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Will we soon be extinct? · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff you should know from house stuff works
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast You've got Josh,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: You've got Chuck Here, we're a couple of writers from
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. Right, Chuck, that's right, so Chuck, Yes,
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  Speaker 1: are you familiar with any Turkish authors? I've heard this one. Um,
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  Speaker 1: what's the punchline? There's no punch line. Oh, that's a
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  Speaker 1: real question. Now. I don't know if the Turkish authors.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: I didn't either until I was reading an article to
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  Speaker 1: Day about a Turkish author who writes in the name
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  Speaker 1: Haroon Yahiah. Yeah, I believe that's how it's pronounced, and
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  Speaker 1: maybe butchering. Yet my Turkish is a little rusty. Um,
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  Speaker 1: but Mr Yahia recently offered ten trillion Turkish lira, which
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  Speaker 1: is about eight trillion dollars. It's not one of those
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  Speaker 1: upside down things. It's about point eight um point eight
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  Speaker 1: Turkish lyric to the dollars last time I checked. Um
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  Speaker 1: to anyone who can provide definitive fossil evidence of evolution. Wow, yes,
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  Speaker 1: that's a lot of money. What's his motive? His motive?
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  Speaker 1: He's an outspoken creationism creationist crea. He's an outspoken creationism misted.
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  Speaker 1: That's in the word now um and uh he he
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  Speaker 1: is so vehemently opposed to Have you heard of Richard Dawkins. Okay,
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  Speaker 1: Dawkins has a website and uh, you know he's a
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  Speaker 1: zoologist who's a huge evolutionary theorist. He actually believes that
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  Speaker 1: we're nothing more than a vehicle for our genes. That's all.
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  Speaker 1: We are, just big bags of flesh and our genes
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  Speaker 1: are really in control. Um So he's a huge, huge evolutionist.
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  Speaker 1: Um and uh mr Yahiah got the um got Dawkins
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  Speaker 1: website band in Turkey, So really if you go to Turkey,
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  Speaker 1: you can't get unto Richard Dawkins dot com or what
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  Speaker 1: dot ceo dot uk or whatever. Um So, he's he's
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  Speaker 1: really kind of he thinks evolutionary theory is false and
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  Speaker 1: it's not correct. So he's sort of ingested throwing out
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  Speaker 1: this huge sum of money because he claimed he doesn't
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  Speaker 1: think anyone can actually prove this right. Yeah. I I
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  Speaker 1: didn't get the impression that he is a trillionaire. I
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  Speaker 1: don't know how many trillionaires there are. And it sounds
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  Speaker 1: like a smart alec to me, kind of a smart
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  Speaker 1: Alec sure, but he was pretty specific. He said that
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  Speaker 1: he wanted an intermediate form fossil. And this is like
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  Speaker 1: an animal that is clearly um a species that is
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  Speaker 1: the the connecting species between one and another, like UM,
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  Speaker 1: some fossil that that links us humans to frogs. Because
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  Speaker 1: on the tree of life, we all, if you go
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  Speaker 1: back far enough, are related. Everything. Every species on Earth
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  Speaker 1: came from some little strand of RNA in the primordial
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  Speaker 1: soup here on Earth billions of years ago. Right, That's
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  Speaker 1: what I believe. That's that's what a lot of people.
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  Speaker 1: But the fossil record, which is this UM, this this
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  Speaker 1: record of all the fossils, all the um sedimentary layers,
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  Speaker 1: all this stuff over the last five and fifty million
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  Speaker 1: years UM is admittedly spotty. The history of our planet.
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  Speaker 1: It is. It is. It's a it's a it is.
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  Speaker 1: So you go and take an nice sample, you know,
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  Speaker 1: when you go down far enough and you reach a
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  Speaker 1: point where no one is sampled yet that gets added
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  Speaker 1: to the fossil record. It paints this whole picture of
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  Speaker 1: the evolution of life on Earth. Depending on what you believe,
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  Speaker 1: everything may have been placed there. That's another theory. Okay,
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  Speaker 1: So UM we're still trying to figure out if evolution
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  Speaker 1: occurs like consistently over a long period of time, which
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  Speaker 1: is called phyletic gradualism, or it could be in short.
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  Speaker 1: First is the competing theory, which is punctuated equilibrium. So
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  Speaker 1: it's still like I said, it's spotty, but it does
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  Speaker 1: have its uses. What uses, I'll give you a use
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  Speaker 1: to a chuck uh. Last year, October of two thousand seven, uh,
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  Speaker 1: some British researchers came up or where they published a
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  Speaker 1: study that where they used the fossil record and compared
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  Speaker 1: it to global climates over a five twenty million year period,
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  Speaker 1: because we have what climate information in the fossil record
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  Speaker 1: as well, And what they found was that in times
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  Speaker 1: of warm global temperatures like we have now, I think
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  Speaker 1: the mean global temperature, which is land and ocean average
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  Speaker 1: temperatures put together, it's about fifty four degrees fifty six
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  Speaker 1: degrees ferret height, which is about which historically we're in.
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  Speaker 1: It's a greenhouse period, which is what we're in now. Traditionally,
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  Speaker 1: when the Earth has seen greenhouse periods, mass extinction has
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  Speaker 1: taken place. So the question we're forced to explore is
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  Speaker 1: will we soon be extinct, right, which if you look
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  Speaker 1: at the history of our planet, there's you know, there's
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  Speaker 1: a case for that. And if we're not extinct, certain
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  Speaker 1: uh organisms on our planet might become extinct, which could
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  Speaker 1: lead to the domino effect and eventually we might be
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  Speaker 1: extinct after all. It is very true. Um, there's one
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  Speaker 1: case in point a mass extinction, the worst one, apparently
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  Speaker 1: on the fossil record, happened at the end of the
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  Speaker 1: Permian period. I believe two fifty one million years ago
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  Speaker 1: of all the species on Earth died out like all
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  Speaker 1: at once. I read. When I read that, I was
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  Speaker 1: just blown away. I mean, can you imagine if all
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  Speaker 1: of a sudden it was like, you know, humans, dogs, cats,
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  Speaker 1: and yeah, mosquitoes and maybe a cockroach something like that,
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  Speaker 1: with all the rest just gone. You know, you didn't
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  Speaker 1: see anything when you went outside, right with, humans wouldn't
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  Speaker 1: last long if that were the case. No, because we
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  Speaker 1: require biodiversity exactly you want to tell them about biodiversity. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: I can speak a little bit about that. You know,
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  Speaker 1: the Earth basically, Josh is like just a big machine
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  Speaker 1: and if you were compared to like a car engine,
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  Speaker 1: each each little part has its own function. And if
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  Speaker 1: one you know, nut on the car engine goes off,
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  Speaker 1: that leads to something else to break and something else
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  Speaker 1: to break in. And the earth is kind of like
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  Speaker 1: that as well. Um, there are no unnecessary parts. Everything
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  Speaker 1: is important. Even even if looking at a car engine
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  Speaker 1: you don't really understand, you know, what this does or
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  Speaker 1: what that does, It's still essential. It was put there
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  Speaker 1: for a reason. If you'll, you know, excuse the comparison,
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  Speaker 1: excuse thanks. Uh so, I know when one example you
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  Speaker 1: use was a nitrogen in your article if you wanted
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  Speaker 1: to enlighten some folks, what I love enlightening folks. You're ready, folks,
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  Speaker 1: let's do this. So Um, nitrogen basically is present in
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  Speaker 1: the soil. It's it's an essential food for crops or crops, right. Um.
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  Speaker 1: We we've learned to harness wild crops to to be
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  Speaker 1: produced under conditions we like corn um and you know,
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  Speaker 1: we can control how many grow and how well it
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  Speaker 1: grows in that kind of thing. But really, ultimately, none
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  Speaker 1: of this would work if it wasn't for the nitrogen
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  Speaker 1: present in the soil. And we can add nitrogen, but
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  Speaker 1: it occurs naturally in the soil through like worms digesting
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  Speaker 1: you know, all sorts of different microbs that kind of thing. Um,
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  Speaker 1: and the microbs themselves are involved in digesting things, and
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  Speaker 1: they what they put out is a waste product in
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  Speaker 1: many cases is nitrogen which feeds the crops which feed us. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: so I mean the lowly worm or the even lowlier microbe, bacteria,
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  Speaker 1: things that just seems so unimportant or even threatening to us.
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  Speaker 1: We are essential life on Earth. That's that. It kind
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  Speaker 1: of goes with that machine you were talking about, the
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  Speaker 1: interrelated parts that each one's very important, even if it
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  Speaker 1: doesn't seem like it. So it with a loss of biodiversity.
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  Speaker 1: So we lose the worms, we lose a lot of
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  Speaker 1: the nitrogen in the soil. All of a sudden, our
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  Speaker 1: crops fail. So we will be effective when we're one
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  Speaker 1: way or another despite our technology. It's pretty amazing when
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  Speaker 1: you think about that. The smallest thing can have the
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  Speaker 1: the trickle effect and we may actually be able to
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  Speaker 1: survive some sort of mass extinction. I mean, we're we're
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  Speaker 1: pretty smart species. Like technically we're subtropical, you know what, right,
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  Speaker 1: And we've mastered the colder climbs by a technology like
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  Speaker 1: clothes or you know, um, tankless hot water heaters that
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  Speaker 1: kind of thing. UM. So we're supposed to be living
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  Speaker 1: kind of near the equator, UM, so we could conceivably
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  Speaker 1: survive a mass extinction we have before. Actually, supposedly about
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  Speaker 1: seventy thousand years ago, human humanity faced a an evolutionary bottleneck,
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  Speaker 1: which is where there's some a species is brought to
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  Speaker 1: the brink of extinction. So imagine it like a bottle,
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  Speaker 1: and then the bottleneck comes and you lose all that
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  Speaker 1: all that life and all those genes and UM. Basically
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  Speaker 1: the population squeezed down and they estimate that there is
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  Speaker 1: about fifteen thousand people worldwide on planet on planet Earth
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  Speaker 1: at that time because of that bottle from what number
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  Speaker 1: you know, I don't know the number, but I think
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  Speaker 1: a lot more than UM. So on the other end
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  Speaker 1: you come out. So really the evolutionary bottleneck, if the
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  Speaker 1: species survives, goes from a bottleneck to an evolutionary hourglass
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  Speaker 1: where it becomes robust again and populated. But at that
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  Speaker 1: if you go back to that bottleneck, it took a
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  Speaker 1: lot of inbreeding to get past that point. Or which
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  Speaker 1: under a theory that I have, UM explains why a
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  Speaker 1: lot of people today mouth breathe Wow, yeah, let's hear it.
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  Speaker 1: That was it. I think I think there's mouth breathers
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  Speaker 1: on planet Earth today because seventy thousand years ago it
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  Speaker 1: took a lot of inbreeding to get past our evolutionary bottleneck,
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  Speaker 1: and previously we breathe. I'd probably throw a nose guilt.
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  Speaker 1: There's no no, no, no no. I mean you know,
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  Speaker 1: you know, like you ever watched twenty four Uh I
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  Speaker 1: watched the first day? Okay, Well keep for Sutherland. He's
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  Speaker 1: a good example of a mouth breather. He breathes through
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  Speaker 1: his mouth, breathe with his mouth open. It's still a
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  Speaker 1: little slack jaw. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, Okay,
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  Speaker 1: Mr Sutherland, no offense, he doesn't listen, so um chuck.
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  Speaker 1: That's pretty much the long and short of whether or
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  Speaker 1: not we will face a mass extinction. I think it's
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  Speaker 1: entirely possible. Um. I know I've been storing water ever
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: since I wrote this. Really, in your basement, do you
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: have a bomb shelter? Um? I don't know if I
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: call it a bomb shelter. It's more like an emergency
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: bachelor pad. So you've got your Nintendo and your liquor
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: and yeah, exactly, and the water well. I got plenty
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: of that sleeping bags over. You can learn whether or
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: not you're going to die in the next couple of
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: years by reading will We Soon Be Extinct? On how
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: of other topics. Because at how stuff works dot com,
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: let us know what you think. Send an email to
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: podcast at how stuff works dot com.