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How Charles Darwin Worked · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff you should know, Friendhouse Stuff Works dot Com. Hey,
0:11
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's
0:13
Speaker 1: Charles W Chuck Bryan. So this is stuff you should know.
0:17
Speaker 1: That's right, unless I forget. Jerry's over there. She's over there.
0:21
Speaker 1: You know, we went like five years, I went five
0:24
Speaker 1: years of this podcast. Were just mentioning us once in
0:28
Speaker 1: a while, mentioning Jerry. But I mean, like, I can't
0:31
Speaker 1: imagine the podcast without Jerry too. Now, after after five years,
0:35
Speaker 1: finally I'm like, yeah, I guess she should stay young.
0:38
Speaker 1: She's earned her place. Yeah, at least she keeps quiet.
0:41
Speaker 1: That's right. How you doing, I'm great. How are you?
0:46
Speaker 1: I'm good. Yeah, I'm like low key calm, I'm fine,
0:50
Speaker 1: that's good. I'm a little smelly, which we talked about.
0:53
Speaker 1: I know, but I'm talking about it, which makes the
0:55
Speaker 1: smell worse. What is it? What is it about someone's
0:58
Speaker 1: own special sweet tang of assent that they're drawn to,
1:03
Speaker 1: like you're drawn to your own tang? Yeah? Man, everyone
1:06
Speaker 1: I think like secretly smells their own shoe and their
1:08
Speaker 1: own armpits when they get a little ripe. And maybe
1:10
Speaker 1: we all deep down one to mate with ourselves. Maybe,
1:13
Speaker 1: so that's not true because I'm disgusted with myself. Yeah,
1:16
Speaker 1: but I see you looking at your armpit eye and
1:19
Speaker 1: it like that. I know if you I do that thing. Yeah,
1:22
Speaker 1: I've slipped out twice today just to smell them. There's
1:26
Speaker 1: a little on your nose. Uh So, Chuck, you're doing good.
1:30
Speaker 1: I'm doing good. We'll just assume Jerry's doing good. Um,
1:33
Speaker 1: and we're all doing good because we're fairly fit. You
1:38
Speaker 1: know why we're fit because we're alive. We're evolving as
1:42
Speaker 1: we speak. We are part of this huge, long, natural
1:46
Speaker 1: procession of change forced by scarcity, competition, the ravages of nature,
1:54
Speaker 1: and we as humans have climbed to the top of
1:57
Speaker 1: the food pyramid of the evolutionary chain and said we
2:00
Speaker 1: own this planet. That's why we're doing good today. It's
2:05
Speaker 1: one of my most favorite notions evolution. Yeah, natural selection.
2:10
Speaker 1: I think it's like one of the most beautiful things
2:13
Speaker 1: that we've been able to figure out. Yeah, evolution gets
2:16
Speaker 1: all the spotlight. I'm a big natural selection fan myself too,
2:20
Speaker 1: you know, so divergent that stuff turns me on. That
2:26
Speaker 1: and your smell intellectually. Uh So, let's let's talk about this.
2:30
Speaker 1: You can't have evolution without natural selection again, even though
2:34
Speaker 1: evolution gets all the spotlight, at the very least, there's
2:37
Speaker 1: no evolution on Earth without natural selection, and the idea
2:43
Speaker 1: of natural selection of evolution in general, the idea that
2:47
Speaker 1: God didn't create everything exactly the way we see it now,
2:52
Speaker 1: um is a fairly recent notion, despite how tremendously widespread
2:58
Speaker 1: it is. You know Bill Nye, the science guy you're
3:01
Speaker 1: talking about this debate, Yeah, he got in a debate
3:03
Speaker 1: with Ken hamp just just totally off the cuff, not
3:07
Speaker 1: planned at all. They just both happened to be in
3:09
Speaker 1: the same auditorium. I watched the whole thing, did you
3:12
Speaker 1: the whole two hours? I couldn't pull myself away from it.
3:15
Speaker 1: So I'm guessing that you suspect Bill ni won the debate. Well,
3:21
Speaker 1: I mean, are there winners and losers, So don't be shy.
3:24
Speaker 1: There are, um there's there's a British uh religious website
3:30
Speaker 1: that pulled it's um it's guests because you know, people
3:35
Speaker 1: who go to websites are called guests. But in England
3:38
Speaker 1: there and said who won? And um, I think ninety
3:42
Speaker 1: two said Bill ny one and The reason why is
3:47
Speaker 1: because in the comments section, it was revealed that most
3:51
Speaker 1: of these people said, yeah, we believe in God, but
3:54
Speaker 1: evolution is still real. And to deny evolution outright is
3:59
Speaker 1: pretty silly. I think when you say things like dragons,
4:01
Speaker 1: you might lose people. Did he say dragons that didn't
4:04
Speaker 1: see it? Yeah, he mentioned dragons. Well, I mean that's
4:07
Speaker 1: some people. And like you said, religion and science co
4:10
Speaker 1: exists for a lot of religious folk. But um, there
4:14
Speaker 1: are some that are very literal and strict and say
4:16
Speaker 1: that you know, how to explain dinosaurs while they may
4:18
Speaker 1: have been dragons, and I don't that that doesn't explain
4:23
Speaker 1: anything that well, I think that just changes in the Bible.
4:26
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, if if I'm getting this wrong and I
4:30
Speaker 1: really get killed, we should pausitive for a second. Um, Like,
4:35
Speaker 1: the point of this episode is not to stomp on
4:37
Speaker 1: anybody's beliefs. No, I think science can be just as
4:40
Speaker 1: dogmatic as religion. Um, so like that's not what we're
4:44
Speaker 1: doing now. Like, if you believe in creationism, to each
4:48
Speaker 1: his own, Like, we're not gonna pound our beliefs into
4:52
Speaker 1: you or you know, vice versa. I've never understood that,
4:54
Speaker 1: Like who cares just either way, you know, it's like
5:00
Speaker 1: to my way of thinking, or else you are just
5:02
Speaker 1: so wrong it's mind boggling. Um, well, that's not the
5:07
Speaker 1: point of this. I think we should just c o
5:09
Speaker 1: a with that, because that's not what we're like. There's
5:11
Speaker 1: some people who don't always listen. Maybe this is their
5:13
Speaker 1: first episode. Welcome. Uh, we are not those kind of guys, know,
5:17
Speaker 1: And specifically with this episode, it's on Charles Darwin the
5:21
Speaker 1: man and kind of what made him who he was not?
5:24
Speaker 1: And we'll tackle are we committing to go ahead and
5:27
Speaker 1: doing natural selection? As a matter of fact, we'll have
5:30
Speaker 1: this one come out on a Tuesday. We'll do natural
5:32
Speaker 1: selection on a Thursday. Look at that? All right? I agree,
5:35
Speaker 1: let's do it. Let there be like, but h Darwin
5:41
Speaker 1: is a fascinating dude though, Yeah, yeah, because you can't
5:45
Speaker 1: really overstate the idea that he was. As Robert lam
5:49
Speaker 1: puts in his fine article, I have to say one
5:51
Speaker 1: of his best um that Charles Darwin was the fulcrum
5:56
Speaker 1: by which or on which the entire he change from
6:01
Speaker 1: a religious worldview to a scientific worldview took place. It
6:05
Speaker 1: was on this man's shoulders, even though oddly enough. He
6:08
Speaker 1: wasn't the only person to come up with natural selection now,
6:12
Speaker 1: and we'll get to that. He wasn't the first or
6:14
Speaker 1: the last. Uh. But it turns out he was the
6:17
Speaker 1: most thorough in his research right and had the most
6:21
Speaker 1: social breeding and in breeding. Yeah. Man, this is the
6:26
Speaker 1: ultimate tease. It is. So let's get started, Chuck. Let's
6:29
Speaker 1: talk about Darwin He Um didn't He wasn't born with
6:32
Speaker 1: a Bunsen burner in a flask in his hand. No,
6:35
Speaker 1: he was not. Uh. He was born, if anything, with
6:40
Speaker 1: a stethoscope in his hand. Because his father, doctor Robert
6:44
Speaker 1: Wearing Darwin Um, had designs on little Chuck being a
6:49
Speaker 1: doctor like him, because he was you know, they had
6:52
Speaker 1: some dough that he was an English gentleman. They weren't
6:55
Speaker 1: poor by any means. No. Apparently his grandfather a massive,
6:58
Speaker 1: vast fortune in China, and not the country, but the
7:02
Speaker 1: porcelain interesting, So would be incorrect to say he had
7:06
Speaker 1: a Chinese fortune. He had a China fortune, okay, Uh.
7:10
Speaker 1: But little Chuck was not into anatomy. He was definitely
7:13
Speaker 1: not into surgery on humans. It freaked him out. I
7:18
Speaker 1: think he was a little queasy as a person. It
7:21
Speaker 1: seems like, yeah, but he was. He was way into
7:24
Speaker 1: the natural sciences and was just fine with dissecting a frog. Yeah.
7:29
Speaker 1: You know, he was cool with biology. As long as
7:31
Speaker 1: you weren't human, he'd cut you, that's right. Uh. So
7:35
Speaker 1: he was sent to several schools um first when he
7:38
Speaker 1: was going to be a doctor, to the Anglican Shrewsbury School,
7:41
Speaker 1: then to Edinburgh University, and finally his dad was like,
7:45
Speaker 1: all right, you don't want to be a doctor or
7:46
Speaker 1: so the only other option for you is to be
7:49
Speaker 1: a man of religion parson in the country. Yeah, so
7:52
Speaker 1: I'm gonna send you to christ College in Cambridge, which
7:54
Speaker 1: is I mean, if you're gonna go be a country parson,
7:57
Speaker 1: you could do a lot worse. I agreed. You know,
8:00
Speaker 1: the fighting padres is over there, padres um. So he
8:07
Speaker 1: was very well educated, uh and had been exposed to
8:11
Speaker 1: all kinds of science, so he was. He was a
8:13
Speaker 1: very smart guy from early on, um, and way into
8:17
Speaker 1: natural science, like I said, but not into the religion
8:20
Speaker 1: thing as much. He was agnostic from a pretty early age, right,
8:24
Speaker 1: and he seemed like he was going to follow the
8:27
Speaker 1: path that his father was laying out for him. I
8:30
Speaker 1: guess he was very domineering and Charles Darwin was a
8:34
Speaker 1: pretty great thinker, pretty all around good guy. But he
8:38
Speaker 1: also was a bit of a pantywaist. It seems like,
8:41
Speaker 1: you know, he was like really really affected by stress. Yeah. Sight,
8:46
Speaker 1: he had a lot of psycho somatic symptoms from stress
8:50
Speaker 1: pretty much throughout his whole life. Despite that, though, he
8:55
Speaker 1: took a very brave course in life. And it started
8:58
Speaker 1: when he was twenty one and he was on his
9:01
Speaker 1: way to becoming that country parson that his father had
9:04
Speaker 1: decided he would be. And he got an invitation to
9:07
Speaker 1: go on a tour of the islands off South America
9:11
Speaker 1: UM from a guy named Robert Fitzroy who was twenty
9:14
Speaker 1: six years old. He was an aristocrat and he liked Darwin.
9:18
Speaker 1: He said, hey, you're good at conversations. When I get bored,
9:22
Speaker 1: I suffer about to depression. I'm about to go on
9:25
Speaker 1: this boat called the h MS Beagle for god knows
9:28
Speaker 1: how long, So why don't you come along and uh,
9:31
Speaker 1: we can chat and I won't get depressed. And Darwin said,
9:34
Speaker 1: you know what, let's do this. That's right, which is
9:37
Speaker 1: a that's a pretty bold move. Yeah, he's he was
9:40
Speaker 1: for someone who was would you say, pennyways, Yeah, Pennyways.
9:43
Speaker 1: It's sort of surprising that he was up for that
9:45
Speaker 1: kind of adventure. Yes, a milk toast. You could also
9:49
Speaker 1: call him a milk toast. Maybe call him that. All right? Uh,
9:53
Speaker 1: so this was one He boarded the HMS Beagle, which
9:57
Speaker 1: I for some reason just cracks me up. You know,
9:59
Speaker 1: our buddy go from forward thinking just adopted a dog
10:03
Speaker 1: part beagle, and his name is Darwin. Huh because of
10:07
Speaker 1: that association, I would imagine, And Joe said, he looks
10:10
Speaker 1: like Darwin head on ibrow. That's funny. Um. All right,
10:16
Speaker 1: so he board at the HMS Beagle. What did you say?
10:18
Speaker 1: How old was he? Twenty one? And they took a
10:21
Speaker 1: five year voyage around South America. Um. The purpose for
10:25
Speaker 1: fitz Roy was to chart the waters of South America
10:28
Speaker 1: and the coastlines and that kind of thing. But Chuck
10:31
Speaker 1: was like, I'm into natural stuff and species that I
10:35
Speaker 1: don't know, So what better thing to do than spend
10:39
Speaker 1: like most of my time not on the boat but
10:42
Speaker 1: on land just researching stuff. I'm sure he got pretty
10:44
Speaker 1: good at rowing from the ship too short back and forth. Yeah,
10:49
Speaker 1: he's basically Paul Bettany's character and master and commander Well,
10:54
Speaker 1: which is ironic because Paul Bettany played Charles Darwin. Did
10:56
Speaker 1: he really in that movie Creation? Oh yeah, I never
11:00
Speaker 1: saw that, but I know what you're talking about. That's funny.
11:02
Speaker 1: You had no idea. Huh. No, he stepped right into
11:04
Speaker 1: that one. I wonder if he recognized that. I don't know.
11:07
Speaker 1: It's a good movie, that Creation. You should check it out.
11:09
Speaker 1: It's um details a lot of the struggles of his
11:12
Speaker 1: life that we're gonna go over here, and mainly is
11:14
Speaker 1: about his uh anxieties of what he was doing in
11:19
Speaker 1: his relationship to his Christian wife. Oh yeah, I'll bet
11:22
Speaker 1: that was kind of a sore spot big time. We'll
11:25
Speaker 1: get to that though in a second. So okay, So
11:27
Speaker 1: they head off to South America. There he's spending two
11:30
Speaker 1: thirds of the voyage. Of this five year voyage, he
11:33
Speaker 1: spends on land. Uh. One of the most famous places
11:36
Speaker 1: he visited was the Galapa Ghost which are still around. Yeah,
11:39
Speaker 1: and that apparently was really overstated. He was only, uh,
11:42
Speaker 1: what is still around? Is that a joke? The Galapa
11:44
Speaker 1: Ghost They're still around? Okay. I thought I was missing
11:49
Speaker 1: on something because you looked at me like you're missing
11:51
Speaker 1: a joke. That's this look Okay, um what was that one?
11:55
Speaker 1: As you smell that was my either water. So the
12:00
Speaker 1: Glapaos apparently it was a little overstated it's significance wise. Um,
12:05
Speaker 1: he was only there for about five weeks out of
12:07
Speaker 1: the five years, and historians think it's been overstated because
12:11
Speaker 1: it was so exotic and people wanted to point to
12:14
Speaker 1: some like kind of fantastical birthplace of all these ideas
12:19
Speaker 1: I mean stuck, yeah, I mean for sure, and he
12:23
Speaker 1: you know, collected all kinds of different specimens from the Glapicos,
12:27
Speaker 1: but it wasn't as big a deal. Have you ever
12:29
Speaker 1: seen the size of the turtles there or the tortoises?
12:31
Speaker 1: Are the huge, dude, They're like the size of VW. Beatles.
12:35
Speaker 1: They're enormous and apparently like they'll hang out with you.
12:41
Speaker 1: What else are they gonna do? Run away slowly? Okay? Yeah,
12:44
Speaker 1: they have no choice, they have agency. They could be
12:47
Speaker 1: like I don't want to be here around you, I'm
12:49
Speaker 1: gonna go this way. They just it wouldn't work very
12:51
Speaker 1: well or very quickly. Yeah. Okay, so where are we? Man?
12:55
Speaker 1: We are? I was just poopooing the Galapagos. Yeah. Um,
13:00
Speaker 1: but what he did while he was gone was he
13:02
Speaker 1: did a lot of great work and made a real
13:04
Speaker 1: name for himself and kind of came back a well
13:08
Speaker 1: known scientist. Scientists because the whole time he's making all
13:11
Speaker 1: these findings, he's finding new species of animals that like
13:14
Speaker 1: Europeans didn't even know existed, like entire types of animals. Um,
13:18
Speaker 1: he's sending back specimens, which means he killed a lot
13:21
Speaker 1: of animals while he was on these islands, mailed them
13:24
Speaker 1: back to Europe, mailed back some of his findings. He's
13:27
Speaker 1: basically writing papers as he's doing this, this journey, so
13:32
Speaker 1: back in the jolly old England there um basically becomes
13:38
Speaker 1: his celebrity. Yeah. And he was, you know, like before
13:41
Speaker 1: he even returned. Yeah, he was looking at he had
13:44
Speaker 1: the idea of natural selection, but it was, like we said,
13:47
Speaker 1: it was already out there. It was known as the
13:49
Speaker 1: mystery of Mysteries or transmutation. And he called his his
13:54
Speaker 1: research at first the Transmutation Notebooks, so that yeah, he
13:59
Speaker 1: wasn't you know, his reach searching stuff that he had
14:00
Speaker 1: heard about. It was a working title. What was the
14:03
Speaker 1: working title actually? Um, what would later become on the
14:07
Speaker 1: origin of the species of course. Yeah, and uh, he
14:10
Speaker 1: and another guy will talk about a little bit. We're
14:12
Speaker 1: also UM inspired. Both were inspired by Thomas Malthus, who
14:16
Speaker 1: we've talked about, who came up with the idea of
14:18
Speaker 1: carrying capacity and basically introduced the idea that scarcity and
14:23
Speaker 1: competition forces adaptation and change. And then uh, Darwin and
14:28
Speaker 1: the guy Um, Alfred Wallace Russell or Alfred Russell Wallace
14:34
Speaker 1: UM both read this and said, well, wait, man, I
14:37
Speaker 1: wonder if that adaptation and change that's forced by scarcity
14:42
Speaker 1: is what creates the change and species that we're seeing here. Yeah,
14:47
Speaker 1: that was definitely UM. The book was called Essay on
14:50
Speaker 1: Principle of Population and that was like a super game
14:53
Speaker 1: changer because it really gave him, like the the notion
14:56
Speaker 1: that by studying our any species death, you can kind
15:00
Speaker 1: of study its life. Yeah. And it wasn't it wasn't
15:03
Speaker 1: just biology that it gave rise to. It gave rise
15:07
Speaker 1: to um economics, largely, a lot of anthropology, a lot
15:13
Speaker 1: of ecology. Like it was, like you say, a game changer.
15:18
Speaker 1: Thomas Malthis go back and listen to our population podcast.
15:22
Speaker 1: Is that where he appears I think he appears a
15:25
Speaker 1: few times, but that was a good one. Yeah, it's
15:27
Speaker 1: an oldie, but a goodie. Um. So, like we said,
15:30
Speaker 1: he came back sort of a celebrity of sorts, and
15:33
Speaker 1: he came back with a lot of information, uh, and
15:35
Speaker 1: settled in at the down House in Kent, and this
15:41
Speaker 1: place was He spent the next forty years there studying
15:45
Speaker 1: his property essentially, like he didn't need to go anywhere.
15:48
Speaker 1: He had plenty of nature there. Apparently there were forty
15:51
Speaker 1: different species per square meter on his property. Uh. He
15:56
Speaker 1: had ten kids and he used them as sort of
15:58
Speaker 1: a a little laboratory experiment because three of them died
16:03
Speaker 1: and he was fascinated with why things and people survive
16:06
Speaker 1: and some don't. So it was all sort of part
16:09
Speaker 1: of his Uh. It was just everything was part of
16:12
Speaker 1: his laboratory. Essentially. He had people sending him samples from
16:16
Speaker 1: all over the world, and there are some theories that
16:19
Speaker 1: if the postal service hadn't have been so good, he
16:22
Speaker 1: may have never been able to write the origin of
16:25
Speaker 1: the species because he relied on people sending him stuff
16:29
Speaker 1: in due time. Oh yeah, and also he was really
16:32
Speaker 1: big on corresponding, which kind of helped develop his UM,
16:37
Speaker 1: his ideas, flesh him out even further. Was he was
16:41
Speaker 1: huge on correspondence. Yeah. He had a UM area on
16:44
Speaker 1: his property called the Sandwalk that he had built. It
16:46
Speaker 1: was basically just a loop path through the woods and
16:50
Speaker 1: he would just spend like countless hours just walking this
16:54
Speaker 1: path and thinking and looking at everything everything right, nothing design.
17:01
Speaker 1: One of his favorite UM subjects was earthworms. Remember our
17:05
Speaker 1: Earthworm podcast. There was a quote from him in there
17:09
Speaker 1: UM where he said, it may be doubted whether there
17:13
Speaker 1: are many other animals which have played so important a
17:16
Speaker 1: part in the history of the world as these lowly
17:18
Speaker 1: organized creatures. So he was down with earthworms, downs and
17:22
Speaker 1: orchids very famously too. Yeah, he was. He was active.
17:25
Speaker 1: He wasn't just looking at things. He raised orchids. He
17:27
Speaker 1: was a beekeeper, he raised pigeons and like it was
17:30
Speaker 1: all just in the name of study. Right. One of
17:33
Speaker 1: the things though, we um He married his first cousin,
17:37
Speaker 1: his wife um and at the time they didn't really
17:42
Speaker 1: know much about the troubles with inbreeding, and he was
17:46
Speaker 1: one of the people who discovered the troubles with inbreeding,
17:49
Speaker 1: and it apparently had a really big effect on him.
17:51
Speaker 1: Like he felt kind of guilty and weird and wondered
17:55
Speaker 1: if maybe his kids early deaths had to do with that. Yeah, um,
18:01
Speaker 1: which has to be kind of startling if you're the
18:04
Speaker 1: guy who discovers the problems with inbreeding and you've inbred,
18:09
Speaker 1: you know, Yeah, it's gotta be a little jarring. Sure. Uh.
18:13
Speaker 1: Emma Wedgewood was his wife's maiden name, And one thing
18:17
Speaker 1: that happened when he married her was he got more
18:20
Speaker 1: money because she was also in the family fortune. So
18:23
Speaker 1: they were set up pretty nicely. Uh. And like I said,
18:25
Speaker 1: she was Christian and she was amazing though, like the
18:29
Speaker 1: Creation movie really like it's a great love story. Despite
18:33
Speaker 1: the fact that they had he was Agnostic and she
18:35
Speaker 1: was Christian. She spent her life caring for him because
18:39
Speaker 1: he was a very sickly man. Um may have had
18:43
Speaker 1: some sort of viral diseases entire life, maybe that he
18:46
Speaker 1: picked up in South America. Now he was a pennywaise
18:50
Speaker 1: on top of that, so he was just fraught with anxiety. Uh.
18:55
Speaker 1: And she cared for him and all the kids, and
18:57
Speaker 1: her life's worry was are we going to spend it
18:59
Speaker 1: turn nity together in the afterlife? Yeah, that was her
19:02
Speaker 1: big concern, Yeah, which is he didn't buy that stuff. No,
19:06
Speaker 1: he and he was you know, religious ish when he
19:09
Speaker 1: was younger, but as he grew older and no, the
19:13
Speaker 1: more he exposed himself to these ideas of evolution and
19:18
Speaker 1: natural selection, the less religious, the less he bought into it. Um.
19:23
Speaker 1: And it's funny that that divide first occurred in him
19:26
Speaker 1: and then it just kind of grew out from him
19:28
Speaker 1: to create this divide throughout the world. He was the
19:33
Speaker 1: epicenter of that divide. It first, if that crack in
19:36
Speaker 1: the world first appeared in him. Yeah, isn't that interesting? Yeah,
19:41
Speaker 1: for sure. Um, he's the one to blame pretty much.
19:44
Speaker 1: Or he was a patient zero, one of the two. Um.
19:48
Speaker 1: So he he comes back to down House, he gets married,
19:51
Speaker 1: settles down doubles his fortune by marrying Emma. Um and
19:57
Speaker 1: and his experimenting with orchids, earthworms. F he's his kids,
20:01
Speaker 1: all this stuff. Um. And he's also at the same
20:04
Speaker 1: time writing he's expanding that notebook into what he's calling
20:09
Speaker 1: a natural selection another working title. And um, he is
20:14
Speaker 1: taking his sweet time with it. One of the reasons
20:16
Speaker 1: he's taking his sweet time with this is one he
20:20
Speaker 1: is being very diligent. He's making sure he's crossing all
20:23
Speaker 1: of his teams, dotting his eyes, making sure he's not
20:25
Speaker 1: looking at it wrong, making sure he's backing up everything.
20:29
Speaker 1: And the second connected reason to that first one is
20:33
Speaker 1: that he is really not looking forward to the storm
20:39
Speaker 1: that this is going to create when he unleashes it
20:41
Speaker 1: on the public. He was well aware of it from
20:43
Speaker 1: the beginning, because there's a couple of things that are
20:46
Speaker 1: inherent in the theory of natural selection. I'm going to
20:50
Speaker 1: add a third reason, my friend, if you're studying natural selection,
20:54
Speaker 1: evolution takes a long time, well, yeah, you can't study
20:58
Speaker 1: something for a week and detect change is And like
21:01
Speaker 1: you said, he was thorough because he lived his life, uh,
21:04
Speaker 1: basically an anxiety of not being accepted by these peers
21:09
Speaker 1: and like these are people, these are friends of his.
21:11
Speaker 1: So his procrastination is definitely fear driven by his peers
21:14
Speaker 1: and by society at large, and by the fact that
21:17
Speaker 1: it just takes a long time to study something like this. Right.
21:20
Speaker 1: For instance, he left a area of his lawn unmode
21:23
Speaker 1: for twenty years just to study what would happen and
21:27
Speaker 1: out of that sounds like an excuse exactly, but out
21:34
Speaker 1: of like the twenty different species he studied, eleven survived
21:38
Speaker 1: and nine died away. So boom, natural selection right there,
21:41
Speaker 1: just in a portion of his lawn. Okay, but it
21:43
Speaker 1: took twenty years, is the point. Okay. So the time
21:46
Speaker 1: fear of his peers, fear of the public, and he
21:47
Speaker 1: had good reason to fear um or be anxious, because
21:53
Speaker 1: the world was a much different place than it is now,
21:56
Speaker 1: and he was well aware that what he was about
21:58
Speaker 1: to unleash on society was going to create some big
22:02
Speaker 1: changes in some big problems. And uh, we'll get into
22:05
Speaker 1: that right after this message. So chuck, um, we're talking
22:11
Speaker 1: about Darwin. He's at his house down house. Um, he's
22:16
Speaker 1: working on his manuscript. He's kind of procrastinating a little bit,
22:18
Speaker 1: and because it takes time to um, but he knows
22:22
Speaker 1: that he's about to unleash this complete change in paradigm,
22:27
Speaker 1: a poop storm, onto the world exactly. And Um, it's
22:32
Speaker 1: because the world was a much different place than it
22:37
Speaker 1: is today. Because Darwin hadn't talked about natural selection yet. Yeah,
22:42
Speaker 1: I mean, religion, religious biology was biology. They didn't call
22:47
Speaker 1: it religious biology, that was just biology. Yeah. So he
22:49
Speaker 1: was the first one to secularize it and make it
22:52
Speaker 1: just about the science. Um. Yeah, because before scientists thought like, well,
22:58
Speaker 1: God created this and that is our starting point. Like
23:02
Speaker 1: everything else, every other scientific explanation we have has to
23:06
Speaker 1: trace back to creation, which is kind of It can
23:10
Speaker 1: make science a little easier, um, but at the very
23:14
Speaker 1: at the same time, it leaves you open to a
23:19
Speaker 1: huge problem when somebody comes along and can fill in
23:22
Speaker 1: all these other gaps through a completely different explanation that
23:26
Speaker 1: doesn't use creationism. And that's what Darn was doing with
23:28
Speaker 1: natural selection. Yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and at a
23:32
Speaker 1: fourth thing. Man, you just keep them coming. Uh. There
23:35
Speaker 1: were two texts that were vital, and we talked about
23:37
Speaker 1: one of them, the mouths uh principle of population. In
23:41
Speaker 1: four there was a book written called The Vestiges of
23:44
Speaker 1: the Natural History of Creation and it was published anonymously
23:48
Speaker 1: for forty years. No one kne who wrote it because
23:50
Speaker 1: no one wanted to put their name on it. Like
23:52
Speaker 1: that's how radical it was. And it was slammed like
23:57
Speaker 1: it was hugely popular. It was like a phenomenon, like
24:00
Speaker 1: everybody read it and everybody slammed it. And uh, it
24:05
Speaker 1: came out later it was a guy named Robert Chambers.
24:07
Speaker 1: He was a Scottish journalist. But what Darwit scared the
24:11
Speaker 1: crap out of Darwin was like, yeah, because a lot
24:15
Speaker 1: it was, Mama, there's a lot of the same same
24:19
Speaker 1: ideas as he had. So what it did was it
24:21
Speaker 1: caused him to basically rewrite his voluminous work and pare
24:27
Speaker 1: it down the armor it with sturdier armor over the
24:31
Speaker 1: next thirteen months. It's smart, very smart. I mean you
24:34
Speaker 1: could say for him that that was a stroke of
24:36
Speaker 1: luck that that was published and he read it and
24:37
Speaker 1: saw what happened to total stroke of luck. He might
24:39
Speaker 1: have been laughed out of existence if he had gotten
24:43
Speaker 1: there first. So he he goes back, redoubles his efforts,
24:46
Speaker 1: strengthens his argument um, and again he's combatting not just
24:52
Speaker 1: the i the religious ideals of the time, but the
24:55
Speaker 1: religious ideals of science. Yeah, like most scientists at the
24:59
Speaker 1: time were aist when Dais believed that God created the
25:03
Speaker 1: universe basically like a clockmaker makes a clock, wounded up
25:08
Speaker 1: and walked away like see you later, good luck with everything.
25:10
Speaker 1: And then anything that happened as a result after that
25:13
Speaker 1: was the results of the mechanations of this clock and
25:17
Speaker 1: there was a theory that was fairly well accepted called catastrophism, Yes,
25:26
Speaker 1: and that basically sought to account fossils, because fossils were
25:30
Speaker 1: a big sticking point. Why were there clearly extinct animals
25:36
Speaker 1: that had lived before there's fossils, we have them in
25:38
Speaker 1: our hands. Why do these kind of resemble the things
25:43
Speaker 1: that are alive today. That doesn't make any sense. Well,
25:48
Speaker 1: catastrophism um who which was suggested by a guy named
25:53
Speaker 1: George Cuvier, And Cuvier said that catastrophism, which one I
26:00
Speaker 1: like the second one catastrophism. Catastrophism, uh says that something happens, volcanoes, floods, pestilence,
26:09
Speaker 1: something very biblical happens, and a species dies out in
26:13
Speaker 1: an area and a new species comes in and fills
26:15
Speaker 1: it in, and maybe that species just from living in
26:18
Speaker 1: proximity was similar. Uh. And they that that explains why
26:23
Speaker 1: some are extinct and some are now here. I would
26:27
Speaker 1: also call that coincidences. M. Yeah, it's another way to
26:30
Speaker 1: put it as another pronunciation. But it wasn't like super
26:34
Speaker 1: science based, right, but this is these like these, This
26:37
Speaker 1: was a well respected scientists, um, and this was the
26:41
Speaker 1: prevailing thought at the time that creationism and the natural
26:45
Speaker 1: scientists went hand in hand. Creationism was the basis for it,
26:49
Speaker 1: and Darwin is about to say, you know that basis
26:52
Speaker 1: that everybody's built science on for the last several centuries.
26:56
Speaker 1: It's not that's that doesn't hold water. And then he
26:59
Speaker 1: went through up again and again apparently throw a lot. Yeah,
27:03
Speaker 1: when his when on the Origin of the Species came
27:06
Speaker 1: out in eighteen fifty nine, he was at a spa
27:10
Speaker 1: um recovering from bouts of KNOWLEDGEA so, yeah, he was
27:13
Speaker 1: all thrown up. I feel bad for the guy. Sure,
27:16
Speaker 1: he was just racked with anxiety his entire life, but
27:18
Speaker 1: imagine that. Imagine being racked with anxiety and still going
27:21
Speaker 1: to it. It's pretty impressive. Uh So. Previous to its publication,
27:26
Speaker 1: another important thing happened. Um we mentioned earlier Alfred Russell Wallace.
27:31
Speaker 1: He was a fellow Englishman and specimen collector, and he
27:38
Speaker 1: basically wrote almost exactly the same thing that Darwin had
27:43
Speaker 1: been working on, sent it to Darwin, and um people
27:49
Speaker 1: urged them both to present their works at something called
27:52
Speaker 1: the Linnaean Society in eight They did so together as
27:57
Speaker 1: a team. But um, it wasn't it didn't kinda make
28:01
Speaker 1: much of a splash at the time. It wasn't until
28:04
Speaker 1: he officially published his work that you know made the splash, right.
28:08
Speaker 1: And Alfred Um, Alfred Russell Wallace actually was the impetus
28:12
Speaker 1: for him to publish Um Origin of the Species. He
28:17
Speaker 1: he'd been sitting there dawdling, waiting, waiting, waiting, procrastinating. Um.
28:21
Speaker 1: Not long and um. He got a letter from Wallace,
28:25
Speaker 1: like you said, and he realized, holy cow, Wallace has
28:29
Speaker 1: come up with the same thing. I've been working on
28:32
Speaker 1: this for thirty years. I'm I'm not gonna forget that.
28:36
Speaker 1: Forgive my anxiety. I'm just publishing this puppy. And uh.
28:40
Speaker 1: He he did, and it came out in eighteen fifty nine. Um,
28:44
Speaker 1: and he was hailed as a villain and a genius,
28:52
Speaker 1: depending on who you spoke to. And let's talk about
28:55
Speaker 1: the Origin of Species and what it says and what
28:58
Speaker 1: natural selection means, Chuck Um. First of all, the official
29:03
Speaker 1: title of the book is on the Origin of Species
29:06
Speaker 1: by means of natural selection or the preservation of favorite racism,
29:10
Speaker 1: the Struggle for life. And that's why everybody calls the
29:13
Speaker 1: Origin of Species. Because it's long and wordy, but what
29:18
Speaker 1: it basically says is that um species adapt. They adapt
29:25
Speaker 1: due to population pressure, they adapt through competition with one
29:30
Speaker 1: another between species inside species. UM that when you see
29:36
Speaker 1: like slightly different traits, individual traits to be expected, but
29:40
Speaker 1: those individual traits can ultimately lead to a new species
29:43
Speaker 1: on a long enough time table if those traits make
29:49
Speaker 1: their their increase their chance of surviving to reproduction age,
29:55
Speaker 1: and enhance their ability to reproduce. Yeah right, and if
29:59
Speaker 1: you if don't, if you aren't good at that, then
30:02
Speaker 1: you go bye bye. Right, And this explains why some
30:05
Speaker 1: species are extinct, why the ones that are here today
30:09
Speaker 1: are the winners. And chillingly that all this is still
30:12
Speaker 1: going on. It's very very slow, so we can't see
30:16
Speaker 1: it happens on a glacial time scale, our geologic time scale,
30:21
Speaker 1: but it's still going on. And here's proof. The thing
30:24
Speaker 1: that he doesn't come out in state, But that wasn't
30:27
Speaker 1: lost on the Victorians, especially the religious victorians, is that
30:31
Speaker 1: inherent in that argument is that man, the king of
30:36
Speaker 1: the world, is nothing more than an animal that evolved
30:40
Speaker 1: from who knows what. Yeah he I bet, I bet
30:43
Speaker 1: He threaded over that so much because he believed it,
30:45
Speaker 1: but I think there are only two mentions of mankind
30:49
Speaker 1: in the entire work, but the implications were clear, Like
30:53
Speaker 1: the public at large may not have been wise to
30:54
Speaker 1: it at first, but scientists were like, wait a minute,
30:57
Speaker 1: are you saying that we came from apes? He's like,
31:01
Speaker 1: I'm at a spa recovering from I can't be reached. Um.
31:06
Speaker 1: But yeah, he definitely skirted around coming out and saying
31:10
Speaker 1: that upfront in plain English. Yeah, and it caused like
31:13
Speaker 1: he said, a poop storm. Yeah, And I guess we
31:16
Speaker 1: should say Russell Wallace was he's been sort of lost
31:20
Speaker 1: to history as far as you know what most people know. Um. Yeah,
31:23
Speaker 1: it's sad. It is sad because he was a smart guy,
31:26
Speaker 1: but he wasn't. He had no standing, um like Darwin did.
31:30
Speaker 1: And that's kind of one of the reasons he was
31:32
Speaker 1: forgotten to history, right he Um, he was out in
31:35
Speaker 1: the field. He was he seemed to be happiest out
31:37
Speaker 1: in the field. After this um this theory was introduced. Um,
31:41
Speaker 1: he retreated back to the Melee Peninsula to collect um specimens. Yeah,
31:48
Speaker 1: but he would sell them, which kind of degraded his standing,
31:51
Speaker 1: I think, right, just but he was using those funds
31:54
Speaker 1: to further fund more scientific exploration. You know, it's not
31:57
Speaker 1: like he was funding his opium habit or not. But
32:00
Speaker 1: the point is Darwin didn't need to sell it, so
32:02
Speaker 1: I think he was. People were like, well, this guy's
32:04
Speaker 1: collecting species and selling them. He's a merchant, right, exactly,
32:06
Speaker 1: That's exactly right. And regardless of whether Wallace um Russell
32:11
Speaker 1: was a you know, a great scientist or not, it
32:15
Speaker 1: didn't matter. If you put these two men and their
32:17
Speaker 1: theories were exactly equal, but one was of higher social
32:20
Speaker 1: standing and greater wealth, well that guy won, and that
32:23
Speaker 1: was Darwin. Um. So Darwin became he will, exactly under
32:29
Speaker 1: Victorian aristocracy rules, but he became the again, the rallying point,
32:34
Speaker 1: the fulcrum, the center of the universe in this new
32:37
Speaker 1: debate that he unleashed between creationism and evolution that's still
32:42
Speaker 1: going on today literally not today, but a couple of
32:46
Speaker 1: weeks ago, right, so almost literally. Um, And he didn't
32:51
Speaker 1: like that at all. So what he said was, you
32:53
Speaker 1: know what, you guys talked this over, I'm gonna go
32:57
Speaker 1: hit and hit the spa and throw up do what
33:01
Speaker 1: you want with it, right, I'm going away. I've got
33:04
Speaker 1: a lawn to not moo. But lucky for him, he
33:06
Speaker 1: had a lot of supporters, like right out of the game, yeah,
33:09
Speaker 1: he had he had both. He had um supporters scientists
33:12
Speaker 1: that I think some wanted I wanted to say this
33:17
Speaker 1: stuff all along, and now that they had such a
33:20
Speaker 1: like wonderful, concise and well researched piece of work to
33:24
Speaker 1: back them up, they came out of the woodwork and like, yeah,
33:27
Speaker 1: see this is great. But some people weren't. In fact,
33:30
Speaker 1: I think I can't remember the guy's name. Someone he
33:33
Speaker 1: really respected and his wife really respected, basically slammed him
33:38
Speaker 1: in called it heresy, and that was really impactful. Again
33:44
Speaker 1: more anxiety, well yeah, more throwing up. And there was
33:47
Speaker 1: a lot of name calling. There was a lot of
33:48
Speaker 1: political cartoons that were unflattering, um, and unflattering for the
33:54
Speaker 1: Victorian Nates so basically his head on a monkey or
33:56
Speaker 1: something like that. Um. But he while he had his detractors,
34:01
Speaker 1: he had his supporters. And there was one guy in
34:02
Speaker 1: particular named Thomas Huxley, and he was I believe the
34:06
Speaker 1: grandfather of Algius Huxley. Uh huh and um. Sometimes you'll
34:11
Speaker 1: if you see Darwin's theory mentioned, you'll see the Darwin
34:15
Speaker 1: slash Huxley theory. Because Huxley UM basically was a religious man,
34:23
Speaker 1: and Darwin, I think firsthand, not just through the origin
34:29
Speaker 1: the species, but through the correspondence as well, convinced him
34:32
Speaker 1: like no, dude, natural selection is actually right, and very ironically,
34:37
Speaker 1: just like uh, Saul converting to Paul on the Road
34:39
Speaker 1: to Damascus, Huxley converts from a religious fervent to a
34:44
Speaker 1: natural selection and he just takes it with religious selotry
34:52
Speaker 1: and starts taking on anybody he can in debate, writing
34:56
Speaker 1: any article he can and defending not just darw and
35:00
Speaker 1: but his theory as well. And it came so much
35:04
Speaker 1: so that he came to be known as Darwin's bulldog.
35:07
Speaker 1: And he actually coined the term agnostic. Oh really, Yeah,
35:10
Speaker 1: he was the one that coined that term to differentiate
35:12
Speaker 1: people like himself who was who were still believers in
35:15
Speaker 1: God but also fervent believers in UM in natural selection
35:19
Speaker 1: as well. Yeah. That's pretty cool. So that wasn't the
35:23
Speaker 1: only thing he wrote that was his life's work, for sure,
35:25
Speaker 1: But he wrote UM eleven more, published eleven more times
35:29
Speaker 1: before two uh, and then finally in nineteen seventy three,
35:34
Speaker 1: which is pretty old for someone who was in such
35:36
Speaker 1: ill health as entire life. Heart heart attack finally got him. Yeah,
35:41
Speaker 1: it's very sad, it is. But he lived a good, long,
35:44
Speaker 1: nauseated life. You know. That's a good point. So I
35:48
Speaker 1: guess we should talk a little bit about his legacy, right, Yeah,
35:52
Speaker 1: you did that kind of work. He pass away, you're
35:54
Speaker 1: gonna have a legacy. They name a city in Australia
35:57
Speaker 1: after you. Really, I believe it's dar in Australia. Please, guy,
36:01
Speaker 1: don't let it be New Zealand. Do you want to look? No? Okay,
36:05
Speaker 1: I'm I'm I'm feeling like a gambling man today got you?
36:09
Speaker 1: Uh So his influence um from then on and continues
36:13
Speaker 1: to be today. Uh Lamb calls it rightfully, so a
36:17
Speaker 1: paradigm shift in science, society and literature. Like it can't
36:20
Speaker 1: be understated. It was a game changer for kind of
36:23
Speaker 1: everything and the way things went. You're on one side
36:26
Speaker 1: or the other. It's like meo water, it changes everything.
36:31
Speaker 1: What's that you haven't seen the ad for? Like the
36:34
Speaker 1: little droplets of flavoring you can add to your water.
36:38
Speaker 1: I've seen that. So you haven't seen the ad where
36:40
Speaker 1: the guys in the office talking and like as you
36:42
Speaker 1: as they cut back and forth, everything keeps changing because
36:45
Speaker 1: they're adding meal. Oh it's one of the better adds around.
36:49
Speaker 1: And you know me, I'm an ad aficionado. That's true. Well,
36:53
Speaker 1: one thing we can um point to is that, uh,
36:57
Speaker 1: Herbert Spencer, he was a sociologist after Darwin applied Darwinism
37:03
Speaker 1: to sociology in the form of social Darwinism a k A.
37:08
Speaker 1: Survival of the fittest, which it didn't bastardize it, but
37:13
Speaker 1: it definitely he definitely used it for his own purposes
37:16
Speaker 1: to say that, uh, you know what, the week, we
37:20
Speaker 1: shouldn't even worry about the week. If we want to
37:23
Speaker 1: be a strong mankind, then let the week die out. Well,
37:27
Speaker 1: you know, so, um, this sociologist that came up with
37:31
Speaker 1: this idea of social Darwinism, Herbert Spencer, that's a very
37:35
Speaker 1: Mauthusian view of humanity and um nature, because Mauthis was
37:42
Speaker 1: basically saying, like, look, man, we take care of the
37:44
Speaker 1: poor and everything, but if we do that, we're interfering
37:48
Speaker 1: with nature and we're gonna end up over burdening the
37:52
Speaker 1: population because population is gonna grow geometrically and we're not
37:56
Speaker 1: going to be able to support ourselves and society is
37:59
Speaker 1: going to collapse. Yeah, that was what Mauthis was saying.
38:01
Speaker 1: This guy said, yeah, Yeah, it's weird that Darwin was
38:05
Speaker 1: in the middle of kind of both book ended by
38:08
Speaker 1: these two. And I think it really just you can
38:11
Speaker 1: kind of say, like it really just kind of he
38:13
Speaker 1: was lacking a bit of evil, where if he had
38:16
Speaker 1: been a little more evil maybe he would have come
38:18
Speaker 1: up with social Darwinism himself. Um, but he didn't. Herbert
38:22
Speaker 1: Spencer did, and it kind of took off like a rocket,
38:25
Speaker 1: this idea like yeah, wait a minute, wait a minute,
38:27
Speaker 1: wait a minute, we don't need to pay taxes anymore,
38:29
Speaker 1: we don't need to tithe. We can just you know,
38:32
Speaker 1: let the poor die in the streets. It's social Darwinism,
38:35
Speaker 1: survival of the fittest. We don't have to feel guilt
38:38
Speaker 1: for not taking care of these other people any longer.
38:41
Speaker 1: The survival of this they weren't meant to be. And
38:43
Speaker 1: basically they replaced God's will with nature's will in there
38:50
Speaker 1: the in explaining the cruelty of the world, you know,
38:55
Speaker 1: and um, like I said, it took off. It became
38:58
Speaker 1: what what uh we call the eugenics movement very quickly. Yeah,
39:03
Speaker 1: which was the idea that the government would actually get
39:06
Speaker 1: involved in weeding out the weaker uh parts of society. Yeah,
39:12
Speaker 1: because you don't have to wait around for revolution to
39:14
Speaker 1: do this. We can speed it up by picking out
39:17
Speaker 1: the weakest and and exterminating them, or at the very
39:20
Speaker 1: least letting them exterminate themselves by only breeding. Uh. You know,
39:25
Speaker 1: the the Boys from Brazil. Yeah, I finally saw half
39:30
Speaker 1: of that movie. I can't tell you how surprised I
39:33
Speaker 1: was there. Surprised I was to see Steve Guttenberg. Oh
39:37
Speaker 1: Goods was one of the kids, wouldn't he He was
39:39
Speaker 1: like the first one. Yeah, yeah, godd I forgot about that.
39:42
Speaker 1: Oh wait a minute, he was one of the kids
39:43
Speaker 1: from the experiment. No, he wasn't. He was like the journalist.
39:47
Speaker 1: It's like blowing the cover off of this whole thing.
39:50
Speaker 1: I haven't seen him a long time. Yeah, I know.
39:52
Speaker 1: It's creepy though. So Yeah. Possibly gave birth to eugenics,
39:56
Speaker 1: which we should say obviously, Um, the Nazis loved, and
40:00
Speaker 1: they used that to rationalize the extermination of the Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, epileptics,
40:06
Speaker 1: the mentally handicapped, the blind, everybody, Um, guys who smelled
40:11
Speaker 1: like me. Yeah, it would have been in big trouble. Um.
40:15
Speaker 1: But prior to the Nazis doing this, Uh, the United States, Indiana, Georgia,
40:23
Speaker 1: all sorts of other states forced sterilization on uh people
40:28
Speaker 1: of similar stature. Um. And actually Adolf Hitler, Well, Germany
40:35
Speaker 1: had its own sterilization program as well. But Adolf Hitler
40:38
Speaker 1: was apparently well aware of what was going on in
40:40
Speaker 1: America and um was a pretty big fan of it.
40:43
Speaker 1: And if, um, you don't believe me, go back and
40:46
Speaker 1: listen to our episode. Um, is it legal to sterilize addicts?
40:52
Speaker 1: Because it's still going on today? Yeah? So what about
40:56
Speaker 1: this deathbed recan have you ever heard that? I have?
40:59
Speaker 1: Not true? Apparently so, he supposedly said on his deathbed, basically,
41:05
Speaker 1: I take it all back. Yeah, I wish I hadn't
41:07
Speaker 1: e ever said this. It's not true. You know, God
41:11
Speaker 1: is God is good. God's the one. And a woman
41:14
Speaker 1: from New England named Lady Hope claimed that she was
41:19
Speaker 1: there and took this confession and his both his daughter
41:24
Speaker 1: and his son, who were both at his side while
41:27
Speaker 1: he died. He said, this lady was not at his deathbed.
41:30
Speaker 1: She never came to our house. Uh, and she had
41:33
Speaker 1: absolutely no influence on our father's way of looking or
41:37
Speaker 1: judgment or opinions at all. He never recanted to the end.
41:40
Speaker 1: He was an ardent supporter of natural selection. Yeah, that's
41:45
Speaker 1: a pretty good idea, though, if you're a creationist, well,
41:48
Speaker 1: I mean to make up that story. The father of
41:50
Speaker 1: evolution even changed his mind on his deathbed. If you
41:53
Speaker 1: look up today on the internet, like, um, I think
41:57
Speaker 1: darwin deathbed even will bring up like creationist website after
42:01
Speaker 1: creationist website that use it to support their claims. Oh really,
42:06
Speaker 1: but it's bunk. It's it was debunked right afterwards. And chuck,
42:10
Speaker 1: let me say one more thing about social Darwinism. Um.
42:14
Speaker 1: This idea, although in a very cold calculated sense it
42:18
Speaker 1: might make sense, it doesn't appear in humanity's history. In fact,
42:24
Speaker 1: there's evidence UM from up to five thousand years ago
42:28
Speaker 1: of severely disabled people fossils, their fossils, their remains being
42:34
Speaker 1: found UM where they could not possibly have lived to
42:38
Speaker 1: the age they lived to without being cared for by
42:40
Speaker 1: their community. So this idea that you know, in a
42:43
Speaker 1: more primitive state. We just you know, left people to
42:47
Speaker 1: to die out in the weather because they couldn't keep up.
42:50
Speaker 1: It doesn't hold water. Yeah, it's very comforting that. So
42:54
Speaker 1: that means we were innately have compassion as a species.
42:58
Speaker 1: I would guess that. Yeah, that's what I like. I
43:01
Speaker 1: think it's one of the things that makes us human, agreed,
43:04
Speaker 1: But not just us. No other species have compassion, So um,
43:09
Speaker 1: maybe we should. Uh, why don't you play us out
43:12
Speaker 1: with a little bit of Darwin Man. Yeah, the last
43:16
Speaker 1: paragraph of the Origin of the Species, to me, is
43:19
Speaker 1: one of the most beautiful things I ever written, So
43:21
Speaker 1: I'm gonna read it. It is interesting to contemplate an
43:25
Speaker 1: entangled bank, and he's talking about his home in Kent
43:29
Speaker 1: that pats of grass. Well, now all of it. Uh,
43:33
Speaker 1: It is interesting to contemplate and entangled bank clothed with
43:36
Speaker 1: many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes,
43:39
Speaker 1: with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through
43:42
Speaker 1: the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms,
43:47
Speaker 1: so different from each other and dependent on each other
43:49
Speaker 1: in so complex of manner, have all been produced by
43:52
Speaker 1: laws acting around us. These laws taken in the largest sense,
43:56
Speaker 1: being growth with reproduction inheritance, which is almost implied by
44:00
Speaker 1: reproduction variability, from the indirect and direct action of the
44:03
Speaker 1: external conditions of life, and from use and disuse. A
44:07
Speaker 1: ratio of increase so high is to lead to a
44:10
Speaker 1: struggle for life, and as a consequence to natural selection,
44:14
Speaker 1: entailing divergence of character and the extinction of less improved forms. Thus,
44:19
Speaker 1: from the war of nature, from famine and death, the
44:22
Speaker 1: most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely
44:26
Speaker 1: the production of the higher animals, directly follows Uh. There
44:29
Speaker 1: is grandeur in this view of life, with its several
44:32
Speaker 1: powers having been originally breathed into a few forms, or
44:35
Speaker 1: into one. That's where he's kind of skirting around things,
44:39
Speaker 1: and that whilst this planet has gone cycling on according
44:43
Speaker 1: to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning,
44:46
Speaker 1: endless forms, most beautiful and most wonderful have been and
44:50
Speaker 1: are being evolved. Good stuff, Chuck, not me, both of you.
44:58
Speaker 1: I felt like it was in our Halloween. Up as
45:00
Speaker 1: it again? Oh yeah, yeah, it was good. Chuck. Don't
45:03
Speaker 1: think me, Chuck's I can just read you got anything else?
45:06
Speaker 1: Got nothing else? I think that was a fine way
45:08
Speaker 1: to end this one. Um, if you want to learn
45:10
Speaker 1: more about Charles Darwin, the man uh and his ideas,
45:14
Speaker 1: you can type Darwin into the search bar at how
45:17
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. It should bring up a whole
45:19
Speaker 1: bunch of articles, some of which we will record into podcasts. Yeah,
45:23
Speaker 1: or that movie creation is really good, or if you're
45:25
Speaker 1: in the documentaries, Um, there are tons of them. The
45:28
Speaker 1: BBC has got like a dozen. Oh yeah, they love
45:31
Speaker 1: him there sure. Uh Well, since I said uh, search bar,
45:35
Speaker 1: I probably did, it's time for listening before the mail.
45:42
Speaker 1: There's a quick correction. In our Kent State episode, we
45:46
Speaker 1: said Mussolini had his brown shirts. Yeah they're the black shirts. Duh, No, biggie.
45:53
Speaker 1: It's the presence of all color, not the presence of
45:55
Speaker 1: some colors brownison, new black anyway? Is that right? Oranges?
46:00
Speaker 1: All right? I'm gonna call this uh amputee uh ampt
46:06
Speaker 1: like ampute comma ampute. Hey, guys, been listening for a
46:11
Speaker 1: couple of years now and really enjoy it. As a
46:12
Speaker 1: sixty year old woman who had to right leg amputated
46:15
Speaker 1: above the knee in nineteen sixty nine due to cancer,
46:18
Speaker 1: I was especially interested in that podcast. First, I want
46:21
Speaker 1: to correct one off hand comment which he stated that
46:24
Speaker 1: being an empt probably becomes the focus of your life,
46:27
Speaker 1: not always. In my case, being an ampute did not
46:29
Speaker 1: become the focus. In fact, occasionally friends forget that I
46:33
Speaker 1: am an ampute. Now I consider it a compliment. Um.
46:37
Speaker 1: As you said, life isn't over because the person becomes
46:39
Speaker 1: an ampute. I was married for twenty years. I went
46:42
Speaker 1: to graduate school for my master's degree in counseling psychology.
46:45
Speaker 1: Now two wonderful grown children, worked from the age of
46:48
Speaker 1: fourteen to fifty five, with time off for raising kids,
46:51
Speaker 1: and attend to graduate school, and have been able to
46:53
Speaker 1: travel quite a bit. I've been lucky not to have
46:55
Speaker 1: experienced fan of pain. I have always had, and have
46:59
Speaker 1: been told by my doctors will always have phantom feeling
47:02
Speaker 1: though it feels I know, uh, it feels as though
47:06
Speaker 1: my amputated leg is present but asleep, sort of a benign,
47:10
Speaker 1: prickly feeling. The feeling quickly faded into the background, and
47:14
Speaker 1: I only notice it now when I'm thinking about it.
47:17
Speaker 1: You may be interested also to know that the artificial
47:19
Speaker 1: leg I received in nineteen sixty nine was literally a
47:22
Speaker 1: wooden leg from the knee down. I am now in
47:26
Speaker 1: my fourth press prestesis. I thought she's gonna say, like
47:30
Speaker 1: an old Bessie still with me? Not now. I'm now
47:34
Speaker 1: on my fourth procesis and they get better and better.
47:36
Speaker 1: My current leg is very high tech and impressive. It
47:39
Speaker 1: can make coffee. That is from Denise. Uh slat slatting
47:44
Speaker 1: grin awesome from Arcada, Arcata, California. Nice, not Arcadia. That's
47:50
Speaker 1: northern California, A R C A T A. Thanks Denise.
47:54
Speaker 1: She sounds like a very well adjusted person. Uh, and
47:57
Speaker 1: we appreciate you writing in calling us out on that.
48:00
Speaker 1: I hope you still have old Betty on the shelf
48:01
Speaker 1: somewhere at least it's Betsy Chuck Betsy. Yeah, I would
48:04
Speaker 1: keep it, just got it carved into this side, you know. Um.
48:09
Speaker 1: Thanks for writing in, and if any of you out
48:12
Speaker 1: there want to write in, share your story. We love
48:16
Speaker 1: hearing them. We're pretty much like the central clearinghouse for
48:19
Speaker 1: people's stories. So bring him to us. We will disseminate
48:23
Speaker 1: them as best we can. You can hang out with
48:26
Speaker 1: us on Twitter, s y s K podcast. You can
48:29
Speaker 1: hang out with us on Facebook dot com slash stuff.
48:32
Speaker 1: You should know you can send us an email to
48:35
Speaker 1: Stuff Podcasts at Discovery dot com. Check out the Stuff
48:38
Speaker 1: You Should Know Television Network on our YouTube channel Josh
48:42
Speaker 1: and Chuck, and as always, hang out with us on
48:45
Speaker 1: our home on the web, Stuff You Should Don't dot
48:49
Speaker 1: count for more on this and thousands of other topics.
48:57
Speaker 1: Is it how Stuff Works dot com