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1-800-1882: Orlando and the Origin of Species · 1-800-1800

0:00
SPEAKER_01: Ring, ring.
0:01
SPEAKER_01: Hello?
0:01
SPEAKER_01: Is this 1882?
0:03
SPEAKER_01: This is she.
0:03
SPEAKER_01: Thank God.
0:05
SPEAKER_01: I know.
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SPEAKER_01: I know you've been looking for me.
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SPEAKER_01: You've been searching, wondering, wondering what is that year all about?
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SPEAKER_02: I've been waiting 82 years for this year.
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SPEAKER_01: It was meant to be.
0:19
SPEAKER_00: Hello?
0:20
SPEAKER_00: You've reached 1-800-1800.
0:20
SPEAKER_00: 1-800-1800.
0:20
SPEAKER_00: I have a burning question.
0:22
SPEAKER_00: 1-800-1800.
0:37
SPEAKER_00: I have a burning question.
0:40
SPEAKER_01: This is 1-800-1800.
0:42
SPEAKER_01: My name is Mabel Taylor.
0:43
SPEAKER_01: And I'm Madeline Porcella.
0:45
SPEAKER_01: And we are the founders and editors of Mandy Lyon Press,
0:49
SPEAKER_02: which is a press that republishes 19th century novels.
0:52
SPEAKER_02: And here we just talk about one random year of the 19th century.
0:56
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
0:57
SPEAKER_02: And this year is 1882.
0:59
SPEAKER_01: And I cannot wait to learn more.
1:01
SPEAKER_01: First, I have a question, though.
1:02
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
1:02
SPEAKER_01: Did you learn anything this week?
1:04
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
1:05
SPEAKER_01: Let's hear it.
1:07
SPEAKER_02: Did you know that John Ruskin was a pedophile?
1:10
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I did know that.
1:13
SPEAKER_02: Like a bad one, I think.
1:14
SPEAKER_02: No.
1:15
SPEAKER_02: I've read about it, though.
1:16
SPEAKER_02: It's kind of complicated, actually.
1:18
SPEAKER_02: And I'm actually on the side of maybe it was overblown.
1:25
SPEAKER_02: Basically,
1:26
SPEAKER_02: his first marriage was annulled because the woman fell in love with,
1:30
SPEAKER_02: I think,
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SPEAKER_02: John Everett Millay,
1:31
SPEAKER_02: the painter,
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SPEAKER_02: and left him.
1:34
SPEAKER_02: And in the annulment proceedings, claimed that he was impotent.
1:39
SPEAKER_02: That John Ruskin was impotent.
1:41
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:41
And that they had never consummated their marriage and that
1:43
that's why she was
1:44
SPEAKER_02: annoying their marriage.
1:45
SPEAKER_02: And I thought you were going to say that's why she was annoyed.
1:47
SPEAKER_02: That's why she was annoyed with him.
1:50
SPEAKER_02: And because it was really hard to get a divorce at the time,
1:54
SPEAKER_02: he like in his personal letters,
1:56
SPEAKER_02: like really contests all of the claims she makes.
1:58
SPEAKER_02: But in the court always was like, yes, I was repulsed by her body.
2:02
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
2:03
SPEAKER_02: And so the pedophile rumor comes,
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SPEAKER_02: I mean,
2:05
he did marry her when she was 15 and then afterwards dated like
2:08
another teenage
2:09
SPEAKER_02: girl.
2:10
SPEAKER_02: So it doesn't reflect very, or didn't date, but was like obsessed with.
2:14
SPEAKER_02: They don't really date then.
2:16
But the rumor about the pedophilia stems from the fact that
2:22
this biographer of his
2:24
SPEAKER_02: in the sixties interpreted the court as,
2:27
comments he made without looking at all of the other evidence
2:30
as him not realizing
2:32
that women had pubic hair and being so repulsed by the wife's
2:37
pubic hair that he
2:38
like couldn't have sex with her and that turns out to maybe not
2:42
be totally true i
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SPEAKER_02: see
2:45
SPEAKER_02: Sort of fascinating, right?
2:46
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's a good one, Madeline.
2:47
SPEAKER_02: I went on a deep dive on that.
2:49
SPEAKER_02: I'm like, aren't you supposed to be preparing for your PhD oral exam?
2:53
SPEAKER_02: That's the part I'm doing arts and crafts movement this week.
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What question do you think during your exam are they going to
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ask where you will
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SPEAKER_02: need to talk about whether or not he was a pedophile?
3:02
So the reason that that story is significant is because that
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story is often used to
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SPEAKER_02: illustrate the fact that Victorians were really prudish.
3:12
SPEAKER_02: And that's not totally true.
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SPEAKER_01: No, as we've often discussed, they were pervs.
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SPEAKER_02: They were pervs.
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SPEAKER_02: And so complicating that narrative,
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SPEAKER_02: I'm not going to bring any of this up in my exams,
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SPEAKER_02: obviously,
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but I followed the rabbit hole because it's like complicating
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this idea that like
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SPEAKER_02: Ruskin was so shocked by,
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there's like instances in his letters where he's like talking
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about looking at
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SPEAKER_02: porn.
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SPEAKER_02: Like he was not shocked by a woman's body.
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SPEAKER_01: No, he knew all about pubic hair.
3:39
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
3:39
SPEAKER_01: We haven't even discussed yet this new Skims pubic hair underwear.
3:43
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to be honest.
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SPEAKER_01: I skipped it.
3:46
SPEAKER_01: You decided I'm not participating in that one?
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SPEAKER_01: I was like, I don't need to know about it.
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SPEAKER_01: So is it like the nipple thing?
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SPEAKER_01: It's like the nipple thing.
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SPEAKER_01: It's a Merkin, basically.
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SPEAKER_02: But why?
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For everyone who like lasered off all their pubes and like
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can't participate.
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They're like marketing it as a sort of nostalgic,
4:02
like wearing the past as a costume,
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honestly.
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SPEAKER_01: The campaign is like 70s themed.
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SPEAKER_01: It's like a 70s game show.
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SPEAKER_01: Is it like full big pubes?
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SPEAKER_01: No,
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SPEAKER_01: it's actually,
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SPEAKER_01: you know,
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when everyone finds out about Jenna Lyons' pubic hair in Real
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Housewives of New
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SPEAKER_01: York City.
4:15
SPEAKER_01: It's like that.
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SPEAKER_01: And so, you know how they all wear like little wigs on their vaginas?
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SPEAKER_01: It sort of looks like that.
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And so far as what I like about it is Kim Kardashian obviously
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hasn't had pubic
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SPEAKER_01: hair in like 30 years.
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And so it's like,
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what would someone without any pubic hair imagine pubic hair to
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be?
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And that's how I felt like about Britain pretending that she
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knew what Jenna's
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SPEAKER_01: pubic hair would look like.
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um anyway i just think that's interesting yeah anyway that is
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interesting do you
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want to know what i learned about yeah of course okay well mine
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requires a prop and
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i have it right here here is a book written by our friend eve
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khan called queen of
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SPEAKER_01: bohemia predicts own death gilded age journalist zo anderson norris
5:00
And I learned a lot about Zoe this week when I went to a talk
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at the Salma Gundy
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SPEAKER_01: Club hosted by the Victorian Society.
5:06
SPEAKER_01: Which I love.
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SPEAKER_02: Which we all love.
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SPEAKER_02: I was the Victorian Society's Emerging Scholar of the Year in 2022?
5:13
SPEAKER_02: 2023?
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SPEAKER_01: I would say you've emerged beautifully now.
5:17
SPEAKER_01: They saw me before anybody else did.
5:20
SPEAKER_01: I think it was 2022.
5:20
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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um so eve wrote this book about this journalist um who was a
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sort of muckraking
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journalist who muckraking she wrote about the poverty and
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degradation and sadness
5:36
of the lower east side she talked a lot about immigrants she
5:38
went to ellis island
5:39
love she like went undercover as like a homeless woman playing
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accordion on the
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street and like wrote about which rich people walked by her and
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didn't give money
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SPEAKER_01: like so funny
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um and she was born in Kentucky just like me just like you um
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and stars that are
5:54
just like us they I know me and Zoe Zoe is so lucky to be just
5:57
like me um and she's
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been largely forgotten um by history so it's cool what Eve has
6:03
done she's been
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SPEAKER_01: working on this book for a very long time everyone should buy it
6:07
SPEAKER_01: And now I'm going to brag about us.
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SPEAKER_01: So Zoe also wrote a couple of novels.
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SPEAKER_01: And at the very end of the talk,
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SPEAKER_01: during the Q&A,
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SPEAKER_01: someone I've never seen before raises their hand and says,
6:17
SPEAKER_01: excuse me,
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SPEAKER_01: I have a question.
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SPEAKER_01: Do you think that any of Eve's novels would be worth reissuing?
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SPEAKER_01: Zoe's novels.
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SPEAKER_01: Who did I say?
6:24
SPEAKER_01: Eve's novels.
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SPEAKER_01: Eve is alive.
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SPEAKER_01: Zoe was the 19th century novelist.
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SPEAKER_01: The woman says, sounds like Zoe's novels were very interesting.
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SPEAKER_01: Do you think anyone should republish them?
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SPEAKER_01: Maybe like Mandeline Press would reissue them.
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isn't that cool it's so cool our reputation precedes us it's
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sort of like when
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addison ray says my life moves faster than me yeah it's sort of
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that's how i feel
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about the mandy lion effect yeah and of course i reacted as all
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professional people
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do by running away going home not saying anything to this
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really nice woman who
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brought up our business yeah you should have so that's what i
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learned this week
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SPEAKER_01: fabulous all right are you ready for 1882
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SPEAKER_01: Drumroll, please.
7:09
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
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SPEAKER_01: So I'm going to tell you one thing about 1882 before I dive in.
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SPEAKER_01: I suspect I know what it is.
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SPEAKER_01: Really?
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SPEAKER_02: Is it based on my reading assignment?
7:20
SPEAKER_01: Oh, no.
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SPEAKER_01: Okay.
7:21
SPEAKER_01: I'm not there yet.
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SPEAKER_01: Okay.
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SPEAKER_01: I'm telling you like one contextual thing.
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SPEAKER_01: Oh, okay.
7:25
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
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i have been feeling like i don't even need to mention anymore
7:28
who is president in a
7:29
given year that we discussed because i'm sort of like we've now
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done about a year a
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decade and one president covers several years i do feel like
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there are some we
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haven't had yet well so i looked up who was president in 1882
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and i go who someone
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SPEAKER_01: named chester arthur i've heard of him chester a arthur yeah
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he was the 21st president of the united states and he became
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president after being
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vice president because garfield was shot after only four months
8:00
in office and it's
8:03
just a fun i kind of remember that i remember reading a book in
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high school about
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garfield's assassination which was like kind of tragic because
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in a classic 19th
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century thing way they like he had the bullet in him and the
8:13
doctors were like we
8:14
got to get the bullet out so then they just like stuck their
8:16
dirty fingers in the
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SPEAKER_01: wound like he they had left it he probably would have been fine
8:19
yeah it was like in his leg like he died of infection not from
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the bullet wound but
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then chester becomes president he's president from 1881 until
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1885 but something
8:28
you might know about him is this let's hear it did you know
8:32
obama was not the first
8:33
president to be victimized by a birther conspiracy theory
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chester a arthur yeah
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tester arthur was the victim of the first birtherism scandal um
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before trump trump
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did not invent that um actually was like googling i'm like
8:48
refraining from making a
8:49
joke i was reading on some something on the google ai results
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for birtherism that
8:54
was saying that hillary clinton actually started the birther
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rumor about obama
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SPEAKER_01: I wouldn't be surprised.
9:00
SPEAKER_01: But basically,
9:01
SPEAKER_01: when he had become president,
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SPEAKER_01: someone,
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SPEAKER_01: this New York attorney named Arthur P.
9:07
SPEAKER_01: Hinman,
9:08
SPEAKER_01: started spreading rumors.
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SPEAKER_02: Chester A. Arthur P. Hinman.
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SPEAKER_01: Everyone was about the middle initial in the 19th century.
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SPEAKER_01: Well, also the first last thing.
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SPEAKER_02: First, last thing.
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SPEAKER_02: Chester A. Arthur.
9:18
SPEAKER_01: Arthur P. Hindman.
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SPEAKER_01: It's the same name.
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SPEAKER_02: Do you really not?
9:23
SPEAKER_01: I missed that.
9:23
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
9:24
SPEAKER_01: I was like, what is she talking about?
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Basically,
9:27
Arthur P.
9:27
Hindman spread rumors about Chester A.
9:30
Arthur that...
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SPEAKER_01: Arthur was born not in Vermont, as he claimed, but actually in Canada.
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SPEAKER_02: Right over the border, though.
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SPEAKER_02: Right over the border.
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SPEAKER_02: His mom waddled across the country line.
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SPEAKER_02: It's not the state line.
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SPEAKER_02: It's not the state line.
9:47
SPEAKER_01: Border?
9:47
SPEAKER_01: The country line.
9:48
SPEAKER_01: The national border?
9:49
SPEAKER_01: The national border.
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SPEAKER_01: And of course, that was not true, but people did believe it.
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SPEAKER_01: And I would say it really tarnished Chester A. Arthur's reputation.
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Imagine you're in the White House and you just have to listen
10:01
to people go Canadian.
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SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
10:04
SPEAKER_02: No worse accusation.
10:07
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
10:07
SPEAKER_01: So that's what I have to say about the president.
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SPEAKER_01: Haters will be waiters at the table of success.
10:12
SPEAKER_01: Literally.
10:13
SPEAKER_01: Eric Adams will miss your way with words.
10:16
SPEAKER_01: Um, okay.
10:17
So now I want to talk about births and deaths,
10:22
which we often do on 1-800-1800.
10:24
SPEAKER_02: We're developing like a pretty wild theory of world history.
10:30
SPEAKER_02: I think we're like inventing Hegelianism to be honest.
10:33
SPEAKER_02: We're going to like work our way there.
10:35
SPEAKER_02: We're like, we're like...
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SPEAKER_02: And then sometimes special people are born and the world is different.
10:39
SPEAKER_01: That's what I wrote in my notes.
10:41
SPEAKER_01: I was like, some years, no one interesting was born or died.
10:45
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes no one interesting was born or vice versa.
10:48
SPEAKER_01: No one interesting died.
10:49
This is one of the craziest years ever in terms of epic births
10:53
and epic deaths.
10:54
SPEAKER_02: Maybe it's like not Hegelianism in the sense that it's one man,
10:58
SPEAKER_02: but maybe there is some sort of like arc of history that...
11:02
we're sort of catching on to well what i was reflecting on was
11:05
that something about
11:06
the birth and death theory of history is that it kind of
11:09
becomes this form of time
11:10
travel i started writing my notes so the people who were born
11:13
in 1882 they died in
11:13
1945 1941 1963 1971 like very recent history people who died in
11:15
1882 were born in
11:15
SPEAKER_01: 1803 1807 1815 it's like a bridge you
11:28
year yeah it's like imagine so i'm talking about people who are
11:32
connected in 1882
11:34
some of whom were born in 1803 and then some of whom died in
11:37
1971 and all of that
11:38
is encapsulated in one generation yeah i think that's like kind
11:42
of pretty amazing
11:43
amazing and i feel like it's time travel um but basically let
11:48
me it's time travel
11:50
SPEAKER_02: in the one direction that we travel through time which is forward
11:53
SPEAKER_01: But I'm saying you can also go backwards.
11:54
SPEAKER_01: Like when someone dies, they are still in like defined.
11:58
SPEAKER_02: They've been carrying that forward.
12:00
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
12:01
SPEAKER_01: Like 1996 is in the room with us right now vis-a-vis me.
12:04
SPEAKER_01: And me.
12:06
SPEAKER_01: And you.
12:06
SPEAKER_01: You were there.
12:07
SPEAKER_01: I experienced it.
12:08
SPEAKER_01: Maybe I should say 1993 or two, whatever it was.
12:10
SPEAKER_01: Who knows?
12:11
SPEAKER_01: Not important.
12:13
SPEAKER_01: But anyway, here are some of the people who died in 1882.
12:17
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
12:18
SPEAKER_01: Ralph Waldo Emerson.
12:20
SPEAKER_02: Amazing.
12:21
SPEAKER_01: Mary Todd Lincoln.
12:22
SPEAKER_01: okay anthony trollop okay
12:27
SPEAKER_01: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
12:28
SPEAKER_01: Some of the great thinkers.
12:30
SPEAKER_01: And Mary Todd Lincoln.
12:32
SPEAKER_01: Alexander Gardner, photographer of the Civil War.
12:35
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
12:36
SPEAKER_01: Henry James Sr.
12:38
SPEAKER_01: Oh, wow.
12:38
SPEAKER_01: Really interesting.
12:39
SPEAKER_01: Okay, now do you want to know who was born?
12:40
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
12:40
SPEAKER_01: It's crazy.
12:42
SPEAKER_01: FDR.
12:43
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
12:44
SPEAKER_01: James Joyce.
12:45
SPEAKER_01: When did he have polio?
12:47
SPEAKER_01: As a kid.
12:48
SPEAKER_01: Probably like 1885.
12:48
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
12:51
SPEAKER_01: Brock.
12:51
SPEAKER_01: George Brock died.
12:53
SPEAKER_01: I mean, was born.
12:54
SPEAKER_01: Was born.
12:54
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
12:54
SPEAKER_01: Sylvia Pankhurst, the suffragette.
12:56
SPEAKER_01: I don't know who that is.
12:57
Sigrid Unset,
12:58
the author of one of my favorite Norwegian epics,
13:01
Kristen Lavron's daughter.
13:02
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
13:03
SPEAKER_02: Some of these are a little obscure.
13:04
SPEAKER_02: I'm going to be honest.
13:05
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
13:05
SPEAKER_01: These last two you'll enjoy.
13:07
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
13:07
SPEAKER_02: Stravinsky.
13:08
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
13:09
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
13:10
SPEAKER_02: Famously, I love Stravinsky.
13:12
SPEAKER_02: And Edward Hopper.
13:13
I'm not saying these are like people you love,
13:15
but I'm saying they're famous.
13:16
SPEAKER_02: They're famous.
13:17
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
13:18
SPEAKER_01: That's a crazy list.
13:19
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
13:19
And I haven't even talked about the birth or the death that
13:22
will define this episode.
13:24
SPEAKER_01: Ah!
13:25
and this was my assigned reading yeah okay okay so on january
13:30
25th 1882 okay a baby
13:33
girl named adeline virginia stephen was born at 22 hyde park
13:38
gate kensington
13:40
adeline is such a pretty name you may know her not as adeline
13:43
though but as the
13:45
SPEAKER_01: woman she became yeah virginia wolf and on april 19th
13:53
1882,
13:54
Charles Robert Darwin died of a heart attack at Down House in
13:59
Kent.
13:59
SPEAKER_01: My God.
14:01
So here we have two of the most exciting and notable figures in
14:08
English history.
14:09
SPEAKER_01: One,
14:09
the scientist whose theories like Galileo before him and
14:13
Einstein after him forever
14:15
SPEAKER_01: changed how we understand the world.
14:17
SPEAKER_01: And the other,
14:17
a modernist author credited with pioneering stream of
14:21
consciousness writing known
14:22
SPEAKER_01: for novels like Mrs.
14:23
SPEAKER_01: Dalloway and To the Lighthouse,
14:26
SPEAKER_01: as well as her feminist politics and also her lesbian leanings.
14:30
SPEAKER_01: At first blush, I wrote this word for word.
14:32
These two individuals have little in common other than that
14:36
they are both famous and British.
14:39
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
14:39
SPEAKER_01: And also they are connected by 1882.
14:43
But I am going to argue on today's episode that they are linked
14:48
inextricably by
14:49
SPEAKER_01: more than fame,
14:51
SPEAKER_01: England in 1882.
14:53
SPEAKER_01: But actually that two of their most famous works,
14:56
SPEAKER_01: Darwin's On the Origin of Species and Wolf's Orlando,
15:00
SPEAKER_01: are very interesting to discuss in the same context.
15:03
SPEAKER_01: I cannot wait.
15:04
SPEAKER_01: I can't wait to talk about it.
15:05
SPEAKER_02: I've never read On the Origin.
15:06
SPEAKER_02: I know what it's about.
15:08
SPEAKER_02: And I'm going to tell you.
15:09
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to tell you all about it.
15:11
I spent all last weekend reading everything there is to know
15:14
about On the Origin of Species.
15:16
SPEAKER_01: Fabulous.
15:18
SPEAKER_01: Okay, are you ready?
15:20
SPEAKER_02: As I'll ever be.
15:21
SPEAKER_02: Are you scared?
15:22
SPEAKER_02: A little bit.
15:23
SPEAKER_02: Because you know how excited I am to do this.
15:27
SPEAKER_02: I just don't want to let you down.
15:29
SPEAKER_01: You could never.
15:29
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
15:31
SPEAKER_01: I like want to talk about this with you.
15:32
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, okay.
15:33
SPEAKER_01: You know?
15:33
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, totally.
15:34
SPEAKER_01: That's why I'm here today.
15:36
SPEAKER_02: That's why we do this.
15:37
SPEAKER_01: This is why we do this.
15:37
SPEAKER_01: Because I feel like I have a lot of thoughts about it,
15:39
SPEAKER_01: but I'm really curious what you're going to say.
15:40
SPEAKER_01: Wait, is Virginia Woolf a Pisces or an Aquarius?
15:43
SPEAKER_01: I think she's an Aquarius, but let me just double check that.
15:46
SPEAKER_01: She was an Aquarius.
15:50
SPEAKER_02: Okay, I guess that makes sense.
15:51
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, a son in Aquarius.
15:52
SPEAKER_01: And then let's do Darwin now.
15:54
SPEAKER_01: Charles Darwin.
15:55
SPEAKER_01: I think he's a Taurus.
15:56
SPEAKER_01: He's an April, yeah.
15:57
SPEAKER_01: Taurus.
15:58
SPEAKER_01: It's important that we look this up.
16:00
SPEAKER_01: I can't believe I didn't... Wait.
16:02
SPEAKER_01: Why is it saying Darwin's also an Aquarius?
16:04
SPEAKER_01: Oh, because he died.
16:04
SPEAKER_01: Because we're stupid.
16:08
SPEAKER_01: Wait, that's so interesting.
16:10
SPEAKER_01: I didn't even get there in my notes.
16:11
SPEAKER_02: They were Aquarius brethren.
16:14
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
16:14
SPEAKER_02: Well, Aquarius has changed the way people think.
16:16
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
16:17
SPEAKER_02: It's an air sign that's connected to the mind.
16:19
SPEAKER_02: People think it's a water sign because of aqua,
16:20
SPEAKER_02: but it's an air sign and it's connected to like the life of the mind.
16:23
SPEAKER_02: That's so cool.
16:24
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
16:24
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
16:25
SPEAKER_01: I'm thinking about all the Aquarius's in my life,
16:26
SPEAKER_01: thinking about how they have changed how I think.
16:28
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
16:29
SPEAKER_01: See?
16:30
SPEAKER_01: Should we just check really quick with their Mars?
16:34
SPEAKER_02: Darwin,
16:35
SPEAKER_02: like me,
16:35
SPEAKER_02: has a Capricorn moon,
16:36
which is punishing from the fates and often indicates a tense
16:41
relationship with
16:42
SPEAKER_02: your mother.
16:43
SPEAKER_02: Something to think about.
16:44
SPEAKER_01: Wait, what was, she was Venus in Capricorn.
16:47
SPEAKER_01: He was Venus in Aries.
16:49
SPEAKER_01: I'm just trying to see if they'd be compatible lovers.
16:51
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
16:52
SPEAKER_01: They did not overlap on the earth.
16:55
SPEAKER_01: Um, actually they did.
16:56
SPEAKER_01: She was four months old when he died.
16:57
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
16:58
SPEAKER_02: So they would have been problematic lovers for sure.
17:03
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
17:04
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
17:04
So first I want to say where were Virginia Woolf and Charles
17:08
Darwin in 1882?
17:08
SPEAKER_01: Um,
17:10
SPEAKER_01: Virginia Woolf was a baby.
17:11
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
17:12
SPEAKER_01: A little bit about her biography.
17:15
SPEAKER_01: Her family structure is actually kind of interesting.
17:17
SPEAKER_01: Both her parents had kids with other people.
17:19
SPEAKER_01: They'd been married before.
17:20
SPEAKER_01: They were both widowed.
17:21
SPEAKER_01: So her father, Leslie Stephen, married her mother, Julia Princep Jackson.
17:27
SPEAKER_01: And she was the seventh of eight children.
17:30
SPEAKER_01: Oh, my God.
17:31
SPEAKER_01: Really intense.
17:31
SPEAKER_01: And her childhood was pretty bleak.
17:34
SPEAKER_01: Her mom died when she was little.
17:36
SPEAKER_01: And that was like the cause of her first mental breakdown.
17:40
SPEAKER_01: She was sexually abused by one of her older half siblings.
17:44
SPEAKER_01: Really intense.
17:45
SPEAKER_01: I don't like that.
17:47
SPEAKER_01: And that's all I'll say right now about her.
17:48
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
17:49
SPEAKER_01: So that's where she was in 1882.
17:51
SPEAKER_01: Darwin was at a very different point in his life.
17:53
SPEAKER_02: He was nearly dead.
17:54
SPEAKER_01: He was 73 years old.
17:55
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
17:56
SPEAKER_01: So when he died at 73 in 1882,
18:00
SPEAKER_01: he was at home with his family,
18:02
having seen his most famous work on the origin of species go
18:05
through six editions.
18:07
SPEAKER_01: But it was only published in like 1859.
18:09
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
18:09
SPEAKER_02: So very recently.
18:11
He's always flagged as someone who like was a sort of later in
18:14
life success.
18:15
SPEAKER_02: I'm going to tell you all about that.
18:16
SPEAKER_01: Oh, you can't wait.
18:16
I actually learned a lot about myself by learning everything
18:19
about Darwin.
18:20
okay because you feel like a later in life success i just
18:22
thought a lot well
18:23
because wolf is kind of a prodigy right no she was 33 when she
18:27
first published a
18:27
book oh or like when she first started writing it like they
18:31
both took their time he
18:32
took yeah he is a lesson in taking a chance yeah and what it
18:37
means to not do that
18:38
SPEAKER_01: yeah i'll get there
18:39
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
18:39
SPEAKER_01: So yeah,
18:40
SPEAKER_01: he published on the origin of species at,
18:43
SPEAKER_01: um,
18:43
SPEAKER_01: in the year 1859,
18:45
even though he had been home from the journey that inspired it
18:49
on the HMS Beagle
18:50
SPEAKER_01: for like 46 years.
18:52
SPEAKER_01: So he, am I getting, he was home for 46 years.
18:56
SPEAKER_01: Like he had, is that correct?
18:59
SPEAKER_02: That can't be true.
18:59
SPEAKER_01: No, I think it's correct.
19:03
SPEAKER_02: I think he was like 51 or something.
19:05
SPEAKER_02: So that would mean he was five years old when he was on the HMS Beagle.
19:09
um okay no that is wrong no he died no i'm saying when he died
19:14
oh okay okay okay he
19:16
went on the hms beagle in 1831 okay i was like what am i
19:20
talking about so he goes
19:21
on this global journey in the year 1831 and then he never
19:25
leaves england again so
19:26
he's been home for a long time that's iconic i'm taking one
19:31
trip i literally think
19:34
SPEAKER_02: Make it count.
19:34
My life would have been better if I had gone on one trip for
19:37
five years rather than
19:38
SPEAKER_01: a trip every year.
19:40
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so he was married to his first cousin, Emma Wedgwood.
19:43
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we have discussed her.
19:45
SPEAKER_01: We've discussed her and the Wedgwood family.
19:48
SPEAKER_01: He's from a very prominent family.
19:49
He's the grandson of Josiah Wedgwood on one side and Erasmus
19:53
Darwin on the other side.
19:54
SPEAKER_01: Erasmus Darwin is also very famous.
19:56
SPEAKER_01: Um,
19:57
SPEAKER_01: and they had 10 children together,
19:58
SPEAKER_01: two of whom died as babies and a daughter,
20:01
SPEAKER_01: Annie,
20:01
who died at the age of 10 and her death was like a huge
20:03
devastating blow for
20:04
SPEAKER_01: Darwin.
20:05
SPEAKER_01: And yes,
20:06
he was worried that the fact that he married his cousin may
20:09
have led to inbreeding
20:09
SPEAKER_01: with his children.
20:10
SPEAKER_02: Cause he was interested in biology.
20:12
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
20:13
SPEAKER_01: And he was himself the son of cousins and he had very poor health.
20:16
SPEAKER_01: What I learned, it's super interesting.
20:18
SPEAKER_01: I'm not going to talk about it too much.
20:19
It's like,
20:19
he was an invalid for like,
20:21
he spent a lot of time in like health spas.
20:24
SPEAKER_01: He was very sickly.
20:26
That makes sense to me because I think to come up with what he
20:29
came up with you
20:30
SPEAKER_02: need to spend a lot of time in like contemplation.
20:33
Yeah and what's so fascinating about him as a scientist is like
20:36
we know him as this
20:37
explorer the guy who like went to the Galapagos whatever but
20:39
actually many of his
20:41
most important scientific experiments he just like did in his
20:43
backyard in Kent.
20:44
yeah like one thing was he like went out and took a tea cup
20:48
full of mud from the
20:50
pond outside of his house and brought it inside and then like
20:53
tracked how many
20:53
species of plants bred from that one cup of that's cute mud
20:58
like he was doing like
20:59
SPEAKER_01: very simple experiments very creatively within his
21:02
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
21:02
SPEAKER_02: Well, also like that's part of that tradition of like British naturalism.
21:06
Like a lot of British people were just like going to their
21:10
yards and like observing
21:12
SPEAKER_02: the natural world.
21:13
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
21:13
SPEAKER_01: England's relationship with nature is so interesting.
21:15
SPEAKER_02: The like seaside ones are always...
21:17
SPEAKER_01: Well, they had like less to work with.
21:19
SPEAKER_01: Like England of all the places in the world is probably like not the most
21:23
SPEAKER_01: interesting like geographic range or like horticultural,
21:28
SPEAKER_01: you know,
21:28
SPEAKER_02: it just had giants.
21:30
SPEAKER_01: They did have giants who roamed to land.
21:31
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
21:32
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
21:32
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
21:34
SPEAKER_01: I just want to also flag that,
21:35
SPEAKER_01: like,
21:35
SPEAKER_01: by the time he died in 1882,
21:37
the words Darwinian and Darwinism had already entered the
21:41
English language and
21:41
SPEAKER_01: were,
21:42
SPEAKER_01: like,
21:42
SPEAKER_01: being used also,
21:42
SPEAKER_01: like,
21:43
SPEAKER_01: in all sorts of European languages.
21:44
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
21:45
SPEAKER_01: And so I hope when we die, Mandelianian.
21:49
mandolinian mandolinian will be a word mandalorian um so how
21:53
did charles become the
21:54
darwin of darwinism that's really the question so he was born
21:58
in shropshire the
21:59
grandson of erasmith darwin who had written a book called
22:02
zoonomia which was
22:04
published in 1794 and it's actually it's interesting because he
22:07
wrote a lot about
22:08
evolution okay he didn't like quite get it right but like he
22:11
was what was his take
22:13
SPEAKER_01: like lamarck
22:13
it was like i think it was post lamarck or i thought lamarck
22:18
and darwin were
22:18
contemporaries i even want to be right i can't remember i wrote
22:24
about lamarck in my
22:25
no okay i think not because darwin was really inspired by this
22:31
guy um charles lyle
22:32
who i think is criticizing lamarck okay so i think it's a two
22:36
generations back okay
22:38
um but zoonomi is really interesting because it's like poetic
22:41
it's like poetry
22:42
SPEAKER_01: about evolution and science yeah
22:43
I've actually been reading all this week about like the
22:47
romantic sciences and the
22:51
sort of I think now we think of science and like poetry and art
22:56
as separate.
22:56
SPEAKER_02: But in this period, there was kind of especially like.
23:01
this is maybe a little later but like post-Kantian
23:06
philosophical studies of
23:07
aesthetics were really related to science and so there was like
23:11
all of these ideas
23:12
about like color theory and harmonics and like different
23:17
aesthetic experiences
23:19
involved in the way people were thinking about science and like
23:22
biology in
23:24
particular because it was like shape how they could shape you
23:27
as a person and
23:28
that's interesting yeah i don't know about darwin's like well
23:31
he comes from such a
23:32
creative family yeah i'm sure that they're they're also like
23:35
it's the kind of
23:36
family that would have that education yeah well he wasn't a
23:39
very good was not a
23:40
very good student which is interesting and his grandfather
23:43
erasmus as well as his
23:44
SPEAKER_01: father whose name i think was also charles
23:48
SPEAKER_01: They were both doctors, medical doctors.
23:50
SPEAKER_01: So he had been sent to Scotland to go to medical school.
23:53
SPEAKER_01: And he,
23:54
SPEAKER_01: I think,
23:54
SPEAKER_01: spent like one afternoon in the surgical theater and was like,
23:58
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to barf my guts out.
24:00
SPEAKER_01: And was like, no way.
24:02
So then they sent him to Cambridge and they wanted him to
24:04
become a parson.
24:05
But there was all of these people working at Cambridge who were
24:09
very interested in
24:10
SPEAKER_01: geography and botany and biology.
24:12
And he was mentored by a few different professors who took him
24:16
on expeditions within England.
24:18
SPEAKER_01: And he learned a lot.
24:19
SPEAKER_01: And that was actually his...
24:21
um professor steven john stevens henslow who was a botanist um
24:26
had been asked to be
24:27
the sort of gentleman scientist on the hms beagle and but he
24:31
had like kids and
24:32
didn't want to go for five years so he recommended charles and
24:37
charles's father was
24:38
like hell no you need to like get serious and get to work and
24:41
then his uncle josiah
24:43
wedgewood the second was like he let him go let him go so it
24:47
was a wedgewood who
24:48
SPEAKER_01: encouraged him oh that's cute isn't that cute yeah
24:50
SPEAKER_01: So then he goes on this journey, which is epic.
24:53
SPEAKER_01: It's five years.
24:54
SPEAKER_01: He's seasick for most of that time.
24:56
SPEAKER_02: I've read not his journals, but like other journals of people.
25:00
SPEAKER_02: I've read like missionary journals where people go from Boston to India.
25:03
SPEAKER_02: And the only thing they write about is when they are and aren't seasick.
25:07
SPEAKER_02: It's for like that journey was like a year and a half.
25:10
SPEAKER_02: And it's like today seasick.
25:12
SPEAKER_02: Today, Mrs. Other person was seasick, but I wasn't.
25:16
I mean,
25:16
I cannot even imagine how badly I would be doing on one of
25:20
these trips.
25:20
I got seasick for the first time like a year ago or a year and
25:23
a half ago.
25:24
SPEAKER_02: You were texting me being like, it was so nice knowing you.
25:26
SPEAKER_02: But I was also like,
25:29
SPEAKER_02: I have a newfound understanding about like when you say your car is sick,
25:31
SPEAKER_02: what you mean.
25:32
SPEAKER_02: Like, because I'm always like, suck it up, bitch.
25:35
SPEAKER_02: But that was brutal.
25:36
SPEAKER_01: Well,
25:36
SPEAKER_01: the thing about seasickness and motion sickness is like once it starts,
25:39
SPEAKER_01: it won't stop until you're on solid land.
25:41
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
25:41
SPEAKER_01: That's what happens to me in the car and sometimes on the subway as well.
25:46
and like all I need is for it to stop and if you're on a boat
25:49
for two years yeah so
25:51
you'd think you would adjust but the good thing for Darwin is
25:54
that he did spend a
25:55
fair amount of time on land like they stopped off in all these
25:58
different places
25:59
like he spent a lot of time in South America and that was good
26:02
for him and he's
26:03
witnessing all of these things that are incredibly inspiring
26:07
and he goes on the
26:08
journey already super interested in botany and like he had been
26:13
collecting natural
26:14
SPEAKER_01: specimens since he was a kid and
26:17
sorry and so he and he's sending things back as he goes on this
26:23
journey so he ends
26:23
up collecting thousands and thousands and thousands of
26:26
specimens he visits the
26:27
galapagos famously he goes to patagonia he goes to australia
26:31
he's like obsessed
26:32
with armadillos wait he goes to australia yeah it's not just
26:37
south america they go
26:37
SPEAKER_01: all over the world
26:38
oh i didn't realize so they went like down and around i don't
26:42
know the exact path
26:43
but surely we could google it um he also witnesses earthquakes
26:48
and he's very at the
26:49
time of the trip like geography and geology is like huge it's
26:54
huge and it's very
26:55
SPEAKER_01: tied up in people's understanding of biology
26:57
and aesthetics like Ruskin's whole like stones of Venice like
27:03
theory about art and
27:05
surface and ornament is like all really inspired by geology and
27:09
this like idea of
27:10
SPEAKER_02: like incrustation and accretion and accumulation that makes sense yeah
27:15
well and so this is the like field of geology had recently
27:19
changed when he left for
27:20
the journey so in 1830 charles lyle publishes principles of
27:25
geology which is kind
27:26
of the one of the first big bold statements of an alternative
27:30
to a more like
27:32
SPEAKER_01: biblical version of geologic history which
27:35
had reigned throughout the western world through the 1820s and
27:40
that was this like
27:41
much more catastrophic idea of how geology worked so basically
27:45
which is like the
27:46
layers it's like yeah there's like one big cataclysmic event
27:50
that forms the earth
27:51
SPEAKER_01: and then that's it
27:53
SPEAKER_01: opposed to Lyle, who's arguing for like an idea of like constant change.
27:58
And he's basically pointing to things like earthquakes and
28:00
volcanoes and floods and
28:03
SPEAKER_01: saying these are all continuing to shape the world.
28:05
SPEAKER_01: Right.
28:06
SPEAKER_01: Which,
28:06
SPEAKER_01: and then he also,
28:07
it becomes this biologic argument because he also somehow is
28:11
able to state that...
28:14
like history has been like geologic history and biological
28:18
history has been going
28:18
on for a lot longer than the bible i thought this quote from
28:22
this cop that i'm i
28:24
was referencing the penguin edition of on the origin of species
28:27
which had an
28:27
introduction by william binham and so i'm going to quote from
28:30
that because i feel
28:31
like it characterizes kind of like the world that darwin went
28:35
into the b onto the
28:36
SPEAKER_01: beagle from okay
28:37
SPEAKER_01: So in the 1820s,
28:38
most geologists still assumed that the last great catastrophe
28:41
was the biblical
28:42
SPEAKER_01: flood of Noah,
28:43
SPEAKER_01: following which the present relatively stable era had begun.
28:45
These periodic catastrophes had destroyed life wholesale and
28:49
then had been followed
28:49
SPEAKER_01: by the wholesale creations of plants and animals.
28:52
SPEAKER_01: This vision of Earth history was providential,
28:54
postulating that God's design had gradually prepared the Earth
28:57
for human beings.
28:58
It explained the sharp breaks in fossils as one went back
29:00
through the strata and
29:01
the fact that fossils from younger strata processed forms more
29:04
like those of
29:05
SPEAKER_01: existing species.
29:07
So I just thought that was a very helpful context for me about
29:11
what the before is.
29:13
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
29:14
SPEAKER_02: Well,
29:14
it's also like I'm just thinking like what changed that way of
29:19
thinking and it's
29:21
exploration like what happened on the Beagle because they start
29:24
seeing like that
29:26
SPEAKER_02: that striation and those changes are not...
29:30
consistent throughout the world which means that there wasn't a
29:33
flood that flooded
29:34
the entire world it means that there was like different events
29:37
in different places
29:38
and that yeah so it's like in a way like going on this trip is
29:42
like the very it's
29:43
SPEAKER_02: like creating the object of study for him
29:47
it's also so interesting to me because obviously 1831 is you
29:52
know a long time after
29:53
1492 like it's a long time after people had people from europe
29:59
had been going to
30:00
the americas via boat for a long time and encountering these
30:04
things that like
30:05
disrupted their history of what the world was but i don't even
30:08
know that the but
30:10
SPEAKER_01: sorry go ahead
30:10
I was just thinking it's seeing it as a topic for scientific
30:16
inquiry is so
30:16
SPEAKER_01: interesting,
30:17
SPEAKER_02: opposed to colonial booty.
30:19
SPEAKER_02: That's what I was going to say.
30:20
SPEAKER_02: I don't think that the sort of even theory,
30:26
SPEAKER_02: the geological theories of the 1830s,
30:29
this idea that those striations and things can be linked to
30:33
biblical events...
30:34
SPEAKER_02: that's coming out of the enlightenment.
30:36
SPEAKER_02: I think that's not like been a longstanding thing.
30:39
SPEAKER_02: So there's already been this shift.
30:41
SPEAKER_02: I think what happens is people,
30:43
SPEAKER_02: you know,
30:44
SPEAKER_02: first of all,
30:45
SPEAKER_02: knowledge took longer to like transfer back then,
30:49
SPEAKER_02: but like people go to the Americas,
30:50
people are experiencing these new things and then they get home
30:53
and it's not until
30:54
SPEAKER_02: this impulse to categorize them,
30:56
SPEAKER_02: which is what the enlightenment is born out of kind of like kicks in.
31:00
SPEAKER_02: And there's like years and years of information about that.
31:04
SPEAKER_01: Well,
31:04
SPEAKER_01: but what's interesting is I don't,
31:06
what this Benham argues sort of in the introduction to On the
31:09
Origin of Species is
31:10
that urge to taxonomize is not only an enlightenment impulse
31:14
and that like ever
31:15
SPEAKER_01: since Adam in Eden is told by God to name everything.
31:18
SPEAKER_01: Right.
31:19
SPEAKER_01: Right.
31:20
like that had been going on for a long time and like I think
31:23
the fundamental like
31:24
rupture that starts happening in 1492 or shortly thereafter is
31:29
like the challenge
31:30
SPEAKER_01: to taxonomize things that you didn't know existed before.
31:34
SPEAKER_02: Right.
31:35
SPEAKER_01: Well,
31:35
SPEAKER_01: and I was just thinking,
31:35
SPEAKER_01: like,
31:36
I learned a lot about Athanasius Kircher one time in a phase I
31:40
had in grad school.
31:41
SPEAKER_01: And,
31:43
SPEAKER_01: you know,
31:44
SPEAKER_01: also it's interesting because it's like Jesuits,
31:46
SPEAKER_01: people who were scholarly and not in,
31:50
SPEAKER_01: you know,
31:50
SPEAKER_01: Mexico in order to take wealth in the same way,
31:54
SPEAKER_01: but were there to,
31:55
SPEAKER_01: like,
31:55
SPEAKER_01: convert.
31:56
SPEAKER_01: They were extracting souls.
31:57
they're extracting souls and like athanasius kircher never
32:00
traveled beyond well he
32:01
actually no he did travel beyond europe i think he went to
32:04
china but like he never
32:05
went to the americas but he like spent a lot of time trying to
32:08
reconcile the
32:09
information he got from other missionaries within biblical
32:13
history yeah like that
32:15
was the goal was to be like okay so there's pyramids in mexico
32:17
like well then
32:18
SPEAKER_01: obviously like the egyptians must have traveled there and like
32:21
yeah it's just the like i'm so interested by the sort of like
32:25
intellectual
32:26
acrobatics and the lengths that people went to for so long to
32:29
maintain a singular
32:30
history of human life it's like if the only source you have for
32:34
that kind of
32:34
history is the old testament like because you're not engaged
32:37
with these other
32:38
cultural histories and you're not comparing and contrasting
32:41
natural like landmarks
32:43
of what things are of course you're gonna like that was the
32:46
history of the world
32:47
SPEAKER_02: yeah was the old testament
32:48
and darwin came and he messed that freaking shit up i liked
32:52
this quote too from the
32:53
introduction to this book he returned to england at the dawn of
32:56
the railway age i
32:57
was like that's super interesting he gets back in 1836 and like
33:00
england is changing
33:01
in all these other ways which yeah i think we weren't recording
33:04
when we said this
33:05
to each other but like everything we're talking about in terms
33:08
of geology is super
33:09
SPEAKER_01: related to the hill of dreams and
33:11
SPEAKER_01: and I feel like you talk in your introduction to that book about like the
33:15
relationship between coal and diamonds and like industrial
33:19
revolution and like
33:20
colonial booty I don't know I see yeah I mean like extraction
33:24
as a like kind of
33:26
SPEAKER_02: mode of cultural meaning making is like
33:31
present in all of those things in colonial exploitation and
33:37
exploration in the
33:39
developed like in the industrial revolution that all relies on
33:43
extractive practices
33:45
SPEAKER_02: and in kind of like this creation of um yeah like sort of like
33:53
diamonds and treasures and like like mummies and buried
33:57
treasure like all of that
33:59
is about like pulling stuff out of the earth yeah and whether
34:03
you like burn it for
34:04
fuel or you put it in a museum it's still like enriching you
34:08
and it's like
34:08
propelling this like like in the case of hill of dreams or what
34:12
i'm arguing in hill
34:12
of dreams and also like in this conversation we're having like
34:16
the british empire
34:17
SPEAKER_02: is fueled by this extraction even if it's like the taking of
34:23
um like or like pulling like celtic history out of mounds like
34:26
it's all coming out
34:27
of the ground like the history is coming out of the ground the
34:29
future is coming out
34:30
of the ground like what's not coming out of the ground we need
34:35
to go on an
34:35
archaeological dig i feel like you know i went on one once
34:38
really in like high
34:38
school in like high school and i got in trouble because i
34:41
couldn't tell the
34:42
difference between what was like just dirt and what was like
34:45
stuff you wanted to
34:46
SPEAKER_02: keep so i kept trying to throw away pottery shards
34:49
yeah i'm like it's all it's all dirt to me babe it's all realty
34:54
one man's trash i
34:54
don't want any of this stuff it's not cute yeah um so darwin
35:01
gets back from england
35:02
and he's thinking about what he saw he's thinking about charles
35:06
lyle and the
35:07
principles of geology and he's starting to turn his attention
35:10
to the origin of
35:11
SPEAKER_01: species
35:11
like he's starting to think about okay like if it didn't all
35:15
begin with the flood
35:16
of noah if it didn't all begin in eden where did it begin yeah
35:21
and he's writing
35:22
down his observations and the other interesting thing about
35:24
darwin is that he was a
35:25
prolific writer but not all of it was published so like our
35:28
perspective on darwin
35:29
is very different now than it was in 1882 because we now have
35:33
access to his archive
35:34
So he's keeping these really,
35:36
really extensive notes about his impressions of what he saw.
35:40
SPEAKER_01: And he's, he's also writing about it.
35:42
What's interesting to me in like back to the kind of England of
35:44
it all is that he
35:46
SPEAKER_01: was surrounded by people breeding horses,
35:48
SPEAKER_01: breeding sheep,
35:49
SPEAKER_01: breeding dogs.
35:50
SPEAKER_01: Like he,
35:51
his reflections on like what he saw in the Galapagos are
35:54
intermixed with like
35:55
SPEAKER_01: reflections on like what it is to breed like a really good hunting dog.
35:58
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
35:58
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
35:59
and he also what's something notable is that he's keeping
36:01
notebooks too about human
36:04
sex and human kind and so it indicates that he is already
36:09
thinking about humans as
36:11
part of this biological history and this biology that's not
36:15
what is proposed in the
36:16
SPEAKER_01: bible and that is incredibly radical
36:19
yeah um so he basically like the way that lyle and his time on
36:27
the beagle is
36:27
starting to like marinate in his mind um is you know lyle has
36:32
suggested that
36:33
extinction is a constant process in the same way that like
36:38
earthquakes and floods
36:40
are a constant process okay um and so you know lyle is pointing
36:45
out to species that
36:46
SPEAKER_01: have disappeared like the dodo
36:49
like the dodo like species are extinguishing themselves yeah or
36:53
humans are
36:54
extinguishing them like before their very eyes um and so darwin
36:58
starts to think
36:58
about how and lyle kind of indicates this too it's like well if
37:02
that's true of
37:02
extinction it must also be true for the origin of species too
37:06
right like if that's
37:07
how they end there also must be something related happening
37:10
when species begin
37:12
um and there's this idea that like environment is related to
37:20
the birth of species
37:22
but Lyle doesn't quite go there because I think it's too
37:24
controversial yeah um so
37:27
Darwin's thinking about that and he also I learned a lot about
37:29
Thomas Malthus I
37:30
don't really know about that I had no idea it's crazy what is
37:35
it like Malthusian
37:36
SPEAKER_01: you know when people say that
37:37
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
37:37
SPEAKER_01: I learned what that means.
37:38
SPEAKER_01: What does it mean?
37:41
SPEAKER_01: So in 1844, um, Oh, I'm sorry.
37:44
SPEAKER_01: Nope.
37:44
SPEAKER_01: I was looking at the wrong year in 1798.
37:45
SPEAKER_01: That's right.
37:49
Malthus publishes this essay called an essay on the principle
37:53
of population.
37:54
SPEAKER_01: So Malthus is writing about the economy and,
37:56
and the idea and it's it's very much like about capitalism
38:00
basically he's saying
38:02
that there can be like a very abundant harvest yeah or there
38:07
can be like a boom in
38:09
production and there will be an increase in food and the
38:13
quality of life will
38:15
improve and that leads human beings he's talking about humans
38:18
who lead human beings
38:19
SPEAKER_01: to reproduce more
38:21
And then it's that increase in reproduction that actually leads
38:24
to another state of scarcity.
38:25
SPEAKER_01: Because abundance leads to population growth,
38:29
SPEAKER_01: which means that there's actually less for everyone.
38:31
SPEAKER_01: And so...
38:33
like the human urge to reproduce is not related to a human urge
38:37
to sustain
38:38
themselves or like it's not necessarily linked to the increased
38:41
ability to sustain
38:42
human life right he's like the when people nowadays talk about
38:46
like overpopulation
38:47
SPEAKER_01: he's the origin of that conversation he started that and basically like
38:55
SPEAKER_01: Sorry.
38:55
SPEAKER_01: So Darwin,
38:56
SPEAKER_01: like what Darwin is starting to think about is like,
38:58
SPEAKER_01: so what determines who will survive?
39:01
SPEAKER_02: Right.
39:02
So there must,
39:03
and it kind of sets Darwin up for natural selection,
39:05
basically.
39:06
SPEAKER_01: Like if not, and it's, what's complicated to me is it's like,
39:10
it's so much about wealth and class kind of like in my mind
39:13
malthusian malthusian
39:15
stuff and but i think darwin smartly is thinking about it
39:18
actually as not just like
39:20
oh well rich people will have access to like more food well but
39:23
it's also like
39:24
think about well think about the present day and the fact that
39:28
like rich people are
39:31
imposing like basically population regulation strictures on
39:35
themselves because of
39:36
SPEAKER_02: this like intellectual idea of climate change
39:40
yeah and also they're like going to school for longer and
39:43
they're trying to have
39:44
kids later whereas like other people are having the same amount
39:48
of kids as ever
39:49
well it's like the handmaid's tale it's like the handmaid's
39:52
tale it's just i'm just
39:53
saying there's like there's not necessarily a one-to-one
39:56
correlation between like
39:57
SPEAKER_02: like i think have you ever seen idiocracy
40:01
sort of the premise of that movie is that in 200 years like all
40:07
of the people who
40:08
were like of kind of less intellectual prowess maybe i mean
40:14
it's like a it's
40:15
obviously like a really fucked up class thing because they're
40:17
like poor people are
40:18
stupid people but like that those people have a lot more kids
40:21
and like propel
40:22
america and those people have voting power and they propel
40:25
america towards this
40:26
SPEAKER_02: like disneyification like seven up
40:28
SPEAKER_02: like fueled or Mountain Dew fueled like Dr.
40:31
SPEAKER_02: Pepper fueled Dr.
40:32
Pepper fueled idiocracy where like and it's like people have
40:37
brought it up a lot
40:37
with Trump one because the president is like a wrestler or
40:40
something I don't
40:40
SPEAKER_02: remember Justin talks about yeah all the time
40:43
SPEAKER_02: Whereas like there's clips in the movie of like,
40:46
SPEAKER_02: because I forget if he,
40:48
SPEAKER_02: I don't know how he wakes up there,
40:49
but it's someone from the past who like wakes up in this future
40:51
and sleeper style.
40:52
SPEAKER_02: Uh, yeah, maybe sleeper style.
40:55
SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
40:56
SPEAKER_02: Or like if you time travel,
40:57
SPEAKER_02: I don't remember,
40:58
SPEAKER_02: but,
40:59
and he like can't build the machine because everyone's so
41:01
stupid to go back.
41:02
SPEAKER_02: It's sort of like back to the future, but everyone's too stupid to help.
41:07
But there's like clips of his friends like recording these
41:12
videos explaining why
41:13
SPEAKER_02: they only had one kid or why they decided not to have kids at all.
41:16
SPEAKER_02: And it's these people who are like,
41:18
SPEAKER_02: you know,
41:18
SPEAKER_02: upper middle class professionals who are like,
41:21
SPEAKER_02: you know,
41:21
SPEAKER_02: we don't want to pile on to the world's problems.
41:24
SPEAKER_02: And then the result is that...
41:26
SPEAKER_02: No one's there to fix it.
41:27
SPEAKER_02: No one's there to fix it.
41:28
SPEAKER_02: I don't necessarily agree.
41:30
SPEAKER_02: It is sort of a social Darwinist message now that I repeat it,
41:33
but I just think that the direct correlation between population
41:37
growth and access
41:38
SPEAKER_02: to wealth is not one-to-one when push comes to shove.
41:42
SPEAKER_02: When push comes to shove.
41:44
SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
41:45
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
41:46
everything I'm talking about right now is just sort of like a
41:49
hair away from
41:50
SPEAKER_01: something really fucked up.
41:52
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
41:53
SPEAKER_02: I think,
41:53
SPEAKER_02: is it worth saying,
41:54
SPEAKER_02: like,
41:55
SPEAKER_02: obviously this is like the moment that eugenics comes into being?
41:59
SPEAKER_02: Well...
41:59
not because of darwin but like i just because of his cousin
42:03
yeah in the 1880s
42:04
actually is when eugenics comes into being and it's like real
42:07
like related to all
42:08
of these other theories and i always just think it's worth
42:12
saying like in the 19th
42:13
century the conversation about eugenics had a really different
42:17
connotation than it
42:18
SPEAKER_02: has now because like the history of the 20th century had not unfolded and
42:26
So it's just like worth bearing in mind that like you got
42:29
really close to these
42:29
issues that I think are like took on these really racist and
42:34
really horrific
42:35
SPEAKER_02: connotations.
42:37
But at the time we're like people parsing out like the fact
42:41
that the Bible isn't direct history.
42:44
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
42:44
SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
42:44
and I think I was dancing around that tension when I was
42:49
writing my introduction to
42:50
SPEAKER_01: Elsie Venner,
42:51
SPEAKER_01: which is another one of our books,
42:53
SPEAKER_01: which is about,
42:55
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
42:56
SPEAKER_01: what's super interesting about Elsie Venner,
42:57
SPEAKER_01: and we'll talk about this in another episode of 1800 1800,
42:59
SPEAKER_01: is that...
43:02
um basically it was written in 1861 and on the origin of
43:06
species came out in 1859
43:08
and holmes is one of these people who in the aftermath of on
43:11
the origin of species
43:12
publication he's like contemplating what that means and there's
43:16
this insane passage
43:17
SPEAKER_01: on else in lc venner where he's like
43:19
The struggle for life,
43:20
which Darwin talks about,
43:22
applies to more than just like fish and frogs.
43:26
SPEAKER_01: It's at play in the ballroom.
43:28
And Holmes is talking about teenage girls and teenage boys like
43:33
flirting with each
43:34
SPEAKER_01: other and wearing crinolines and dancing.
43:36
SPEAKER_01: And...
43:37
lc venner is you know meant one thing when it was published in
43:41
1861 and what i also
43:43
know in my introduction is like holmes published there was
43:47
three editions of that
43:47
book that came out in his lifetime and by the third edition
43:50
which came out in the
43:51
1890s holmes's introduction his new preface is like so racist
43:56
and offensive yeah
43:57
SPEAKER_01: and so like the meaning of darwin had already changed and by the
44:01
so he's talking about Darwin takes on all of these other
44:05
judgments about like
44:08
superior like racial superiority in the period that it didn't
44:12
necessarily have at
44:14
SPEAKER_02: its inception yeah
44:16
And like I felt this even I there's like I feel embarrassed or
44:20
whatever to even
44:21
SPEAKER_01: have been like reading Darwin last week.
44:23
Like I think I in some ways it's like you don't want to touch
44:26
Darwin with a 10 foot pole.
44:27
SPEAKER_01: No Darwin's fine.
44:28
SPEAKER_01: No but like that's what I'm saying.
44:29
It's like our assumption of what Darwin means is so cloaked in
44:35
like 19 I mean 21st
44:36
century assumptions that like a lot of people hear Darwin and
44:41
then they think
44:41
SPEAKER_01: racist.
44:42
SPEAKER_01: Really?
44:43
SPEAKER_01: I think so.
44:44
SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah.
44:45
SPEAKER_02: I thought people knew.
44:46
SPEAKER_01: I don't know what people know.
44:48
SPEAKER_01: I hope they know.
44:50
Like I learned about Darwin in middle school science class and
44:53
it was always like
44:54
SPEAKER_02: this isn't social Darwinism.
44:55
SPEAKER_01: Like the fact that they had to make that disclaimer.
44:58
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
44:59
SPEAKER_02: I guess that's true.
44:59
You know,
44:59
you have to like dig through the disclaimer to get to the
45:02
content.
45:02
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
45:04
SPEAKER_02: They're having like fully a wrestling match upstairs.
45:07
SPEAKER_01: I don't know what the fuck they're doing.
45:08
SPEAKER_01: They're doing natural selection.
45:09
SPEAKER_01: It's 4 p.m.
45:10
SPEAKER_01: on a Saturday.
45:11
SPEAKER_01: Like, could you not?
45:13
SPEAKER_01: Guess not.
45:14
So all of these ideas are brewing within Darwin upon his return
45:18
from the Beagle.
45:20
SPEAKER_01: And I'm hoping you can't hear it.
45:22
SPEAKER_02: If you can, you can.
45:23
SPEAKER_02: Whatever.
45:24
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so Darwin, his mind is bursting at the seams.
45:29
He has all of these ideas,
45:30
and they're starting to inch towards a new idea of evolution.
45:34
SPEAKER_01: And then in 1844,
45:37
a text called Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation is
45:41
published anonymously.
45:43
SPEAKER_01: We later find out it was published by this Scottish man.
45:47
And it is a sort of very radical,
45:49
but sort of not very well-researched or well-done
45:53
theory of evolution that contradicts creationism and it causes
45:58
a huge stir in
45:59
Victorian society and people at first don't even like
46:03
understand how radical it is
46:05
and then like all of the establishment scientists including
46:07
Darwin kind of attack
46:08
it but Darwin he there's a flicker of something inside him he's
46:12
like he knows it's
46:13
true he knows it's true and he knows he has the scientific
46:16
backing to prove it yeah
46:17
and but it scares him and he's like I can't touch this yet I'm
46:21
not ready yeah
46:21
So then he begins what is meant to be a two or three year foray
46:26
into the world of
46:27
SPEAKER_01: barnacles that of course turns into a 10 year project.
46:31
Once you get bogged down in the barnacles,
46:33
it's hard to find your way out.
46:35
SPEAKER_01: I love, this is a quote from the intro to On the Origin of Species.
46:38
he thought the project would take him three or four years in
46:40
the end it took twice
46:41
as long yielded four substantial volumes and drove him almost
46:44
to despair so endless
46:46
was the work he made new friends with the few barnacle
46:49
enthusiasts around and this
46:52
is where i really i like literally took my journal out and
46:54
started reflecting on
46:55
this i was like what the fuck is my great study of barnacles
46:58
like no but you have
46:59
to think okay have you seen these tiktoks that are floating
47:02
around now of like
47:03
SPEAKER_02: tween girls being like i'm raw dogging boredom
47:06
SPEAKER_01: No, but that's cool.
47:07
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
47:08
SPEAKER_02: And they'll like have like,
47:10
I saw one that was basically like these 13 year olds have
47:12
invented meditation and
47:14
they don't realize it because they'll like put a timer up on
47:17
their computer and
47:18
SPEAKER_02: face it to the camera so they can't see it.
47:20
And it will be like 15 minutes and then they'll just sit there
47:22
for 15 minutes and
47:23
SPEAKER_02: like contemplative silence.
47:24
SPEAKER_02: And see how long they can last.
47:26
And like try to like reconcile the fact that they've lived a
47:30
life where they have
47:30
SPEAKER_02: no time to not be attentive to something.
47:34
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
47:35
SPEAKER_01: So messed up.
47:36
But you think about,
47:37
like,
47:37
in the 19th century,
47:39
like,
47:40
you were fucking bored.
47:42
SPEAKER_02: Like,
47:42
SPEAKER_02: if I put you on the seaside and said,
47:45
SPEAKER_02: you have some books,
47:47
SPEAKER_02: you have the coast around you,
47:49
SPEAKER_02: and you have mealtimes set.
47:52
SPEAKER_02: Would I invent?
47:53
SPEAKER_02: Go free.
47:54
SPEAKER_01: Evolution.
47:55
SPEAKER_02: I just think you would,
47:55
SPEAKER_02: like,
47:56
SPEAKER_02: spend a lot more time thinking about barnacles than you do right now.
47:59
SPEAKER_01: But, like...
48:00
For a man in the year 1844 to describe his study of barnacles
48:07
as boring and driving
48:08
SPEAKER_01: him to the edge of despair.
48:09
SPEAKER_01: Can you imagine how boring that is?
48:12
SPEAKER_01: That has to be the most boring fucking thing you've ever heard of.
48:16
SPEAKER_02: That is so boring.
48:17
SPEAKER_02: But we do a lot of stuff that people would think is so boring.
48:19
SPEAKER_01: You and me?
48:20
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
48:21
I spent last week reading eight modern architecture textbooks
48:27
back to back and
48:29
SPEAKER_02: thinking about the subtle differences between them.
48:32
SPEAKER_01: You know what I think is fun?
48:33
SPEAKER_01: What?
48:34
I think it's like cool that even though you and I share so much
48:36
in common and like
48:37
SPEAKER_01: we do things that other people would think are so boring.
48:39
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
48:40
Like there's things that you do that I would never want to do
48:42
and there's things
48:42
SPEAKER_01: that I do that you would never want to do.
48:45
SPEAKER_01: It's amazing.
48:45
SPEAKER_02: We're not one in the same.
48:46
SPEAKER_01: No, we're...
48:47
very different and i think it makes our modern architecture is
48:49
actually the point
48:51
when i was talking earlier about in the previous episode about
48:55
hill of dreams about
48:57
um liking boy stuff that would be a situation where i like
49:00
something that's like
49:01
SPEAKER_02: really pretentious and boy stuff and you are like that's boring
49:04
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
49:05
SPEAKER_02: And it's good for me to hear.
49:05
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
49:09
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
49:09
SPEAKER_01: So he finally finishes his study of barnacles in 1854,
49:14
SPEAKER_01: a good 10 years after he started the study of barnacles.
49:17
SPEAKER_02: And it's also, sorry, it's just a lesson in like, like sustained.
49:22
I just think sometimes if something's going to take like a
49:25
year,
49:26
I think it's impossible.
49:28
SPEAKER_02: But 10 years to do a barnacle study life is long.
49:32
well he really wanted to touch every single part of the
49:34
barnacle he wanted to cut
49:37
the barnacle open and touch its soul the other thing like he
49:40
also like cracked the
49:41
secret of um not only barnacles but what are the other things
49:46
in the ocean fish no
49:49
what's it called like reefs what are those coral reefs coral
49:53
reefs he figured that
49:54
SPEAKER_01: out
49:55
okay i'm like someone had to do it yeah someone had to do it to
49:58
him um okay but all
50:00
the while he's brewing in his notebooks and in very very few
50:04
conversations with
50:05
friends like very close friends knew that he had what he called
50:07
my theory uh-huh
50:09
and he also had what he called my big book uh-huh which do you
50:12
remember when i saw
50:13
the psychic who had a vision of me having a big book inside me
50:17
yeah i was like whoa
50:18
SPEAKER_01: it's cool that darwin also had quote a big book
50:21
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
50:22
SPEAKER_01: And this big book was something.
50:23
SPEAKER_02: Do you think you have like the new theory of evolution inside of you?
50:27
SPEAKER_01: I kind of do.
50:28
SPEAKER_01: I feel like I understand something that other people don't.
50:32
SPEAKER_02: We'll get back to that later.
50:34
SPEAKER_01: So the big book is a work he's writing and it's called Natural Selection.
50:39
SPEAKER_01: And by 1858,
50:40
SPEAKER_01: four years after he's done with his barnacle studies,
50:43
SPEAKER_01: he has written 225,000 words on the topic.
50:44
SPEAKER_01: And that's not that crazy.
50:51
SPEAKER_01: It's a lot.
50:52
SPEAKER_01: It's a lot.
50:53
SPEAKER_01: It's a lot to handwrite.
50:55
SPEAKER_01: Again, about something basically as boring as barnacles.
50:58
SPEAKER_02: Oh, that's about barnacles.
50:59
SPEAKER_02: Sorry.
51:00
SPEAKER_01: I thought that was the theory of evolution.
51:01
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
51:02
SPEAKER_01: It's not even quite the theory of evolution.
51:04
SPEAKER_01: It's called natural selection.
51:05
SPEAKER_01: It's like a different...
51:06
thing and he's working away at it he's like i'm almost ready to
51:10
tell the world what
51:10
i think my big theory and reminder he came back from the beagle
51:14
in 1836 and
51:15
basically had this idea so it's 1858 and he's written thousands
51:19
and thousands of
51:20
SPEAKER_01: pages he had no fear of death
51:22
SPEAKER_01: Oh, he did.
51:22
SPEAKER_01: And then he gets a letter from a young man named Alfred Russell Wallace.
51:29
And it's a letter and it summarizes in like a couple of pages
51:34
Darwin's theory of
51:35
SPEAKER_01: evolution,
51:35
SPEAKER_01: which Wallace had just come up with too.
51:38
yeah darwin freaks out how did wallace know to write darwin
51:43
about it because he was
51:44
already pretty prominent and like had sort of said stuff that
51:47
was like alluding to
51:48
the theory okay um darwin freaks out he is so upset he's like
51:54
i've waited so long
51:55
and now someone else has the great idea um and he confided to a
52:00
friend you know
52:01
just to give you a sense of like what the stakes were and why
52:03
he had not published
52:05
SPEAKER_01: his theory 15 years earlier um
52:07
SPEAKER_01: He had written to a friend that his belief,
52:10
SPEAKER_01: the idea that,
52:11
SPEAKER_01: sorry,
52:12
he wrote to a friend that his idea that species were not
52:15
immutable was quote,
52:17
SPEAKER_01: like confessing a murder.
52:18
SPEAKER_01: Like he, it was weighing on him incredibly heavily.
52:20
SPEAKER_01: Also interesting.
52:21
SPEAKER_01: His wife was like incredibly religiously devout.
52:23
SPEAKER_01: And so his work was like caused trouble between them.
52:26
SPEAKER_01: Like,
52:27
SPEAKER_02: Well,
52:27
it's also interesting to think like maybe if he had released it
52:30
15 years earlier,
52:30
SPEAKER_02: like the world wouldn't have been ready for it.
52:32
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
52:33
SPEAKER_01: And like it would have been discredited.
52:34
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
52:35
SPEAKER_01: And he would like the barnacle work actually established him.
52:38
Like he was old guard,
52:40
like respected,
52:41
lots of colleagues,
52:42
things like that.
52:43
he does something kind of seedy which is that he publishes
52:46
Wallace's essay that he
52:48
had sent him in a letter without Wallace's permission because
52:51
Wallace is like in
52:52
India or something like doing the research on the ground and he
52:55
publishes the
52:56
Wallace's work with one of his own essays that he had actually
52:59
written 15 years
52:59
SPEAKER_01: earlier
53:00
and publishes oh he publishes wallace's letter he takes
53:03
wallace's letter and he's
53:04
like see this young man has come up with something similar to
53:07
what i came up with
53:08
he publishes something he publishes something that he wrote 15
53:10
years ago yeah and
53:11
sends them to the linnaean society in london and then and so
53:16
the world knows
53:16
basically he like leaks it so that everybody knows what a
53:21
genius he is and how like
53:22
SPEAKER_01: wallace is kind of like
53:24
kind of a credit to him writing his coattails yeah and then he
53:27
really rapidly he
53:28
scraps natural selection the huge book that he's been writing
53:31
for four years and
53:32
writes on the origin of species in a really short amount of
53:35
time and yeah by 1859
53:37
on the origin of species is published and it like immediately
53:40
sells out and and
53:42
some scholars say like it lend it's like good too that he got
53:47
pressured because on
53:48
SPEAKER_01: the origin of species is like very readable and yeah like
53:52
kind of for a general audience it's not actually it wasn't
53:54
really yeah he needed to
53:55
like make he needed the pressure to like make it something that
53:58
people could
53:59
actually this would like the same thing is like to make it
54:03
palatable for people
54:04
yeah and so it kind of it all happened the way that it was
54:08
meant to and he's and
54:09
like it summarizes 33 years of thought yeah i mean the other
54:13
thing is that you know
54:14
my mom always says if you have a good idea and you don't use it
54:16
it goes back out
54:17
SPEAKER_02: yeah and i really believe that it's really intense
54:21
SPEAKER_02: Because I invented the donut craze when cupcakes were still a thing.
54:24
SPEAKER_02: You did?
54:25
SPEAKER_02: Uh-huh.
54:26
SPEAKER_02: I was like, donuts are next.
54:30
SPEAKER_01: Oh, my God.
54:32
SPEAKER_02: And people thought I was crazy.
54:34
SPEAKER_01: They weren't ready to hear it.
54:35
SPEAKER_01: You and Darwin.
54:37
SPEAKER_01: There's this idea that works when you're thinking about the Bible,
54:42
SPEAKER_01: which in Latin is natura non facit saltum,
54:45
SPEAKER_01: nature makes no leaps.
54:46
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
54:48
And that Latin principle could be used to defend creationism
54:54
because it's basically
54:54
SPEAKER_01: this idea that God doesn't slip.
54:58
SPEAKER_01: He makes everything and there's no other cause for human life.
55:02
SPEAKER_02: That's interesting because I would interpret it differently.
55:05
well darwin interprets it differently he's basically like it's
55:08
the idea that there
55:09
isn't a cataclysmic noah's flood instead it argues for it
55:14
supports one of his great
55:15
arguments which is that in gradualism yeah and basically that
55:18
little by little the
55:20
world becomes itself i actually feel like i've discovered
55:23
darwinism in my personal
55:24
SPEAKER_01: life how so please explain
55:27
I just feel like a lot of his discoveries about the world at
55:30
large are things that
55:31
SPEAKER_02: like in my thirties in particular,
55:33
SPEAKER_02: I've like realized about like how to make the life you want.
55:38
SPEAKER_02: Like step by step.
55:39
SPEAKER_02: Like you can't, it doesn't happen in leaps and bounds.
55:42
SPEAKER_02: It doesn't happen overnight.
55:43
You have to like make small changes every day and you have to
55:47
take the ideas as
55:48
SPEAKER_02: they come and not let them go back out.
55:50
SPEAKER_02: And you have to like, I'm just like, there's, there's something here.
55:54
SPEAKER_02: Maybe I should write a Darwin self-help book.
55:57
yeah that will go real well um but so nature makes no leaps um
56:06
really I think it's
56:06
beautiful and I clearly you're inspired by it too it connects
56:10
with me I'm glad and
56:12
SPEAKER_01: I can't wait to talk more about it so
56:14
Just quickly,
56:14
before I pivot to my real topic,
56:17
which is nature makes no leaps.
56:19
SPEAKER_01: My real topic, an hour and a half in.
56:22
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
56:23
SPEAKER_01: The book does well, as I said.
56:25
SPEAKER_01: It sells out instantly.
56:26
SPEAKER_01: It goes into six editions before 1882.
56:28
SPEAKER_01: I love this reaction.
56:29
His friend Thomas Henry Huxley,
56:31
upon finishing the book,
56:33
slaps himself in the head and said,
56:34
how extremely stupid not to have thought of that and that's
56:37
like the beauty of on
56:38
the origin of species and there's another quote um from this
56:42
like society woman who
56:43
was kind of thomas huxley like aldous huxley's dad i think so
56:46
yeah the huxley
56:47
family the huxley's um like a lot of people are actually angry
56:51
about it because
56:52
they're like well obviously that makes sense if i had had the
56:55
evidence you have
56:56
SPEAKER_01: like and that's when you know it's like a great theory yeah yeah um
57:01
SPEAKER_01: And then but the thing is, is that also, again, Darwin is like sickly.
57:04
SPEAKER_01: So he's not really like in society defending his work.
57:07
SPEAKER_01: Other people are defending it on his behalf.
57:09
SPEAKER_01: So Huxley,
57:10
SPEAKER_01: that same friend,
57:11
goes to the British Association for the Advancement of Science
57:15
in Oxford and like
57:17
is does this huge debate with the Bishop of Oxford about the
57:19
book because the
57:20
SPEAKER_01: bishop is like really offended.
57:21
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
57:22
And the bishop is reported to have asked Huxley whether he was
57:25
descended from apes
57:26
SPEAKER_01: on his grandmother's or his grandfather's side.
57:29
And Huxley says he'd rather be descended from an ape than fight
57:32
like the bishop fights.
57:35
SPEAKER_01: But then,
57:35
SPEAKER_01: of course,
57:36
the bishop and Huxley are kind of missing the point because
57:38
it's less about us
57:39
being like the grandchildren of apes and more about us being
57:43
like having common
57:44
SPEAKER_01: ancestors with apes.
57:46
SPEAKER_01: Right.
57:47
um and what's interesting too is that like it's darwin doesn't
57:52
really explicitly
57:53
talk about human evolution again in on the origin of species
57:55
but obviously people
57:57
are receiving controversial part of the book and he content
58:01
continues to develop it
58:03
SPEAKER_01: in later works um what was the kind of bird
58:08
There's a specific kind of bird that he sees in the Galapagos
58:11
that there are like
58:11
SPEAKER_02: variations on every island.
58:12
SPEAKER_02: Oh, it's the finch.
58:13
SPEAKER_01: The finch.
58:14
SPEAKER_02: Well,
58:14
SPEAKER_02: I was just going to say like,
58:15
like that argument about finches is a lot less controversial
58:18
than like trying to
58:21
SPEAKER_02: tell people that they're like part animal.
58:24
SPEAKER_01: So are you ape on your mom's side or your dad's side?
58:28
SPEAKER_02: I'm all ape, baby.
58:30
SPEAKER_01: Take a bite of me.
58:31
SPEAKER_01: I'm ape.
58:32
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
58:33
SPEAKER_01: So nature makes no leaps.
58:37
SPEAKER_01: Nature makes no leaps.
58:41
SPEAKER_01: To get back to 1882.
58:42
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
58:42
SPEAKER_01: Let's leap back.
58:44
Let's leap back to the birth of this little baby girl,
58:48
Adeline Virginia Stephen.
58:49
SPEAKER_02: Wait, can I say one more thing about Darwin before?
58:51
SPEAKER_02: Mm-hmm.
58:52
SPEAKER_02: Well,
58:52
the other thing that it's making me think of for my Darwin
58:54
self-help book is that I
58:55
SPEAKER_02: had a professor in college.
58:57
SPEAKER_02: I feel like I've maybe even said this on the podcast before.
58:59
It's like the greatest life advice of all time who said to
59:02
never think about your
59:03
career in terms shorter than 50 years and where you want to be
59:06
in 50 years.
59:07
SPEAKER_02: That's really intense.
59:08
SPEAKER_02: Yeah,
59:09
but I think it's amazing advice like to the point of the leaps
59:11
because it's like
59:12
something amazing could happen one day and something horrible
59:14
could happen the next
59:15
SPEAKER_02: day and it doesn't matter.
59:16
SPEAKER_02: It's like what it all ends up to in the end.
59:18
And the way that you get there is not from these like somebody
59:21
calling out of the
59:22
SPEAKER_02: blue and offering you the Nobel Prize or whatever.
59:24
SPEAKER_02: It's from like the daily repeated action that takes you,
59:28
makes you ready for those calls or makes it so that you make it
59:31
through the bad
59:32
SPEAKER_02: part.
59:33
SPEAKER_02: Like it's gradualism.
59:34
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
59:36
SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's my 50-year plan.
59:37
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
59:38
Well,
59:39
what I actually,
59:40
like,
59:40
basically I had this sort of like head slapping moment.
59:44
SPEAKER_02: You were Thomas Huxley.
59:45
I was Thomas Huxley when I was rereading Orlando and thinking
59:49
about Darwin.
59:50
SPEAKER_02: And I was like, you want to set that up, tee that up a little bit more?
59:54
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm going to say it.
59:56
SPEAKER_01: I'm like,
59:56
SPEAKER_01: there's something that these two works share in this really,
59:59
SPEAKER_01: really weird,
1:00:00
SPEAKER_01: unexpected way.
1:00:01
SPEAKER_01: So I
1:00:02
SPEAKER_01: So Orlando is, I would argue, one of the best books of all time.
1:00:06
SPEAKER_02: I agree.
1:00:07
And has inspired some of the two film adaptations that I would
1:00:10
say are some of the
1:00:11
SPEAKER_02: best films of all time.
1:00:13
SPEAKER_01: It's evergreen, I would say.
1:00:15
SPEAKER_01: So Orlando is about a person named Orlando and
1:00:22
SPEAKER_01: who is this sort of timeless,
1:00:25
SPEAKER_01: shape-shifting,
1:00:26
SPEAKER_01: gender-bending person who we meet in Elizabethan England as a young man.
1:00:32
SPEAKER_01: And by the time the book ends,
1:00:34
SPEAKER_01: Orlando is a woman living in London and the year is 1928,
1:00:38
SPEAKER_01: which is the year that the book was published.
1:00:40
and this came after virginia wolf wrote these novels which
1:00:44
basically like you know
1:00:45
helped birth modernist writing in a way um and i think it's
1:00:49
again back to 1882 the
1:00:50
fact that james joyce was also born that year is super crazy um
1:00:55
so she's writing
1:00:56
these novels like mrs dalloway into the lighthouse where it's
1:00:59
sort of similar to
1:01:00
SPEAKER_01: the hill of dreams where it's like you want to know the plot like
1:01:05
good question like mrs dalloway is about one day and one woman
1:01:09
preparing for a
1:01:10
party that she's going to throw but i've so i started reading
1:01:13
it i'm about 100
1:01:14
pages in and i had i've read orlando obviously into the
1:01:17
lighthouse in high school
1:01:18
but i never read mrs dalloway before and we're not with mrs
1:01:22
dalloway at all
1:01:23
SPEAKER_01: Well, that's what's crazy.
1:01:24
SPEAKER_01: Like it's called Mrs. Dalloway.
1:01:26
SPEAKER_01: And if you were pressed at gunpoint to tell me what it was about,
1:01:29
SPEAKER_01: you would probably be like,
1:01:30
it's about like a woman planning a party and about the people
1:01:33
she encounters and
1:01:34
SPEAKER_01: people she doesn't know.
1:01:36
And nothing,
1:01:38
you know,
1:01:38
she goes out to buy flowers and you're inside of her mind.
1:01:41
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:01:42
But then you're also with every person who she walks by at sort
1:01:46
of this like great,
1:01:47
SPEAKER_02: like hive mind situation.
1:01:50
kind of or like it's a novel well I think something else you
1:01:53
talk about in the Hill
1:01:54
of Dreams introduction is about like what a Bildungsroman is
1:01:58
supposed to be and
1:01:59
it's so much about like the Botkin definition of what a
1:02:02
Bildungsroman is is like
1:02:04
it's about space as much as it is about time it's about
1:02:07
chronotype or whatever and
1:02:08
it's like someone plods through time but we're really grounded
1:02:12
in space and Mrs.
1:02:14
SPEAKER_01: Dalloway is like about London like the
1:02:16
SPEAKER_01: These big buses are driving by and you feel the buzz of the city.
1:02:21
SPEAKER_01: But it's not like David Copperfield because no one's changing.
1:02:26
SPEAKER_01: There's no plot.
1:02:28
SPEAKER_01: But life is always happening.
1:02:29
SPEAKER_02: Life in a city, what modernism is born out of is this kind of...
1:02:34
fight in an urban landscape where you have like you're part of
1:02:39
a mass it's this
1:02:40
fight for individuality and this fight to like keep your
1:02:43
subjectivity separate in
1:02:46
like like um georg simmel writes about it and metropolitan like
1:02:52
the metropolitan in
1:02:53
SPEAKER_02: the mind or something i forget the name of the essay
1:02:55
But it's about like the big problem of modernity is maintaining
1:03:00
individuality
1:03:01
against the mass culture that surrounds you at every moment and
1:03:04
is trying to engulf
1:03:05
SPEAKER_02: you and sweep you away.
1:03:06
And I feel like Wolf is arguing that you can't maintain your
1:03:09
individuality.
1:03:10
SPEAKER_01: And there's this like,
1:03:11
SPEAKER_01: I don't know which,
1:03:12
SPEAKER_01: I won't talk about it if you haven't gotten there yet,
1:03:14
SPEAKER_01: but there's this like really intense...
1:03:16
doubling that happens of mrs dalloway with a character who at
1:03:19
first seems totally
1:03:20
unrelated and it's like you have this bourgeois character mrs
1:03:23
dalloway who seems
1:03:24
like so kind of conservative and like she's just sort of vapid
1:03:29
and i pulled out
1:03:31
these quotes that made me laugh about her which i'll read in a
1:03:34
second but like then
1:03:35
you realize that she's no different than the like guy who's
1:03:38
home from war right who
1:03:39
SPEAKER_01: ends up in a really intense place um
1:03:43
okay i know about the guy who's home for more but i don't know
1:03:45
where he oh he gets
1:03:46
like institutionalized we'll see we'll see um i wouldn't want
1:03:50
to spoil a book
1:03:51
that's 100 years old literally i'm really enjoying it i must
1:03:55
say in 1925 which is
1:03:57
also like i was i decided to read it i'd never read it either
1:04:00
well they reissued
1:04:00
there were a bunch of reissues this year because it came into
1:04:03
the public domain
1:04:03
SPEAKER_01: Well, but also the funny thing is like, I just decided to read it.
1:04:08
SPEAKER_01: I didn't know it was the hundredth anniversary.
1:04:09
SPEAKER_01: And then I was like,
1:04:10
SPEAKER_01: I was telling my dad,
1:04:11
SPEAKER_01: I was reading Mrs.
1:04:11
SPEAKER_01: Dalloway and he was like,
1:04:13
SPEAKER_01: because it's the hundredth anniversary.
1:04:14
SPEAKER_01: And I was like, no, I just came up with that myself.
1:04:16
SPEAKER_02: Like, that's funny.
1:04:17
SPEAKER_02: Cause when I had lunch with Katie just now, she was reading East of Eden.
1:04:19
SPEAKER_02: And I was like, why is everyone reading?
1:04:21
SPEAKER_01: Katie is rereading East of Eden.
1:04:23
SPEAKER_02: I've seen it everywhere.
1:04:24
SPEAKER_02: I'm seeing it all like all over online too.
1:04:26
I don't know why I would have to look it up,
1:04:29
but I was like,
1:04:30
why is everyone reading it?
1:04:32
SPEAKER_02: And she was like,
1:04:33
oh I just came up with it on my own that's so weird well it's
1:04:35
funny because it came
1:04:37
out in 1952 so it's not 1925 but I was texting my high school
1:04:40
friend Katie about
1:04:41
East of Eden because she reread it and that book was like
1:04:45
really important to us in
1:04:46
high school yeah because it's like Northern California yeah
1:04:49
Steinbeck's a Northern
1:04:50
California hero and we were just like so moved by like Tim
1:04:53
Schell and all these
1:04:54
SPEAKER_01: things I've never read it oh it's like
1:04:56
well it was so funny because katie was like i do not know what
1:04:58
we were seeing and
1:04:59
like we almost got east of eden tattoos i'm and she was like
1:05:01
i'm so glad we didn't
1:05:03
like it's 15 years old katie schneider seemed to be enjoying it
1:05:08
my katie katie
1:05:09
wilson was like it's good but i don't really know why it moved
1:05:11
us so intensely um
1:05:14
SPEAKER_01: but yeah that's she's getting an east of eden tattoo
1:05:18
on her forehead I hope yeah um that was the big takeaway but
1:05:22
what I also I think
1:05:23
what made me want to get into Virginia Woolf and like think
1:05:26
about what a podcast
1:05:27
SPEAKER_01: topic could be about Woolf was these moments in Mrs.
1:05:30
Dalloway that are actually so different than its reputation in
1:05:34
my mind like it's
1:05:35
known as a sort of like experimental modernist novel but then
1:05:38
there's these moments
1:05:39
SPEAKER_01: of like real like historical detail and richness that were cracking me up
1:05:44
SPEAKER_01: So,
1:05:44
SPEAKER_01: um,
1:05:46
SPEAKER_01: one of the quotes that I loved was the section where I don't,
1:05:49
SPEAKER_01: I assume you've gotten to it,
1:05:50
but basically she's talking about or thinking about how
1:05:54
everyone kind of thinks
1:05:54
SPEAKER_01: she's stupid.
1:05:55
SPEAKER_01: Quote,
1:05:56
SPEAKER_01: she muddled Armenians and Turks loves,
1:05:59
SPEAKER_01: loved success,
1:06:00
SPEAKER_01: hated discomfort,
1:06:01
SPEAKER_01: must be liked,
1:06:02
SPEAKER_01: talked oceans of nonsense.
1:06:04
SPEAKER_01: And to this day, ask her what the equator was.
1:06:06
SPEAKER_01: And she did not know.
1:06:07
yeah like is that not the best quote of all time yeah well
1:06:10
there's another part
1:06:11
right at the beginning where she's like people dress real
1:06:14
different now yeah it's
1:06:16
of its time yeah and i i like i think because of my mandy lion
1:06:21
brain and it's
1:06:21
actually kind of like visual glossary do you like visual
1:06:24
glossary read now
1:06:25
sometimes things come to me or like when i'm looking at images
1:06:29
i relate it to texts
1:06:30
more because my life is full of looking at images yeah and i'm
1:06:33
like oh that would
1:06:34
SPEAKER_02: would have been good for this glossary or whatever
1:06:36
exactly like i was reading mrs dalway like trying to imagine
1:06:39
how we would annotate
1:06:40
it for our press yeah um but i just love that she hated
1:06:44
discomfort loved success
1:06:45
must be liked talked oceans of nonsense and to this day ask her
1:06:48
what the equator
1:06:49
was and she did not know i mean it's she's she's real for that
1:06:52
one yeah um so that
1:06:56
SPEAKER_01: is published in 1925
1:06:59
rewind three years earlier 1922 wolf meets vita sackville west
1:07:05
who will come to
1:07:06
play a huge role in her life and also but not yet as she's
1:07:10
writing this book or in
1:07:11
SPEAKER_01: 1922 is when they meet
1:07:14
SPEAKER_02: I know, but you said she will, oh, like, after 1922.
1:07:17
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:07:18
SPEAKER_02: Okay, it's not like we're, like, we're not, I mean, skip this, whatever.
1:07:21
Okay,
1:07:23
so she meets this woman,
1:07:25
Vita Sackville-West,
1:07:26
who's a fellow writer.
1:07:27
SPEAKER_01: She wrote novels, and she's also a gardener.
1:07:29
SPEAKER_01: She wrote about gardens.
1:07:30
SPEAKER_01: I have novels right there.
1:07:33
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, which we got together in London.
1:07:34
SPEAKER_01: Do you remember that?
1:07:35
SPEAKER_02: Well, how was I reading about the Edwardians recently, actually?
1:07:37
SPEAKER_02: I was reading something where people were reading the Edwardians.
1:07:40
SPEAKER_02: Huh.
1:07:41
SPEAKER_02: Maybe it was Mrs. Dalloway.
1:07:44
SPEAKER_01: That doesn't totally make sense to me.
1:07:46
SPEAKER_02: Timeline-wise?
1:07:47
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I don't know.
1:07:49
SPEAKER_02: I'll think about it.
1:07:52
SPEAKER_01: So they meet.
1:07:53
SPEAKER_01: At first, Virginia Woolf is like, I don't really like this woman.
1:07:55
SPEAKER_01: She writes in her diary,
1:07:56
SPEAKER_01: Vita was florid,
1:07:58
SPEAKER_01: mustached,
1:07:59
SPEAKER_01: parakeet-colored,
1:08:00
SPEAKER_01: with all the supple ease of the aristocracy,
1:08:02
SPEAKER_01: but not the wit of the artist.
1:08:05
SPEAKER_01: which is like the most intense description of someone ever.
1:08:08
SPEAKER_00: Mustache.
1:08:09
SPEAKER_01: Parakeet colored.
1:08:11
SPEAKER_01: I think it's like bright.
1:08:11
SPEAKER_01: Let's talk about Darwin.
1:08:13
SPEAKER_01: Parakeet colored.
1:08:15
SPEAKER_01: And Vita is descended from this very ancient English family.
1:08:19
SPEAKER_01: Honestly,
1:08:19
SPEAKER_01: not to make it Hill of Dreams again,
1:08:21
SPEAKER_01: which is like all about the Roman ruins,
1:08:23
SPEAKER_01: but like Vita's family,
1:08:25
her ancestor literally came to England with William the
1:08:28
Conqueror in 1066.
1:08:28
SPEAKER_01: That's so cool.
1:08:30
SPEAKER_01: And her family had served under all these English monarchs,
1:08:33
SPEAKER_01: including Elizabeth I,
1:08:34
SPEAKER_01: including James I and the Six.
1:08:37
And then her mother was the illegitimate daughter of Lionel
1:08:40
Sackville West and his
1:08:42
SPEAKER_01: mistress,
1:08:43
SPEAKER_01: a Spanish dancer named Pepita.
1:08:45
SPEAKER_01: That's amazing.
1:08:47
and vita grew up in this beautiful mansion of the family house
1:08:52
called null and
1:08:54
which was originally built in 1455 so if you can if you've read
1:08:58
orlando you can see
1:08:59
what's happening here it's like basically orlando is vita but
1:09:03
also all of her
1:09:04
ancestors yeah like there's literally a spanish dancer named
1:09:07
pepita in orlando
1:09:08
SPEAKER_01: right and orland basically like
1:09:11
virginia wolf has been writing these very serious novels that
1:09:14
are like really
1:09:15
intense and take a lot out of her and then she and vita have
1:09:19
this love affair
1:09:20
they're lesbian lovers and like you say it like that it's funny
1:09:26
um and then
1:09:27
virginia wolf is like kind of in a writing she's in a writer's
1:09:30
block era and so
1:09:31
then she basically orlando is like the greatest love letter
1:09:34
ever written yeah and
1:09:35
SPEAKER_01: she's like having fun she's like i'm gonna write something with plot
1:09:39
SPEAKER_01: Well,
1:09:39
SPEAKER_02: it's fascinating also because like Richard Dalloway,
1:09:41
there's a scene where he goes to the woman's house to help her
1:09:44
write a letter to
1:09:44
the Times and he's looking at the portrait of her father and
1:09:48
he's looking at it
1:09:48
SPEAKER_02: going,
1:09:49
SPEAKER_02: I'm going to write a biography about her family one day.
1:09:52
SPEAKER_02: That's cool.
1:09:53
SPEAKER_02: There's like a,
1:09:54
SPEAKER_02: there was some,
1:09:55
SPEAKER_02: there's a seed of Orlando in that desire,
1:09:58
SPEAKER_02: I think for sure,
1:09:59
SPEAKER_02: to like want to partake in this English history that's like not yours,
1:10:05
SPEAKER_02: but it is familial.
1:10:07
yeah and like i do i mean we talk about the english monarchy i
1:10:11
feel like every time
1:10:12
we do an episode but i'm like you you can see in these ancient
1:10:16
families the
1:10:18
generations and generations of time i think well it's also
1:10:21
interesting that like
1:10:22
vida was like in the family but not of it kind of because she
1:10:26
has this like spanish
1:10:27
SPEAKER_02: parentage and
1:10:28
and also so what's also interesting about vita's relationship
1:10:34
with her aristocratic
1:10:35
background is that she was the sort of victim of inheritance
1:10:40
law because she was a
1:10:40
woman and she didn't have children and also there were all
1:10:44
these questions about
1:10:44
her particular paternity and history because of her father's
1:10:49
affair um or her
1:10:51
grandfather's affair and basically in orlando when orlando
1:10:57
becomes a woman
1:10:59
SPEAKER_01: um, she becomes a woman while she's in Turkey serving as a ambassador.
1:11:03
SPEAKER_01: Right.
1:11:03
And she comes back to England as a woman and immediately
1:11:08
becomes the victim of all
1:11:09
SPEAKER_01: of these lawsuits being like,
1:11:10
SPEAKER_01: Hey,
1:11:10
SPEAKER_01: you're dead because you are 300 years old.
1:11:13
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:11:13
SPEAKER_01: And two, you're a woman.
1:11:14
SPEAKER_01: I forgot about that.
1:11:15
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:11:15
SPEAKER_01: That is interesting.
1:11:17
SPEAKER_01: Which is really funny.
1:11:17
SPEAKER_01: Cause,
1:11:18
SPEAKER_01: and basically in,
1:11:19
I was reading about Orlando and like Vida herself was sort of
1:11:22
the victim of the
1:11:23
SPEAKER_01: same lawsuits,
1:11:24
SPEAKER_01: like all her legal trouble because she loses the family seat.
1:11:27
SPEAKER_01: No.
1:11:27
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:11:28
SPEAKER_01: And,
1:11:33
basically just to um i guess i was gonna say to summarize like
1:11:37
very quickly the
1:11:38
plot of orlando right like it's she's they are a boy and then
1:11:44
they become um an
1:11:46
ambassador and they go to turkey and as a woman she starts
1:11:51
living with like the
1:11:51
romani people and then she takes the boat back and she like has
1:11:54
this like really
1:11:55
complicated relationship to being a woman she's kind of like
1:11:57
this sucks i can't do
1:11:58
anything anymore i can't even feel my legs and my skirt and
1:12:01
then she's like wait
1:12:02
SPEAKER_01: it's awesome
1:12:03
one's helping me yeah and but the whole time she wants to be a
1:12:06
writer yeah and
1:12:08
again back to the hill of dreams it's about like someone who
1:12:11
wants to write but
1:12:12
can't yeah and she ends up like scrapping a lot of the things
1:12:16
she writes but always
1:12:17
holds on to this poem which is called the oak tree and she like
1:12:20
keeps it in her
1:12:21
bosom um and virginia's a writer vita's a writer and there's
1:12:26
something like this
1:12:27
sort of like crazy plot is ultimately all about this desire to
1:12:31
like be a creative
1:12:31
SPEAKER_01: person
1:12:32
SPEAKER_01: Well,
1:12:32
SPEAKER_02: it's also sort of brutal to be like,
1:12:35
my love letter to you is about someone who can't realize their
1:12:39
actual dream.
1:12:40
SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
1:12:41
SPEAKER_01: but also like,
1:12:42
but it's like embedded in all this history and has such a rich
1:12:45
existence and like
1:12:46
SPEAKER_02: can't see that they're not a writer.
1:12:47
yeah but they're like life is the great story yeah um and like
1:12:52
back to darwin like
1:12:54
if darwin is saying nature makes no leaps then virginia wolf is
1:12:58
saying nature makes
1:12:59
only leaps yeah like orlando is this person who does not make
1:13:02
any sense like all
1:13:04
these things happen to orlando that like defy everything we
1:13:07
know about human life
1:13:09
like she lives for hundreds of years but never ages like she i
1:13:13
when the book ends
1:13:14
SPEAKER_01: she's like 33
1:13:16
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:13:16
SPEAKER_01: And also like she becomes a woman,
1:13:19
SPEAKER_01: not from any like major intervention of any kind,
1:13:21
but because she enters this like coma like state and after a
1:13:24
week wakes up a woman.
1:13:26
SPEAKER_01: And then even when she is a woman, she cross dresses as a man.
1:13:29
SPEAKER_01: And Vida did that.
1:13:30
SPEAKER_01: Vida was a big cross dresser.
1:13:32
um and i guess like what i love about thinking about orlando in
1:13:37
relationship to on
1:13:37
SPEAKER_01: the origin of species is that they to me also both feel like these really
1:13:41
interesting important texts for understanding the 19th century
1:13:45
um and if you
1:13:45
SPEAKER_02: remember madeline okay take me back
1:13:48
when we first first first did an episode of 1-800-1800 we
1:13:52
talked about Orlando
1:13:54
because and I don't remember what it was an episode we scrapped
1:13:57
like we just like
1:13:58
tried it out and do you remember it's where anti-macassars came
1:14:02
from in our oh it's
1:14:04
from Orlando yeah I don't remember okay so I don't know what
1:14:07
sort of inspiration
1:14:09
SPEAKER_02: occurred when the first one we ever did was 1851 and
1:14:12
yeah and then for some reason while we were doing 1851 I had
1:14:15
this like stroke of
1:14:16
genius and I was like we have to look at Orlando so we were at
1:14:19
your apartment and I
1:14:20
took Orlando off the shelf and then I found this passage which
1:14:23
is really long but I
1:14:24
kind of want to read it okay because I think what's so what I
1:14:27
want to say is that
1:14:28
Orlando which seems to not be a book about anything is actually
1:14:32
like has the truest
1:14:34
SPEAKER_01: most beautiful description of what the 19th century is
1:14:37
SPEAKER_01: The great cloud which hung not only over London,
1:14:40
but over the whole of the British Isles on the first day of the
1:14:42
19th century
1:14:43
SPEAKER_01: stayed,
1:14:44
SPEAKER_01: or rather did not stay,
1:14:45
for it was buffeted about constantly by blustering gales long
1:14:48
enough to have
1:14:49
SPEAKER_01: extraordinary consequences upon those who lived beneath its shadow.
1:14:52
SPEAKER_01: A change seemed to have come over the climate of England.
1:14:55
SPEAKER_01: Rain fell frequently,
1:14:56
SPEAKER_01: but only in fitful gusts,
1:14:57
SPEAKER_01: which were no sooner over than they began again.
1:14:59
SPEAKER_01: The sun shone,
1:15:00
SPEAKER_01: of course,
1:15:00
but it was so girt about with clouds and the air was so
1:15:03
saturated with water that
1:15:05
SPEAKER_01: its beams were discolored and purples,
1:15:06
SPEAKER_01: oranges,
1:15:07
and reds of a dull sort took the place of the more positive
1:15:10
landscapes of the 18th
1:15:11
SPEAKER_01: century.
1:15:12
under this bruised and sullen canopy the green of the cabbages
1:15:15
was less intense and
1:15:16
the white of the snow was muddied but what was worse damp now
1:15:19
began to make its way
1:15:20
into every house damp which is the most insidious of all
1:15:23
enemies for while the sun
1:15:24
can be shut out by blinds and the frost roasted by a hot fire
1:15:29
damp steals in while
1:15:30
SPEAKER_01: we sleep damp is silent imperceptible and ubiquitous
1:15:34
damp swells the wood furs the kettle rust the iron rots the
1:15:37
stone so gradual is the
1:15:38
process that it is not until we pick up some chest of drawers
1:15:41
or coal scuttle and
1:15:42
the whole thing drops to pieces in our hands that we suspect
1:15:45
even that even that
1:15:46
the disease is at work thus stealthily and imperceptibly none
1:15:50
marking the exact day
1:15:51
or hour of the change the constitution of england was altered
1:15:53
and nobody knew it
1:15:55
SPEAKER_01: Everywhere the effects were felt,
1:15:56
the hardy country gentleman who had sat down gladly to a meal
1:15:59
of ale and beef in a
1:16:00
SPEAKER_01: room designed,
1:16:01
SPEAKER_01: perhaps by the brothers Adam with classic dignity,
1:16:04
SPEAKER_01: now felt chilly.
1:16:05
Rugs appeared,
1:16:06
beards were grown,
1:16:07
trousers were fastened tight under the instep.
1:16:09
The chill which he felt in his legs,
1:16:11
the country gentleman soon transferred to his house.
1:16:14
Furniture was muffled,
1:16:15
walls and tables were covered,
1:16:16
nothing was left bare.
1:16:17
SPEAKER_01: Then a change of diet became essential.
1:16:19
SPEAKER_01: The muffin was invented, and the crumpet.
1:16:21
SPEAKER_01: Coffee supplanted the after-dinner port,
1:16:23
SPEAKER_01: and as coffee led to a drawing room in which to drink it,
1:16:26
SPEAKER_01: and a drawing room to glass cases,
1:16:28
SPEAKER_01: and glass cases to artificial flowers,
1:16:30
SPEAKER_01: and artificial flowers to mantelpieces,
1:16:32
SPEAKER_01: and mantelpieces to pianofortes,
1:16:34
SPEAKER_01: and pianofortes to drawing room ballads,
1:16:36
and drawing room ballads skipping a stage or two to innumerable
1:16:39
little dogs mats
1:16:40
and china ornaments the home which had become extremely
1:16:43
important was completely
1:16:44
altered wow i forgot about that passage it's so amazing it's
1:16:50
like that is the 19th
1:16:51
SPEAKER_01: century
1:16:52
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:16:52
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
1:16:53
she's like one of the things that's so amazing about that book
1:16:56
is that it's like in
1:16:58
SPEAKER_02: that description,
1:17:00
she's talking not just about kind of like the mood of the 19th
1:17:05
century and being
1:17:06
SPEAKER_02: evoked,
1:17:07
SPEAKER_02: but like the very material changes.
1:17:09
SPEAKER_02: And she's, I think she's also talking about Turner.
1:17:11
SPEAKER_02: Hmm.
1:17:13
Like now that you read it sort of like swooping atmosphere,
1:17:15
this change of the landscape.
1:17:16
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:17:19
SPEAKER_01: yeah well it's what's so interesting it's like some would argue that the
1:17:24
environment literally changed because of like coal smoke like
1:17:28
sitting over london
1:17:29
like fog and smog but then also it is as you're saying when you
1:17:33
reference turner
1:17:34
SPEAKER_01: it's a change in how it's represented
1:17:36
yeah like like that's yeah there's like there's the physical
1:17:39
reality of all these
1:17:40
changes and there is a lot more stuff there's production in the
1:17:43
19th century that
1:17:44
would change the atmosphere and all of the accoutrement of
1:17:47
those changes that she's
1:17:48
mentioning would have been produced by industry and that's why
1:17:52
they would have been
1:17:53
more widely available and everyone would have had them in their
1:17:55
house and so
1:17:57
there's that link but then even beyond that i think that
1:18:00
there's like an aesthetic
1:18:01
SPEAKER_02: sensibility and a change in representation that she's capturing too
1:18:05
yeah and like it's so funny because it actually like even
1:18:10
though we've just leapt
1:18:11
via orlando from the 18th century into the 19th century and it
1:18:15
makes no sense and
1:18:16
like it's not one day at a time there actually is a causality
1:18:20
and gradualism to the
1:18:21
argument she's making she's basically like there's a great
1:18:23
cloud hanging over
1:18:24
SPEAKER_01: england
1:18:25
SPEAKER_01: it gets colder and then damp grows.
1:18:27
SPEAKER_01: And so then everybody's colder.
1:18:30
SPEAKER_01: And so then people put rugs everywhere and they grow beards.
1:18:34
SPEAKER_01: And so their fashions change and then their furniture is muffled.
1:18:37
And since they're cold,
1:18:39
they start eating muffins and crumpets and drinking coffee.
1:18:42
And then since they're drinking coffee,
1:18:43
they start hanging out in the drawing room.
1:18:45
And since they're in the drawing room,
1:18:47
like their constitution continues to change.
1:18:50
SPEAKER_01: Like it actually does make sense.
1:18:51
SPEAKER_02: It's like geological also.
1:18:53
SPEAKER_02: It's like this accretion of,
1:18:56
new material yeah and the reason why we were talking about
1:19:04
anti-macassars is that
1:19:08
when i read this passage in your copy of orlando instead of
1:19:13
china ornaments it
1:19:14
actually said anti-macassars oh i wonder isn't that weird like
1:19:19
i'm reading a
1:19:19
SPEAKER_01: slightly different edition than you have
1:19:21
yeah and antimacassars are these like we didn't know what it
1:19:25
was when we were
1:19:26
reading no which is maybe why she changed it in a later edition
1:19:29
yeah china
1:19:30
ornaments is kind of more vivid but basically macassar oil is
1:19:33
like a body oil that
1:19:34
you can also like put on your hair and stuff yeah and so an
1:19:36
antimacassar is you
1:19:37
know when like a grandma has a doily on the back of her chair
1:19:41
that was put there
1:19:43
for a utilitarian purpose other than being cute it was to like
1:19:46
prevent the oil from
1:19:47
SPEAKER_01: seeping out of your hair and getting onto the chair
1:19:49
yeah and i just like i love this description of the 19th
1:19:52
century but it's also like
1:19:54
SPEAKER_02: china ornaments are like whatever that the like point a to point b of an
1:20:00
anti-macassar is really invocative of what she's talking about
1:20:03
because you need the
1:20:05
SPEAKER_02: chair
1:20:06
and you need the hair oil and you need the hairstyle and you
1:20:09
also need like it's
1:20:10
some sort of foreign entity like macassar oil is not from
1:20:14
england so you need like
1:20:16
the empire that's fueling all of these purchases like whereas a
1:20:20
china ornament is
1:20:21
what it is well you know it's less like it's less in this this
1:20:26
like accretive
1:20:27
SPEAKER_02: argument about the shift of the 19th century yeah
1:20:31
But also there's something where like being a consumer and
1:20:34
consumer capitalism is
1:20:36
SPEAKER_01: like accreting because it's like,
1:20:37
SPEAKER_01: well,
1:20:38
SPEAKER_01: now that I brush my teeth,
1:20:40
SPEAKER_01: I need to have mouthwash or whatever.
1:20:41
SPEAKER_01: Like now that I floss,
1:20:43
SPEAKER_01: I want to do X,
1:20:44
SPEAKER_01: Y,
1:20:44
SPEAKER_01: Z.
1:20:44
SPEAKER_01: It's like,
1:20:44
SPEAKER_02: well,
1:20:45
SPEAKER_02: and you need to floss because you eat the candy because the candy.
1:20:48
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:20:48
Like I go to the dentist because I eat too much sugar and I eat
1:20:51
too much sugar
1:20:51
SPEAKER_01: because that's all that's available.
1:20:53
SPEAKER_01: And just the way that like,
1:20:54
SPEAKER_01: I'm trying to think of like a more,
1:20:56
SPEAKER_01: I don't know,
1:20:57
SPEAKER_01: like the more you buy,
1:20:57
SPEAKER_01: the more you buy.
1:20:58
yeah and well it's like all these things on tiktoks that are
1:21:01
like solving a problem
1:21:05
that doesn't exist kind of thing like a i can't think of like i
1:21:09
was just so stupid
1:21:10
like a dust i used to have get ads all the time for a duster
1:21:14
that could dust your
1:21:15
SPEAKER_02: ceiling fan i'm like looking at my fan which is dirty
1:21:18
SPEAKER_01: But I could just get on a fucking chair and wipe it down with a cloth.
1:21:21
SPEAKER_02: But also like to need the duster that dusts the fan,
1:21:24
SPEAKER_02: you need the fan and to need to have the fan,
1:21:26
SPEAKER_02: you need the house and have,
1:21:27
SPEAKER_02: you know,
1:21:28
SPEAKER_02: not the house,
1:21:28
SPEAKER_02: the apartment,
1:21:29
SPEAKER_02: because there's nobody has a ceiling fan.
1:21:31
SPEAKER_02: Like, yeah.
1:21:32
SPEAKER_01: Well, and I really try.
1:21:33
SPEAKER_01: I feel like.
1:21:35
SPEAKER_01: I've had the same type of horror that you're describing where like,
1:21:37
SPEAKER_01: I try not to buy things that are secondary accessories to other things.
1:21:41
SPEAKER_01: Like I'm just like, I don't really want any specialty appliances.
1:21:45
SPEAKER_01: Like I don't want an Instapot that can only do one thing.
1:21:49
SPEAKER_01: Even if everyone's telling me that I could do all these things with it.
1:21:51
SPEAKER_01: I'm just like,
1:21:52
SPEAKER_01: Well, I have a pot and I can use it to like make popcorn.
1:21:55
SPEAKER_01: So I don't need a microwave and I can use it to reheat soup.
1:21:58
SPEAKER_01: So I don't need a microwave.
1:21:59
SPEAKER_01: But I can also use it to make soup.
1:22:01
SPEAKER_01: Like, yeah, that brings me joy.
1:22:03
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:22:03
SPEAKER_01: But also terrifies me because I just feel like,
1:22:05
SPEAKER_01: yeah,
1:22:06
SPEAKER_01: I go on the Internet and everything is something I could buy.
1:22:09
And everything is like for such a specific like purpose that
1:22:13
you didn't even know
1:22:14
SPEAKER_02: existed and wouldn't exist if you didn't have all this other stuff.
1:22:18
Yeah,
1:22:18
and like all of these little products are changing our
1:22:21
experience of life.
1:22:21
Like,
1:22:22
you know,
1:22:22
it's the perfect example,
1:22:23
sorry,
1:22:24
is the Hailey Bieber phone case.
1:22:26
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:22:26
SPEAKER_02: That holds your lip gloss.
1:22:28
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and it's just plastic.
1:22:30
SPEAKER_02: Because like the level of like...
1:22:34
cultural knowledge and accompanying products you need to have
1:22:40
to get to the point
1:22:41
that you would want a phone case that holds your lip gloss is
1:22:45
like all of human
1:22:47
SPEAKER_02: evolution up to the point of hailey beaver's birth
1:22:50
Well and I was just watching a video of her literally today on
1:22:53
YouTube where she
1:22:54
was talking about testing out versions of products before she
1:22:58
came to the formula
1:22:59
that was the lip gloss and she said the way that I tested it
1:23:02
was by what I really
1:23:04
SPEAKER_01: wanted it to do was to stay on overnight.
1:23:06
So I would test the products by putting it on and then making
1:23:08
sure I still felt
1:23:09
SPEAKER_01: it's like delicious juiciness in the morning.
1:23:12
SPEAKER_01: And I was kind of like, maybe your lips aren't dry.
1:23:16
SPEAKER_01: Like,
1:23:16
SPEAKER_01: I think I've been thinking about this,
1:23:17
SPEAKER_01: especially too,
1:23:18
SPEAKER_01: because I've been having like all this horrible dryness.
1:23:20
SPEAKER_01: And yeah, but I'm just like, think about Orlando in the year 1608.
1:23:24
SPEAKER_01: Like, what did you do if your lips were dry?
1:23:26
SPEAKER_01: You certainly didn't put chapstick on.
1:23:28
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I suffer from dry lips.
1:23:31
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:23:31
SPEAKER_01: Of course me too.
1:23:32
But then like the,
1:23:34
but I try not to over correct because I feel like it makes it
1:23:37
worse actually.
1:23:38
SPEAKER_01: I mean like most of my fears.
1:23:40
SPEAKER_02: It's like creating new problems.
1:23:41
SPEAKER_01: Like, yeah.
1:23:42
And I just think about like what would happen if there was some
1:23:45
sort of apocalyptic
1:23:46
SPEAKER_01: cataclysmic event.
1:23:47
SPEAKER_01: And then I'm just like,
1:23:48
SPEAKER_02: Can't even focus because your lips are dry.
1:23:50
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:23:50
SPEAKER_01: And I can't see because I don't have my contacts in and I'm like,
1:23:53
SPEAKER_01: you know,
1:23:54
SPEAKER_01: I'm just a fucking mess.
1:23:55
SPEAKER_02: You know what?
1:23:55
SPEAKER_02: I got masseter Botox a while ago.
1:23:58
SPEAKER_02: And what happened?
1:24:01
SPEAKER_02: And I was talking about it with my friend and she was like,
1:24:05
SPEAKER_02: you should be careful because that can lead to jowling.
1:24:08
SPEAKER_02: And she was like,
1:24:09
I really wouldn't want you to create a problem that you
1:24:12
actually have trying to
1:24:14
SPEAKER_02: solve a problem that you made up.
1:24:16
SPEAKER_02: And I think about that a lot.
1:24:18
SPEAKER_02: Would you do it again?
1:24:19
SPEAKER_02: I did it.
1:24:20
SPEAKER_02: It did help my,
1:24:21
SPEAKER_02: like,
1:24:22
SPEAKER_02: TMJ stuff,
1:24:23
SPEAKER_02: so I would do it again,
1:24:24
SPEAKER_02: but I did it for vain reasons,
1:24:26
SPEAKER_02: not just for jaw reasons.
1:24:28
SPEAKER_01: Jaw reasons.
1:24:32
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, just back to Orlando.
1:24:34
SPEAKER_01: It's like...
1:24:36
SPEAKER_01: There's all of these moments where Virginia Woolf,
1:24:40
SPEAKER_01: who's kind of narrating the book as a quote,
1:24:42
SPEAKER_01: like biographer,
1:24:43
SPEAKER_01: like that's the other thing is that it's like told very tongue in cheek,
1:24:47
SPEAKER_01: but seriously,
1:24:48
SPEAKER_01: as if it's a real biography of a real person.
1:24:51
And all these moments where the biographer like breaks the
1:24:54
fourth wall and talks to
1:24:55
us about like what it means to be a historian and talks to
1:24:58
about like what's
1:24:59
SPEAKER_01: missing from other histories that like a biographer can capture.
1:25:02
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:25:02
SPEAKER_02: Well,
1:25:03
SPEAKER_02: I'm thinking as you're talking about that,
1:25:04
that like in the passage you read that the other thing that's
1:25:06
kind of amazing about
1:25:07
Orlando is that it's a book that captures like the fact that
1:25:11
the weather is
1:25:12
SPEAKER_02: actually the most important thing.
1:25:14
SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
1:25:14
SPEAKER_01: Well,
1:25:14
SPEAKER_01: so if you jump back to the beginning of the book in the Elizabethan era,
1:25:19
it begins when Orlando basically goes to this party during the
1:25:25
great frost,
1:25:26
SPEAKER_01: which was like an actual thing that happens.
1:25:28
SPEAKER_01: There was a mini ice age in England.
1:25:30
um in the 15th century i guess yeah and it the passages are so
1:25:36
amazing so the the
1:25:37
great frost was historians tell us the most severe that has
1:25:41
ever visited these
1:25:42
islands birds froze in midair and fell like stones to the
1:25:45
ground at norwich a young
1:25:46
country woman started to cross oh that doesn't my notes got all
1:25:49
weird but basically
1:25:51
SPEAKER_01: just like corpses frozen could not be drawn from the sheets and it's like
1:25:55
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:25:55
SPEAKER_02: And they have the big festival on the Thames.
1:25:57
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:25:58
SPEAKER_01: And because the river was totally frozen over.
1:26:00
SPEAKER_01: And yeah.
1:26:01
So like every moment of historical passage is defined by a new
1:26:06
type of weather.
1:26:06
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:26:07
SPEAKER_01: Which is so Darwin.
1:26:09
SPEAKER_02: And it's like,
1:26:10
SPEAKER_02: and it gets at the heart of this,
1:26:11
like the like all encompassing ecological facts that like
1:26:15
individuality can't exist
1:26:17
SPEAKER_02: outside of like Orlando's life is shaped by these various weathers.
1:26:21
SPEAKER_03: Mm hmm.
1:26:22
and they like and like each epoch has a type of weather
1:26:26
associated with it it's not
1:26:28
like there are hot days and there are cold days it's like when
1:26:31
it's the 15th
1:26:32
century or 16th century then it's freezing yeah because that
1:26:37
aesthetically aligns
1:26:38
SPEAKER_02: with the kind of like story that she's telling about that period
1:26:43
SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
1:26:43
SPEAKER_01: and if you think of portraits of Elizabeth I,
1:26:46
SPEAKER_01: it's like she's bundled and it's not just because she's conservative.
1:26:50
SPEAKER_02: She's also dripping in ice.
1:26:51
SPEAKER_02: Those shears, the way they're painted, it looks always like ice.
1:26:55
SPEAKER_01: And her real pallor.
1:26:59
SPEAKER_01: There was no sun.
1:27:00
SPEAKER_01: I think there was literally no sun.
1:27:03
SPEAKER_01: It wasn't invented yet.
1:27:04
SPEAKER_02: That's like when I said reality was only invented 500 years ago.
1:27:09
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's exactly like that.
1:27:11
and it also makes sense to me that like queen victoria was
1:27:13
queen in a very like
1:27:15
smoggy foggy rainy damp time yeah try finding her body and that
1:27:20
woman looks like
1:27:21
she has a like perpetual cough yeah everyone is sickly it
1:27:25
changes who we are and
1:27:26
how we experience the world and i'm like that in of itself is a
1:27:30
way that like
1:27:30
nature is impacting how we survive and how we live and that's
1:27:35
how it comes back to
1:27:36
SPEAKER_01: darwin
1:27:36
yeah um and that's kind of like the end of my story i suppose
1:27:42
oh thank you for
1:27:43
taking me on this journey i know it was a bit like serpentine i
1:27:47
liked it i had a
1:27:48
lot of fun and it really made me think and i felt like really
1:27:51
grateful for this
1:27:52
podcast because i don't think i would have thought about darwin
1:27:54
and wolf in the
1:27:55
same sentence were it not for 1882 well now i can't stop
1:28:00
thinking about it
1:28:02
SPEAKER_02: That's the police coming to arrest me.
1:28:03
SPEAKER_02: The podcast is over.
1:28:06
SPEAKER_01: The ideas were too good.
1:28:07
SPEAKER_01: They're locking us up.
1:28:09
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
1:28:09
SPEAKER_01: Love you guys.
1:28:10
SPEAKER_01: Tune in next time.
1:28:11
SPEAKER_01: Love you.
1:28:12
SPEAKER_01: Bye.
1:28:13
SPEAKER_01: Bye.
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