviet sounding, yes. Now. Tropin was born in 0:14:25.520 --> 0:14:27.840 six and a region of what is today Ukraine. Trophin 0:14:27.920 --> 0:14:29.680 was a peasant. He didn't learn to read until he 0:14:29.760 --> 0:14:31.840 was thirteen. He was so low on the cultural totem 0:14:31.880 --> 0:14:33.880 pole that there probably would have been no chance of 0:14:33.920 --> 0:14:36.440 him having any career beyond peasant and Czarist Russia, but 0:14:36.480 --> 0:14:38.480 the Bolshevik Revolution gave him an in road to the 0:14:38.480 --> 0:14:41.160 scientific community. He was able to gain admittance to several 0:14:41.160 --> 0:14:44.800 agricultural science institutes and began carrying out experiments into growing 0:14:44.880 --> 0:14:48.120 vegetables in different climates. Was the state paying for people's education? 0:14:48.200 --> 0:14:51.280 Was it like, okay, yeah, yeah, so Russia has and 0:14:51.320 --> 0:14:53.720 this is a World War two spoiler, pretty brutal winters. 0:14:54.800 --> 0:14:56.320 I don't know if you'd if you were aware of that. 0:14:56.720 --> 0:14:59.000 I heard that their codes were not good enough. That's 0:14:59.000 --> 0:15:01.800 what I remember from was the Germans. The Russians had 0:15:01.800 --> 0:15:05.760 great coats in that water, right, yeah, swords are one 0:15:05.760 --> 0:15:08.040 and lost in the quality of the coats and boots 0:15:08.120 --> 0:15:12.520 and ricks. So a. Famines had been a regular part 0:15:12.520 --> 0:15:15.160 of life for centuries, and the Soviet government was trying 0:15:15.160 --> 0:15:16.880 to find out new ways to make that not the case. 0:15:16.920 --> 0:15:20.360 So in newly minted scientists troph and Leshenko wound up 0:15:20.400 --> 0:15:23.240 in his Gerby Shan trying to breed cold resistant peas. 0:15:23.480 --> 0:15:26.120 Now Lashinko believed his special winter Peace would turn the 0:15:26.160 --> 0:15:28.880 Caucasus mountains green in the winter and feed the Soviet 0:15:28.880 --> 0:15:31.120 people through the coldest months of the year. He also 0:15:31.120 --> 0:15:33.000 claimed that he had created a new kind of winter 0:15:33.040 --> 0:15:36.200 wheat using a process called vernalization. Now ver analysis is 0:15:36.240 --> 0:15:38.400 the Latin word for spring, which basically what he was 0:15:38.400 --> 0:15:40.240 trying to do is wheat seeds are different in spring 0:15:40.280 --> 0:15:43.440 in winter because the cold damages the seeds as they're growing. 0:15:43.800 --> 0:15:45.800 So the seeds that you tend to grow in the 0:15:45.800 --> 0:15:49.120 winter have reduced yields in the summer seeds. So Lushenko 0:15:49.240 --> 0:15:51.880 is basically claiming that by soaking seeds in cold water, 0:15:51.920 --> 0:15:54.280 he could get them ready for cold weather and then 0:15:54.320 --> 0:15:57.320 they would grow like spring wheat in the winter. Um, 0:15:57.560 --> 0:16:01.080 you could like prepare them for exactly used to the cold. Yeah, 0:16:01.120 --> 0:16:03.200 get him used to the cold while their seeds and 0:16:03.240 --> 0:16:05.760 then it'll be fine. Then they'll grow really really well 0:16:05.800 --> 0:16:11.640 in the which again, nineteen twenties science something to try, 0:16:11.800 --> 0:16:14.480 he gotta try, uh, and he got lucky that year. 0:16:14.520 --> 0:16:17.520 It just so happened the nine was an unusually warm winter. 0:16:17.680 --> 0:16:19.920 His seeds did very well. Now, there was zero evidence 0:16:19.960 --> 0:16:22.520 that had anything to do with the vitalization because Trophim 0:16:22.560 --> 0:16:25.880 Leshenko didn't believe in using control groups. Yeah, why would 0:16:25.880 --> 0:16:27.600 you do that? And the most fun scientists shoot from 0:16:27.640 --> 0:16:31.080 the hip. Come on, Yeah, this is a whole episode 0:16:31.120 --> 0:16:34.680 about scientists who shoot from the hip. Um. So trophim 0:16:34.960 --> 0:16:36.880 lied and falsified his data to make it look like 0:16:36.960 --> 0:16:39.720 his methods were the cause of the better harvest that year, 0:16:39.840 --> 0:16:41.440 and then he kicked off a pr blitz to make 0:16:41.440 --> 0:16:44.760 sure everyone in the USSR heard about his work. He 0:16:44.960 --> 0:16:48.360 convinced a reporter from Pravda to cover him. The resulting article, 0:16:48.520 --> 0:16:51.360 The Green Fields of Winter, started out kind of negative, 0:16:51.400 --> 0:16:55.320 describing Lushenko this way quote Lushenko gives one the feeling 0:16:55.360 --> 0:16:57.280 of a toothache. God give him help. He has a 0:16:57.360 --> 0:17:00.240 dejected me in stingy of words and insignia and get 0:17:00.280 --> 0:17:02.680 to faces. He all one remembers is his sullen look 0:17:02.720 --> 0:17:05.040 creeping across the earth, as if at very least he 0:17:05.080 --> 0:17:08.359 were ready to do someone in which is it's pretty 0:17:08.400 --> 0:17:11.680 brutal opening, brutal. There's the picture of him from PROFTA. 0:17:12.480 --> 0:17:14.320 I feel like that like reads like one of those 0:17:14.359 --> 0:17:16.919 celebrity profiles now where they focus too much on like 0:17:17.160 --> 0:17:19.159 how many French fries they ate. At the beginning, it's 0:17:19.200 --> 0:17:20.680 just like, oh, this doesn't feel like what they should 0:17:20.720 --> 0:17:23.520 be about. You should be nicer. Yeah, well it did 0:17:23.600 --> 0:17:28.680 get like Elizabeth Holmes. I feel like of an earlier time, 0:17:28.800 --> 0:17:32.200 this is exactly like that. Actually, So the article starts 0:17:32.200 --> 0:17:34.520 off talking about who he's kind of a dour, gross 0:17:34.560 --> 0:17:36.440 looking guy, but as it goes on it gets more 0:17:36.480 --> 0:17:39.359 praiseful because the provat the guy bought into what he 0:17:39.400 --> 0:17:42.280 was saying about his seeds. So it famously dubbed Lushenko 0:17:42.359 --> 0:17:47.080 the barefoot Professor, which was a compliment in Soviet era Russia, 0:17:47.440 --> 0:17:50.760 and it noticed, loves the barefoot contessa exactly exactly, and 0:17:50.800 --> 0:17:53.760 you would trust him to reform your nation's agricultural processes 0:17:53.920 --> 0:17:55.720 for her, I don't know anything about. Her name is 0:17:55.720 --> 0:17:57.840 Eina Garden. She was like the head of nuclear policy 0:17:57.880 --> 0:18:02.520 and now she is a food network person and really, yeah, 0:18:02.720 --> 0:18:05.600 she had a nuclear policy. She like worked under Reagan 0:18:05.640 --> 0:18:08.359 as like one of the top policy writers. And then 0:18:08.400 --> 0:18:10.200 like her husband, who I believe is a dean of 0:18:10.200 --> 0:18:12.719 a school at Yale, Like, she moved up to New 0:18:12.800 --> 0:18:14.440 York after that part of her career, and she like 0:18:14.520 --> 0:18:17.119 opened a grocery store called Preful Contests on Long Island 0:18:17.160 --> 0:18:18.800 and the Hampton's and it became a thing. And then 0:18:18.840 --> 0:18:21.600 cookbooks and then now she's you know, okay, well, I 0:18:21.600 --> 0:18:24.119 guess maybe let her set agricultural policy. I don't know, 0:18:24.240 --> 0:18:28.240 she seems she seems great. Uh. Lushenko was not so. 0:18:28.400 --> 0:18:31.200 But the article, yeah, called him the barefoot Professor and 0:18:31.200 --> 0:18:33.960 and noted that his experimental fields were often filled with 0:18:34.000 --> 0:18:36.680 agronomic luminaries, eager to shake his hand and witness the 0:18:36.720 --> 0:18:40.000 miracles of his creation. So in that interview, Leshenko claimed 0:18:40.000 --> 0:18:42.640 to have invented vitalization, which was a lie. The process 0:18:42.680 --> 0:18:45.560 was about forty years older than he was, and vitalization 0:18:45.680 --> 0:18:48.359 does actually work to make plants flower earlier, so you 0:18:48.400 --> 0:18:51.439