Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe McCormick. And
Speaker 1: I think today we're doing tunnels, Is that right? Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're going to venture into some strange tunnels in the earth. Um.
Speaker 1: I don't know about you, Joe, but I love a
Speaker 1: good creepy tunnel story. Um. You know, any caliber of
Speaker 1: motion picture. If you have like a subway tunnel and
Speaker 1: you have a monster shambling around down there, even possibility
Speaker 1: of a monster shambling around down there, I'm generally on board.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean it's one of the classics. And
Speaker 1: you know your your your your fairytale types. One of
Speaker 1: the big ones is you've got to go into the underworld, right,
Speaker 1: And what's closer in physical reality to an underworld than
Speaker 1: cave or a tunnel. Caves and tunnels, any humans have
Speaker 1: have long been fascinated by them. You know, we see
Speaker 1: a cave, we want to get in there. We need
Speaker 1: to know what's going on, we need to find out
Speaker 1: what kind of sacred uh secrets are contained in there.
Speaker 1: And so you know, I'm also continually fascinated by tales
Speaker 1: of of you know, modern tunnel systems, abandoned tunnel systems
Speaker 1: from from further back in history. UM. I also love
Speaker 1: a good you know, tunnel of unknown origin stories such
Speaker 1: as the Strange Tunnels and the Hyperion novels, or oh,
Speaker 1: another a film in this case that had some strange tunnels.
Speaker 1: There's the whole tunnel plotline in Jordan Peel's two thousand
Speaker 1: nineteen film US. Yeah. Yeah, let's not spoil anything about that.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna spoil anything, but it does open with
Speaker 1: a with a fun text crawl, uh quote. There are
Speaker 1: thousands of miles of tunnels beneath the United States, abandoned
Speaker 1: subway systems, unused service roots, and deserted mind shafts. Many
Speaker 1: have no known purpose at all. So I instantly I was,
Speaker 1: you know, on board for that. I love a good
Speaker 1: informational legend like that. Uh. And the fun thing about
Speaker 1: that quote is that it's it's a fun one to
Speaker 1: ponder over because on one hand, it's sort of true.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of of of abandoned tunnel systems
Speaker 1: in the United States, some with some pretty engaging stories
Speaker 1: about them at times, you know, old minds, abandoned subway
Speaker 1: projects and abandoned subway lines. I'm a real I'm a
Speaker 1: real sucker for that sort of thing. Um. Also, you know, ultimately,
Speaker 1: I think this is the filming question is one that
Speaker 1: maybe doesn't you know, I supposed to take it completely
Speaker 1: seriously and think, well, there's this entire system of of
Speaker 1: tunnels and who knows what's going on down there? But
Speaker 1: it also reminds me of what we're talking about here today, uh,
Speaker 1: the story of mysterious tunnels uh and caves caverns in
Speaker 1: South America. Now, what makes today's example really interesting is
Speaker 1: normally you're going to think about your your mysterious tunnels
Speaker 1: in two categories. One is one is, obviously, you know,
Speaker 1: a cave of geological origin, you know, uh, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: here's here's a millions of years old cave with with
Speaker 1: stalactites and stalagmites, clearly a water formed cavity of some type.
Speaker 1: But then the other bucket, of course, is who made
Speaker 1: this tunnel, what human dug this and for what purpose?
Speaker 1: But actually, uh, those two categories leave out leave out
Speaker 1: another option, don't they? Yeah, and it's not aliens. The
Speaker 1: fun thing about this is you don't need aliens to
Speaker 1: get to the you know, the wow moment, to the
Speaker 1: to the amazing content of this particular topic, because we're
Speaker 1: still we still seem to be dealing with a non
Speaker 1: human entity U, a non human will behind these um,
Speaker 1: these these tunnels or caves or or burrows. Uh is
Speaker 1: probably more appropriate to call them these paleo burrows of
Speaker 1: South America. They're not the work of of a pre
Speaker 1: Columbian society. Uh, they're older and they're quite impressive. Well,
Speaker 1: as we dive in here, I want to mention that
Speaker 1: that one of my main sources here is an excellent
Speaker 1: book that came out, I believe in seventeen by Anthony J. Martin,
Speaker 1: a paleontologist at Emory University here here in Atlanta, titled
Speaker 1: The Evolution Underground Burrows, Bunkers, and the Marvelous Subterranean World
Speaker 1: Beneath Our Feet. Um. I've been meaning to cover this
Speaker 1: book in some form or another for a while, and
Speaker 1: I saw it on the shelf again. I was like,
Speaker 1: all right, today's the day I'm gonna I'm gonna bust
Speaker 1: this book out and see what grabs my attention. So
Speaker 1: I haven't read this yet, but my interest is piqued
Speaker 1: because I, like, you love a tunnel borrow a din
Speaker 1: under the earth. But I was familiar with Anthony J.
Speaker 1: Martin's name, and I'm not sure, but I think it
Speaker 1: was because he was one of the authors of research
Speaker 1: from two thousand seven that was famous for documenting the
Speaker 1: first fossil evidence of a dinosaur, the Doug Tunnels. Did
Speaker 1: you read about this, Yeah, this is covered in the
Speaker 1: in the in the book. Uh yeah, there's something some
Speaker 1: wonderful illustrations and even in one case, I believe a
Speaker 1: bit of folk art depicting these creatures, which I loved.
Speaker 1: Uh So the brief rundown on this. The paper where
Speaker 1: they described this find came out in two thousand seven
Speaker 1: and Proceedings of the Royal Society b Biological Sciences. It
Speaker 1: was by David J. Verrikio, Anthony J. Martin, and Yoshihiro Katsura,
Speaker 1: and it was called first trace and body fossil evidence
Speaker 1: of a burrowing Denning dinosaur. So this fossil find came
Speaker 1: from a formation in southwest Montanas near the border with Idaho.
Speaker 1: I think it's called the Black Leaf Formation, and this
Speaker 1: formation dates back to the mid Cretaceous period. The find
Speaker 1: consisted of both the trace fossil of the borough itself
Speaker 1: as well as skeletal fossils found inside. The skeletal fossils
Speaker 1: were of one adult and two juveniles, which apparently all
Speaker 1: and were fossilized inside the burrow. The dinosaur was a
Speaker 1: member of a previously undiscovered species of Ornithia, which the
Speaker 1: author's name or Ricto dromius cubicularis, and that genus name
Speaker 1: or Rictodromus that means digging runners that gives you a
Speaker 1: hint of like the two main talents of the stat
Speaker 1: build of this dinosaur. These would have been herbivorous dinosaurs
Speaker 1: that lived roughly ninety something million years ago. And so
Speaker 1: one question you might wonder is, well, how do we
Speaker 1: know that the dinosaurs we found inside actually made the
Speaker 1: tunnel or burrow instead of just I don't know, finding
Speaker 1: a a naturally occurring hollow or tunnel made by some
Speaker 1: other mysterious creature. Well, it seems likely that the dinosaurs
Speaker 1: themselves made it because of the creatures anatomy and because
Speaker 1: of its relationship to the borrow. So, in the words
Speaker 1: of the author's quote, the features of the snout, shoulder, girdle,
Speaker 1: and pelvis are consistent with digging habits. So it has
Speaker 1: multiple uh anatomical adaptations you would expect to find in
Speaker 1: a creature that specializes in digging. Like it's got a
Speaker 1: snout that is sort of fused together in a way
Speaker 1: that would make it kind of a good shovel for
Speaker 1: like kicking soil back and forth, and it's skeletal structure
Speaker 1: seems well put together to kind of brace itself with
Speaker 1: the back limbs or the pelvis as it uses its
Speaker 1: four limbs to dig and and throw soil out behind it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is something that's UH that's touched on with various
Speaker 1: organisms in this book that no organism needs the tools
Speaker 1: for burrowing or digging. But it's not just the you
Speaker 1: know something on matter having claws or some sort of snout.
Speaker 1: It also needs uh like the body to back it up.
Speaker 1: And so we can look at the bodies of many
Speaker 1: of these organisms that are extinct now and we can
Speaker 1: we can make very informed UH guesses about what their
Speaker 1: body had evolved to do. Right, you need the right
Speaker 1: kind of chassis to give you leverage with which to dig,
Speaker 1: because you remember, your digging is not just about what
Speaker 1: the hands are doing in the front. The four limbs
Speaker 1: scraping away at things. You all, the bracing is really important.
Speaker 1: You gotta hold your ground while you're scraping. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can't just put a big scoop on the front
Speaker 1: of your um. I don't know your prius and say
Speaker 1: you're gonna go out and start moving earth around. But
Speaker 1: another clue that that the dinosaurs inside this burrow dug
Speaker 1: it were the fact that the borrow almost perfectly matches
Speaker 1: the width and breadth of the torso of the adult.
Speaker 1: So it seems like this is a borrow of the
Speaker 1: right size to have been dug by the adult dinosaur.
Speaker 1: And the adult is found along with two juveniles inside
Speaker 1: the borrow, and they were found with no bite marks
Speaker 1: or anything on the bones, no signs of of carnivore
Speaker 1: bone assemblies like you might sometimes find where you know
Speaker 1: carnivore is dumping all the bones from its recent meals.
Speaker 1: So it looks like this was not just a tunnel
Speaker 1: dug by a dinosaur, but one that an adult dinosaur
Speaker 1: lived in side with its juveniles. And this would provide
Speaker 1: evidence of a case of extended parental care in dinosaurs,
Speaker 1: something that I think was uh less well evidenced and
Speaker 1: more controversial at the time, and based on the size
Speaker 1: of the juveniles, it appears that this parental care had
Speaker 1: gone on for at least several months. Yeah, yeah, this
Speaker 1: is a This is in stark contrast to some of
Speaker 1: the hypothesized ways that say, giant sauropods would have dealt
Speaker 1: with their young. I remember discussing that on the podcast,
Speaker 1: where like at least one hypothesis was the like the
Speaker 1: eggs kind of just fall out and they just rolled
Speaker 1: us aside and then they do their thing. So yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: totally different parenting strategy. Anyway. The authors of this paper
Speaker 1: note that vertebrates today create burrows, of course for a
Speaker 1: number of reasons. Some actually use tunneling as a as
Speaker 1: a food foraging strategy, trying to get underground food. Some
Speaker 1: use it for escaping predators that's a common one, as
Speaker 1: a type of shelter that protects you, and some use
Speaker 1: it for are avoiding the elements in harsh environments. But
Speaker 1: the other half of the equation is that this animal,
Speaker 1: or Rictodromus, was also a cursor, which means a runner.
Speaker 1: Remember the name means digging runner. And the authors of
Speaker 1: this paper say that if we look at analogies today.
Speaker 1: Running animals that create burrows tend to do so for
Speaker 1: a pretty specific reason, which is they create them as
Speaker 1: dens for rearing their young. So once you give birth
Speaker 1: to young, the young and the juveniles are pretty vulnerable
Speaker 1: for a while until they get bigger, big enough to
Speaker 1: run around and defend themselves like an adult can, and
Speaker 1: so a den provides a place to protect the young
Speaker 1: while they're growing and still vulnerable. Now, Joe, you included
Speaker 1: a fabulous bit of paleo art here from this uh
Speaker 1: this study, this is actually in the book as well. Um,
Speaker 1: I love a good bit of paleo art. But here
Speaker 1: we see the parent, we see a cutaway of the burrow,
Speaker 1: and we see the two young dinos at the bottom.
Speaker 1: I like the the paleo artist in this case has
Speaker 1: chosen to depict the adult Erictodromus as Sam the Eagle
Speaker 1: from the Muppets, as a very severe eyebrow and uh
Speaker 1: and and very well. I think this is anatomically accurate
Speaker 1: the beak like mouth. Yes, well, anyway, sorry if that
Speaker 1: was a digression from the paleo burrows, but I just
Speaker 1: wanted to say, yeah, so you're looking at this book
Speaker 1: by Anthony J. Martin. And Martin has a history with
Speaker 1: with the diggers. Yeah, and Martin knows his his tunnels
Speaker 1: and his his burrows here and so he he discusses
Speaker 1: the paleo burrows in the Evolution Underground, pointing out that
Speaker 1: geologists in Argentina and Brazil noted these burrows back in
Speaker 1: the nineteen twenties and nineteen thirties. Uh. Some had partially
Speaker 1: or wholly filled with sediment, but others remained quite open. Uh.
Speaker 1: They were cutting a variety of soft um, igneous, metamorphic,
Speaker 1: and set and sedimentary bedrock. So we're talking about we're
Speaker 1: talking about rock here. That's one of the the important
Speaker 1: and I think really impressive things about about this. Uh.
Speaker 1: Some of some were visible in outcrops, others as cylindrical chambers.
Speaker 1: There are some actually some wonderful photographs you can find
Speaker 1: online and attached to various UM articles about these papers
Speaker 1: about these Uh, they're quite impressive. They look just like
Speaker 1: like a tunnel cut through a rock. You can you
Speaker 1: know that you they look like that. They look like
Speaker 1: real tunnels. We're not just talking about just an indention
Speaker 1: in the side of a hill. Yeah, some of them
Speaker 1: look like somebody brought in the boring machine like a large,
Speaker 1: like several meter wide, basically circular, cylindrical tunnel. Others are smaller,
Speaker 1: more compact, or more kind of a half moon shape.
Speaker 1: But I just wanted to flag this was interesting because
Speaker 1: so Martin notes that the people had previously observed these
Speaker 1: things in the twenties and thirties in Argentina and Brazil. Now,
Speaker 1: I had been reading about the paleo burrows in some
Speaker 1: articles that came out in ten and those articles were
Speaker 1: were essentially saying that that nobody had ever reported these
Speaker 1: things until just recently, that they just sort of come
Speaker 1: on the radar. But it seems like Martin has turned
Speaker 1: up some other previous reports of of these things. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that that's what seems to be the case. But the
Speaker 1: important thing is that they weren't exactly sure what they
Speaker 1: were looking at here. Now and over the decades to follow,
Speaker 1: hundreds of these caves were uncovered, with a lot of
Speaker 1: concentration in the area of what is now Rio Grande
Speaker 1: do Sol in southern Brazil. Um others other of paleo
Speaker 1: burrows of this nature are simply undiscovered. Uh. I've seen
Speaker 1: a total number express somewhere around like fifteen hundred. And
Speaker 1: again they're likely others as well that haven't been discovered
Speaker 1: or will never be discovered, you know. Yeah, the reporting
Speaker 1: I was reading said that most of these are clustered
Speaker 1: in kind of a kind of strange geographical bands, like
Speaker 1: right in this area in southern Brazil, but not further
Speaker 1: south than like Uruguay. But then if you go even
Speaker 1: further south, there are some more down further into Argentina. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the archaeologists came back and they were studying them
Speaker 1: with renewed interest in the seventies and eighties, and they
Speaker 1: hypothesized that these were surely the work of human beings.
Speaker 1: Martin writes, quote, considering their proportions and geological setting. This
Speaker 1: was a perfectly reasonable hypothesis, as they superficially resembled human
Speaker 1: made tunnels and chambers in Cappadocia and elsewhere. Now, Cappadocia
Speaker 1: is is noted here, as u is a place that
Speaker 1: in what is modern day Turkey, where you have these
Speaker 1: hit wonderful historic cave houses that can still be seen today. Um, Joe,
Speaker 1: you might be interested to also note that they filmed
Speaker 1: parts of your The Hunter from the future here. Yes,
Speaker 1: there there are quite clear signs of The movie has
Speaker 1: scenes of of the of its muscly superstar, a brown,
Speaker 1: scuttling around over these beautiful rock formations. I think he
Speaker 1: fights a dinosaur in what is clearly Cappadocia than now.
Speaker 1: While some of these paleo burrows, again in South America
Speaker 1: were too small to have served as anything other than
Speaker 1: hiding places for children, um, he writes that others were
Speaker 1: large enough to have potentially been human dwellings. The largest
Speaker 1: were as wide as thirteen feet or four meters um.
Speaker 1: They were six point six feet tall or you know,
Speaker 1: two or two meters, and they were more than three
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty feet long or about a hundred meters
Speaker 1: in length. So again, well, you know, in many of
Speaker 1: these cases, we're not just talking about uh, some sort
Speaker 1: of a narrow burrow, but but something that that that
Speaker 1: that a family or small group could have lived in. Quote. Moreover,
Speaker 1: some tunnels connected with one another or joined larger sub
Speaker 1: spherical chain burrs to make more complicated networks. Once put together,
Speaker 1: some of these spaces feasibly could have served as underground
Speaker 1: homes for families or small communities. A few even contain petroglyphs,
Speaker 1: showing that pre Columbian people entered at least some of them.
Speaker 1: And as we've we've touched on already and know there's
Speaker 1: a there's a long history of humans using naturally occurring caves,
Speaker 1: if not for shelter, then for for other purposes, be
Speaker 1: it like, um, you know, a burial or some sort
Speaker 1: of sacred purpose, or in some cases, you know, we're
Speaker 1: not sure exactly what that purpose might have been. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then we have excellent examples of places like Cappadocia,
Speaker 1: which we just mentioned, which demonstrate that if local geologic
Speaker 1: conditions are conducive to excavation, then homes can be manufactured
Speaker 1: in the substance of the earth. There are also various
Speaker 1: traditions of pit houses partially buried or excavated homes. Again,
Speaker 1: it just kind of depends on the culture what's available
Speaker 1: there in the given environment. But in looking at these
Speaker 1: paleo boroughs, reese ushers begin to notice things that made
Speaker 1: it less likely that humans built these particular tunnels at all. So,
Speaker 1: first of all, while artifacts and petroglyphs did factor into
Speaker 1: some of these sites, we did not find anywhere near
Speaker 1: the amount of human bones and human artifacts that we'd
Speaker 1: expect to find at a place where humans lived, humans visited,
Speaker 1: but they did not seem to live here. And this
Speaker 1: is something that you know, you think of any of
Speaker 1: any of the episodes we've recorded or anything you read
Speaker 1: about about ancient sites of human habitation, you have you know,
Speaker 1: you have these layers you can go through. You can
Speaker 1: you can essentially sort through the garbage of human civilizations
Speaker 1: and learn what they were up to and how long
Speaker 1: they were there. And in these cases, it does not
Speaker 1: seem like there is there are enough artifacts, enough remains
Speaker 1: or even enough you know, um petroglyphs uh to indicate
Speaker 1: that they were here. And that's another thing. Petroglyphic rarity
Speaker 1: in these tunnels indicated, according to Martin quote, folks were
Speaker 1: not inspired enough to hang out in these places. And
Speaker 1: art Another fact, and this gets into the artifact issue
Speaker 1: as well, is indigenous peoples in south eastern South America
Speaker 1: did not have access to the right materials for rock
Speaker 1: carving tools and no evidence of of said tools were found. So,
Speaker 1: again getting back into the that the lack of artifacts
Speaker 1: to support the the idea that humans made these uh,
Speaker 1: these burrows UH and or lived here. So during the
Speaker 1: nine eighties, researchers began to turn their attention away from
Speaker 1: human beings. Uh. They looked at the scale of these
Speaker 1: caves and tunnels. The small child sized tunnels that we mentioned,
Speaker 1: they decided were likely the result of of a smaller
Speaker 1: burrowing prehistoric animals such as giant armadillo. But the grand
Speaker 1: caves and tunnels, the ones in which human families or
Speaker 1: communities could have potentially lived. A new hypothesis emerged for
Speaker 1: these architects, and it's it's not human beings, it's not
Speaker 1: flowing water or you know, natural geologics sees, it is
Speaker 1: the giant ground sloth. The big boys, the big Boys. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so um. I know we've talked about sloths, uh, extant
Speaker 1: sloth species on the show before, and I guess giant
Speaker 1: ground sloths have come up but at least a time
Speaker 1: or two. But I don't think we've really discussed like
Speaker 1: what they were and why they're so cool. Because today
Speaker 1: we have in the world, I believe, six extant species
Speaker 1: of oar boreal sloths. You know, they live in the trees,
Speaker 1: and these are certainly weird and wonderful animals. Um. I'll
Speaker 1: be the first to admit that they can be a
Speaker 1: bit of a bore. If you encounter them in the zoo,
Speaker 1: you know, they're typically just um, you know, bunched in
Speaker 1: the corner of a of an exhibit, you know, just
Speaker 1: chilling or staying warm. Uh. I find that they often
Speaker 1: look like a like a wig hanging on a hook. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And uh, And I mean I'm not commenting on their
Speaker 1: their happiness or lack of happiness there, but they're not
Speaker 1: as interests. They're not magical to behold. But in the wild, uh,
Speaker 1: they come off these two strange elemental spirit beings. I
Speaker 1: had the privilege to glimpse one in the wild ones
Speaker 1: and it was just magical. It's got like this kind
Speaker 1: of thing that like slowly emerges out of the canopy
Speaker 1: and the distance, and you glimpse it for a short
Speaker 1: amount of time and then it's gone. They're also magical
Speaker 1: in a different way if you get up close enough
Speaker 1: to see their face, because they often appear to be smiling. Yes,
Speaker 1: they have very that their faces are in this wonderful
Speaker 1: place that where they You know that we lean into
Speaker 1: anthropomorphizing them rather easily. They look kind of like they're smiling.
Speaker 1: They look a little a little dirty, which is you
Speaker 1: know which which is cute too? Cuteness um and yeah,
Speaker 1: and don't even get it started on baby slots. Absolutely adorable.
Speaker 1: So we have today three toad slots and two toad slots.
Speaker 1: This refers to the four limbs only, and these represent
Speaker 1: two distantly related families that experience convergent evolution to our
Speaker 1: boreal life. Okay, so the sloth lineage is not one
Speaker 1: that that always existed in the trees. The species we
Speaker 1: have today are the ones that happened to move into
Speaker 1: the trees at some point in in in deep history.
Speaker 1: That's right. Yeah, Because plenty of these other slots or
Speaker 1: or slothes if you, if you were rather believe it's
Speaker 1: the British pronounciation. Um, many of them were ground slots,
Speaker 1: and in some cases we're talking giant ground slots. And
Speaker 1: these can be quite impressive. I've enjoyed looking at at bones,
Speaker 1: you know, fossil exhibits of these over time. There's also
Speaker 1: a wonderful, full scale, muddy and shaggy recreation of of
Speaker 1: of a ground slot that Atlanta's own firm Bank Museum
Speaker 1: of Natural History. I don't know if you've been over
Speaker 1: to see this, Joe. But it's in the walk through
Speaker 1: Time in Georgia exhibit. Yeah, I have been through that before,
Speaker 1: though I don't remember exactly what this one looks like.
Speaker 1: I wonder if there's a picture of it online. Hold on,
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, okay, here it is. I remember this now, Okay,
Speaker 1: the sloth needs a bath. First of all, it is filthy.
Speaker 1: It looks really gross. Yeah, it's it's it's it's impressive.
Speaker 1: I imagine it's been I don't know how long it's
Speaker 1: been there, but it has to have been impressing school children, uh,
Speaker 1: for for quite a while at this point. And I
Speaker 1: hope that if at some point they they they change
Speaker 1: anything in that exhibit, they keep the sloth. Uh. This
Speaker 1: would have been a keeping dirty, keep it dirty, keep it,
Speaker 1: keep it, keep it on display. Uh. This would have
Speaker 1: I believe this would have been an airmatherium, which was
Speaker 1: a giant ground slot that would have lived four point
Speaker 1: nine million years ago to around eleven thousand years ago.
Speaker 1: And it was. It was a pretty big big guy,
Speaker 1: rivaling but not surpassing the megatherium in size. Now megatherium,
Speaker 1: this is the This is the biggest of the known
Speaker 1: ground sloths. Of prehistoric times. Uh. Megatherium is Latin for
Speaker 1: the great beast. Oh, I've never put that together before,
Speaker 1: the theory um theoryum being beast, But that would be like,
Speaker 1: as in the word theory amorphic, taking the form of
Speaker 1: a beast. So these guys reached heights of twenty feet
Speaker 1: or six meters, and they probably weighed roughly four tons, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, dealing with the adults here obviously. Um. It
Speaker 1: was simply put the sloth as megafauna fear and feeling
Speaker 1: that filling that niche in the in the ecosystem, a
Speaker 1: giant eating machine that didn't have to worry too much
Speaker 1: about predators, ate a lot to maintain their enormous bodies
Speaker 1: and then also slept a lot to digest it. This
Speaker 1: particular guy would have been as big as an elephant,
Speaker 1: and it it exceeded at the time only in size,
Speaker 1: uh you know, concerning mammals by some terrestrial mammals, by
Speaker 1: some mammoths during its day. So this was a huge animal.
Speaker 1: And while there are some I think these are mainly controversial,
Speaker 1: there's a controversial hypothesis that it might have been partially carnivorous,
Speaker 1: uh you know, perhaps feasting on scavenge dead animals, such
Speaker 1: as I believe the glyptodonts, but it's wildly thought. I
Speaker 1: believe that they were merely selective herbivores, though there are
Speaker 1: some ground slots that I think there there's more robust
Speaker 1: evidence that they may have been sporadically omnivorous, such as
Speaker 1: the Mila don Darwini. There was I believe, a two
Speaker 1: thousand twenty one study looking at the copper lights of it,
Speaker 1: the the fossil pooh of this particular slot, and they
Speaker 1: determined that, yeah, it was probably scavenging some meat here
Speaker 1: and there to to make things, to make ends meet. So,
Speaker 1: as we've discussed on the show several times, they're actually
Speaker 1: quite a there's quite robust documentation that many animals we
Speaker 1: think of is pretty much strictly herbivorous, will in some
Speaker 1: strange occasions eat meat. Right. Nature is just pretty opportunistic.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's gonna take what it gets. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: you know that this is just a starter on just
Speaker 1: how weird and strange these uh, these these loths truly were.
Speaker 1: I mean, they're they're huge. There's the there's this idea
Speaker 1: that some of them are also eating a little meat
Speaker 1: here and there. But then when you start realizing that, Okay,
Speaker 1: looking at these paleo burrows, we're talking about giant ground
Speaker 1: slots that were not just digging in mud and dirt,
Speaker 1: they were burrowing through rock. Uh, We're just in a
Speaker 1: whole different dimension of wonder here. In my opinion, Martin
Speaker 1: writes that as paleontologists in Argentina and Brazil started looking
Speaker 1: closer at the at the the paleo burrows, they began
Speaker 1: to find clear signs that they were made. They seem
Speaker 1: to have been made by giant sloths. They were so.
Speaker 1: First of all, they saw there were groove marks in
Speaker 1: the walls that matched the size and claw account of
Speaker 1: ground slots, usually two toad and then also the dimensions
Speaker 1: of the tunnels pointed towards the slots. These were not
Speaker 1: smooth and cylindrical tunnels, but quote a series of semi
Speaker 1: elliptical chambers with flat floors but ceilings that's that were
Speaker 1: possibly buffed out into concave shapes by the sloths backs
Speaker 1: and the resulting complexes of tunnels and rooms. Again this
Speaker 1: this feeling that you're going into a multi chambered subterranean habitat.
Speaker 1: These were likely the result of many generations of ground
Speaker 1: slots returning to a given site year after year, So
Speaker 1: not just one creating this, but you know, coming back
Speaker 1: to the same location and uh and essentially adding onto it. Right,
Speaker 1: And from what I was reading these paleo burrows, they
Speaker 1: vary greatly in like size and complexity, right. So some
Speaker 1: are just sort of a straight cylinder that that goes
Speaker 1: aways in and uh and then terminates. But there are
Speaker 1: these other ones like you're talking about that have these
Speaker 1: uh more elaborate branching tunnels and and sometimes open up
Speaker 1: into what appeared to be kind of rooms inside. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and these you know, I guess we could if you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's difficult to compare these types of constructions to
Speaker 1: human constructions, but you know, it's kind of like thinking about, well,
Speaker 1: think about a newspaper shops. Sometimes it's a freestanding place
Speaker 1: out here on on a street with nothing around it.
Speaker 1: Other times, well, it's it's got this thing next to
Speaker 1: it and this other thing. And it guess it depends
Speaker 1: on just how much uh sloth activity was going on
Speaker 1: in that given spot, like how what how prime this
Speaker 1: location was for the burroughs, and how many generations of
Speaker 1: of of animals were coming back to this place and
Speaker 1: digging these spaces out and redigging. Thank okay. So another
Speaker 1: interesting point of comparison based on the articles I was
Speaker 1: reading versus Martin's take on this, is that the stuff
Speaker 1: I was reading made it seem like it was less
Speaker 1: well agreed on what what exactly had made these tunnels
Speaker 1: and why, and the ground sloths and extinct species of
Speaker 1: armadillos were the main contenders, But it sounds like Martin
Speaker 1: is is way more on the sloths side. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: And and he writes when you when you look at
Speaker 1: giant ground sloth and nat of me as well, especially
Speaker 1: um uh Skello, duth ethereum, and gloss ethereum, you find
Speaker 1: that their claw hands have these closely spaced thick fingers
Speaker 1: that make for quote natural shovels when applied against soft rock. Uh.
Speaker 1: They also had, you know, coming back to our example earlier,
Speaker 1: they had the muscle to back it all up. They
Speaker 1: had the four limbs and the shoulders. He compares it
Speaker 1: to the muscles necessary for a galloping power, like a
Speaker 1: galloping horse, except that in this case it's applied to digging,
Speaker 1: so instead of running. This is this is power that's
Speaker 1: clearly meant to dig. Also, their center of gravity was
Speaker 1: more towards the rear of the body, which he indicates
Speaker 1: would be would be more in line with the creature
Speaker 1: that's burrowing. Now, these two species that he ends up
Speaker 1: writing about, they're not they're not quite as big as
Speaker 1: the megathereum. But Martin he compares them to two automobiles.
Speaker 1: So he says that the skeletethereum was the size of
Speaker 1: a Smart fort Woe electric car. These are these kind
Speaker 1: of mini car. I didn't really know what these were called.
Speaker 1: Base um help driving around? Oh yeah, okay, I didn't
Speaker 1: know what these were called either, But yeah, they're there.
Speaker 1: They're like the little little cars the I don't know
Speaker 1: which you could like compact electric cars. You might see it,
Speaker 1: you imagine driving around some European city or something, right, right, Uh.
Speaker 1: And then he says that gloss Ethereum was more of
Speaker 1: the size of an average midsize car. That you know,
Speaker 1: we do some some car ads for this show occasionally,
Speaker 1: and I think we need to start asking the advertisers
Speaker 1: to indicate what species of it of extinct ground sloth
Speaker 1: was the size of this vehicle, so that you know,
Speaker 1: listeners will be a little bit more informed about their
Speaker 1: potential auto purchases right now. What Martin doesn't really discuss
Speaker 1: megathereum in his book, it's but it seems like megatherium
Speaker 1: may have burrowed as well. I found some articles that
Speaker 1: we're talking about the megathereum and and burrowing possibilities. But
Speaker 1: this kind of blew me away. There's at least one
Speaker 1: hypothesis out there that megatherium might have have been hairless,
Speaker 1: like a like a naked mole rat, like a towering
Speaker 1: naked mole rat. Uh uh Yeah. And I included a
Speaker 1: bit of paleo art here um indicating what this might
Speaker 1: have looked like. I found it completely strange and wonderful.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, because you shared this with me and well,
Speaker 1: he looks like the engineers from the Alien franchise. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You managed to even find a pose from one of
Speaker 1: the engineers where it's it's it looks like they're they're
Speaker 1: doing the same pose here. Yeah. I wish I could
Speaker 1: have done it though. What would have been perfect is
Speaker 1: if it was the engineer but he had the mask on,
Speaker 1: like when they find the body in the original Alien. Oh. Goodness. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because the this naked giant sloth head, it's fleshy head
Speaker 1: with it's it would have, you know, probably had a
Speaker 1: pretty like fleshy lip situation for uh, for all of
Speaker 1: the delicate consumption of of tree bits. Uh. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: would have. It looked. It looks a lot like that
Speaker 1: mass that they wear in those in those movies. Okay,
Speaker 1: so wait a minute, did you did you credit this
Speaker 1: hypothesis yet? No, I haven't yet, because it's a comment. Okay,
Speaker 1: this is a hypothesis by a paleontologist from Uruguay, Richard A. Farina.
Speaker 1: He wrote a paper in two thousand and two titled Megatherium,
Speaker 1: The Hairless Appearances of the Great Quaternary Sloths, arguing that
Speaker 1: this is in part because modern large this may be
Speaker 1: the case. These arguing in part because modern large mammals
Speaker 1: such as elephants and rhinos, are mostly hairless to prevent
Speaker 1: overheating and hot climates. Okay, so, as far as I'm aware,
Speaker 1: this is not the dominant view of of of these
Speaker 1: ancient ground sloths, but this is one idea. This is
Speaker 1: funny because I came across yet another paper where one
Speaker 1: of the two authors is the same guy, Richard Farina. Uh,
Speaker 1: this one was from nineteen and Proceedings of the Royal
Speaker 1: Society b by Farina and somebody named R. E. Blanco.
Speaker 1: And this one is called Megatherium the Stabber. That's the
Speaker 1: title of the paper. And this one hypothesizes. Now you
Speaker 1: may have already sort of touched on this when when
Speaker 1: talking about the the different ideas about the diets of
Speaker 1: these slots. But here Farina and Blanco are looking at
Speaker 1: characteristics of the remains of of the giant ground sloth
Speaker 1: of of Megatherium and saying maybe it wasn't so herbivorous.
Speaker 1: They write, quote, Megatherium american um had morphological features that
Speaker 1: are better explained by its having had carnivorous habits rather
Speaker 1: than by solely herbivorous ones. Specifically, the question of its
Speaker 1: four arms having been designed for optimizing speed rather than
Speaker 1: strength of extension is addressed. So they argue that the
Speaker 1: anatomy of the foe arms is such that this is
Speaker 1: an animal that would have been using vicious attacks with
Speaker 1: its claws rather than just sort of uh, slow slow
Speaker 1: extending actions of like tearing branches out of trees or something.
Speaker 1: And then they also say that the high mechanical advantage
Speaker 1: of the megatherium's biceps would have made it possible for
Speaker 1: the animal to have lifted and carried heavy weights. And
Speaker 1: they're like, well, what if this means it was like
Speaker 1: turning animals over to get at the soft underbelly. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure if anybody agrees with this today, this seems
Speaker 1: this seems possibly out there. But I like the idea
Speaker 1: that Verena has has made a career, at least partially
Speaker 1: on on proposing alternate interpretations of the megatherium. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think I did look at part of this paper. The
Speaker 1: idea I think is that glyptodonts it would have been
Speaker 1: like turning the glipto dot over and then using the
Speaker 1: claws and the forearms to like dig into the belly
Speaker 1: and start eating the flesh. Get that thing, flip it
Speaker 1: and then stab with the claws. Yeah, and I'm not
Speaker 1: sure entirely if we're talking about a a living glipto
Speaker 1: dot or a dead one. If we're ultimately talking is
Speaker 1: the arguing like the this was the mighty hunter or
Speaker 1: that basically it's eating a lot of plain ants. But
Speaker 1: if it finds a dead glipted on. Yeah, it's gonna
Speaker 1: flip it over and dig in a little bit. They're
Speaker 1: saying predatory behavior. So again, again I want to be
Speaker 1: very clear, I've not found any indication that this is
Speaker 1: a widely accepted interpretation of of megatherium remains, but an
Speaker 1: interesting hypothesis, you know. Yeah, that's funny. All right. So
Speaker 1: coming back to paleo burrows, um one of the big
Speaker 1: remaining questions, and ultimately I guess one of the big
Speaker 1: remaining mysteries is Okay, so if we if we're gonna
Speaker 1: go with the hypothesis that these were dug out by
Speaker 1: giant ground slots, why did they burrow in the ground?
Speaker 1: Why did they seem to come back to the same places, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, year after year, generation after generation and maintain
Speaker 1: these spaces. So Martin gets into this because the whole
Speaker 1: book is about, you know, deals with questions of why
Speaker 1: animals do this, Why is the burrow advantageous, Why has
Speaker 1: it helped you know, why in some cases did it
Speaker 1: enable certain creatures to survive cataclysms on the earth? Well? Well,
Speaker 1: Martin points out that, Okay, well, if we're looking at
Speaker 1: the smaller paleo burrows, we're looking at the work presumed
Speaker 1: to be created by giant armadillos, E thinks they likely
Speaker 1: burrowed for the same reason that modern armadillos do. It's
Speaker 1: just it's safer underground. It allows them to hide somewhere
Speaker 1: that major predators cannot go. And um, and so you know,
Speaker 1: these ancient armadillos, even though there they were bigger than
Speaker 1: what we have today, they would still have to avoid
Speaker 1: things like sabertooth cats and short faced bears. But when
Speaker 1: we look at the great ground slots here, digging tunnels
Speaker 1: so big that they wouldn't have been able to keep
Speaker 1: these predators out, you know, we have a slightly different situation. Uh.
Speaker 1: And we're also dealing with creatures that were they were
Speaker 1: you know, large enough in some cases that they probably
Speaker 1: didn't really have to worry about these predators, not while
Speaker 1: they were healthy at any rate, and you know, not
Speaker 1: when and uh, you know, certainly when you get into
Speaker 1: you know, young being around, that's a different situation. But
Speaker 1: you know, they're not as threatened by these predators, and
Speaker 1: they also are not creating spaces that would adequately protect
Speaker 1: them anyway. Right. Yeah, So I mean these are kind
Speaker 1: of the perks of being megafauna, with only climate change
Speaker 1: and human hunting seeming to be big enough threats to
Speaker 1: to end their reins. According to Martin, the most popular
Speaker 1: current hypothesis here is that the primary reason that ground
Speaker 1: the giant ground sloths um dug these tunnels was ultimately
Speaker 1: to cope with a climate that was drier than today's.
Speaker 1: So the idea here is the cave would have maintained
Speaker 1: more human conditions as well as an average temperature, thus
Speaker 1: helping the animal out no matter what the outside temperature is,
Speaker 1: if it's colder or hotter than what would be comfortable
Speaker 1: for the organism. Now, that is interesting, and it also
Speaker 1: makes me think about how I think it's certainly the
Speaker 1: case that when animals get bigger, they have more heat
Speaker 1: dissipation problems to worry about, right right right, So so that, yeah,
Speaker 1: this hypothesis seems to revolve, you know, roughly around that,
Speaker 1: like how does this this, this, uh, this, this large
Speaker 1: ground sloth maintain appropriate body temperatures? And um, I can
Speaker 1: only guess how this might mash or not mesh with
Speaker 1: Farina's hairless ground slot hypothesis, Like does a hairless ground
Speaker 1: sloth would it need to climb into a burrow. Even more,
Speaker 1: I don't know. This is not something that I think
Speaker 1: experts have weight in on that I have seen. As
Speaker 1: a side note, I will say that I did notice
Speaker 1: it looks like giant ground sloths do feature into some
Speaker 1: video games. I wonder if anyone has been inspired by
Speaker 1: Farina's hypotheses and decided to make them aggressive, and maybe
Speaker 1: they come up and like they if you're in a vehicle,
Speaker 1: they turn your vehicle over and like dig you out
Speaker 1: through the bottom of the vehicle. That ground slots the
Speaker 1: naked stabber. Yeah. Now, as as I mentioned earlier, the
Speaker 1: ground slauce we're talking about, they did overlap with human
Speaker 1: beings for for at least a short time, and it
Speaker 1: seems like human beings probably had played a major role
Speaker 1: in their extinction. Um you know there there there have
Speaker 1: been sites where we find evidence of of butchery taking
Speaker 1: place with the with these giant ground sloths. So ultimately
Speaker 1: human being survived, some arboreal sloth survived by the age
Speaker 1: of the giant ground sloth. Um came to any end. Okay,
Speaker 1: so this is not super related to what we're talking about.
Speaker 1: But did you happen to read that thing about the
Speaker 1: giant ground sloths and the paper arguing that that like
Speaker 1: twenty two of them that were found dead all in
Speaker 1: the same place, died in a in a poop related
Speaker 1: mass casualty incident. No I did not. Uh. So the
Speaker 1: paper was published in paleo Geography, Paleoclimatology and Paleoecology in
Speaker 1: in by Lindsay at all uh and it was documenting
Speaker 1: a large death assemblage from the from the late place
Speaker 1: to scene in a place called tonke Loma in the
Speaker 1: southwest of of Ecuador. And so it was this place
Speaker 1: that had the remains of at least twenty two different
Speaker 1: giant ground sloths, the Ramotherium laurel ardi. And they they
Speaker 1: found all of these animals together in a in a
Speaker 1: deposition pattern that indicated that they basically all died right
Speaker 1: around the same time, gathered around this marshy little pool
Speaker 1: of water that looked like a place that had repeatedly
Speaker 1: been been filled with water and then and then dried
Speaker 1: up and allowed plants to grow, and then filled with
Speaker 1: water again. So maybe one of these sort of intermittent
Speaker 1: watering holes, places that that sometimes have water and sometimes don't.
Speaker 1: And based on a number of queues around this area.
Speaker 1: The authors decided that they thought the most likely interpretation
Speaker 1: of what happened here is that a bunch of giant
Speaker 1: ground slots were hanging out in and around this water,
Speaker 1: using it to cool their bodies and as as a
Speaker 1: watering hole to drink from and to eat the plants
Speaker 1: that were growing around, and that by fouling this water
Speaker 1: source that was ever shrinking with their fecal matter, they
Speaker 1: essentially poop poison to themselves and and many of them
Speaker 1: ended up dying. You know, I don't have is there
Speaker 1: a paleo art to go with this one show? It's
Speaker 1: not very inspiring for the children's books, is it. But
Speaker 1: but they end up writing and and their their modern
Speaker 1: analogies for this. The fountains like like shrinking watering holes
Speaker 1: in in the present day savannah environments. They write, quote,
Speaker 1: we suggest that this death event could have resulted from
Speaker 1: drought ind or disease stemming from the contamination of the wallow,
Speaker 1: paralleling situations observed among hippopotamus populations in watering holes on
Speaker 1: the present day African savannah. So sometimes this apparently happens
Speaker 1: like a watering hole in a in a dry area
Speaker 1: is filled with hippos, and they just keep pooping into
Speaker 1: it and drinking it, and obviously that's that's not good
Speaker 1: for them. Well, we can see how you know, we
Speaker 1: can see like changing climates potentially impacting these situations as well.
Speaker 1: So um Martin and his But again, the whole book
Speaker 1: is full of full is full of wonderful explorations of
Speaker 1: of burrowing creatures. Um, you know, and not all of
Speaker 1: which are vertebrates. H for sure. Uh, I recommend picking
Speaker 1: that up if you're at all interested in this topic.
Speaker 1: But he writes that scientists would have once thought that
Speaker 1: creatures as large as these, uh, these ground sloss would
Speaker 1: have would not have burrowed, that the borrowed burrowing creatures
Speaker 1: do not grow this big. But he points out that
Speaker 1: in fact, the largest burrowing animals today are bears, especially
Speaker 1: says if you count snow as a substrate for burrowing,
Speaker 1: which he does. You know, I think we've all seen uh.
Speaker 1: He points out that, you know, we've all seen documentaries
Speaker 1: at this point showing polar bears doing the burrowing in
Speaker 1: the snow, creating a burrow. Uh. Mother Polo polar bear
Speaker 1: anyway for her young and uh and yeah, if you
Speaker 1: if you count snow as a substrate for burrowing, then
Speaker 1: that's that's burrowing, and that's a pretty impressive interesting So
Speaker 1: this comes in a way back to the dinosaur paper
Speaker 1: we talked about earlier, because this would primarily be a
Speaker 1: dinning behavior for the protection of young while they're well,
Speaker 1: they're still vulnerable. Yeah, now I do have to mention
Speaker 1: as well, quite amusingly and of course very much touching
Speaker 1: on my interest. He also compares the giant ground sloth
Speaker 1: to the grab voids from the movie Trimmers. This was
Speaker 1: pretty fun when I was looking through the index and
Speaker 1: this when I first got the book, I was not Oh,
Speaker 1: he talks about trimmers at some point. Uh, this seems
Speaker 1: like our our kind of scientists. So because the giant
Speaker 1: ground sloths also had multiple snake tongues that would go
Speaker 1: out and get well, no, but but he points out
Speaker 1: like he seems to be a fan of tremmors. But
Speaker 1: he points out that, Okay, you have these fabulous worm
Speaker 1: like creatures that are digging these tunnels, burrowing through the
Speaker 1: ground in this corner of nevada Um. He says, well, well,
Speaker 1: there would probably be some remnant of that. There would
Speaker 1: be some uh, there's some evidence, So the ant grab
Speaker 1: boids in this area, um where the burrowing would have
Speaker 1: taken place. Right, So even if the animal decomposed, it
Speaker 1: would leave the trace fossils of its burrows, right. And
Speaker 1: I don't know, thinking back on on the grab boids,
Speaker 1: it looked like there was some hard parts that might fossilize.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, maybe that's beaks or something. Yeah, the beak. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Awaiting his his full paper break doing
Speaker 1: a breakdown of the grab boids. Now, wait a minute.
Speaker 1: Didn't we learn in some of the Deep Trimmor sequels
Speaker 1: that they have multiple life cycle stages and that some
Speaker 1: of them are like flying and junk like running around.
Speaker 1: There's a version of legs. Yeah. Um, I I don't
Speaker 1: know that I ever really watched any of the sequels,
Speaker 1: but I have a lot of love for that first
Speaker 1: Trimmor's film. That was just that's a pretty perfect monster movie.
Speaker 1: Pretty great. So Kevin Bacon is not in the sequels.
Speaker 1: The sequels end up focusing back at some point, or
Speaker 1: he was because they did a TV series. They had
Speaker 1: a lot of I think, you know, I didn't know
Speaker 1: that Sci Fi Channel kind of sequels there, But then
Speaker 1: they did a TV show at some point, and um,
Speaker 1: I feel I feel like Kevin Bacon finally came back.
Speaker 1: The sequels I'm familiar with don't have Bacon. They focus
Speaker 1: more on that guy who's Reba's husband, and the first
Speaker 1: one the like the gun the gun prepper guy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that played by Michael Gross. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, he's
Speaker 1: the he's the like heavily armed Dale Gribble guy in
Speaker 1: the first movie. Yeah. Yeah, he was in a bunch
Speaker 1: of him and he was fun in that. I don't
Speaker 1: know why, but we we often go around quoting Reba
Speaker 1: McIntyre from the First Timers movie. She she's just got
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of punchy delivery. You know,
Speaker 1: he didn't get pantration any with the elephant gun. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Reba's great in that. Yeah. Oh, and I am correct.
Speaker 1: There was a two thousand eighteen TV movie called Tremors
Speaker 1: and it had the return of Kevin Bacon and Fred Wards.
Speaker 1: So there you go. I have not seen it, can't
Speaker 1: vouch for it. I apologize I was wrong. All right,
Speaker 1: Well we're gonna go in close. I'm sorry. I just
Speaker 1: I just googled it and I found that uh sorry.
Speaker 1: On Reba's website. She has a page dedicated to trimmers.
Speaker 1: Oh that's great, so you can go to reba dot
Speaker 1: com slash trimmers. Let's let's also not forget that Victor Wong,
Speaker 1: isn't that and it's also pretty fabulous? Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. All right, we're gonna go ahead and close
Speaker 1: it out here, but we'd love to hear from anyone
Speaker 1: out there who has thoughts on these if you have
Speaker 1: you know, if you have any thoughts on giant ground
Speaker 1: sloths or modern arboreal sloths. Um, everything is is up
Speaker 1: for grabs here. Are there interesting tunnels that you're aware of,
Speaker 1: be they you know, naturally occurring caves and so forth,
Speaker 1: or modern or ancient human constructions that we're trying to
Speaker 1: figure out. We'd love to hear about all of that.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, if you would like to listen to
Speaker 1: more episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, you'll find
Speaker 1: us in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed
Speaker 1: Core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Listener Mail on Monday,
Speaker 1: Artifact on Wednesday, and on Friday. We do Weird How Cinema.
Speaker 1: That's our time to satisfy most serious matters and just
Speaker 1: talk about a strange film. Big thanks, as always to
Speaker 1: our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would
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Speaker 1: this episode or any other, to suggest topic for the future,
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