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John Edmonstone: The Man Who Trained Darwin · Ridiculous History

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  Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Well, well, well,
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: Darwin is entering the car, Yes, entering the conversation again.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: Though we have talked about Darwin in the past, because
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of stuff that people don't know. We
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: think of origin of the species, and we just we
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: stopped there in school. What is this? Why are we
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: talking about Darwin? This is ridiculous history. Thank you for
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: coming through. I am not Darwin. You're not Darwin. My
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: name is Ben, my name is Nolan. I immediately regret
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: my joke because I'm a little I'm on like west
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: East coast brains still where we're still on the West coast, uh,
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: and we've been staying up quite late, even by West
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: Coast standards. So it's been mega mega late by East
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: Coast standards. Um, and we've had a bit of a
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: whirlwind experience. But it's kind of been fun. I'm leaning
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: into the punchiness. But Darwin, I hardly knew him. That
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  Speaker 1: doesn't even make sense. I know, I thought it had
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: an internal lot. It was the phonemes of it that
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  Speaker 1: kind of triggered my brain to do a thing that
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: just didn't work out. But I'm owning up to it.
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  Speaker 1: I'm no old that I say that already. Yeah. Oh
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  Speaker 1: I well, I'm glad you did. Either way, people might
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  Speaker 1: have been confused. You're who is this? Fool's fine? You're no,
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: I'm Ben. We're joined in spirit, as always, with our
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: super producer Casey Pegram. God only knows where we'd be
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: without him. Uh, each reference a little bit. La Bouche
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: is a big fan of the Beach Boys, right, fantastic.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: The French love the Beach Boys. I don't know, and
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: probably do. French have notoriously good taste. I'm right there
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: with you. I slept like maybe an hour before this.
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  Speaker 1: But we are also joined with our at turning guests,
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: super producer Danald Goodman. How's it going, Man, It's going great?
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: Ready for another episode of fun. We're the sweetest guy
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: I know, right, and it's got like these great food recommendations.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: You know, did you I didn't get any food, Rex,
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: you gotta ask. We can talk after that. Sounds good.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: I'm ready for it. Um. I went to a place
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: called the fleet Footed Goose. No, it wasn't that, it
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: was just the running goose. See. I added too many
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: words to you've been to the running goose. I have
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: not where where's that's right around here? It's on the
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: front end of the block. Or no, I'm sorry the
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: uh I want to say it's on Cowanga. Um. It
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: was right across from a place called Beauty and Essex
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: or kind of like right around there. It's just a
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: little cafe. I had been there before and they have
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: a salmon belly sandwich that's quite delightful. But you went
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: to a bond me place that seems to be the
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: talk of the office here bon bon. We from Daniel's recommendation,
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: which was pretty amazing. They got this Georgian flatbread. Georgia
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  Speaker 1: the country. Uh. So, apparently you guys are sick of
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: it sometimes. We've had quite a few times at this point.
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  Speaker 1: But it's a it's a standard haunt, as it were.
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  Speaker 1: So the way we can segue this, uh is to
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  Speaker 1: talk about one of our earlier episodes. He did a
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  Speaker 1: two part series on weird historical flexes with our pals
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: Jack and Miles from the Daily Seite. Guys and Jack
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  Speaker 1: hipped us to one of the strangest Darwin facts we
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  Speaker 1: had learned up to that point, which was well, it
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  Speaker 1: was the fact that Darwin um in college had been
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  Speaker 1: a member of this like fraternity that was all about
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  Speaker 1: eating exotic creatures. Uh. And he took that lust for
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  Speaker 1: murder and flesh, exotic fleshes uh and and applied it
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  Speaker 1: to his research where when he was exploring the Galapagos
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  Speaker 1: and you know, charting all of the different species that
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  Speaker 1: he encountered, and you know that it made up the
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  Speaker 1: great tapestry that is the human experience and life on Earth,
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  Speaker 1: he'd eat at least one of each of them. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: sometimes more. I think he consumes so many, uh, Galapagossian
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  Speaker 1: sortises that he single handedly was was a big part
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  Speaker 1: of the reason they went they went endangered and then extinct.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: I don't know, I might be overstating the case. They're
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  Speaker 1: a little bit, but I'm pretty sure there's some truth
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  Speaker 1: to them. Yeah. Yeah. And so again, as we say,
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  Speaker 1: whenever Darwin comes up in conversation on or off the air,
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  Speaker 1: thanks for ruining that for us, Jack, thanks for ruining
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  Speaker 1: that guy for us. I always say, Darwin, I hardly
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  Speaker 1: knew him. See, I think you should lead into it.
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  Speaker 1: It's like, this is me now, I'm such an easy
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: crowd today, man, because I'm at that stage where it's
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  Speaker 1: like my head is stuffed with cotton. I'm I'm very adult.
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  Speaker 1: Everything seems surreal and hilarious and loaded with symbolism and
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: double entendre. Well, Daniel seems to think we're funny. We're
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: getting some some solid laughs out of him. It could
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: just be the fact that we're literally like two men
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: losing their minds in a fish tank, and he is
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  Speaker 1: the audience. Here's the thing. Oh you said, Okay, he
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  Speaker 1: thinks it's hum aw. Let's continue. Let's let's continue with
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  Speaker 1: today's Darwin story. Today's Darwin story. Yes, uh, there's another
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  Speaker 1: thing that people may generally not know about Charles Darwin.
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  Speaker 1: Like many famous, historically influential individuals, he is the sum
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  Speaker 1: of more than one person's work. We stand on the
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: shoulder of giants and one we stand on just the
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  Speaker 1: one shoulder. It's usually the left because like regular sized bipeds, um,
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: you know, like giants are right handed. And also one
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: giant shoulder would be the equivalent of a set of
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: shoulders for a regular size many yeah, many shoulders biped ye.
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  Speaker 1: So so there there is a person in the evolution
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  Speaker 1: of Darwin which terrible choice of words on my part.
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  Speaker 1: There's there's a person in Darwin's past who is who
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  Speaker 1: plays a crucial and vital role in all of the
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  Speaker 1: work that Darwin went on to create. He's a person
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  Speaker 1: that many of us may not have heard of before.
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  Speaker 1: His name is very cool, by the way, it is
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  Speaker 1: John Edmond Stone D Stone. I don't know why, you
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: know why? I know why. What makes me think of
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: the Flintstones because everyone's last name and the flint Stone
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  Speaker 1: ended with Stone. Everybody, maybe not everybody. Well, there's there's
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: Betty and Barney, Rubble. There we go. I got one
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: that's that's like a that's a construction rock related thing. Anyway,
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  Speaker 1: it just makes me think of the Flintstone. That's great.
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  Speaker 1: And I I uh, I think Rubble. I think you're
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  Speaker 1: on to something with the rock themes. Anyway. John Edmond
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  Speaker 1: Stone not an inspiration for the Flintstones as far as
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  Speaker 1: we know, but he was one of the sources of
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  Speaker 1: support and inspiration for Charles Darwin. John Edmondstone was from Guiana,
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  Speaker 1: South America, also the country where Jim Jones and his
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  Speaker 1: cult relocated the kool Aid genocide. Technically it was flavor Aid,
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: that's right. He didn't even pop for the good stuff. No,
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  Speaker 1: no he didn't because it didn't really matter, not at
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  Speaker 1: that point. But that's a that's a story for another day.
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  Speaker 1: A dark turns. This is gonna take some turns. We
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  Speaker 1: suckered dan'l in here with our previous episode. There was
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  Speaker 1: a lot of fun and now we're going into some
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  Speaker 1: disturbing stuff. Are you talking about the one about luxury? Luxury?
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  Speaker 1: John Edmondstone I was formerly enslaved and then he was manumitted.
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  Speaker 1: He was a freed slave from Guiana, and he was
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  Speaker 1: in Edinburgh teaching university students taxidermy. He lived literally down
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  Speaker 1: the street from where Charles Darwin and Charles his brother
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  Speaker 1: Erasmus awesome name lived thirty seven Lothian Street right there
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  Speaker 1: in Edinburgh. And um he learned his trade, John did
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  Speaker 1: from a man by the name of Charles waterton U,
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  Speaker 1: who is another assumingly competing naturalist uh to Darwin in
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  Speaker 1: the eighteen hundreds, early eighteen hundreds, Well, I guess not,
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  Speaker 1: maybe they Maybe it was a different time. He would
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  Speaker 1: have would have already attained these skills and then crossed
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  Speaker 1: paths with Darwin. So forget about my fake beef that
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  Speaker 1: I just made up between the all British naturalists. Clearly
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  Speaker 1: they have a Highlander. Yeah, they're very very intense dudes. Um,
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  Speaker 1: but yeah, I mean they kind of just became pals, right, yeah. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: So while Darwin is a student at Edinburgh, he approaches
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  Speaker 1: John Edmondstone and asked him, you know, Mr Edmondstone, will
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  Speaker 1: you teach me to be a taxidermist. They would enter
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  Speaker 1: into this teacher student relationship and they would hang out
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  Speaker 1: and they would have conversation, shoot the breeze, and John
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  Speaker 1: would tell Charles about the land of South America, about
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  Speaker 1: the continent, about the tropical rainforest, about Guiana, and historians
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  Speaker 1: believe that these conversations may have been the spark that
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  Speaker 1: fan the flames of Charles Darwin's ambitions to explore the tropics.
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  Speaker 1: I was gonna make a forest fire reference there, but
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  Speaker 1: I think I think we're already we already got there. Okay,
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  Speaker 1: I was gonna say that fan the flames of the
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  Speaker 1: forest fire in his mind. I like the alliteration. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: we love alliterationous, fan the flames of the forest fire
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  Speaker 1: in his fancy. I don't know of his fancy, of
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  Speaker 1: his fancy. Okay, we got there, We did so we
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  Speaker 1: know that regardless of how we want to freeze it.
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  Speaker 1: The taxidermy skills that Darwin did provably learn from edmond
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  Speaker 1: Stone were indispensable when he was later traveling famously aboard
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  Speaker 1: the HMS Beagle in eight thirty one. So let's let's
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  Speaker 1: talk a little bit about this man who has been
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  Speaker 1: so woefully ignored by, you know, by history, or the
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  Speaker 1: at least the history would learn in school. He was
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  Speaker 1: born into slavery in British Guiana in the late seventeen hundreds.
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  Speaker 1: In his early years, he was on a plantation in
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  Speaker 1: a region in present day Guiana that was called Dimrera.
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  Speaker 1: That's right. And um, there were a lot of ties
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  Speaker 1: with Caribbean countries, so Guiana, um was kind of looked
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  Speaker 1: at as an extension I guess of of the Caribbean. Um.
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  Speaker 1: A lot of the political and cultural and um ties
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  Speaker 1: historically to the Caribbean. So um. Charles Edmondstone was a
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  Speaker 1: Scottish politician. Uh, the original Charles Edmonstone. I guess, let's say,
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  Speaker 1: who owned this plantation where young John lived and worked.
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  Speaker 1: And in the early eighteen hundreds, uh, we'll call him
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  Speaker 1: the elder Charles was visited by a man by the
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  Speaker 1: name of Charles Waterton who would go on to not
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  Speaker 1: only become a renowned naturalist, but also the elder edmund
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  Speaker 1: Stone's son in law. Yeah. Yeah, And while they're interacting
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  Speaker 1: on this plantation, Charles Waterton takes John Edmond Stone sort
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  Speaker 1: of as his protege. Right, he becomes a mentor and
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  Speaker 1: he teaches edmund Stone taxidermy. If you look at the
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  Speaker 1: contemporary reports, Charles Waterton says, I taught him the proper
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  Speaker 1: way to stuffed birds. And so John Edmond Stone and
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  Speaker 1: Charles Waterton would patrol walked through the surrounding rainforest and
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  Speaker 1: they would collect bird specimens. This was really a two
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  Speaker 1: person job because you know, most birds can fly, and
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: as far as we know, most people cannot. I don't
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  Speaker 1: know why I've made that such a point. It's probably
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: the lack of sleep. But anyway, that statement is at
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  Speaker 1: least true. And so they had to They had to
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  Speaker 1: go find these birds, and they wanted to find new specimens,
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  Speaker 1: unique specimens. And then they once they caught them, once
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  Speaker 1: they captured them, killed them. They had to quickly preserve
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: them because this is the jungle, it's very hot, it's
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  Speaker 1: so crazy to think of the idea of field taxidermy, right,
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  Speaker 1: But that's absolutely you had to do because it was
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  Speaker 1: so human and hot that the bird carcasses would start
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  Speaker 1: to rot and decompose very very quickly. So what does
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  Speaker 1: field taxidermy, what do they actually do? Yeah, they had
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  Speaker 1: to soak the carcasses in this mixture um where the
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  Speaker 1: primary ingredient was mercury. And then of course they had,
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  Speaker 1: you know, pull out all their guts and stuff them
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  Speaker 1: with some stuff. What would be some of the stuff
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  Speaker 1: they might stuff them with, Ben, I think sawdust was popular. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: probably not other birds that you're ducan is a it's
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  Speaker 1: a different thing. That's an abomination, Ben, I've never had one.
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  Speaker 1: But yet their primary goal here is to you know,
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  Speaker 1: soaked them, as you said, that sublimate of mercury and
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  Speaker 1: preserve the outer shell. They don't really care about the
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  Speaker 1: stuffing other than what helps it to pure life like.
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  Speaker 1: And during these expeditions, Edmondstone gains a lot of knowledge
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  Speaker 1: about the bio diversity of South American Guyana in particular.
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  Speaker 1: But there's an important point we have to hit here.
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  Speaker 1: You can look back on stories like this and say, oh,
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  Speaker 1: these people were despite uh, the social hierarchies foisted upon them,
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  Speaker 1: actual friends. But it's tough to it's it's tough to
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  Speaker 1: ascribe that to them because we have to remember this
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  Speaker 1: man was enslaved. He did not have the agency to
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  Speaker 1: consent or not consent to these expeditions. It wasn't until
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  Speaker 1: the Slave Trade Act of eighteen o seven that things
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  Speaker 1: began to change for John Edmondstone. The Slave Trade Act
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  Speaker 1: of eighteen oh seven this law from the British Empire
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  Speaker 1: that says the purchase or ownership of slaves is illegal
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: within all the lands of the British Empire. Like a
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: lot of laws concerning manumission, the law on paper doesn't
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  Speaker 1: always reflect the law as it should be practiced or
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  Speaker 1: as it is practiced. So in eighteen o seven Edmonston
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  Speaker 1: travels to Glasgow with the Scottish politician who owns the
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  Speaker 1: plantation is namesake Edmondston the Elder, and while he is
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  Speaker 1: in Scotland he gains his freedom. You'll hear a couple
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  Speaker 1: of conflicting accounts. Some some folks say there was eighteen
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  Speaker 1: seventeen when he gains his freedom, so that so he
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  Speaker 1: was still enslaved for ten years in Scotland, Um, it's interesting.
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  Speaker 1: But either way, by eighteen seventeen, at the very least,
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  Speaker 1: he is a freeman finally, and he says, I'm moving
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  Speaker 1: from Glasgow to Edinburgh, and that's you know. And then
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  Speaker 1: he begins to live at the address you mentioned earlier,
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  Speaker 1: thirty seven Lothian Street, and it's just right down the
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  Speaker 1: street from University of Edinburgh, that's right, and that's where
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  Speaker 1: he um made the acquaintance of a pint size sixteen
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: year old Darwin, who had come to study at Edinburgh
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  Speaker 1: to study medicine. Um. Like, it was a generational thing
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  Speaker 1: in his family's father had been a doctor and his
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  Speaker 1: grandfather and he lived with his brother, as you said,
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  Speaker 1: the delightfully named Erasmus on Lothian Street, and that was
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  Speaker 1: just a couple of doors down from John's house. So um,
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  Speaker 1: it was kind of just serendipitous that these two guys
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  Speaker 1: kind of became pals. Yeah, And he did hire him
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  Speaker 1: as a tutor, essentially a taxidermy tutor, because Darwin knew
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  Speaker 1: pretty quickly that the doctor he was not, he was
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: more interested in exploring and adventures. And again he'd already
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: been kind of dreaming of some of those places that
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: John would kind of really hit him to in South
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: America and really make those dreams come alive in his mind. Yes, exactly,
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: just so. And in Darwin's defense, we have to realize that,
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: you know, even today, a lot of college students, we
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: don't really know a percent what we want to do.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: It's a it's very common thing. And then furthermore, during
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: surgery in this time, there was no anesthesia. This reminds
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: me of the story of Robert Liston. We were a
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: little click baity with the title, but it is true
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: that he did perform a surgery with a three percent fatality.
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: I was gonna obviously don't understand how math works because
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: that still is as a head scratcher to me, because
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: he hit the guy on the he hit the surgical
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: assistant or a bystander, Nick and yeah led out right. Yeah,
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: he swung wide on that one. He s white because
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: you had to work fast. There was no anesthesia. Anyway,
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: Darwin says, this is not the life for me, and
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: so he and John Edmondstone make an agreement where Darwin
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: will pay John Edmondstone one guinea per lesson and that
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: after forty daily hour long sessions his training in taxidermy
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: will be considered complete. Uh if we want to inflation,
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: calculate this to get a sense of the math. Yeah yeah.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: Peepoopoo pee peepoop pepoo, peepoopoop pepoop peepoo doo deepoo ding perfect.
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  Speaker 1: One guinea or is replaced by the pound in eighteen sixteen.
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  Speaker 1: But anyway, in eight one guinea was about a hundred
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: and sixty U s. Dollars today, right, it's I mean,
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: it feels like he is paying for a college course
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: at that point for sure. And that was when he
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: again he started talking about, um, the lush tropical regions
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: and all of the creatures and the vegetation that populated
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: it there in South America. Where was it again, dem Arara? Yeah, yeah,
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: the plantation, that's right, um. And it really got Darwin
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: thinking about a career in naturalism. Right. And at this time,
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: Guiana is making international headlines to not just headlines in
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: Darwin's mind. You see, at the time, Guiana has become
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  Speaker 1: the site of a slave rebellion, and this rebellion was
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  Speaker 1: ultimately unsuccessful and had been crushed a few months earlier.
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  Speaker 1: Compounding this, Charles Waterton had published a book about his
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  Speaker 1: expeditions to Guiana, named in a Burst of Creativity Wanderings
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: in South America. It's hugely popular. Everybody loves it, and
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: Edmond Stone stories, along with Waterton's book, along with the
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: international headlines about Guiana very plausibly inspired Darwin to explore
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: to discover more things. And during this winter when they
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: are when he's receiving his tax durmy training, he begins
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  Speaker 1: to think of his teacher, of John Edmond Stone, more
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: and more as not just a teacher, but a but
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: a friend, you know, a mentor. And we have a
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: letter that Darwin wrote to his sister about the course
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  Speaker 1: that Edmond Stone taught him and rich He said, it
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: has the recommendation of cheapness. If nothing else is the
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  Speaker 1: only charges one guinea for an hour every day for
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: two months. And then they eventually as they become closer. Later,
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: Darwin writes about John Edmond Stone in his memoir Memoir,
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  Speaker 1: Memoir and then and in this In this writing, Darwin
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  Speaker 1: says that Edmund Stone is quote a very pleasant and
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: intelligent man. I spent many hours in conversation at his side.
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  Speaker 1: Of course, you know, we we know that Darwin is
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: still trying to resist his father's saying, like you will
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: be a doctor. I was a doctor where a family
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: of doctors. And that is why in one at the
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: age of twenty two, inspired by and educated by John
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: Edmond Stone, Darwin gets a place on the HMS Beagle
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: as they voyage to chart the South American coastline. And
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: he gets he secures this position not as a doctor,
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: not as a surgeon, but as a naturalist. Yes, just
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: just as he had wished. UM. And all of those
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: lessons in taxidermy were huge. His ability to do that
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: UM in the field so quickly and efficiently were a
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: massive help on this voyage UM, and in helping him
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: formulate his theory of evolution um and the idea of
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: natural selection UM. And he when he was eating tortoises
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: on the Galapagos Island, there's a really cool story here
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: from history dot co dot uk UM what's called the
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: finch story. Right. He saw that there were differences between
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: these birds, these finches on the island, and the big
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: one had to do with the shape of their beak. UM.
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: If I may ben, I would like to read some
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: intensely triggering descriptions of birds. I was gonna ask you
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: I'll go ahead and ask on air, are you sure
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: you're okay? It's all right, it's gonna help me. All right. Well,
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: you're in a safe spot, so let me know. If
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: anything goes sideways, want to get through it, we can stop.
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: Oh sorry, danal Nolan, Okay, you know about the birthdays.
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: Everybody knows about you probably talked about it. Is that, guys,
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: I just you know, it's just it's obvious, just from
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: from the look on my face when you see a
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: pigeon walk by, my eyes light up in horror. Um,
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: So here we go, here a minute, a minne, make
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: this happen. Some of the finches had broad, deep beaks,
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: some elongated, and others small and stout. Ben, can you continue?
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: I can't go on? Yeah, yeah, so I thought you
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: did a good job. Thanks man. So Darwin notices, as
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: we said, specifically that some of the finches have one
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: kind of beak and some have other kinds. Some finches
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: have broad, deep beaks, some have really long beaks, and
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: some have very small, very tough, stout beaks. And he says,
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: you know what I think is happening here. You can
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: differentiate the finches by their beaks and also by the
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: islands upon which these finches reside, and each island has
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: different sort of stuff for finches to eat, and so
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: I believe that over time, advantageous traits that lead to
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: certain types of beaks become become more common in the
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: breeding population. So, if we have a finch population on
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: island with lots of seeds, the individual finches that have
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: broad beaks that can help them crack open the hard
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: coding of seeds will have a better chance of surviving
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: and reproducing, and then they become more common and ultimately
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: they become the only kind of finch on that island.
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: It's right, It's like we're talking about with Katie Golden
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: on Creature Feature. When we were talking, I had asked
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: the very stupid question of you know, why, what was
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: the advantage of the woodpecker being able to you know,
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: it's it's such a damaging adaptation to the creature to
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: like basically essentially gives it brain damage over time. But
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: what's the what's the edge and the edges? Obviously the
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: other creatures can't get those bugs that are in that
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: tree way up there that he has to dig dairy,
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: you know, the bird has to dig so deep for
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: and you know, to such a personal harm. Uh. And
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: there is another influence that Edmund Stone had on Darwin.
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: And this this is not completely proven, but it's it's
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: something that a lot of historians speculate about. They believe
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: that it may have been Darwin's personal relationship with John
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: Edmond Stone, along with the abolitionist beliefs of his grandfather's
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: of course, that contributed to his famous loathing and hatred
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: of slavery. And that comes to us via Clifford B.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: Frith in his book Charles Darwin's Life with Birds his
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: Complete Ornithology, which promise you will never have to read.
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: Thank you, Ben, thank you for shielding me from the
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: horrible bed eid weird talent, gangly, twitchy creatures. All right,
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: at this point you're just doing it to yourself. You're
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: probably I'm a glad punishment. So so we know that
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: this personal relationship uh, and his his firsthand experience seeing
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: the just gross atrocities of slavery had made him very
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: much an abolitionist. And then they will also argue that
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: his anti slavery beliefs may have may have had a
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: relationship to the formation of his theory of natural selection
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: because it traces all things that are ostensibly different quote
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: unquote races or whatever to a common ancestor. And that
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: challenges the popular notion at that time that a certain
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: type of person could be somehow considered inferior or superior. Absolutely,
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: and he really did see it firsthand with the bloody
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: aftermath of some of the slave rebellions in South America.
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: And now you know, we we did it again. We
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: did the thing that a lot of historians have done,
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: which is we started dwelling on Charles Darwin instead of
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: John Edmondstone. So let's give John Edmondstone is due what
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: what happened to him? Do we know what happened after
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: after the taxidermy lessons were wrapped after Darwin heads off. Well, no,
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: And that's sort of the impetus for the story is
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: that he was sort of an uncredited influence on Darwin.
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: And the fact that we know anything about him and
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: kind of helps share a story. Um, I think it's
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: pretty cool. What we do know about him comes directly
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: from a very short little blurb in Darwin's own autobiography.
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: That's right, it's the it's the moment where he recalls
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: the conversations they had, right, and then this sets people
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: off on a path to learn more about John Edmondstone.
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: We know that after his interaction teaching Charles Darwin, he
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: stays in Edinburgh. He moves in the eighteen thirties to
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: areas south St. David Street. And if you look at
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: there were some real crackerjack researchers here. If you look
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: at the Scottish Industrial and Natural History Museum Register, which
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: is later the Royal Scottish Museum, you see that they
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: acquired a boa constrictor skin, a fifteen foot boa constrictor
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: from a Mr Edmondstone, and that seems likely to be
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: John Edmond Stone. And then there are a couple of
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: other records relating to him, uh showing that the museum
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: has purchased different specimens from him. But eventually John Edmondstone
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: began to receive his do In two thousand and nine,
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: a small plaque was mounted on Lothian Street, really close
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: to Edmond Stone's original home in Edinburgh. It commemorates his
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: years of mentorship, his years as an educator. And you know,
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: it's it's a small gesture, it's better than nothing, but
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: it's at least finally as the University of Texas says,
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: acknowledging Edmond Stone's influence, as historians continue to make efforts
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: to learn more about his life, and here, for now
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: our story draws to a close. Or maybe let's let's
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: call it a pause, because you know, history is active,
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: it's a conversation. People are still learning more stuff about
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: John Edmond Stone. And you know, in the coming years
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: we might learn even more. And I have to ask.
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: I'll be completely upfront and honest here I had not
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: heard of John Edmond Stone. Had you, guys, said you?
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: Daniel never No, I had neither and and unfortunately, um,
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: as recently as night, some of the academic writing about
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: Edmond Stone and his work UM use some pretty racist language.
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: Daniella Lee, who's a professor of biology at the University
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: of Missouri, once wrote a column from Scientific America where
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: she was quoted as saying, the next time I teach
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: evolutionary biology, I am definitely including Edmond Stone in my lectures.
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: I hope others do as well. Well said, and I
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: think it's a sentiment we can all get behind. This
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: concludes today's episode, but not our show. We want to
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: hear from you who are some other figures that you
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: think mainstream historical discourse has neglected, UH, And who do
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: you think has been maybe overblown or presented with some
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: sort of sanitized image. I just I just listened to
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: as we were coming in, I was listening to our
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: Columbus episode, and I got a quiet let's let's do
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: real quick, in the spirit of the daily zeygeists and
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: being here in the l A Studios, let's do an
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: overrated historical overrated, underrated. I feel like that's every episode. Okay,
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: so UM historically underrated. This is this is a hot take,
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: But I think the what we call the Black Plague
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: or the Black Death has UH, the way it's taught
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: to people, it's historically underrated. The statistics, the estimates about
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: how many people died UM are terrifying. I think people
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: are giving those their full do. But the there's so
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: many long term UH effects and consequences ramifications of that
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: massive outbreak that those three waves of outbreaks that we
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: didn't know, we did not fully understand until recently. Like
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: the reason that some people have genetic inborn resistant stage
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: I V it's because of the Black Plague. That's just
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: one example that was well, that was a very thoughtful
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: and thoroughly researched answer. I'm going to do a hot
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: take overrated Yeah, George Washington, baby who needs oh boy?
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: All right, well, let us know what you think, folks.
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: You can find us on Facebook. You can find us
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: on Twitter, you can find us on Instagram. Just type
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: Ridiculous History into your uh Internet connection of choice or
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: your Internet connection device choice. I don't know, maybe meditate,
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: Maybe I'll just come to you. But if you want
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: to take a shortcut, you can go to one of
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: our favorite places online, our community page Ridiculous Historians on Facebook,
• 30:23
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• 30:25
  Speaker 1: the show. You and your fellow listeners have a chat
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: with Jonathan Strick on the quister. He's there, like most
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: of the time, he's probably there right now, lurking um.
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: You can also find us individually on social media. You
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: can find me on Instagram at how now Noel Brown.
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: You can find me on Instagram getting kicked into and
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: out of various countries, communities, and organizations at ben Bowling
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: in a burst of creativity. You can also find me
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: on Twitter. I'm at ben Bowling h s W. Thanks
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: as always to our our third Musketeer, super producer Casey
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: Pegram Again big thanks to our guests, super producer Daniel Goodman,
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: and I like that sound effect from the last episode,
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: just treaming a Californication. Do you think we get sued
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: for for saying the words californication is a portmanteau. They
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: probably can copyright that. Can you get supers saying words? Um?
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: Not yet? What even our words anymore? But seriously, Daniel,
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: thank you so much for having us and for being
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: such an amazing host and super producer. It is truly
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: my pleasure. This guy I can't even handle it, so
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: we have other people to thank. We do. Thank you
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: to Alex Williams, who composed our theme. Of course, super
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: producer Casey Pegram here in spirit. Christopher Haciota is also
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: here in spirit. Jonathan Strickland um here as some sort
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: of demonic presence um but here none the people but
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: here nonetheless, and of course thanks to our research associate
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: Gabe Louisier. Thank you to John Edmondstone. Uh. And you know,
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: despite his strange loustatory culinary inclinations, thanks to Charles Darwin. Yeah,
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: he seemed like he was okay unless you're at, you know,
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: unless you're an animal, if you're ducking, unless you're literally
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: in the animal he'd ever discovered. We'll see you next time. Books.
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the I
• 32:17
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• 32:20
  Speaker 1: your favorite shows.