Steve Brusatte (paleontologist and evolutionary biologist)

[0] Welcome, welcome to armchair expert, experts on expert.

[1] I'm Dan Shepard.

[2] I'm joined by Mr. Mouse.

[3] Hi, Mr. Shepard.

[4] How are you?

[5] I'm good.

[6] Today was great.

[7] You added a third name to your new column that's growing of guests.

[8] I did.

[9] So there's a very select few of the 400 plus episodes we've done that I call mind expansion.

[10] Uh -huh.

[11] Monica's mind expansion.

[12] Yes.

[13] And Steve Rusadi is one of these guys.

[14] He's a paleontologist, a best -selling author, and paleontology advisor on the Jurassic World Film franchise.

[15] Very cool.

[16] He had an incredibly successful book called The Rise and the Fall of the Dinosaurs.

[17] I also say we learned in this, he's also a consultant on that really cool Apple Plus dinosaur thing.

[18] Yeah.

[19] Prehistoric planet.

[20] Now, he has a new book out called The Rise and Rain of the Mammals.

[21] That's us, guys.

[22] That's us.

[23] Ding, ding.

[24] The Rise and Rain of Mammals, a new history from the Shadows of the Dinosaurs to us.

[25] This is so fascinating.

[26] This is a really incredible episode.

[27] It is.

[28] Mammals are so cool.

[29] I'm surprised we haven't had anyone like him on, but we haven't.

[30] But now we have.

[31] So shut up if you're complaining about that.

[32] You can't complain anymore.

[33] We have now.

[34] Steve Brousotti.

[35] Wondry Plus subscribers can listen to armchair expert early and add free right now.

[36] Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts.

[37] Or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcast.

[38] He's an odd chance for You adjusted well to being home?

[39] Mm -hmm.

[40] Yeah.

[41] But do you want to be back?

[42] Vacation is fun.

[43] Where are you at on Austin as a...

[44] I love it.

[45] I love it.

[46] Okay.

[47] I mean, it's just an 11 for me. Yeah, you love it.

[48] I did another four -hour spell at Barton Springs yesterday.

[49] Oh, fun.

[50] Many mikfas.

[51] Steve, have you been down to Austin?

[52] I have, yeah.

[53] It's been a while.

[54] A UT, they have a big paleontology collection.

[55] Oh, they do?

[56] Yeah.

[57] Because there have been many fossils found in Texas?

[58] Yeah, because Texas is so big.

[59] Yeah.

[60] And there's so many fossils from across the state, and it's the best public university in the state.

[61] So they have a big collection.

[62] When I was a student, I would go down there and study the fossils.

[63] Oh, no kidding.

[64] Oh, that's cool.

[65] I'm surprised you haven't done that.

[66] I'm embarrassed for you.

[67] You should be embarrassed for me. Now, also, I would imagine the climate's kind of good because it's dry as hell, so the fossil stay pretty well.

[68] Yeah, especially in West Texas.

[69] Anywhere where there's a lot of open space, and there's a lot of wind and there's a lot of erosion and stuff, that's good.

[70] So I was in New Mexico last week, and I brought some stuff.

[71] You too are time traveling.

[72] Yeah.

[73] We're just bouncing around time and space.

[74] Exactly.

[75] Are they presents or are they just visual aids?

[76] They're not presents.

[77] Okay, we can talk.

[78] Yeah, yeah, give you a present.

[79] Although in New Mexico becomes a country, they may come after you.

[80] That's okay.

[81] All right.

[82] You can handle it.

[83] So welcome, Steve.

[84] We have not had a paleontologist, shockingly, because as I'm sure you were warned, I was an anthropology major.

[85] We almost had a paleontologist on David Schwimmer.

[86] Oh, you know what's really funny.

[87] There is a real paleontologist named David Schwimmer.

[88] No way.

[89] Yes, it's his real name.

[90] He actually described a new species of Tyrannosaur about, you know, a decade and a half ago.

[91] But could you imagine you're a real paleontologist?

[92] Oh, that's the Phoebe Soros.

[93] No, I mean, this should have been, right?

[94] Oh, my God.

[95] That's simulation.

[96] But I mean, he would have got started.

[97] in paleontology probably in the 70s or 80s, you know, and he's just some guy named David Schwimmer, and then all of a sudden this show comes along.

[98] I mean, could you imagine?

[99] That is so silly.

[100] And you're right, lazy sim.

[101] Lazy simulation.

[102] Sometimes this sim gets real lazy.

[103] Yeah, I can't wait to hear Steve's opinion about the simulation, considering he's basically in the pursuit of anchoring us to reality.

[104] To the ground.

[105] Yes.

[106] So let's first prime everyone with the fact that you went to Chicago, and then he did his graduate work at Columbia.

[107] Okay.

[108] We like that.

[109] We like that.

[110] And then you're currently a professor in Edinburgh?

[111] That's right.

[112] I've been in Edinburgh for about a decade now, over in Scotland.

[113] So a very random place for somebody growing up in the cornfields of the Midwest to end up in.

[114] But it's a wonderful university, a beautiful city.

[115] My wife is English, so from a family sense, it's a great place to live too.

[116] How often are you there?

[117] How often are you here?

[118] Well, the pandemic obviously changed everything.

[119] like it did for all of us.

[120] It used to be that I would go out in the field and dig up fossils a few weeks, maybe even sometimes a month or more out of the year.

[121] But it was actually just last week.

[122] I went to New Mexico to dig up fossils for the first time in three years.

[123] Oh, my God.

[124] You know, we had a kid in between and the pandemic.

[125] So it was really nice to be back out there in the desert with the sun scorching down, just looking for fossil bones and teeth.

[126] So nowadays, I'm in Edinburgh most of the time.

[127] But I'm here able to talk to you guys because I'm in town for the Jurassic World movie premiere.

[128] Oh, my God, how fun they invited you.

[129] Well, no, he's an advisor on the films.

[130] Oh, my God.

[131] I wasn't done with his accolades.

[132] Yeah, my God, you should have got there first because, you know, I love Jurassic World.

[133] She saw the first one three times in the theater?

[134] Yeah, the first Jurassic World.

[135] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[136] Not Jurassic Park.

[137] The first Chris Pratt and Bryce Howard won in.

[138] That's right.

[139] And did you get to hang with Chris at all?

[140] Yeah, so I met Chris on the set in London.

[141] a lot of it was filmed in London.

[142] They had a really strict COVID protocols, though.

[143] They were the first big production to go back to work.

[144] And so I had to do testing for like a week beforehand to go.

[145] So I did meet Chris and Bryce Dallas Howard and Omar C. You know, on the set, I saw them film a scene, which was super cool.

[146] And then I've been seeing a lot of them over the last week.

[147] We were in London to do some stuff and then come here for this.

[148] So it's been pretty surreal.

[149] I spend most of my time teaching classes, digging up fossils.

[150] You just met Kristen and Bell on accident?

[151] Yeah, I did.

[152] I got Dax.

[153] I got Monica.

[154] meet Kristen Bell here.

[155] It's cool.

[156] So I'm milking it all and just having a lot of fun.

[157] Ultimately, for me, it's a cool thing to be able to take this very esoteric knowledge of fossils and dinosaur bones and all of this and just bring it to a different audience to use it to connect with people.

[158] Yes, and now let me lodge a public complaint against archaeology in general, which is you grow up as I did.

[159] I watch Indiana Jones.

[160] I want to find a jade mask.

[161] I want to go out there and dig for five seconds.

[162] I want to pull out like King Tutank Cummins gold bust.

[163] Conversely, then Jurassic Park comes along, and if I go dig, I want to find a T -Rex tooth or something.

[164] And then I had a fieldwork class at UCLA, and we went up to the mountains here, and we dug around for Native American Chumash remains.

[165] Quickly, I found out it is the most tedious endeavor anyone can take on, right?

[166] Did you have some illusion of it?

[167] And then get there and, wait, I'm digging down a centimeter at a time.

[168] I'm doing in situ readings every five seconds.

[169] Luckily, we are not as meticulous as archaeologists.

[170] Okay.

[171] At archaeologists, as you know, you do go centimeter by centimeter, you log everything.

[172] Now, we're meticulous, but for us to find fossils, those fossils have to be eroding.

[173] They have to be sticking out of the rock.

[174] That's the only way we can see them.

[175] There's no radar or sonar or anything we can use.

[176] Despite what they were doing at the beginning of the first Jurassic Park.

[177] Yes, they show this in the first Jurassic Park in 93.

[178] This is before you were on.

[179] This would have never happened on your watch.

[180] This was when I was nine years old and the first film came out.

[181] I knew nothing about dinosaurs.

[182] But it is true.

[183] And one of the reasons I'm here, I'm talking about the new book.

[184] So the book comes out here in June.

[185] The Rise and Rain of the Mammals.

[186] You had an enormously successful and really, really revered book.

[187] Every scientific journal and magazine called it a masterpiece.

[188] The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs.

[189] So this is a follow -up to that.

[190] You're kind of a wonder -kind.

[191] You're a wonder -kind.

[192] Because you're young.

[193] Well.

[194] And I've already lived on another continent for 10 years.

[195] I'm losing all my hair, though.

[196] I tell stories in this mammal book about how we do find the fossils and I have a bit in there about how a student found this amazing fossil in New Mexico a few years ago, the young lady named Carissa Raymond and she was just coming out of her first year of college she was brought out in the field crew and it took her several days to get her eyes tuned to what these fossils looked like but then it just clicked and she found this new species of this beaver -sized mammal that was living like 200 ,000 years after the asteroid killed the dinosaurs.

[197] Wow.

[198] Was it a megafauna?

[199] Was it like an enormous beaver?

[200] It wasn't that big.

[201] It was beaver -sized, but in the ice age, you know, the time of the La Brea Tar Pits here.

[202] I went to yesterday for the first time, which was awesome.

[203] But at that time, there were beavers that were bigger than us.

[204] As creepy and weird as that.

[205] We're going to earmark the megafauna, because I'm so fascinated by it.

[206] And then conversely, the megafauna swimming to the Channel Islands and becoming miniature.

[207] That's right, the miniature mammoths.

[208] Foster's Island principle?

[209] Yep.

[210] Okay, we're going to geek out.

[211] Before we get there, why did you get interested in this?

[212] Did you see a movie when you're a kid?

[213] I saw Jurassic Park in 93.

[214] I remember seeing it very well.

[215] I was nine years old.

[216] I was there with my dad.

[217] I was there with my two brothers.

[218] I remember the film just blowing us away.

[219] Like the special effects.

[220] Oh, they were revolutionary.

[221] Oh, they were.

[222] And I mean, you know, this is your industry.

[223] You know this better than me. But as a moviegoer at that time.

[224] But that was a paradigm shift.

[225] Whoa, like those dinosaurs.

[226] That bronosaurus is the first one you see.

[227] Oh, yeah.

[228] Sam Neal pauses and he takes off his glasses.

[229] That scene is, to me, the single most magical movie scene ever.

[230] I agree with you.

[231] It's incredible.

[232] Those dinosaurs were so unlike anything in any books of the library that we were reading, anything at the lessons in school.

[233] They were just so realistic and they were ferocious, but they were relatable.

[234] You know, they seemed like real animals.

[235] So I love the film.

[236] It didn't make me want to be a paleontologist right away, but my youngest brother, Chris, he became obsessed with dinosaurs.

[237] He turned his bedroom into a dinosaur museum, which was really a Jurassic Park museum.

[238] He gave a lot of money to Universal.

[239] You know, he bought every toy.

[240] He had my parents buy every toy and every book.

[241] So posters all over the ball.

[242] And it was really living with him for a few years.

[243] Him being this kid with this obsessive fandom of Jurassic Park, that wore me down.

[244] Little by little, I just learned so much about dinosaurs through him, just through osmosis, that when I started high school, it just kind of clicked that, whoa, I could study dinosaurs.

[245] Maybe I could make a career out of this, and it took off from there.

[246] Wait, what does your little brother do now?

[247] So he went on to study history.

[248] Like most kids, you know, he grew out.

[249] the dinosaur phase.

[250] I have a two -and -a -half -year -old and he's maybe starting to come into the face.

[251] Like, I'm trying not to pressure him too much.

[252] I want him to do his own thing, but he's starting to learn the names.

[253] He knows what T -Rex is.

[254] So he's getting there.

[255] Most kids do.

[256] Yeah, they're so fantastical.

[257] Yeah.

[258] You swap places.

[259] We swap places.

[260] But he follows, you know, all my dinosaur stuff.

[261] I'm always exchanging messages.

[262] He can't believe, you know, that I'm here in Los Angeles.

[263] I'm moving from here hanging out with Jeff Goldblum and Laura Dern.

[264] Like, my God, these are heroes, you know, especially His heroes as a kid.

[265] Is he your guest this weekend?

[266] I wish he could be.

[267] Why is he?

[268] Because he doesn't take any time off work ever.

[269] Oh, I am heartbroken.

[270] Chris, you shit the bet on this one, Chris.

[271] You fucked up.

[272] Oh, man. Okay, well, maybe they'll be a European premiere or something.

[273] Yeah, maybe when we do Jurassic Park 13 or something, they'll finally want to take a few days off of work.

[274] Oh, I'm so sad.

[275] Chris.

[276] Chris, we're mad at you, Chris.

[277] Yeah, and bigger, broader conversation.

[278] One trip on planet Earth, Chris.

[279] Let's do the things that are important.

[280] Okay, we've got to just touch in on dinosaurs before we move to mammals.

[281] Quick curiosity, have you watched this prehistoric world on Apple Plus?

[282] Yeah, I was one of the consultants on that as well.

[283] Yes, that's been in development for a decade.

[284] Wow.

[285] Those dinosaurs are absolutely stunning.

[286] They're easily the most lifelike and realistic that have ever been put on television.

[287] What prehistoric planet is is really a reboot of walking with dinosaurs.

[288] I remember that.

[289] And so it's just been rebranded a bit.

[290] John Favreau came on at Apple and worked with a great team at the BBC.

[291] And I was one of a handful of scientific consultants and there was actually a lead paleontologist consultant a guy named Darren Nash, who's a friend of mine, and he was working full -time on that series.

[292] I think it's probably the only time a paleontologist has worked full -time on a series and it really, really shows because not just the dinosaur.

[293] I mean, there's pteradactals, mammals, there's all kinds of stuff.

[294] It's the whole environment 66 million years ago.

[295] And it's absolutely beautiful television.

[296] That's a million years before, or right on the eve of the pre -Cambrian extinction, is that what it was known?

[297] It's right on the eve of, yeah, the Uncretaceous extinction, right before the asteroid hit.

[298] This is like the glory days, you know, the last summer of love.

[299] The 30s for film, yeah.

[300] They don't know what's about to hit him, but when that thing hits.

[301] Partling towards them.

[302] Yep.

[303] Okay, this is reassuring because you basically already answered my question.

[304] So I watched it with, I have a seven and nine -year -old, they're both super into dinosaurs, and we're watching it, and I was like, I'm confused.

[305] I thought everyone agreed recently that dinosaurs had feathers.

[306] So they must just said, fuck it, no one wants to see dinosaurs with feathers.

[307] Then maybe episode two or something, all of a sudden one's got feathers.

[308] And I'm like, okay, well, maybe this is completely accurate.

[309] And which ones did, which didn't?

[310] Tell me about the feathers.

[311] We're also, by the way, going to finally see feathered dinosaurs in the New Jurassic world.

[312] That's something that paleontologists like me have been wanting for a long time.

[313] And when I first met Colin Trevor, the director of the film, one of the first things he told me is, I want to put feathers on some of these dinosaurs.

[314] So that sold me to help me. Not like I needed any convincing.

[315] Sure.

[316] They could have been like, we're going to give them canes and smoking pipes.

[317] And you're like, all right, let's do this.

[318] Sure, yeah.

[319] You know, we don't have fossils that say they didn't.

[320] A lot of dinosaurs do have feathers.

[321] Today's birds evolved from dinosaurs.

[322] So the dinosaurs that were the ancestors of birds.

[323] A lot of things that you see in birds today, whether it's, you know, wings, beaks, wishbones, the way they grow really fast.

[324] first evolved in their dinosaur ancestors, and that includes feathers.

[325] It seems like most dinosaurs had some type of feather, the same way that all mammals have some type of hair.

[326] So feathers were to dinosaurs, what hair is to mammals.

[327] But of course, there's some mammals like, say, elephants, but don't have a lot of hair because they're really big and they live in warm places and they would overheat.

[328] So it was probably the same with dinosaurs.

[329] The smaller ones probably had very dense coats of feathers.

[330] The really big long neck ones might not have had any feathers at all, or if they did, they might have just been mangy little bits, you know, sticking out of the scale.

[331] So there was quite a lot of diversity, but we know a lot of this.

[332] We have actual fossils that show feathers.

[333] Yeah, so it's not guesswork.

[334] This isn't some mad hallucination of some crazy artists or whatever.

[335] We have real fossils with feathers, but they were first found in 1996.

[336] So that was three years after Jurassic Park, so horrible timing.

[337] Yeah, cut them some slack everybody.

[338] Allianologists cut them some slack.

[339] But now we have thousands of these feather -covered dinosaurs.

[340] Most of them come from China, and there were these entire ecosystems that were buried by volcanoes, almost Pompeii -style.

[341] Oh, really?

[342] Oh, my God.

[343] So are they, like, incredibly well -preserved?

[344] They're beautiful.

[345] And I've been so privileged to work in China many times with great Chinese colleagues.

[346] We've described some of these new dinosaurs.

[347] We described a new raptor dinosaur called Gen Wan Long a few years ago that has feathers all over its body.

[348] It has wings on its arms.

[349] It's all because these volcanoes just locked all that into place.

[350] It's astounding these fossils.

[351] We just learned that birds can see an ultraviolet.

[352] Could the dinosaurs see ultraviolet?

[353] That's a hard thing to prove with fossils.

[354] My guess is probably yes.

[355] We are really unique as mammals.

[356] We can see in color.

[357] I can see that really nice purple shirt you wear.

[358] Thank you.

[359] I can see Rob's black and white white socks hat over here.

[360] Got to get a white sock shout out in.

[361] There was an air cheers, by the way.

[362] Steve is from Illinois.

[363] Rob I have both, huge white socks sentences we found out in chatting.

[364] Anyway, so we can see this, but that's very unusual for a mammal.

[365] There's only a handful of mammals that can even see in color.

[366] Most mammals can't.

[367] When the matador is waving that red cloth of the bull, the bull just sees it as black and white television.

[368] And that's why most mammals are brown or gray fur colors.

[369] Birds, look at all the different feather colors birds have.

[370] And that's because they can see in so much more vibrant color.

[371] We can tell the color of dinosaur feathers.

[372] If they're well preserved, we can actually find the little pigment bubbles inside these little vessels.

[373] And we can just compare with modern -day animals.

[374] We know that these little bubbles of different sizes and shapes, house different colors of pigment.

[375] So we know that some dinosaurs were brown, black, white.

[376] We know some dinosaurs had ginger -colored feathers.

[377] Some dinosaurs had iridescent feathers that would shine in the sun like the feathers of a crow.

[378] There were camouflage patterns on dinosaurs.

[379] There were rings on their tails.

[380] So probably, yes, a lot of dinosaurs probably could have seen in ultraviolet.

[381] Wow.

[382] Okay, so when I think of mammals, I think 65 million years ago, and I'm wrong.

[383] I learned this from your book.

[384] They've been around for 200 million years or something?

[385] Yeah, you're partly wrong, Dax.

[386] You're not totally wrong.

[387] Okay.

[388] You're right in the sense that today we are in the age of mammals, right?

[389] I mean, there's 6 ,000 some species of mammals around the world.

[390] Things like blue whales are the biggest animals that have ever lived.

[391] We have huge mammals on land filling all kinds of roles.

[392] and ecosystems, all the way down to very small mammals.

[393] And of course, we are a mammal.

[394] So we are in an age of mammals.

[395] The age of mammals did start about 65 million years ago when the asteroid hit and killed off the dinosaurs.

[396] So that part is true.

[397] Mammals only got their opportunity when the dinosaurs died.

[398] I also think I was wrong in my thought process of, oh, I think of this asteroid hitting the Yucatan, and then like a light switch, everyone's dead.

[399] But now, as I'm reading this, I'm imagining that process probably took a while.

[400] Yes, it did.

[401] So this asteroid, it hit the Earth 66 million years ago.

[402] This thing was six miles wide.

[403] So imagine a rock that's the size of Mount Everest.

[404] It's like three times as wide as Manhattan.

[405] Oh, my God.

[406] I mean, a single rock.

[407] It was hurtling through the heavens, 10 times faster than a speeding bullet.

[408] Oh, my.

[409] I mean, it could have gone anywhere, right?

[410] This is just a random bit of space junk.

[411] It could have rustled the upper layers of the atmosphere and sailed right now by, but no, it made a B -line for the Earth.

[412] And it was the biggest asteroid that's hit our planet, at least in the last half a billion years.

[413] This was no normal day.

[414] In fact, it was probably the single worst day in the history of life.

[415] Because when that asteroid hit, it released more energy than one billion nuclear bombs put together.

[416] Oh, my God.

[417] If we can even imagine something like this.

[418] And then instantaneously, it caused wildfires, earthquakes, tsunamis, all kinds of things that within moments would have started to reshape the world.

[419] There was immediate chaos.

[420] And then over the course of the next day, You had all the gunk in the atmosphere.

[421] It was really hot, and all that superheated the atmosphere, turn the atmosphere into an oven.

[422] Then you had this stuff condensing down, raining down bullets of hot glass that would have pelted anything that was on the surface that wasn't hiding.

[423] Hot glass.

[424] Like a hailstorm, but with hot glass.

[425] Really quick.

[426] I know you're not a physicist or a geologist, but I'm imagining this asteroid hits so hard, there's so much heat that it creates the glass that it shoots up into the air.

[427] Yeah, it vaporizes stuff, it turns stuff to lick.

[428] that it landed in, vaporized?

[429] Yes.

[430] And then as the stuff goes into the atmosphere, some of it stays up there.

[431] Okay.

[432] If it's small enough, the rest of it falls back down.

[433] And as it falls back down, it's very hot.

[434] So it cools as it falls down.

[435] And it forms solid glass a lot of this stuff.

[436] But it would be super hot glass.

[437] So imagine a hailstorm of hot glass bullets.

[438] And so that was like the day and maybe the next day of the asteroid.

[439] Okay.

[440] Then there were longer term consequences.

[441] You had all this dust and dirt and grime and all the smoke from the fire.

[442] All this stuff went into the atmosphere.

[443] There are currents in the atmosphere, just like in a river.

[444] So this stuff circulated around the world, and it basically blocked out the sun.

[445] There were gray clouds, black clouds that would have clogged the atmosphere and blocked out the sun for probably a few years.

[446] And all the vegetation dies, the temperature cools.

[447] If you're a plant, you know, you've got to photosynthesize and make your food.

[448] You need sunlight.

[449] It's your only option.

[450] You can't go to 7 -Eleven.

[451] You cannot.

[452] You cannot.

[453] And so the forest collapsed.

[454] And as the forest collapsed, the plant -eating dinosaurs and other animals they ate plants, they didn't have any food to eat, and then the meat -eaters didn't.

[455] So ecosystems collapsed, houses of cars.

[456] So basically it was a nuclear winter scenario for probably somewhere between about three and ten years.

[457] Oh, wow.

[458] Now, when you're looking at the archaeological record and you're imagining these ribbons, the strata, is that evident when you dig down where, oh, we have this girth of fossils in this layer, And then below it, we have a much more precipitous, tiny...

[459] Yeah.

[460] In the Rise and Rain on the Mammals, the new book, I tell this story of working in New Mexico, and you see it really starkly.

[461] It has probably the best record in the world.

[462] This is up in the Four Corners region, not too far from Chaco Canyon.

[463] And it probably has the best record in the world of the last dinosaurs and then the mammals that take over.

[464] And what you see is you're walking along the rocks.

[465] You're seeing dinosaur bones everywhere.

[466] There are so many dinosaur bones in places.

[467] They're shattered and they just littered the ground.

[468] You can't help but stepping on them.

[469] So bones of T -Rex, bones of big long -neck dinosaurs, and then all of a sudden they disappear.

[470] There's gone.

[471] You notice it right away.

[472] It's just so obvious.

[473] Yeah, if you think of kind of the oldest rocks are at the bottom of the pile and then things are compiled on top, kind of like making a cake.

[474] But you can walk kind of along the rocks because they've been tilted a bit.

[475] So you can walk through the dinosaur rocks, then the dinosaurs disappear, and it's like something bizarre has happened.

[476] And then all of a sudden, you start to see a new type of fossil.

[477] You start to see all of these teeth and these jawbones of mammals, you know, things, these molar teeth, teeth with all these ridges and valleys and bumps on them that are characteristically mammal.

[478] It's like two chapters in a book or two scenes in a film that just totally different characters.

[479] They don't go together.

[480] Something happened.

[481] And the thing that happened was the asteroid hit.

[482] And there was a horrible extinction.

[483] The dinosaurs were wiped out.

[484] And a few mammals survived.

[485] And as I talk about in the book, what is amazing is that mammals almost went the way of the dinosaurs.

[486] The fossil record tells us that probably less than 10 % of mammals survive that asteroid.

[487] So circling back, Dax, to what you were saying, there were mammals that lived with the dinosaurs.

[488] Mammals actually go all the way back to the Triassic period on the supercontinent of Pangea.

[489] The first mammals lived at the same time as the first dinosaurs.

[490] They rose up together.

[491] But the dinosaurs went big, the mammals stayed in the shadows.

[492] And so for over 150 million years, you had lots of mammals living with the dinosaurs, but they were living incognito.

[493] They were never bigger than a badger for all of that time.

[494] Because the dinosaurs kept them from becoming big.

[495] But conversely, the mammals were so good at living anonymously that they kept the dinosaurs from becoming small.

[496] And if you think about it, there was never a T -Rex the size of a mouse.

[497] Even on an island or anything?

[498] There were small ones.

[499] So we work in Romania a lot, and that was an island back in the Cretaceous.

[500] And you do find dwarf dinosaurs, but they're like the sizes of cows.

[501] Right, right.

[502] Which is really small for a dinosaur, but you never see anything really dwarfed.

[503] So mammals survive for a long time, underfoot of the dinosaurs, basically coming out only at night, but they were very diverse.

[504] There were diggers and climbers and swimmers.

[505] But you mean because they didn't mate, and that's why?

[506] How is one preventing the other from...

[507] Because they can't compete.

[508] Yeah.

[509] And this is the eyesight thing.

[510] Again, I didn't know this.

[511] I learned this from your book.

[512] So because we became nocturnal, our vision changed tremendously.

[513] We lost the ability to see color because it wasn't useful.

[514] You're not going to see color at night.

[515] and that's why we lost it all, yeah.

[516] Absolutely, Monica, it's just an ecological thing.

[517] Ecosystems were kind of full at that time.

[518] The dinosaurs were filling those rolls at bigger size and there was just no room for the mammals to get bigger.

[519] But conversely, the mammals seized their opportunity and they became really good at living small.

[520] The same way today, if you try to introduce a new predator to like the African savannah or something, they'd have a hard time getting a foothole because there's already incumbents in those roles.

[521] Imagine like a fourth cat.

[522] You have lions, they can win.

[523] wander everywhere.

[524] No one's going to kill them.

[525] They bring down the big shit.

[526] Then you have leopards.

[527] They're a little bit smaller, but they have to live in trees because they can't fuck with the lions.

[528] And then cheetahs have to be able to run a bazillion miles an hour to fill their niche.

[529] You couldn't introduce one in between any of those.

[530] Exactly.

[531] I'm going to try to get your approval and I'm going to try to, out of memory, to find the five things that make a mammal.

[532] Oh, okay.

[533] Again, this is very long ago, but mammal, mammary.

[534] Yeah.

[535] We make milk.

[536] Yep.

[537] So every mammal makes milk.

[538] Viviparity.

[539] We have live births instead of laying eggs, with the exception of the shrimp.

[540] What are they?

[541] The platypus and the echidnas.

[542] They're called monotremes.

[543] Monotremes.

[544] There's only like five or six species that live today.

[545] They only live in Australia and New Zealand.

[546] They are holdovers.

[547] They are an archaic group of mammals that go all the way back to the early part of the time of the dinosaurs.

[548] And they've just so happened through good luck more than anything to have barely held on to today's world.

[549] You don't see a ton of duck billed platypus.

[550] No. No, you don't.

[551] And you certainly don't hear because they only live in Australia and Virginia and stuff.

[552] So they're so strange, but they do lay eggs.

[553] And they do have milk, but they don't actually have proper mammary glands.

[554] The mothers leak milk from their bellies.

[555] We had Viviparity.

[556] We have make milk.

[557] We have hair.

[558] We don't have feathers.

[559] We have hair.

[560] Yep.

[561] We are warm -blooded.

[562] Yep.

[563] We can regulate our own body temperature, which is a huge toll.

[564] We have to eat so much more stuff.

[565] It's a big expense.

[566] Absolutely.

[567] And then the last one.

[568] is we massacate our food.

[569] Yeah, we chew our food.

[570] We chew our food.

[571] Which is really unusual when you think about it.

[572] If you've ever seen a bird eat something, I mean, birds don't even have teeth.

[573] So birds just kind of swallow.

[574] I mean, they can cut stuff with their beat.

[575] Or if you've seen a commoto dragon need a deer.

[576] Oh, there's legs hanging out.

[577] Ew.

[578] Gross.

[579] So gross.

[580] Or a snake or something.

[581] Anaconda with a fucking copy bar traveling through it.

[582] Oh.

[583] And, you know, dinosaurs are the same way.

[584] It would have been disgusting to watch the meat.

[585] They were just kind of rip it and grip it, just chomper, you know.

[586] You flip the baseball, and grip it and rip it or go off.

[587] They would rip it and grip it.

[588] Oh, my God.

[589] But we're so different.

[590] I mean, we can move our jaws.

[591] You can go up and down.

[592] You can go side to side.

[593] You can kind of twist it.

[594] That's really unusual to do that.

[595] We also have teeth, molar teeth, pre -molar teeth, canine teeth, incisor teeth.

[596] We have all these different types of teeth.

[597] Whereas you look at a T -Rex or something, all the teeth are basically the same.

[598] Just for tearing, right, and ripping and gripping.

[599] For ripping and gripping and whatever.

[600] For us, you know, we have the little incisides.

[601] at the front of our mouths to grab onto food.

[602] We have canines to cut food.

[603] We have premolars that can hold and process food.

[604] We have molars for grinding food, mostly.

[605] And they fit together.

[606] You know, you close your jaw and your teeth, they're really tightly fit together.

[607] And that's why we're able to chew.

[608] You know, you have to have teeth of the upper jaw and the lower jaw that come together really perfectly.

[609] And there's a whole story, and I talk about it in the book, and it's far too nuanced or potentially even boring to go into here, but just how mammals change their jaws, and their teeth.

[610] Which leads to their hearing as well.

[611] Which leads to the hearing, yes.

[612] Yes.

[613] And so the benefit of that is it opens us up to much more varying diet.

[614] Is that the advantage?

[615] So really, we have like a Swiss Army knife in our jaws.

[616] We have lots of different teeth that can do different things.

[617] And then because we can chew our food so well, we can eat lots of food.

[618] We can process it.

[619] We don't have to just rely on our digestive system.

[620] We have big jaw muscles to support that.

[621] Mastoid.

[622] Exactly.

[623] Mine are wheat.

[624] Thinking about getting some filler.

[625] Here's our atrophied?

[626] Chew more gum.

[627] Oh, yeah, that's a good hat.

[628] Yeah, you know, hey, a dinosaur couldn't chew gum.

[629] Commode a fool.

[630] Commode a dragon can't chew gum.

[631] It would just fall out of their mouth.

[632] Ew, they're so stupid.

[633] That's pretty gross to think about that.

[634] Really quick.

[635] So the dinosaurs, there are obviously vegetarian dinosaurs.

[636] You have that ate plants and stuff.

[637] So those two were just tossed down the hatch.

[638] Yes.

[639] Okay.

[640] There were some, like, the duck -billed dinosaurs.

[641] dinosaurs that evolve very sophisticated jaws with thousands of teeth that packed together almost like guillotine blades and so they could cut plants that way rose of teeth i don't like that like sharks have rose yeah it's kind of like a shark and you look into the fossilized mouth of one of these dinosaurs and it is kind of creepy yeah like sci -fi when the big things coming at you and they open up and there's just teeth galore yeah okay stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare we've all been there turning to the internet to self -diagnose our inexplicable pains debilitating body aches sudden fevers and strange rashes though our minds tend to spiral to worst -case scenarios it's usually nothing but for an unlucky few these unsuspecting symptoms can start the clock ticking on a terrifying medical mystery like the unexplainable death of a retired firefighter whose body was found at home by his son except it looked like he had been cremated or the time when an entire town started jumping from buildings and seeing tigers on their ceilings.

[642] Hey listeners, it's Mr. Ballin here, and I'm here to tell you about my podcast.

[643] It's called Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries.

[644] Each terrifying true story will be sure to keep you up at night.

[645] Follow Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries wherever you get your podcasts.

[646] Prime members can listen early and ad free on Amazon Music.

[647] What's up guys?

[648] This is your girl Kiki, and my podcast is back with a new season.

[649] And let me tell you, it's too good.

[650] And I'm diving into the brains of entertainment's best and brightest, okay?

[651] Every episode, I bring on a friend and have a real conversation.

[652] And I don't mean just friends.

[653] I mean the likes of Amy Polar, Kell Mitchell, Vivica Fox.

[654] The list goes on.

[655] So follow, watch, and listen to Baby.

[656] This is Kiki Palmer on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcast.

[657] Okay, so we're pretty much relegated to the corners, the nooks and crannies.

[658] You said one was the size of, I guess, a wolverine.

[659] Yeah.

[660] Sometimes they were snatching some dinosaur eggs.

[661] Yeah.

[662] So for 150 million years, give or take, there were lots of mammals living with the dinosaurs in the Triassic, Jurassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous period.

[663] So if there was a real Jurassic Park, there'd be lots of mammals there, but they'd be so small you wouldn't see them.

[664] Now, those mammals, they did evolve a lot of cool things.

[665] By living in the shadows, they experimented with a lot of stuff.

[666] And as I mentioned, some were runners, some were climbers, some were diggers, some were diggers, some were swimmers, some could glide.

[667] There were early primitive mammals that evolved wings of skin that they used to glide.

[668] Like more sophisticated than a flying squirrel?

[669] Kind of like that.

[670] Not quite as sophisticated as a bat.

[671] Bats are the only mammals that evolve proper wings that they flap and they fly with.

[672] But all these mammals living underfoot of the dinosaurs, they were B -list characters, okay?

[673] Let's be honest, they were D -List.

[674] Maybe D -List, but there was one maybe that was B -List.

[675] And that's the one you mentioned.

[676] There's a thing from China called Repenamus.

[677] It lived about 125 million years ago, back in the Cretaceous period, it was about the size of a badger or a wolverine.

[678] It's the biggest mammal we know of that live with the dinosaurs.

[679] And when its fossil skeleton was found, it was so well preserved, there was a last meal inside of its stomach.

[680] Okay.

[681] And that last meal was a baby dinosaur.

[682] No. Yeah.

[683] So there were some mammals that would have eaten dinosaurs.

[684] Some of our ancestors, way back, hundreds of millions of years ago, would have actually eaten dinosaurs.

[685] Good for us.

[686] Absolutely.

[687] God, we're tenacious.

[688] Here's another thing I think of when I'm watching the Apple show that you worked on is my understanding of the current animals, the bigger animals, non -birds, that are cold -blooded.

[689] They have to generally get their body temperature up to get busy.

[690] Yes.

[691] Oh, to mate.

[692] No, to get out and move around.

[693] Just to do anything, really.

[694] That's what you see, like, snakes sunning themselves on paths and lizards sunned themselves.

[695] They're trying to get their body temperature.

[696] Right.

[697] So those dinosaurs, they're all so active when I see, did they, too, have to, like, warm up in the morning?

[698] Because it seems like we would have had a niche in that as well.

[699] This is a huge debate about dinosaurs.

[700] And this debate's been going on for decades now about what was their metabolism like?

[701] Were they cold -blooded like reptiles?

[702] Were they warm -blooded like mammals?

[703] Were they somewhere in between?

[704] Where some dinosaurs cold -blooded and other ones warm -blooded?

[705] People have gone back and forth.

[706] It's ultimately really difficult scientific question to answer because you can't just stick a thermometer in a T -Rex, you know, and see how his body temperature changes over the course of a day.

[707] So it's tough.

[708] And there's no real organ preservation ever, is there?

[709] Very, very rarely.

[710] But what there is is that fossil bones and fossil teeth are an archive.

[711] They're a chemical archive.

[712] And there's certain chemicals, certain types of elements that only form or form in particular ways depending on the body temperature of an animal.

[713] Different chemical bonds can form differently, warmer temperatures versus cool temperatures.

[714] So there's a whole field of what's called geochemistry, and that's being marshaled to understand the physiology of dinosaurs.

[715] And just about 10 days ago, there was a big new research paper that was published by some very, very young, very bright paleontologists led by a young researcher named Yasmina Weeman that use these geochemical techniques to argue that most dinosaurs probably were properly warm -blooded.

[716] And then some reversed and became more cold -blooded because, as you say, It's very expensive.

[717] To be warm -blooded, to have a high body temperature, to keep that body temperature constant, no matter the season, no matter the time of day.

[718] You have an internal furnace, basically, and you've got to feed that furnace, and you've got to feed that furnace oxygen, and you've got to feed that furnace energy from food.

[719] So you've got to eat a lot more, and you've got to breathe in a lot more oxygen to be warm -blooded compared to a cold -blooded animal.

[720] Yeah.

[721] Now, this is the part of every podcast, where I interrupt this incredible flow you have going, to say that it just occurred to me that he looks like young Jerry Seinfeld.

[722] I want you to look for it.

[723] I see it.

[724] Is it the hairline?

[725] No, no, it's the smile.

[726] It's the smile on the nose.

[727] It's incredible.

[728] It's really there.

[729] There's an essence.

[730] That's a compliment.

[731] I'm a big Seinfeld fan.

[732] Growing up, I mean, oh my God.

[733] And yeah, now the Seinfeld's on Netflix in the UK.

[734] Oh, you're in heaven.

[735] Yeah, it's great.

[736] So we're big fans.

[737] So I take that as a huge compliment.

[738] Okay, wonderful.

[739] Jerry, if you're listening, you're into dinosaurs, into mammals, into fossils.

[740] Come over to Edinburgh.

[741] Or take me in your car if you're still doing that show.

[742] Yeah, right?

[743] That's too.

[744] That's his new show, paleontologists and cars getting coffee.

[745] I am drinking a coffee.

[746] You're in training right now.

[747] Okay, I also want to point out right now.

[748] I imagine someone might think, oh, this is a science book.

[749] I don't want to read this.

[750] This is a very beautiful, story -driven, well -written book.

[751] This is like a fun novel that you're reading.

[752] I appreciate that.

[753] I think it's wonderful because I do think that traditionally, historically, conventionally, science doesn't leap into pop culture because the cohesion of great writer and also scientific mind, it's not just the most natural layup.

[754] Look at the success Michael Crichton had doing it because he understood it and he was an incredible writer.

[755] You had huge hits in this realm.

[756] So it's a rare thing, but I see it on the rise and I'm really encouraged by it because everyone would like to know this stuff.

[757] It's just sometimes not very approachable.

[758] Yeah, daunting.

[759] Okay, let's talk marsupials.

[760] Yeah, okay.

[761] Let's talk about marsupials.

[762] Some other kind of weird mammals that are still with us, and actually quite a lot of them are still with them.

[763] They're weird.

[764] They kind of have viviparity, but not really.

[765] Walk us through that.

[766] Yeah, those of us that live here in North America, there's only one marsupial that we're probably familiar with, and that's the possum.

[767] And I don't know, do they actually live out here?

[768] Oh, like motherfuckers.

[769] Honestly, the animals you're going to see if you live in L .A. with regularity are opossums.

[770] I hate that it's O possums.

[771] Yeah, I just say possum.

[772] I say possum.

[773] That's what we called him growing up.

[774] Let's let be hoity about.

[775] A possum got into the house.

[776] Get out the broom.

[777] Not an old possum.

[778] You're going to see opossums, you're going to see coyotes, and you're going to see some raccoons.

[779] But you're definitely, for me, opossums are the most likely.

[780] So, you know them well.

[781] Those terrible needle teeth and skin tail.

[782] They look reptilian, actually.

[783] And that is because it's not that marsupials are primitive mammals.

[784] They're actually quite advanced.

[785] And we talk about that in a second, the way they give birth.

[786] But they do have a lot of vestiges of that almost reptilian ancestry.

[787] It's not that mammals evolve from reptiles.

[788] You know, reptiles are a different.

[789] branch on the family tree.

[790] But the deepest ancestor of mammals, which I talk about in the new book, was an animal, probably about a foot long.

[791] It was covered in scales.

[792] Its legs and arms stuck out sideways.

[793] It was slow moving.

[794] It was cold -blooded.

[795] So that was the ultimate mammal ancestor.

[796] Things like possums, you can still sense that deep evolutionary legacy of 325 million years ago.

[797] They're just kind of creepy to me, possums.

[798] Especially if you see a mother possum with 10 babies attached to her, which is just a weird thing, because that's not how we, we're placental mammals.

[799] Most mammals alive today are placental mammals.

[800] They're the ones that give live birth to well -developed young.

[801] So humans are an example, elephants, bats, whales, cats.

[802] We're the worst example, though, right?

[803] We're born very premature.

[804] Yes, and our pregnancies are very interesting and very unusual because we have such big heads, and that's very hard to pass through a birth canal because we've evolved these big brains.

[805] So a lot of human evolution was constrained.

[806] by that.

[807] So we evolved to spit us out way too early.

[808] It's interesting it didn't push the evolution for women to have like hips twice as big.

[809] Like why don't we see that?

[810] Well, they do in pregnancy.

[811] They expand.

[812] They expand.

[813] But I'm saying like two X. Evolution is interesting.

[814] We can often say why didn't something evolve?

[815] I mean, why is no animal ever evolved wheels to move around or something wheel.

[816] Wheels, what a great one.

[817] But you know, the mutations have never happened.

[818] And these are fun questions though.

[819] When I teach my classes and work with students, these are the kind of things we just love to the fat over.

[820] Like, why did evolution never do this?

[821] Yeah.

[822] One, I'm hung up on a lot because I shouldn't bore you with this, but increasingly I think of some of the systems that evolved, and I almost, mind you, of course I believe in it, but almost I don't.

[823] I just try to walk through the process.

[824] What was the mechanism by which we started having two sets of teeth?

[825] What's implicit in there is that some human had a mutation where they had a second set of teeth behind the first set.

[826] That's a huge mutation.

[827] That kind of thing boggles me. There's no inching your way to two sets of teeth.

[828] Well, I think there is.

[829] Tell me. All mammals today that have teeth have that system.

[830] You have one set of baby teeth and one set of adult teeth, and that's it.

[831] Now, that's very different from, say, a Komodo dragon or a lizard.

[832] They replace teeth throughout their lives.

[833] They're always growing new teeth.

[834] Change them like underwear.

[835] Exactly.

[836] But, you know, sharks are like that and so on.

[837] Dinosaurs were like that.

[838] T -Rexamines were like that.

[839] had tooth after tooth after tooth.

[840] Oh, wow.

[841] And the earliest mammals, or at least their forerunners, also had that system.

[842] But then, here's what happened.

[843] When mammals started to bite really strong and started to kind of chew their food, our teeth fit together so snugly.

[844] You need that to chew food.

[845] You need the upper teeth to meet the lower teeth.

[846] That can't really work if you're constantly replacing your teeth throughout life.

[847] Just think about it.

[848] If I just lost one of my molars...

[849] Oh, even when you go to the dentist and they've made a mold and they put it in, they still got to grind.

[850] and shit to make it work.

[851] If you're always replacing your teeth and you always randomly have a few teeth in each jaw and a few gaps, you just can't chew.

[852] You're always going to be chewing with like two teeth that are most pronounced.

[853] And that's just not at all efficient.

[854] So when mammals started to change their teeth so they could chew more, that's when the two -set thing came in.

[855] Now, how exactly it happened with which mutations?

[856] I don't know.

[857] Maybe the developmental biologists would have a better idea.

[858] Yeah, because there's no in -between.

[859] No, but the in -between probably had something to do with milk.

[860] So milk is part of the story too.

[861] So once you start seeing animals in the fossil record that only have two sets of teeth, you can be pretty confident that they're drinking milk.

[862] I saw this with the birth of my own son, and you've probably seen it with your kids.

[863] When they're born, they don't have a full mouth of teeth.

[864] No, no. How creepy would that be?

[865] Your baby comes out with a full mouth of teeth.

[866] You know, a lot of mammals, when they're born, don't have any teeth.

[867] They just have gum, so they can't chew at all.

[868] Right.

[869] They need to drink milk.

[870] And then those baby teeth come in, but the baby teeth, they come in at different rates.

[871] They sure do.

[872] and they'll fall out at different rates.

[873] And so it's not really till that full adult set is in that mammals can chew properly, but milk is a way that mammals could get that double set of teeth, taking all those teeth that would replace forever, turning it into a set of baby teeth and adult teeth that could chew really well.

[874] Milk is a very important part of that because it allows you, even if you only have a few teeth or whatever, to still get nutrition.

[875] That, I think, is the intermediate.

[876] I think having a mother being able to basically just give you food, That allows you to get nutrition, even if you can't chew well.

[877] You just pulled me back from the creationist model, back into the evolutionary.

[878] Thank God for you.

[879] He's been living in this space for a little bit, and it's been startling.

[880] Well, this seems too magical at some point.

[881] You're kind of like, no, I understand the proposed mechanism, but also what?

[882] It's so miraculous.

[883] It is.

[884] And the thing to remember is just that the earth is so old.

[885] It's four and a half a billion years old.

[886] And over those stretches of time, even tiny things, tiny mutations can happen.

[887] They can filter through.

[888] Well, the famous thing is the geological calendar.

[889] If you put all of Earth's lifespan onto a current calendar, humans would show up at 11 .59 p .m. on December 31st, even later than that.

[890] Yeah, we are just at the tail end.

[891] We're a fart.

[892] Well, yeah, even if that, we are nothing.

[893] I'm surprised women are evolved to have better immune systems to take care of their kids.

[894] Because in a pandemic situation, I've been thinking about it so much.

[895] When the whole family gets it, the mom's.

[896] still has to be able to take care of the child.

[897] Yeah, especially if she's pregnant at the time, too, with another kid.

[898] It's something I know very little about is immunity.

[899] Of course, like many people, I've learned a lot more about it, just reading things during the pandemic.

[900] I won't pretend to be an expert, though, so I'll punt that question because I couldn't possibly give you a scientifically, you know, accurate answer.

[901] But it is very interesting.

[902] And there's a lot about all these different biological systems working together.

[903] And we're learning more and more about developmental biology, how these mutations work, like in any field of science.

[904] It's just progressing so rapidly.

[905] The only mammal I know a lot about is primates.

[906] So lemurs present themselves 65 million years ago, our first primates, which we are descendant from and are primates.

[907] Can you walk me through our growth?

[908] So there's this extinction, it opens up this huge world to us, and how quickly do we start getting big?

[909] This is, to me, a remarkable story.

[910] This is one of the great stories of evolution.

[911] And we can circle back a bit to what we were talking about when the asteroid hit, about 75 % of species died.

[912] Three out of every four species could not endure.

[913] And most of them probably died pretty quickly.

[914] We can tell from the fossil record that within about 20 ,000 years, the dinosaurs are gone, except for birds.

[915] And it seems like a lot of dinosaurs were just too big, and they couldn't hide very easily.

[916] They had very particular diets, and it took them a long time to grow from a baby into an adult.

[917] These are all handicaps when suddenly just the earth becomes this fickle, casino, basically.

[918] It's like a hand -of -cards scenario.

[919] Dinosaurus just were holding a bad hand of cards.

[920] And some mammals were holding a good hand of cards.

[921] They were small.

[922] That means they could reproduce really quickly.

[923] They could grow from a baby to an adult really quickly.

[924] They could hide really easily.

[925] They could burrow.

[926] Just escape in a burrow.

[927] Weight out the glass bullet rain.

[928] And they had very omnivorous diet, some of these mammals.

[929] They could eat all kinds of food because of the teeth, because those teeth were so adaptable.

[930] Now, with that said, it does look like about 90 % of mammals died when the asteroid hit.

[931] So we almost went the way of the dinosaurs.

[932] And thankfully, we had some ancestor that stared down the asteroid and somehow made it through because it was small and adaptable and could eat lots of food.

[933] So in the rise and rain of the mammals, I do the analogy of like imagine a game of asteroid roulette.

[934] You have a gun with 10 chambers, nine of them have a bullet.

[935] And the mammals had to survive that.

[936] But when they did, the asteroid was a one -off.

[937] It caused a lot of destruction.

[938] But those tsunamis, they stop, the earthquakes.

[939] they stopped.

[940] The glass rain, it stopped.

[941] So the earth started to heal itself pretty quickly.

[942] But all of a sudden, there's no T -Rexes anymore.

[943] There's no Triceratopses anymore.

[944] You have all of these open jobs in the ecosystem.

[945] And it was the bigger animals that really died out more than the smaller ones.

[946] So those mammals that made it through, they really were looking at a new world, a world of abundant opportunity.

[947] And they responded by becoming big.

[948] Within 200 ,000 years, you have mammals the size of pigs.

[949] Oh, wow.

[950] Wow.

[951] Very fast.

[952] And then within a million, maybe two million years, you have mammals the size of cows.

[953] And the two drivers of that are that the animal gets bigger so it's less prone to be attacked and mate selection.

[954] There's probably lots of reasons why you want to get bigger.

[955] I mean, it's easier to defend yourself.

[956] The bigger you are, fewer predators can attack you.

[957] And the other reason really is those roles in the ecosystem, those ecological niches, they were open.

[958] And when there's open jobs, open roles, open opportunities, something.

[959] is going to grab those, and mammals did.

[960] And that's where our ancestry, the primates, come from.

[961] There's some very famous fossil sites, very well -dated, using these geological techniques to about 100 ,000 or so years after the asteroid.

[962] These are in Montana, mostly, and they are just full of teeth of primates.

[963] So you see so soon after the asteroid.

[964] I mean, geologically speaking, Dax, when you mentioned, you know, the clock of Earth history at 1159 humans show up, the Earth's 4 .5 billion years old.

[965] A hundred thousand years is nothing.

[966] Right.

[967] This was, boom, it was a hiccup of earth history, and now you have all these pirates.

[968] Why did I think they came from Madagascar?

[969] Or is that just where they were preserved?

[970] There are some that are preserved.

[971] And then, of course, today in Madagascar, there's lemurs, as you mentioned, and lots of very interesting primates that only live there because it's an island.

[972] A lot of them are quite archaic.

[973] Their ancestry goes back a long way, but they only survive there.

[974] There used to be lemurs and relatives that spanned across Europe and Asia.

[975] Now they're just restricted.

[976] So islands can do that sometimes.

[977] They're refuges for things that have gone extinct elsewhere.

[978] So the really fun thing about islands is that birds get bigger and mammals get smaller.

[979] So on Madagascar, right, you had an elephant ostrich.

[980] Yeah.

[981] Right?

[982] It was like a thousand pound ostrich.

[983] Crazy, yep.

[984] Can you imagine?

[985] No. They're already fucking terrifying running at whatever they are, 180 pounds or something.

[986] And on New Zealand there were these birds called Moas.

[987] They would have towered over us.

[988] They were getting eight feet tall, something like that.

[989] And they only went extinct about 800 years ago or so.

[990] Really?

[991] When the first people hit New Zealand.

[992] Yeah.

[993] Oh, wow.

[994] Yeah, which is just wild to think about.

[995] New Zealand was like one of the last places on Earth that humans came into contact with.

[996] And up until that time, it was all these birds that ruled.

[997] So actually, New Zealand was the last dinosaur -dominated ecosystem on the planet.

[998] Oh, really?

[999] Birds are dinosaurs.

[1000] And so that persisted until about 800 years ago.

[1001] Wow.

[1002] So we can say only 800 years ago, the reign of dinosaurs totally ended.

[1003] Because mammals didn't really get there.

[1004] Some bats got out there because bats can fly.

[1005] Yeah.

[1006] But you didn't have lions and tigers and elephants and horses and these kind of things.

[1007] They just couldn't get to an island on such a...

[1008] extreme fringe of the world.

[1009] Okay, now it's time to get into some of the flashy scintillatings.

[1010] No, that's a titillating.

[1011] That's a word.

[1012] Okay, let's talk about where we went.

[1013] So we went from these little rats to primates, which we just discussed, but when did mammals go back into the water?

[1014] When does that start?

[1015] After the extinction, some mammals survived.

[1016] They started to get big.

[1017] They started to diversify.

[1018] And so it was really in the 10 million years after the extinction.

[1019] that you have all these new types of mammals.

[1020] Most of them are placental mammals like us that can give live birth to well -developed young.

[1021] They're not monotrems that still laid eggs.

[1022] They're not like the possums, the other marsupials that give birth to these tiny babies, they still have to raise in pouches.

[1023] So really, after the asteroid, it became a placental mammal world.

[1024] And this is where you get the ancestors of things like horses and monkeys and bats and elephants and all these familiar groups we know of.

[1025] Sometime around 55 -ish million years ago, a good 10 million years after the asteroid, you had these mammals with hooves that were living in what is now India and what is now parts of Asia.

[1026] India was an island then.

[1027] It was actually moving northward.

[1028] It was in the middle of the water, but it was plowing upwards.

[1029] That's what caused the Himalayas when India smashed into Asia.

[1030] Subcontinent.

[1031] Exactly.

[1032] So, so, I know.

[1033] So you had these mammals, they looked like little deer, very cute little thing.

[1034] And they had hooves, they could run really fast, but they have some peculiar adaptations to their ear bones.

[1035] Small little kind of technical things that are anonymous to anybody who's not an anatomist.

[1036] But we know that those things improve hearing in water.

[1037] So it seems like these little deer -like things were starting to live in the, water.

[1038] Not full time.

[1039] They lived in the land, but probably they went into the water to escape predators.

[1040] Maybe there was some food in the water they ate.

[1041] They were the ancestors, the starting point for whales, because whales are mammals and whales evolved from these mammals that lived on land that over the course of less than 10, millions of years of evolution, traded their arms and legs for flippers and evolved new ways of sensing, echolocating, and so on.

[1042] And they went fully into the water, culminating, and all the way, and dolphins that are with us today, including, of course, the blue whale, which is the biggest thing that has ever lived.

[1043] And that's amazing when you step back and think about it.

[1044] Biggest thing ever, ever that's lived, lives right now.

[1045] It lives with us now, and there's some probably not too far off the coast here.

[1046] I agree with you.

[1047] I think we have the same pet peeve.

[1048] People are so fascinated with dinosaurs, primarily because they were huge.

[1049] I think that's the main attraction.

[1050] Like, wow, there are a bronosaurus is that big, a T -Rex.

[1051] Yeah, the fact that the blue whale dwarfs everything else, they're 100 tons.

[1052] Yeah, they're 100 tons.

[1053] They're the size of submarines.

[1054] Their tongues the size of an elephant.

[1055] Yeah.

[1056] They're longer than a basketball court.

[1057] They can dive thousands of meters deep.

[1058] They have these calls they make out.

[1059] Oh, we just learned this from another biologist we had on.

[1060] They're talking around the world.

[1061] Yeah, they can be heard.

[1062] They resonate around the world's oceans.

[1063] They're the strongest sound that any animal makes.

[1064] We thought they were solitary.

[1065] They might be in a pot.

[1066] Their babies are the sizes of like speedboats.

[1067] Their babies weigh like three tons when they're born.

[1068] Their hearts are the size of a VW bug.

[1069] And you know what?

[1070] Because they're mammals and they're placental mammals and they give live birth to big babies, they have placentas, they have umbilical cords, so whales have belly buttons.

[1071] Oh my God, they do.

[1072] Isn't that just kind of a funny thing?

[1073] I didn't know that.

[1074] Huge ones, probably.

[1075] Yeah.

[1076] Intelligence is such an interesting thing to study in evolution.

[1077] And there's a few popular beliefs about primates why they got increasingly intelligent, whether it was for recognizing food and where it grew or facial recognition, all these different theories.

[1078] Why did whales get so smart?

[1079] Because they're from India.

[1080] Because they're from India?

[1081] That's a great point.

[1082] And the dolphins too.

[1083] Question answered.

[1084] That's it.

[1085] We can move on.

[1086] I do study intelligence in the fossil record.

[1087] We can cat scan fossil skulls and use the x -rays to see into the brain cavity.

[1088] The same way a medical doctor might do if there's something wrong with us.

[1089] Get into the cat scanner.

[1090] Use the x -rays to see inside.

[1091] So we can build digital three -dimensional models of brains just by filling in the cavity.

[1092] And we can look at the size of the brains, the shape of the brains.

[1093] We can compare them to models.

[1094] So we've done a lot of work on this.

[1095] Actually, we just published a project about a month and a half ago that was led by a scientist who works with me, Ornella Bertrand's her name, in my lab in Edinburgh, that we actually found that those first mammals that survived the extinction of the dinosaurs and got really big.

[1096] They got so big, so fast that their brains didn't keep pace.

[1097] They actually got dumber.

[1098] And then it took about 10 million years to catch up.

[1099] So we use CAT scans to study brains.

[1100] And with whales, there's been a lot of work looking at fossils.

[1101] You can see how the brains get bigger and bigger over time.

[1102] You can also see how some whales, the whales that have teeth, they evolved echolocation.

[1103] They are able to have this sixth sense that we can scarcely comprehend it.

[1104] How would you explain, you know, sight to somebody who can't see?

[1105] They're getting like a 3D picture of the world.

[1106] Yeah, it's like a sonar kind of thing and they somehow get this image in their mind and bats can do the same thing, some bats.

[1107] But whales, big brains, high intelligence, very keen senses.

[1108] They have absolutely enormous brains.

[1109] I mean, of course, whale brains are physically bigger than our brains.

[1110] Now, in proportion of their body size, our brains are bigger.

[1111] But why they did that, I don't know.

[1112] Maybe it was to adapt to the new environment in the water.

[1113] Because, again, a brain is a very expensive organ.

[1114] Very expensive.

[1115] We were just talking about this, as I learned it 20 years ago in college, but I want to say that they were saying orcas are the only animals with a neocortex to mass ratio greater than ours.

[1116] That could be.

[1117] Yeah.

[1118] Yeah, I'm not sure you would know better than me, but the neocortex is.

[1119] I would know better than you.

[1120] Thanks for saying that.

[1121] I mean, my knowledge of dreams.

[1122] We got a cool project we're starting, by the way, with some colleagues in Europe about the evolution of intelligence over time.

[1123] We're trying to go beyond just using cat scans to see the size and shape of the brains and fossils, but to actually find a way to predict things like neuron density and connectivity, you know, looking at a lot of modern animals, seeing if we can predict some of the behaviors.

[1124] Now, could a T -Rex make its way through a maze?

[1125] You know, that kind of thing.

[1126] So I'm learning more about all this.

[1127] I don't know a lot, but when you mention the neocortex, just to say, that is a mammalian thing.

[1128] It is a sublime mammalian invention as part of the cerebrum of the brain.

[1129] It has six tissue layers.

[1130] And this is the real seat of our intelligence.

[1131] This is what links all the senses together.

[1132] It's a model to think of the future.

[1133] Yes, it's like a big neural net, you know, the top of our brain.

[1134] The one thing I remember that I found fascinating is that the brain itself is evolving as well.

[1135] It's not just size, right?

[1136] So I think this was in elephants.

[1137] The whole reason they've discovered they have such great memories is, their brains were convoluted like ours are.

[1138] So it's got a bazillion wrinkles all over it.

[1139] And the point of the wrinkles is it increases surface area overall.

[1140] And that's an evolution, right?

[1141] The brains didn't always look like that.

[1142] No, and we can see some of this from fossils.

[1143] You can actually see on the fossil skulls sometimes.

[1144] The cavity around the brain, especially more primitive animals, is very smooth.

[1145] And then in some of these first mammals, you start to see marks on the bone that marked where the neocortex was on the brain.

[1146] Because that neocortex is getting bigger.

[1147] It's kind of pushing against the bone.

[1148] you can see the space.

[1149] And so there are different groups that have really expanded their brains, making them very convoluted exactly, as you say, to increase surface area.

[1150] And elephants are one of them.

[1151] Elephants are remarkable.

[1152] They are very smart.

[1153] And emotionally intelligence.

[1154] Well, let's hit them.

[1155] I mean, they're the only animals we know other than us that mourn their dead.

[1156] They have gravesites.

[1157] They communicate five miles away with their subsonic rumbling.

[1158] I mean, they're awesome.

[1159] They can recognize themselves in mirrors.

[1160] Oh, man. Pretty far detached from what I study, but I've read about it where there is evidence of things like empathy and connections to ancestors.

[1161] This has been proposed for elephants, which I think is wild.

[1162] And that means things like woolly mammoths and mastodons, the extinct elephants, the ones that lived right here, the ones that are found in the tar pits, they would have been really, really smart too.

[1163] So that's where I want to go next, the kind of megafauna.

[1164] I think that's the most exciting thing left.

[1165] But I have one last question before we moved to there.

[1166] Has anything gone full circle?

[1167] Has any mammal gone into the water and then come back out of it?

[1168] the water.

[1169] There have been a few independent groups of mammals that separately have gone into the water.

[1170] There's whales and dolphins.

[1171] That's one group.

[1172] There's things like manatees.

[1173] That's another group.

[1174] Seals are another.

[1175] But I don't think there is anything that's gone into the water that's then come back out.

[1176] I have to think about it.

[1177] There might be some exceptions somewhere.

[1178] I hope blue whales make their way out.

[1179] Oh my God.

[1180] You know, then people would appreciate them, right?

[1181] Because the ocean's so big and it's so vast and it's so deep.

[1182] And I draw this analogy in the book.

[1183] One of the chapters, it's called the Extreme Mammals.

[1184] It's about bats and whales and elephants.

[1185] And I start the chapter off with a fake little newspaper article from like a thousand years in the future about the discovery of giant bones.

[1186] And there's a scientist that's called out to look at these bones.

[1187] And I give her the name of my brother's daughter.

[1188] So Lola, if you're listening.

[1189] Actually, I don't know if you know that.

[1190] If you're listening, tell your father, Chrissy, she should be at this premiere.

[1191] Tell your Uncle Chris.

[1192] Mike wanted to come to the premiere.

[1193] He was just telling me yesterday.

[1194] I said, you've got too many kids.

[1195] You can't just ditch him.

[1196] at home.

[1197] So anyway, so I have this faux article about these hikers discovering giant bones that can fit into the rib cage of this animal and the scientist is called out and she's like, I think this is the mythical whale, you know, that we've heard about from legends in human history.

[1198] Maybe it's a little bit corny, that sort of narrative device.

[1199] I like it.

[1200] Don't say that about yourself.

[1201] But it gets people thinking, what if blue whales were extinct?

[1202] What if all we had were fossil bones?

[1203] There is no doubt we would marvel at them, the same way we marvel at them.

[1204] at a Brontosaurus.

[1205] I'm going to take a wild guest right now.

[1206] I'm going to predict why you and I both love blue whales so much.

[1207] I have a hunch.

[1208] We fell in love with it at the same place in space and time.

[1209] Okay.

[1210] Is it the Chicago Science Museum?

[1211] Yes.

[1212] There's a model of one strung up in the ceiling.

[1213] And I was like eight years old.

[1214] I went there.

[1215] I was like, what?

[1216] That fucking thing lives on planet Earth.

[1217] It's incredible.

[1218] All the great natural history museums don't only have dinosaurs.

[1219] They have whales, too.

[1220] And it's true in New York, at American Museum where I did my PhD.

[1221] is true in London at the Natural History Museum.

[1222] And in Edinburgh, at the National Museum of Scotland, we have whales.

[1223] You have to have whales, and they're always hanging from the ceiling.

[1224] But I think if you see those, you feel it.

[1225] I think everybody needs to go to a natural history museum and look at a whale, just stand underneath it and think, this thing is as fascinating, if not more so, than a brontosaurus, than a T -Rex.

[1226] And I love those dinosaurs, don't get me wrong, but these whales, they're still with us, and they're so endangered.

[1227] The populations of blue whales have been cut, like, 99 % So it would be a travesty to lose these animals.

[1228] We have the choice whether to conserve them or not.

[1229] Yeah.

[1230] Yeah, humans are so obsessed with things we don't know.

[1231] Like, we never got to see dinosaurs, so they're fascinating.

[1232] They're the ultimate novel.

[1233] They're hard to get.

[1234] We love hard to get.

[1235] Unless you believe the movies.

[1236] All right, so let's get into the megaphone.

[1237] Because I will say, when I moved to California and I went to our natural history museum, which is fantastic, Like, this is where I learned a bear sloth?

[1238] Like, what the fuck in the skeleton's enormous?

[1239] I guess I only think of big animals as living in Africa other than our grizzly bear, but hit us with some of these mammals that we had.

[1240] When we think about big mammals, we think about elephants and rhinos.

[1241] Our attention goes straight to Africa.

[1242] I think in part, you know, there's a lot of TV shows, nature shows, but also because Africa is one of the only places where a lot of large mammals survive today.

[1243] That's because probably in most other parts of the world, humans killed off the big mammals.

[1244] But because we as a species evolved in Africa, we had millions of years where us and the other mammals could co -evolve and kind of learn each other's tricks.

[1245] That's probably why Africa has been able to retain more of its bigger mammals.

[1246] Also, do you read Guns, Germs, and Steel?

[1247] Yeah, Jared Diamond's book.

[1248] Yeah, there's some really complex reasons why the people that got to the Americas had different tools.

[1249] Let's put it this way.

[1250] You don't try to kill a lion when you've got a really yummy fruit tree next year.

[1251] But if you're Inuit and you're sitting on frozen ice all year, you're going to figure out how to kill a fucking whale with a spear.

[1252] Absolutely.

[1253] There's no reason for us to feel like horribly guilty about it.

[1254] We just want to understand.

[1255] I mean, we are another animal.

[1256] We evolved.

[1257] And our weapons were our brain and the tools we could make.

[1258] But what that meant was when the first humans came to North America, probably about 15 ,000 years ago, there's always debate, there's always new fossils that are found that are a bit older.

[1259] But basically, it seems like at least the first large -scale human invasion of North America is about 15 ,000 years ago, people coming over the land bridge as the glaciers were rising and falling.

[1260] They would have encountered all of these enormous mammals, these megafauna, these things that would have never seen a human before.

[1261] When those first humans came over the lamberge, there were woolly mammoths, there were saber -toothed tigers, there were giant ground sloths.

[1262] There were these beavers that were bigger than people.

[1263] Oh, yeah.

[1264] Really?

[1265] Yeah.

[1266] A big beaver.

[1267] That's a road in Michigan.

[1268] Exit 69 on 975.

[1269] For real, it's not a joke.

[1270] Big beaver road.

[1271] No, in Michigan, not a joke.

[1272] A beaver, the size of a human, I'd love to see.

[1273] Think of the work they could get done.

[1274] Oh, yeah, they could, you know, chop down a whole forest in the afternoon.

[1275] They could build your house for you, yeah.

[1276] Oh, my God, and these sloths.

[1277] I'm the sloths.

[1278] They're my favorite, by the way, the giant ground sloths.

[1279] Tell me about it.

[1280] How big are they?

[1281] They stood about 10 feet tall, the biggest one.

[1282] Oh.

[1283] Monica.

[1284] They could dunk a basketball without doing anything, which befits a sloth.

[1285] Were they still slow?

[1286] Yeah, probably.

[1287] They walked on their knuckles, so they had big claws.

[1288] You know, sloths today have pretty big claws.

[1289] They used to hang from the trees.

[1290] These sloths did, too.

[1291] But they would have had to walk on their knuckles.

[1292] They were probably very ponderous.

[1293] And they were really, really goofy, really goofy looking.

[1294] But they were huge.

[1295] They looked like an obese human almost, right?

[1296] Because they're just seeded, and it's just getting bigger and bigger as it goes down.

[1297] Yes, they do.

[1298] They do.

[1299] I've never thought about it that way.

[1300] And you can see them over at the tarpits.

[1301] They found a lot of bones.

[1302] There's one called Harlan's Ground Slop because there are actually many species of them.

[1303] Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare.

[1304] One of the first people to really understand these ground sloths and study their bones was Thomas Jefferson.

[1305] Oh, shit.

[1306] Yeah, so there's a lot to say about Jefferson, but he was obsessed with the natural world.

[1307] He was just such a broad learner and thinker.

[1308] And very famously, just a few days after he was inaugurated as vice president.

[1309] So after Washington stepped down, there was.

[1310] was a race to, would the next president be, and John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were duking it out, and John Adams barely won, and they became, of course, bitter rivals.

[1311] Literally just read that chapter last night in my George Washington biography.

[1312] Oh, cool.

[1313] It's so funny that you would bring that up.

[1314] It's weird.

[1315] It's like, we're talking about mammals.

[1316] Why are we talking about, you know, U .S. presidents?

[1317] But it's crazy because Adams was inaugurated as president.

[1318] Jefferson became the vice president, just the way it was just different back then, the electoral college.

[1319] And you picked your vice president.

[1320] In fact, it's probably the guy you hated the most.

[1321] Yes, that's right.

[1322] But Jefferson was inaugurated as vice president.

[1323] And less than a week later, he was in Philadelphia reading a scientific research paper to this learned society about these giant bones, including a very big claw that was like a foot long, that were found in a cave in Virginia.

[1324] It's actually in West Virginia now, but it's part of Virginia then.

[1325] And he thought this belonged to a giant lion because of the claw.

[1326] And he soon realized that it was actually a really big weird sloth because Jefferson read everything.

[1327] So he read some obscure report from South America of a giant sloth being found.

[1328] Anyway, he's doing this as he is starting his vice president.

[1329] Can you imagine that?

[1330] You know, not to get political here, but all I'll say is no recent vice president and I could imagine writing a scientific research paper and delivering it as their vice president.

[1331] But Jefferson was a big part of a debate back then.

[1332] This was right around the turn of the 18th century into the 19th century about whether species could go extinct.

[1333] Because people started to find all these, giant bones, and the natural question was, well, where are these things?

[1334] Why don't we see them alive?

[1335] And some people made the argument, well, they're ancient species.

[1336] They had their time, they thrived, and then they died out.

[1337] They went extinct.

[1338] Other people like Jefferson said, no way.

[1339] Extinction would distort the work of the creator.

[1340] So things couldn't go extinct.

[1341] This was one of the biggest debates in science at that time.

[1342] This was just as science was becoming an academic discipline.

[1343] When he became president, he actually commissioned a lot of his generals to go out and collect bones of the megafauna.

[1344] So in the East Room of the White House, he had mammoth bones strewn all over the floor.

[1345] He was the original Leonardo DiCaprio.

[1346] Oh, my God.

[1347] I don't know if Mr. DeCapri would like that comparison.

[1348] We know all the things we know about the other things Jefferson was getting up to.

[1349] Oh, you disapprove of him converting and having children with a 15 -year -old?

[1350] Why are you so constrained?

[1351] Yeah, not to cancel Jefferson or anything, but that's some pretty bad stuff he did.

[1352] But, scientifically, anyway, imagine the president having his meetings and being like, I need a break, I'm going to go into the East Room and put these bones together, like a big buzz.

[1353] The other thing he did was he sent Lewis and Clark, you know, out west to explore the Louisiana purchase when he bought it from France.

[1354] And, of course, it was a land survey.

[1355] They wanted to see what Native American tribes were there, what resources were there.

[1356] But Jefferson personally told Lewis and Clark, I want you to find living mammoths and living giant sloths to prove that these things are not extinct and they looked and they looked but they couldn't find him.

[1357] So even Jefferson, basically on his deathbed, him and John Adams were friends again, they were writing letters to each other and there's a letter where Jefferson says, I was wrong, these things are extinct.

[1358] He does, he got to it at the end.

[1359] He did, yes.

[1360] Okay, my wife loves saying this to our kids recently and it is something really funny to ponder is George Washington didn't know there were dialed dinosaurs.

[1361] That's true.

[1362] They didn't know there were dinosaurs.

[1363] He didn't know.

[1364] And you know what, even Abraham Lincoln didn't know there was a T -Rex.

[1365] T -Rex was only found in the early 1900s.

[1366] Really?

[1367] So it is amazing to think humans have been encountering dinosaur bones and bones of giant mammals for a long time.

[1368] And in the mammal book, I talk about it.

[1369] I tell some stories about different Native American tribes in North America and in South America that did find bones of giant mammals.

[1370] And they tried to understand them.

[1371] They just didn't have modern tools.

[1372] They didn't have modern research labs and university research grants and all of this.

[1373] So humans have been finding giant fossil bones for a long time, but it was really only around the time of Jefferson in the late 1700s, early 1800s that people started to think about these giant mammals and whether they were still living or not.

[1374] And then it was a few decades later, kind of in the 1820s, 30s, and 40s that the first dinosaur bones were discovered by Western scientists.

[1375] and that was around the time universities and museums were starting to establish this new profession of scientists.

[1376] It was only in the 1840s that the word dinosaur was invented by a guy named Richard Owen, who's a recurring villain in the Rise and Rain of the Mambles.

[1377] Oh, no. Yes, he's a villain because he was one of the, well, there's lots of villains in history, but this guy was insufferable.

[1378] Oh, my favorite adjective.

[1379] He was pompous, he was conceded, he was a member of high society, He hung out with royals.

[1380] He tutored Victoria and Albert's children.

[1381] He sent those children out to South Africa to collect fossil mammals for him.

[1382] No kidding.

[1383] So I think it was third in line to the throne, one of the princes, went out to South Africa and collected these fossils of these mammal antecedents and brought them back to London to give them to Richardone.

[1384] So imagine like Prince George or something, you know, now.

[1385] Or if I sent Sasha and Malia.

[1386] No, they're older.

[1387] These were young kids, right?

[1388] How old were they?

[1389] Well, he was probably a teenager then or maybe in his early 20s.

[1390] Okay.

[1391] Prince George is five.

[1392] Prince George is a bit too young.

[1393] Yeah, but maybe I can train him.

[1394] Send him somewhere.

[1395] Okay, so one of these creatures you talk about in the book, there was an elephant or some kind of pachydermish animal that was 4X of a current elephant?

[1396] 4X.

[1397] Yes.

[1398] So the biggest mammals ever, as we talked about, are the blue whales living today.

[1399] But they live in the ocean.

[1400] If you live in the ocean, you don't have to contend with gravity the same way you do on a lot.

[1401] land.

[1402] You don't have to hoist yourself up.

[1403] That's why I want to retire in the ocean.

[1404] Retire in the ocean.

[1405] That sounds perfect.

[1406] Well, with sea levels rising, I don't know.

[1407] We'll all be retired.

[1408] We'll all be retiring in the ocean.

[1409] That's going to go bad for me. But those mammals are the biggest ever, but the biggest land mammals ever weighed about 20 tons, which is about four times the size of a modern elephant, and there's two different types.

[1410] There were some elephants that were that big, and there was a type of rhinoceros that got to be that big.

[1411] But it was an unconventional rhino, not only because.

[1412] of its size because it had no horns and it had pretty long legs.

[1413] Okay.

[1414] What a freaky looking thing that must be.

[1415] Totally weird.

[1416] It's always hard on podcasts, hard on interviews, because we're talking about all these fantastic extinct species and you're not being able to see them.

[1417] I hope your book leads to a fascination that will have people like Favreau and all these creative people.

[1418] I want to see the Pleistocene movie.

[1419] I want to see it animated.

[1420] Yes, something different than Ice Age.

[1421] Yeah.

[1422] I want to see this ridiculous law.

[1423] I really hope there's another prehistoric planet that does the megafauna.

[1424] I think that's within the realm of possibilities now that this show's been so well received.

[1425] And Colin Trevoro's directed Jurassic World, he's going to be doing a film now that's going to have some megafauna.

[1426] It's not a film about megaphone.

[1427] So it's going to be a blockbuster, but I'm very hopeful that Colin will have me back and I can give them some pointers on the mammals.

[1428] But you're right.

[1429] I mean, these things have never gotten the big screen treatment, the celebrity treatment.

[1430] I mean, everybody knows what a mammoth is, I think, and what a saber -tooth tiger is.

[1431] But that's it.

[1432] That's really it.

[1433] And I think what a lot of people don't understand also is that they lived so recently.

[1434] These things went extinct just like 10 ,000 years ago.

[1435] Humans were interacting with them.

[1436] They were killing them.

[1437] Our ancestors knew these Ice Age megafauna.

[1438] They encountered them.

[1439] They would have been in fear of them.

[1440] I mean, we had ancestors that would have feared going out to collect berries or whatever because the Sabre 2 Tigers might be out there.

[1441] And our ancestors, they admired these things.

[1442] There are so many caves in France and Spain that are just plastered.

[1443] The first human graffiti was all these early humans drawing mammoths and all of other megafauna on cave walls.

[1444] And so we knew these animals.

[1445] And we ultimately are probably the main reason why they're not here anymore.

[1446] And not just because we overhunted them, but just because we expanded so much, we changed the environments, we cleared lands to make agricultural fields, we would break up populations as we moved into different areas.

[1447] And so all of those things together along maybe with some of the climate changes coming out of the last Ice Age glacial period.

[1448] Yeah, they were probably a little maladapted for warmer.

[1449] temperatures.

[1450] Yeah, except they had survived so many ups and downs of temperatures before, because the Ice Age is a few million years old, but really the Ice Age is dozens of glacials.

[1451] These are the times when it's been colder.

[1452] It's on a cycle.

[1453] It's a cycle.

[1454] It's just like a roller coaster ride.

[1455] It's cold is hot.

[1456] It's cold as hot.

[1457] All that's had to do with like the orbit of the Earth.

[1458] Right.

[1459] It's because on our axis, we're not just on an axis and we're not just spinning, but we're wobbling.

[1460] That's right.

[1461] We're wobbling like a top.

[1462] There's like 20 ,000 some years for the wobble, I think.

[1463] And then there's also the angle that the axis is at, that change.

[1464] and the shape of our orbit around the sun.

[1465] It's an ellipse, it's an oval, but that oval kind of stretches and compresses over time.

[1466] Oh, contracts and expands.

[1467] Yeah, so all of those things means there's variation over time and how close the Earth is to the sun.

[1468] And even small variations causes change to the seasons and to snowfall and so on.

[1469] So the ice age has been like dozens of times where the glaciers have grown and then retreating.

[1470] By the way, this is the North Pole ice cap that has grown so much that it actually encroaches on and then covers much of North America.

[1471] So just 10 ,000 years ago, Chicago, Detroit, Michigan, the Great Lakes.

[1472] The Great Lakes are meltwater mud puddles left behind by the glaciers as the glaciers melted.

[1473] So growing up around Chicago, going to Lake Michigan, you know, it's the closest thing to an ocean in there.

[1474] Oh, yeah.

[1475] Fresh Coast.

[1476] Not so fresh in lots of places, especially more towards the Gary, Indiana.

[1477] Yeah, the Southern Bowl of it.

[1478] Actually, Michigan has the best.

[1479] But it's crazy, right?

[1480] I mean, that is just a meltwater puddle from a glacier.

[1481] All the Great Lakes.

[1482] And quite recently.

[1483] And same in Europe.

[1484] Edinburgh, where I live now, would have been covered by glaciers, Dublin, Stockholm, you know, all these places.

[1485] We need to appreciate just how recently that was, how quickly climates do change.

[1486] And climates are always changing.

[1487] Of course, they're changing very fast now.

[1488] We have a lot to do with that.

[1489] But the Earth is always undergoing changes.

[1490] And sometimes those changes can happen really, really, really rapidly.

[1491] And I think that's the lesson of the megaphone.

[1492] You know, things like woolly mammoths and saber -tooth tigers and these giant ground sloths and beavers the size of humans and armadillo's the size of Volkswagons.

[1493] Oh.

[1494] You hear that?

[1495] Imagine that.

[1496] You could.

[1497] Armadillo the size of a car.

[1498] It's like something out of the Flintstones, but it's real.

[1499] And then in Australia there were wombats that weighed three tons.

[1500] Oh, three -ton wombat.

[1501] By the way, wombats are the cutest animals alive.

[1502] They are very, very, very cute.

[1503] They're like a perfect sphere of hair.

[1504] And you know what, they're marsupials too, like the possum.

[1505] So we're talking about the possum being like the creepiest thing alive.

[1506] The wombats are the, On the other end of the spectrum.

[1507] They're so cuddly.

[1508] They should represent all marsupials, not opossos.

[1509] Well, kangaroos really are the high watermark of the marsupy.

[1510] And there were megafauna kangaroos.

[1511] There were kangaroos that weighed like half a ton.

[1512] No. They were too plump to hop.

[1513] Oh.

[1514] They were kangaroos that just kind of waddled around.

[1515] Oh.

[1516] So these things seem otherworldly.

[1517] You talk about these mammals.

[1518] They seem like something that, oh, they must have lived hundreds of millions of years ago.

[1519] No, they lived up until about 10 ,000 years ago.

[1520] ancestors knew them.

[1521] Our species, homo sapiens, knew these animals.

[1522] That to me is an astounding fact.

[1523] Well, we were on the planet as this species for 140 ,000 years at the same time.

[1524] And it's just this last little blip that we're not.

[1525] Does it excite you?

[1526] I haven't followed it as well as I should, but I remember they had found it seemed like a pretty intact woolly mammoth in Siberia, frozen, and there was potentially there was semen in the testicles.

[1527] Yep.

[1528] Yep.

[1529] And there was talk about how they could bring it back and they would use an Asian elephant because Asian elephants can get pregnant by an African elephant, but not the other way around.

[1530] Where are we at on that?

[1531] Ethically, we're fine with bringing a woolly mammoth back, aren't we?

[1532] Well, I guess I'll start with the practicalities.

[1533] Then we can get to the ethics?

[1534] Okay, okay, yeah.

[1535] First you should ask, can we do it before you ask, should we?

[1536] It's a certain character in a certain movie.

[1537] He was a very nice guy, by the way.

[1538] I met Jeff Goldblum in London last week.

[1539] It was so nice.

[1540] Oh, yes.

[1541] He's as fascinating off -screen as he is on screen.

[1542] I'm sorry.

[1543] I sound like I'm just kind of named -dropping.

[1544] You should.

[1545] This is not real life for me. If Monica does it, you'd throw up.

[1546] If I do it, you'd puke.

[1547] But you, it's adorable.

[1548] It should be done recklessly.

[1549] I'm taking advantage of this.

[1550] You should.

[1551] But anyway, so you're right about these mammoths.

[1552] You can find them frozen in Alaska, in Siberia.

[1553] There are several carcasses.

[1554] It's like you put a chicken in your freezer or something.

[1555] But it's just been there for a few tens of thousands of years.

[1556] So it means it's not just the bones.

[1557] Like with dinosaurs or with older fossil mammals, all we have are the bones.

[1558] But here, there's the bones.

[1559] There's the muscles, there's the skin, there's the ligaments and tenders, there's the internal organs, sometimes babies are still in the womb.

[1560] Last meals are still in the stomach.

[1561] A lot of times, the genitals are just hanging out there.

[1562] They're just exposed.

[1563] Several ounces of mammoths' semen.

[1564] They were mega fauna.

[1565] How big were they?

[1566] Woolly mammoths were about the size of the modern day elephant.

[1567] So they weren't actually too supersized, but they were just so different looking because they were so shaggy -coated.

[1568] And there's just full elephant -sized animals they're finding frozen?

[1569] Yeah.

[1570] They would fall, yeah, into rivers or into ponds.

[1571] I do have to introduce this.

[1572] So there are woolly mammoth skeletons from the Channel Islands, and they're the size of a cow.

[1573] Yes, and at LaBreya, they have an exhibit, and I saw it yesterday where they have a jawbone of a regular mammoth and then one of these dwarf mammoths.

[1574] And it blew me away, because I knew there were dwarf mammoths, but I didn't realize how small they were.

[1575] Yes, if I got to pick any animal from the history of the globe, I would want a St. Bernard's sized woolly mammoth.

[1576] What could be better?

[1577] Because they'd be smart.

[1578] You could play with them and have a relationship.

[1579] They'd have little tusks.

[1580] Well, elephants are so smart.

[1581] If you raised it.

[1582] I think you could train them.

[1583] You know, domesticated.

[1584] Yeah, I think so.

[1585] Well, let's bring them back.

[1586] So maybe we can because with dinosaurs, look, no scientists should ever say something's impossible.

[1587] I always try to avoid saying that.

[1588] Because when you start to say something's impossible, you close yourself off to discovery and to exploration.

[1589] When you stop asking questions, you really cease being a scientist.

[1590] But when it comes to bringing back dinosaurs, I mean, nobody's ever found any dinosaur DNA, not even one single little base pair.

[1591] It breaks down so quickly.

[1592] It was a great premise, though, the original one, right?

[1593] Do you remember the original one?

[1594] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1595] A mosquito, frozen name.

[1596] And you know what?

[1597] It wasn't too crazy.

[1598] Back at that time, the genetic revolution was going on.

[1599] This was kind of the early days of the human genome project, the early days of the paternity test that you see on the afternoon talk shows, the early days of Springer.

[1600] And so there was a little bit of Springer.

[1601] a lot of hope, you know, that stuff could happen with dinosaurs.

[1602] But believe me, every paleontologist in the world wants to be the first person to discover dinosaurs.

[1603] Did you imagine how famous you'd be?

[1604] Oh, my God, way more famous than that villain.

[1605] Oh, yeah.

[1606] I already forgot his name.

[1607] You could dispatch famous children all over the globe if you discovered DNA from a dinosaur.

[1608] Yeah.

[1609] We all know, if we find it, that's a huge scientific discovery.

[1610] Yeah.

[1611] But nobody's ever found any.

[1612] And DNA just really breaks down quickly when an animal or a plant dies.

[1613] So to get it preserved for 66 plus million years seems very unlikely.

[1614] But with these mammoths, they only died a few tens of thousands of years ago.

[1615] Their bodies have been frozen.

[1616] So they have DNA.

[1617] We know the entire genome of the woolly mammoth from multiple individuals.

[1618] We know more about mammoth DNA than probably 90 % or more of modern -day mammals.

[1619] Wow.

[1620] So we know the genes that gave mammoths the hair colors that they had.

[1621] Genes that allowed them to have extra fat to insulate themselves.

[1622] in the cold.

[1623] We know so much about mammoths.

[1624] So we have all the tools to clone a mammoth if it could work with a mother species.

[1625] And the Indian elephant would be the obvious one.

[1626] But still is always a bit difficult to get hybrids and stuff.

[1627] But it seems very plausible.

[1628] I do think it will happen.

[1629] I think we will wake up one morning and somebody in some lab somewhere in the darkest corners of Russia or China or somewhere.

[1630] You know, people like scurry to put deposits down on Teslas and stuff?

[1631] Not me. I went first one in on a deposit to have a cloned pygmy woolly man. Well, you know, they did CRISPR under the radar in China.

[1632] So you could probably hire someone.

[1633] Oh, I could probably get from the black market.

[1634] Yeah, so keep an eye on this.

[1635] But then it gets to the ethics, though.

[1636] Okay.

[1637] There's no ethics with a mammoth.

[1638] I'm not going to pretend to be an ethicist.

[1639] What I would say is that if somebody were to bring back a dinosaur somehow, that would be like bringing back an alien or putting an alien on a new planet.

[1640] Because dinosaurs lived in a world that was much warmer.

[1641] Yeah.

[1642] There were no polar ice caps.

[1643] The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was different.

[1644] The plants were, I mean, very few dinosaurs would have ever even seen a blade of grass.

[1645] Things like Brontosaurus and Stegosaurus, they would have never even seen a fruit or a flower.

[1646] Really?

[1647] It's just all leaves?

[1648] Yeah, ferns and evergreen trees, pine trees, that kind of stuff.

[1649] Oh, my God, they're eating fucking pine trees?

[1650] Whoa!

[1651] They're just taking the whole tree and they're not chewing it.

[1652] They're not chewing it.

[1653] No, they're just...

[1654] They're ripping and gripping and gulfing and whatever.

[1655] But, you know, so if we brought back a dinosaur, it would be like an alien coming to the planet.

[1656] I think that would be pretty cruel.

[1657] It would be uncomfortable.

[1658] It would be uncomfortable, definitely.

[1659] But for a mammoth, they lived very recently.

[1660] We took them out.

[1661] It's on us.

[1662] What do we call it?

[1663] Not our bill?

[1664] Our spreadsheet.

[1665] Our tab.

[1666] Yeah, they're on our tab.

[1667] It is on our cosmic tab, isn't it?

[1668] And so could we write that wrong by bringing back the mammoth?

[1669] There would be a strong argument for that.

[1670] Now, the counter argument would be the world now is much warm.

[1671] or about to be much warmer than any mammoth would have ever encountered.

[1672] So is it too hot today, even up in the Arctic, for an animal with that thick of a coat?

[1673] But it's going to be cross -bred.

[1674] It's going to pick up some moms.

[1675] That's true.

[1676] It wouldn't be a pure mammoth.

[1677] Although the thing I read, it only takes like four rounds of that.

[1678] So, yeah, first baby would be half Asian elephant, half mammoth, then more mammoth DNA.

[1679] Now 75 % mammoth, the child of that, more mammoth.

[1680] Now you're in the...

[1681] It only takes like four or five...

[1682] Yeah, if they could be viable and reproducing, then yeah, then it would be quick.

[1683] Actually, you know, at the University of Edinburgh, where I work and teach them, that's where Dolly was cloned.

[1684] So we have these great geneticists at the University of the sheep.

[1685] Yeah.

[1686] So at the National Museum in town, when we collect fossils in Scotland, which we do on the Isle of Sky in other places, these are Jurassic fossil.

[1687] We've got dinosaurs, we got pteradactyl stuff.

[1688] You know, all those fossils go to the National Museum of Scotland.

[1689] And the real prize exhibit there I see every time I walk in is Dolly of the sheep, you know, sitting right there.

[1690] It just reminds you of really the wonder.

[1691] He's passed at this point.

[1692] Yes.

[1693] Oh, yeah.

[1694] Oh, yeah.

[1695] Like a woolly mammoth sitting in permafrost.

[1696] She's just gorgeous.

[1697] Dude, the Scottish, your Scottish students, do they have as hard of a time understanding you as we do Scots?

[1698] No, I think I'm pretty easy understanding.

[1699] They do make fun of my accent sometimes.

[1700] Well, sure, but it can be hard for me to someone with a real Scottish bro.

[1701] Oh, yeah.

[1702] Even some of peekie blinders.

[1703] Yeah, Irish.

[1704] Well, and train spotting, you know?

[1705] And that's in Edinburgh.

[1706] I love the train spotting films in the books by Urban Welsh.

[1707] I'm a big fan.

[1708] Steve knows everything.

[1709] Definitely.

[1710] Remember when he said you knew more than him?

[1711] That was really sweet of him to say.

[1712] I'm just prepared, man. I'm in marketing mode for this book, so I got all the talking points down or else my publisher would kill me. How do you know who wrote Trainspotting?

[1713] Well, because it's an Edinburgh thing.

[1714] Okay.

[1715] And I love the books, man. I don't know.

[1716] Have you ever tried to read any of the books?

[1717] I haven't.

[1718] I saw the movie and I loved it.

[1719] But they're in like the Edinburgh Scottish dialect.

[1720] They're written in that way.

[1721] So when I moved to Edinburgh, I read some of the books so I could start to learn.

[1722] That makes sense.

[1723] To answer your question, I think no, because they have American TV.

[1724] Exactly.

[1725] I mean, people in Scotland, they watch your movies.

[1726] They watch your wife's movies.

[1727] Probably more of hers, but yeah.

[1728] Yeah, well, so, you know, maybe.

[1729] I don't know.

[1730] I won't go there.

[1731] But no, all the media does make it easier.

[1732] But my students, they do make fun of me sometimes because I kind of have a bit of the Chicago accent, and so I'll say things like Scotland, you know, kind of drag it off.

[1733] I've gotten a lot of, you know, funny looks.

[1734] Well, Steve, this was so awesome.

[1735] I feel like we only scratch the surface.

[1736] I guess that's why you should read the book.

[1737] You got to read the book.

[1738] The Rise and Rain of the Mammals, a new history from the shadow of dinosaurs to us.

[1739] So cool.

[1740] I guess maybe, fuck, I don't know if this is going to be a pessimistic note to end on or an optimistic one.

[1741] We've survived three mass extensions.

[1742] I think that's positive.

[1743] I think it's positive, too.

[1744] And I end the book with an epilogue.

[1745] I won't give it away, but I'm back in Chicago with my wife.

[1746] We're at the Lincoln Park Zoo.

[1747] That's the zoo that's very close to the lake.

[1748] And again, the lake being this giant puddle of glacial meltwater gets you thinking that 10 ,000 years ago, there was an ice cap here.

[1749] And then the city's built up.

[1750] The City of Chicago is less than 200 years old.

[1751] To read The Devil in the White City.

[1752] Yes, I love that book.

[1753] Yes.

[1754] I went to college south side at High Park University of Chicago, so the World's Fair is very local there.

[1755] So I love that.

[1756] Eric Larson's tremendous.

[1757] Throw something at him.

[1758] He's like 20 for 20 of the shit I've thrown at him.

[1759] So anyway, and the book, we're walking through the zoo.

[1760] We're looking at the animals, kind of going.

[1761] going through all the different types of mammals that are there.

[1762] We're trying to call back to the reader how those mammals evolved and what they've endured.

[1763] And I say that.

[1764] I said, mammals have endured three mass extinctions.

[1765] Mass extinctions are nasty.

[1766] That asteroid, it killed 75 % of stuff.

[1767] There were two prior extinctions where maybe up to 90 % of species died, these big volcanoes erupted, cause runaway global warming.

[1768] Mammals or their ancestors have gotten through these things.

[1769] What's happening now is very rapid change and very worrying change and change that can be laid at our feet.

[1770] I'm more worried about us than I am about mammals.

[1771] We are so well adapted to this particular world that we've grown up in as a species.

[1772] So we need to learn how to cope with change, but even better than that, we need to reverse some of those changes.

[1773] And I think it's the fossil record, it's looking at what the earth used to be like that gives us that perspective.

[1774] It gives us that baseline.

[1775] It tells us the earth has changed before.

[1776] There have been extinctions, before.

[1777] Real species, real ecosystems have gone through these things.

[1778] So with that knowledge of the clues from prehistory, that's what we need in order to plan a better tomorrow, as trite as that sounds.

[1779] Yeah.

[1780] This is going to be very unpopular.

[1781] People are going to hate that I say this.

[1782] Global warming is happening.

[1783] We caused it.

[1784] I'll suggest the outcome's unknown.

[1785] Oh, I agree with that, yes.

[1786] Look, if we entered the next ice age and we had made ourselves six degrees warmer on accident throughout that time, we might at some point in history be.

[1787] grateful that this happened.

[1788] I'm not promoting more carbon in the atmosphere, but as you said, there's been points on planet Earth where the carbon in the atmosphere was 20x of what it is right now.

[1789] You couldn't have opened your eyes.

[1790] The Earth has gone through everything before.

[1791] The Earth is so old.

[1792] And so anything that's happening now, there are parallels in prehistory, including global warming, sea level rises, ocean acidification.

[1793] I'm not saying those are good things.

[1794] I'm not saying we should want these things.

[1795] But they have happened.

[1796] We can learn from them.

[1797] And the Earth has always endured, and the Earth will endure this, but again, you know, we have not had to deal with these as a human species.

[1798] There's all of this modeling, climate modeling.

[1799] And I know climate modelers, and these people are really bright, and they take into account the whole Earth system.

[1800] And they will be able to predict things.

[1801] Now, of course, any model is only as good as the predictions you put in.

[1802] And there is a lot of uncertainty.

[1803] There's huge uncertainty.

[1804] I mean, you just look at predictions from a few decades ago about things that would be happening now.

[1805] Well, South Beach should be underwater.

[1806] We were just there.

[1807] I was like, wait, this should already be underwater.

[1808] Why isn't it?

[1809] So we have to be humble when we're talking about predictions and modeling.

[1810] And also, I think we don't want to be doomsayers.

[1811] That's not healthy either.

[1812] It's overwhelming and then you go, fuck it, let's party.

[1813] Then nobody cares, right?

[1814] If it's just we're all doomed anyway, if that asteroid is going to, you know, hit in a couple days.

[1815] Yeah, fuck your sister -in -law.

[1816] Who cares?

[1817] Well, that's one approach.

[1818] But yeah, I mean, I think we just want to learn from the past and we want to keep an open mind and we want to just mitigate our worst tendencies.

[1819] Yes.

[1820] And we want to use new and emerging technologies just to do better, to not pump so much carbon into the atmosphere.

[1821] Absolutely.

[1822] If for no other reason, then you should always be striving to be using a replenishable resource for energy.

[1823] There's just basic shit even if there wasn't this looming thing that we would hopefully be striving to.

[1824] We want clean water, whether there's global warming or not.

[1825] We want clean air.

[1826] Yeah.

[1827] Oh my goodness.

[1828] This was a fucking Blast.

[1829] Thank you so much.

[1830] I hope everyone goes out and gets the rise and rain of the mammals.

[1831] That's us, gang.

[1832] This book's about you.

[1833] Check it out.

[1834] Thank you so much, Steve.

[1835] Thanks, Monica.

[1836] Thank you.

[1837] And now my favorite part of the show, the fact check with my soulmate, Monica Padman.

[1838] Good morning.

[1839] Good morning.

[1840] Happy belated Father's Day.

[1841] Oh, thank you.

[1842] Thank you so much.

[1843] Did you have a nice one?

[1844] Oh, incredible.

[1845] the greatest.

[1846] Tell us about it.

[1847] Well, it was really funny because clearly something was a foot, okay?

[1848] What will we call it?

[1849] A conspiracy.

[1850] Conspiracy, yes.

[1851] Christmas was out of town.

[1852] So the girls woke up earlier than me and then they came into the bedroom and they were singing, Happy Father's Day to you.

[1853] And they had signs that said, we love you.

[1854] Yeah.

[1855] It was great.

[1856] And then they were like, they tried to play cool for like 20 seconds.

[1857] They're like, you don't want to work out dad i mean it was like i had been up for five minutes and i was like well i'll probably journal okay well let me know when you want to work out i was like okay something's happening in the gym in black mold paradise and then so i sped through my journal and then went out to the garage and they had all over the walls of black mold paradise they had drawn little pictures and written me notes and then they also in stencil oh did i show you a picture yet uh get your phone out it's out Get it out again.

[1858] Hold it up to your eyes.

[1859] Wait, first of all, I haven't even seen that.

[1860] That's part of it.

[1861] They put that up?

[1862] Kristen and the girls.

[1863] Oh my gosh, how exciting.

[1864] Stenciled.

[1865] I'll post a picture of this.

[1866] They stenciled Dan Gaines Beefhoss.

[1867] Hashtag Black Mold Paradise.

[1868] Yeah.

[1869] Rob, you need to see this too.

[1870] I'm going to send it over to you as well.

[1871] And then also a huge Ted Seeger's stickers now on the wall oh fun what's that other thing at the bottom is there like a drawing on the wall yeah there's a trillion drawings on the wall do you want to see the video what's ted segers ted segers is erin and erin and i's beer we have our own beer non -alcoholic beer i should just for you two for us three yeah yeah yeah Aaron's father who is the handsomest man on the planet he's ted seagers just couldn't be more gorgeous and a beautiful n -a it almost tastes like well not Not almost.

[1872] Of course, my memory is 18 years old.

[1873] But you've had it.

[1874] I think it tastes like Blue Moon.

[1875] Oh, you do?

[1876] I love it.

[1877] And I think it tastes just like Sierra Nevada Palau.

[1878] But again, it's been 18 years.

[1879] Have you ever had a Sierra Nevada Palo?

[1880] I'm sure I have, but it's not top of mind.

[1881] Okay, not top of mind.

[1882] Well, I absolutely loved it back when I was a functional alcoholic.

[1883] I don't know if I was functional, but an active alcoholist.

[1884] You were functioning.

[1885] That's true.

[1886] I made it.

[1887] Speaking of, we have so much.

[1888] to cover on that topic.

[1889] On alcoholism?

[1890] Mm -hmm.

[1891] Oh, no. Or, oh, yes.

[1892] I fell off the wagon, no. You're drinking in the morning as I suspected this many years ago?

[1893] No, but this is sad.

[1894] I ran out of my good tea.

[1895] So I had to, this isn't the part of it.

[1896] I'm tired.

[1897] You are.

[1898] Oh, my God, I'm so tired today.

[1899] You look a little sleepy.

[1900] Not that you don't look young and fresh, just you look a little drowsy.

[1901] I am.

[1902] Why come you're so drowsy?

[1903] Because I watched a documentary that you told me to watch last night.

[1904] Okay.

[1905] And then I was thinking about it for hours.

[1906] Oh, okay.

[1907] I thought it was going to really impact you.

[1908] And then I couldn't sleep, so then I had to do some crosswords.

[1909] Oh, fun.

[1910] And then I finally went to say around one.

[1911] One.

[1912] Okay, well, shit, you could have pushed this morning.

[1913] No. I had fucking nothing to do today.

[1914] Okay, let me. Oh, cute.

[1915] Yeah, go through the whole thing.

[1916] Wow.

[1917] Oh, wow.

[1918] Oh, my God.

[1919] When you said drawings, see, okay, this is confusing.

[1920] Okay.

[1921] It sounded like they drew pictures and taped.

[1922] Nope, nope, nope, permanently on the wall.

[1923] They drew all over the wall.

[1924] Painted and drew, yeah.

[1925] Aw.

[1926] You could say vandalized, but I love all of it.

[1927] One person's beautiful art is another person's vandalization.

[1928] That's right.

[1929] I have the beholder is what they say.

[1930] Beautiful.

[1931] I love that.

[1932] Isn't that lovely?

[1933] And then Lincoln wrote a little, like a little poem or just a, I don't know, when you go, sonnet.

[1934] Haiku.

[1935] Maybe I'm elevating what it is.

[1936] It's just a message is what it is.

[1937] Yeah, it's very sweet.

[1938] Yeah, super sweet message.

[1939] So, yeah.

[1940] Okay, so the doc you told me to watch was.

[1941] The Anthony Bourdain that's on HBO Max.

[1942] I like the idea of him quite a bit, but I never watched the show.

[1943] Did you?

[1944] I've seen episodes, but.

[1945] It wasn't like a show of yours, right?

[1946] No. So I just kind of, well, let me back.

[1947] I had read Kitchen Confidential when it came out, and I loved it.

[1948] And then, of course, I remember when Bradley was on the show, Kitchen Confidential.

[1949] Was it a show or a movie?

[1950] It was a show.

[1951] Okay.

[1952] And I met him right after that finish.

[1953] Yeah, it was funny because in the doc, Anthony Bourdain is looking at some trades or something, and it says, like, Brad Pitt is going to play him in a movie.

[1954] And he's like, oh, my God.

[1955] And then they cut to, like, a quick scene in Kitchen Confidential, but it's Bradley.

[1956] Yeah, and it's a TV show.

[1957] Yeah.

[1958] Yeah, well, first of all, now you'd be just as excited today to find out one of the two Bradds was going to do it.

[1959] But in 2005, he just wasn't coop dog, yeah.

[1960] They couldn't get Brad Pitt.

[1961] Right, so it went from a movie with Brad Pitt to a TV show in Canada with a guy you've never heard of.

[1962] That's show business.

[1963] I know, that's crazy.

[1964] That's hopeful.

[1965] Well, is that the message?

[1966] I think it's helpful.

[1967] If we're talking about Cooper, it's very hopeful.

[1968] That's what I mean.

[1969] Yeah, in that moment, that was like, e, I guess we're not getting Brad Pitt, we're getting this stranger.

[1970] And it's not going to be a movie.

[1971] And by the way, this is before TV was king.

[1972] Exactly, but that's why it's hopeful.

[1973] Now, both of those pieces are better.

[1974] Oh, yes, 100%.

[1975] I keep going from Anthony Bourdain's perspective.

[1976] He probably got in his life to be able to feel that.

[1977] Like, wow, that was really cool.

[1978] That was Bradley Cooper.

[1979] Oh, yeah, for sure.

[1980] But additionally, there's so many side paths here.

[1981] announcements are almost their own industry in Hollywood.

[1982] Yes, they are.

[1983] Like people getting announcements.

[1984] An average A -list celebrity like Brad Pitt is probably setting up three or four projects a year that make the trades.

[1985] And everyone's like, oh my God, Sony got that or Warner Brothers got that.

[1986] One will get made for the amount of announcements are made.

[1987] So anyways, but if you're new to Hollywood and you've just written this book and you read in the newspaper, Brad Pitt's doing my story.

[1988] Yeah.

[1989] You have to think that's happening.

[1990] they put it in the newspaper.

[1991] Exactly.

[1992] But none of those things ever happen.

[1993] Yeah, it's rare.

[1994] I was just saying it's brutal for like the newbie.

[1995] It's a tough biz, but it is hopeful.

[1996] It is.

[1997] Anywho.

[1998] You're watching that.

[1999] Yeah, I watched that.

[2000] It was so...

[2001] Is this about alcohol?

[2002] I'm trying to remember what part I have to do with alcohol.

[2003] Yeah, because he was an addict.

[2004] Oh, yes, he was an addict.

[2005] And for me, that was a big thing that was lingering after.

[2006] Because, I mean, I don't want to be.

[2007] I don't give, there's not that much to give away.

[2008] Well, people know his story, so I don't think you're giving anything away.

[2009] If you haven't seen it and you know nothing about him, then caution.

[2010] Right.

[2011] But we're assuming everyone knows that he killed himself.

[2012] Yeah, he was a big chef.

[2013] And then a. You wrote Christian Confidentials.

[2014] It looked like Brad Pitt was going to do a movie about him.

[2015] This poor Bradley Cooper on a CW TV show.

[2016] It was on CW.

[2017] I don't know.

[2018] I'm just being mean.

[2019] But I'm not being mean because I love Bradley.

[2020] Yeah.

[2021] It's in fun.

[2022] And we love Anthony Bordane.

[2023] Anyway, and then, yes, so he did not, all these shows, all these, like, travel shows based in food, but really not, really based in, like, exploration of these cultures.

[2024] It was one to watch the arc, so the first show he did, I forget what it was called, and it became Parts Unknown was the big, ordain, I think, canon is mostly that.

[2025] Yeah.

[2026] But the first one was, for network approval, they were getting him to eat bizarre things.

[2027] Yes.

[2028] And so what's weird is that's kind of what I remember about him.

[2029] Yeah.

[2030] And then some years went by and I was like, oh, he's not the guy eating weird thing.

[2031] He still did do some of that, like throughout.

[2032] But I think it was organic and authentic.

[2033] Like, I think that motherfucker would eat anything.

[2034] But I don't think he goes to a city going, can I eat a snake?

[2035] Heart that's beating.

[2036] That must have given you the.

[2037] Can you imagine?

[2038] Oh, my God.

[2039] Oh, my God.

[2040] No. No, no, no. He, like, shot it like an oyster, too.

[2041] He didn't, like, chew it.

[2042] Well, he shot it, and then I saw him chewing.

[2043] Oh.

[2044] because there was some leftover goofs.

[2045] Guys, guys, guys.

[2046] He said he felt it beating on the way down.

[2047] Oh, my God.

[2048] What if when you pooped it, I was still beating and you went, whoo!

[2049] That would be kind of fun.

[2050] Yeah, it was like an anal plug or butt beads or whatever.

[2051] Okay, what were you ruminating on?

[2052] So I had all kinds of thoughts.

[2053] Yeah.

[2054] Well, I'm talking about this in therapy a lot.

[2055] You know, when you're on these rides and there's tens, but they come with.

[2056] two's like you can't have a 10 and not have a two unfortunately no it's a pendulum yes and so the 10 is so enticing really quick you can throw 10 after 10 after 10 in it like you can if you're on it you can switch from this 10 to that 10 to this 10 and then it all collapses but like yeah I think one of the two either you're going to have this 10 then it's going to swing to a two or you've got to feed that fucking machine with more 10s that's what addiction is I think it is but it inevitably comes with the drop like When I, I probably not supposed to say this.

[2057] If she hears it, she'll probably be mad at me. I don't know if I'm allowed to say.

[2058] But I'm allowed to say whatever I want.

[2059] I'm my own girl.

[2060] When I first saw her, I was like.

[2061] Who's her?

[2062] My therapist.

[2063] Oh, okay.

[2064] She asked me like to visualize in that moment.

[2065] And I was going through a tough time.

[2066] She was asking me to explain visually what my life was like, basically.

[2067] Like do a metaphor.

[2068] Oh, right.

[2069] Okay.

[2070] And I said it was like a roller coaster.

[2071] And she said, what do you want it to be?

[2072] Yeah.

[2073] And I said a slow hike.

[2074] Oh, that's nice.

[2075] And...

[2076] What if you said the demon drop?

[2077] Do you know what that one is?

[2078] Is that a big, cool roller coaster?

[2079] It's the one that goes straight up in the air.

[2080] And then it pushes you out, and then it just drops down.

[2081] At Cedar Point is called the demon drop.

[2082] The mansion.

[2083] Tower terror.

[2084] Yeah, yeah.

[2085] T .T. It's fun.

[2086] It's fun.

[2087] Sure, sure.

[2088] Like, roller coasters are really fun.

[2089] It are.

[2090] But if you don't get on one.

[2091] you will die.

[2092] Yeah, that's right.

[2093] Eventually, you'll die.

[2094] So anyway, I was just thinking about this with the 10 and the 2.

[2095] And like, it's so hard because if you've experienced a 10, not having that feels like such a loss or it feels horrible.

[2096] It feels like that's the epitome of like winning.

[2097] It's staying out of 10.

[2098] Yeah.

[2099] Yeah, right.

[2100] But the reality is winning is maintaining a 6 and a half.

[2101] Yeah, yeah.

[2102] It's hard to do when you're accustomed to, exactly, when you have to have acceptance around.

[2103] that and I don't think he could ever have that.

[2104] He never had that.

[2105] He was always searching.

[2106] There was no level of contentment.

[2107] Right.

[2108] I think you've heard me say this.

[2109] Like for, I don't know, 10 of the last 18 years, I recognize sobriety is living to learn between four and seven and then that being enough.

[2110] Yeah.

[2111] But it's hard.

[2112] I think it would have helped him, I'm sure, to have been in a program where you are reminded to force yourself to do that.

[2113] every day yeah or minimally seeing other people in there that are living the same way and there's a lot more mirrors for that personality type in an a a meeting than not yeah yeah but i had this curiosity about him always which is i had read kitchen confidential and i very much sorry bradley cooper this fall on ced him on the own we love him he's i love him i love him oh kiss his face um ding ding ding ding i've had like i've been having a all these dreams about him.

[2114] In fact, last night I had a protracted one.

[2115] Yes, and I was going to text him this morning again.

[2116] He's going to get sick of it.

[2117] Are you okay?

[2118] No, maybe you just miss him.

[2119] Maybe.

[2120] But he probably needs your help.

[2121] But he's probably drowning in quicksand right now.

[2122] I was always, so I knew he was a junkie and quit from the book.

[2123] But then when I started watching the show, I noticed he's always drinking in the show.

[2124] Yeah.

[2125] And for me, and look, I'm not a Nazi.

[2126] I really am not.

[2127] I don't really care what people do, whatever.

[2128] But it was curious to me. I've never really met any junkies that were able to drink successfully.

[2129] And then I found it just kind of intriguing that it did appear he drank, I mean, maybe frequently, but not destructively.

[2130] Yeah.

[2131] So I was always intrigued by that.

[2132] That was always one part of his story that didn't fit my worldview of how it works.

[2133] Yeah.

[2134] Like, can you imagine me casually doing anything?

[2135] No, you can't.

[2136] No, I can't casually do halls.

[2137] There's nothing I can casually do.

[2138] So, granted, he and I were different people, but it just always was quite curious to me, that part of it.

[2139] Now, I also personality type relates so much to him.

[2140] I know.

[2141] Was he, was it freaking out?

[2142] Triggering.

[2143] I was just like, oh, no, because I'm always scared of everything and the future.

[2144] So he reminded me a ton of you.

[2145] And also, like, in all the good ways, like in his, like, bright light and how he helps people.

[2146] Tall and duffacy, look lanky.

[2147] A magnetic.

[2148] I think he had a very special personality and, yeah, like a rare bird.

[2149] Yeah.

[2150] And he also was in no hurry, which I found it.

[2151] It's very appealing.

[2152] What do you mean?

[2153] Like the way he spoke.

[2154] Oh, yeah.

[2155] He was very articulate, but not in a hurry.

[2156] And seemingly without trying to win you over.

[2157] But I'm sure he was.

[2158] Yeah.

[2159] Of course he wanted it.

[2160] But he was just, he was a vibe.

[2161] Like he had a really cool vibe to him.

[2162] Yeah, very.

[2163] Can you see why I wanted to smoke?

[2164] Yeah, of course.

[2165] I understand it.

[2166] Yeah.

[2167] It looks cool.

[2168] Okay, so, well, two things.

[2169] So bummed for him that he didn't show up for his daughter.

[2170] Well, that part was so heartbreaking because there's an early part where he's like having some downtime at home and he's like cooking burgers on the grill and he says like this is normal.

[2171] I want to, I love normal.

[2172] I want a normal life.

[2173] I never thought I'd want this.

[2174] but this actually makes me happy.

[2175] But then you kind of go on to see, like, he can only maintain that for so long, then he needs the next hit.

[2176] That's its own high is the return to home.

[2177] It's funny because I was talking to my mom yesterday.

[2178] We had a long, long conversation.

[2179] I was urging her to watch the doc, you know, and I was saying that there's a moment in it where he and another person are talking.

[2180] I think it's David Chang talking about being home and loving it and then needing to go.

[2181] Yeah, Eric Repair, I think.

[2182] Oh, is that who it was?

[2183] And so my mom was like, oh, my God, that was my life.

[2184] It gives me so much guilt.

[2185] But she's like, you know, I did car shows from the time you were 12 to whatever, 28.

[2186] And she's like, and I feel bad for Carly, but I would get home and it would be bliss.

[2187] And then in about a week, I'd start going crazy like, when's my next car show?

[2188] Because it was so fun and you're in a bubble and you're not responsible for anything.

[2189] It's an escape in some ways.

[2190] It's a total escape.

[2191] And it's very appealing.

[2192] Yeah.

[2193] Now, I have it still, but I incorporate everyone in my life.

[2194] I don't, like, disappear on my own.

[2195] But I have wonderlust still very much, and I like having things to look forward to.

[2196] And I'm home for a while, and I like it, but then I want to get everyone going to somewhere else.

[2197] Yeah.

[2198] When I was watching it and I was feeling scared, I felt some solace in the fact that your family's going to root you like your children are in a way that he couldn't get.

[2199] couldn't find purchase and he might have been able to with some help but he didn't he he he didn't I just and it's it's so tricky because you know they talk to all these people in his life who love him they're mad at him yeah they're all mad at him which I understand both like I know that the pain that's happening is so strong that they can't they they actually are incapable it's a limitation like they're incapable of seeing the pain it will cause other like just the relief of that pain is the only thing that needs addressing yeah but when you see all these people left behind and for the rest of their life having questions and not knowing how what was really going with this and could they have done something like the burden that gets placed on everyone's hearts who are around them is so do you remember i went back in time we interviewed somebody who was friends with them.

[2200] Yes.

[2201] It was really fresh.

[2202] It had happened quite recently.

[2203] And he immediately said, I had been texting him saying, you got to get away from that woman.

[2204] You got to stop.

[2205] Yes.

[2206] And I didn't know what he meant because I didn't know anything about his life.

[2207] But he immediately was like, yeah, he went nuts for that woman.

[2208] And we were begging him to stop.

[2209] Okay, this is a very, we will first say that you and I are unified in the fact that no one's responsible for someone's suicide.

[2210] Absolutely not.

[2211] Absolutely not.

[2212] So I have no shade on this woman.

[2213] But his reaction to this woman is worth really talking about and examining.

[2214] And I found it to be so wild.

[2215] Like out of nowhere, he's pretty late in his life.

[2216] He's kind of, he somehow managed this kind of bipolar -ish frenetic life.

[2217] Yeah.

[2218] Successfully, although I think he was getting increasingly sad and lonely.

[2219] It was starting to be meaningless.

[2220] I think the isolation was really serious.

[2221] starting to take over.

[2222] And because he was becoming more famous, he couldn't go anywhere and be anonymous.

[2223] He was getting claustrophobic.

[2224] And I think he had to feel pretty deep shame about not being the dad.

[2225] He thought he could be or was first attempting to be.

[2226] That had to be brutal.

[2227] Somebody said that in the doc.

[2228] That's kind of what he couldn't get over, that he couldn't be the dad she.

[2229] Yeah.

[2230] Yeah, that's a bummer.

[2231] But anyways, he falls in love with this much, much younger woman.

[2232] And then she's very involved in the Me Too movement.

[2233] Yeah.

[2234] And then he becomes a spokesperson for it.

[2235] Yes.

[2236] What did you think about that stuff?

[2237] I thought, to me, it wasn't about her.

[2238] To me, I saw this and I was like another addiction.

[2239] It was just another addiction.

[2240] It was another place for him to put all his energy and to not have to think about the sadness and his daughter and the isolation.

[2241] She was just a vessel for that.

[2242] See, what's, that's fun.

[2243] because what triggered me is I was thinking the whole time it's actually not about the movement it's about her he is doing this singularly for her oh yeah a hundred it's not like he's globally concerned about women I mean I'm sure he has a I'm sure he's a good dude so he had a you know some interest in or whatever some some outrage about it but no it was about protecting her yes and about winning her over and about being her being appealing to her I think I think and I think there's a curious thing when like much of older dudes get with younger women, there's just going to be this really deep foundation of insecurity, which is like, I'm too old for this woman.

[2244] And then even the way they were showing him, like, kept bringing up her parking.

[2245] Like, he's kind of embarrassed.

[2246] Like, he lost his swagger because he was so insecure.

[2247] There was insecurity for sure.

[2248] I think you're definitely right about that.

[2249] But when he can't stop talking about how good of a parker she is.

[2250] It's because there's nothing really on paper.

[2251] And also, to me, it just felt manic.

[2252] I'm like, this person's in a manic spell, and he's a love addict, and, like, that's what's happening.

[2253] And I think, you and this gets talked about a little bit in the doc, too, it's not that much of a surprise that that push.

[2254] Critical mass. Yeah, for her.

[2255] Because if someone is there and all they can, and they're just, like, bragging about your parking, and it feels manic, like, that's a lot.

[2256] Eternal.

[2257] Yeah.

[2258] Yeah.

[2259] Yeah.

[2260] The fact that I think he felt insecure in that relationship big time.

[2261] Yeah.

[2262] And then there are photos of her with another dude publicly.

[2263] Yeah.

[2264] I think he was so humiliated.

[2265] And I think he came to terms with the fact that he was right to be insecure.

[2266] Mm -hmm.

[2267] And he couldn't, on top of, again, whatever kind of manic thing he was having.

[2268] Yeah.

[2269] If nothing else, I look at that, I'm like, oh, my God, you're so close to the finish line.

[2270] And that's how you left, just miserable.

[2271] And it's wild.

[2272] It's like, man, he had such a storybook life for so long.

[2273] He did, but he didn't.

[2274] But he did.

[2275] I think that's the, that's just the takeaway.

[2276] It's when you're living a life like that with all these highs and all these lows, it's not storybook.

[2277] It can look like that.

[2278] It can look like a Bukowski novel.

[2279] That also reminded me of you a little bit because he talks about how loving his parents were.

[2280] And basically how he resented them for that.

[2281] Yes.

[2282] He wanted hardship.

[2283] Yeah, what do you say?

[2284] They committed the unforgivable or the irredeemable.

[2285] Something like that.

[2286] Of loving me. Yeah.

[2287] It was like it was a great line and it, but it told me so much about him.

[2288] I'm like, yeah, he's just the type that needs a struggle that wants a story.

[2289] Yeah.

[2290] And the heroine was like that too.

[2291] Like he said, he's like, I made a choice.

[2292] It wasn't like I fell.

[2293] Yep.

[2294] And then when he got high, he looked at himself, he was proud of himself.

[2295] He was finally doing something that was worth, and reminded you of me. Yeah.

[2296] Yeah, for sure.

[2297] It's interesting, though, because then I'll take another, just one last, because for the people who haven't seen the documentary, maybe this is excruciating.

[2298] I think it, Rob, does it still make sense, even if you haven't seen it?

[2299] Yeah.

[2300] These topics.

[2301] Yeah, yeah.

[2302] Okay, okay, okay.

[2303] The other part, though, that is worth saying, I think, is like, people are people.

[2304] Mm -hmm.

[2305] And some of our most amazing people.

[2306] are this way.

[2307] Yeah, I know.

[2308] And it's a way.

[2309] It's a personality type.

[2310] This is the course, it rant, Hemingway, same thing, killed himself.

[2311] Like, I'm not inclined to say, like, no one should be this way, weirdly.

[2312] That's not really my takeaway.

[2313] My takeaway is like, can you learn to navigate it?

[2314] Can you embrace all that passion and romanticism, but keep it on the rails?

[2315] I think, I think maybe the answer is no. Like, I think if you really are content And you really have found that Which I do think is the goal for humans It should be like that's where you find real peace Yeah If you have that you're not doing that You're not chasing They're actually in opposition to one another And it sucks Because we need those people Right, we need the Bordains But it's hard to be in those people's orbit If they can't ever find a wholeness He also had an honesty about himself that I admired.

[2316] He would admit, like, I blew that marriage up, or I, you know, I like that part.

[2317] You know what actually, I think, potentially happened is he had this drive this whole life to be.

[2318] He was looking for, he was looking to uncover parts and places that people.

[2319] That were unknown?

[2320] They were unknown.

[2321] And there were no reservations there.

[2322] I also at those places.

[2323] No, but he, but I think he just was like searching out other people's pain as part of his.

[2324] So he's just like also surrounding himself with dark shit.

[2325] And that was his goal.

[2326] That's what he said about his parents.

[2327] Like he wanted that, but at some point you probably hit an age and you're like, there's no light in my life because I've been immersed in darkness for so long.

[2328] Yeah.

[2329] I'm not, yeah.

[2330] All the places he goes, I'm like, oh, I'd love to be there.

[2331] Especially when he was on the pool.

[2332] and there was a war going on around him.

[2333] To me, that's my dream situation.

[2334] The one part, I feel like we're missing a part of his life, which is his sex life.

[2335] I have to imagine there was more going on.

[2336] He's in all these weird places.

[2337] A lot of these places are like sex tourism places.

[2338] Yes.

[2339] He's a thrill seeker, a love addict.

[2340] It's hard to imagine there wasn't some really active sexual component to this lifestyle.

[2341] Yeah.

[2342] I don't know.

[2343] Yeah, anyway, it was a...

[2344] It was sad.

[2345] And it was also beautiful.

[2346] It is.

[2347] He was incredible.

[2348] Have you ever read that book?

[2349] It's so good.

[2350] No, I want to.

[2351] Yeah, it's really, really great.

[2352] He's a fucking awesome writer.

[2353] Oh, my God.

[2354] Like, the way he speaks and writes is so beautiful.

[2355] Yeah.

[2356] What an awesome, cool gift that he was for so long time.

[2357] Yeah.

[2358] Really cool, dude.

[2359] Yeah.

[2360] Having watched it, I would love to have hung with him.

[2361] I think he was better off.

[2362] We would have got on a rocket chip.

[2363] just fucking pulled the pin.

[2364] Ding, ding, ding, dinosaurs.

[2365] I don't get it.

[2366] It's not a ding ding ding ding.

[2367] Duck, do have a question that I thought about on my drive over.

[2368] That is a ding, ding, ding, ding, duck, duck goose.

[2369] Do you think it's, um, maybe it's actually because I watched this doc and I didn't realize those are connected, but.

[2370] So it's a duck, duck, duck, goose.

[2371] Yeah, so that is a duck, dog, goose.

[2372] Okay, so like when a young girl is dating an old, a much older man, let's say 20 years older than her.

[2373] When she's 20, it seems like, oh my God, like unethical.

[2374] Oh, right, right.

[2375] But, like, at some point for me, that crosses over.

[2376] Sure, if a 50 -year -old wants to date an 80 -year -old or a...

[2377] Well, what about, like, my age?

[2378] Like, how far could you go?

[2379] 60's too old.

[2380] Really?

[2381] Not, yes, because here's what I...

[2382] But it's not unethical.

[2383] No, there's no morals in it.

[2384] The only morals is agency.

[2385] And then you can kind of get into, does a, you know, does a 22 -year -old really have a ton of agency?

[2386] That's what I'm saying.

[2387] But I think when you, look, if we can't agree that when you hit 30, you're a grown -ass woman who can make whatever decisions.

[2388] Then what are we talking about?

[2389] Then we're really just kind of infanelizing women across the board.

[2390] I'm also of the opinion that any 20 -year -old is allowed to do whatever the fuck they want, too.

[2391] I'll always lean towards, at some point adults are adults.

[2392] And that's that.

[2393] And even if someone's a gold digger, that's an option for an adult human.

[2394] Or if there are this, that's up to them to be.

[2395] Yeah.

[2396] You, of course, implicit in it, and this is vaguely misogynistic.

[2397] I think, in fact, we've even heard a new term.

[2398] Now you don't say daddy issues.

[2399] Oh, yeah.

[2400] Oh, God, Daddy Hunter.

[2401] Whatever.

[2402] That's gross.

[2403] Daddy hunger.

[2404] Father hunger.

[2405] That's gross.

[2406] That's an upcoming Easter egg duck, duck goose.

[2407] But there is an implication of, like, this poor gal didn't have a father.

[2408] If she's attracted to a 60 -year -old.

[2409] Yeah, but that's not true.

[2410] Of course, that's not true.

[2411] And then, of course, it doesn't, it leaves out like, Men are also looking for some weird thing with their mother.

[2412] Yeah.

[2413] We just don't, we don't label it.

[2414] Well, edible.

[2415] It's like we're...

[2416] Mommy hunger.

[2417] Oh, mommy hunger.

[2418] That sounds like a terrible porn series.

[2419] Yeah, our mommy hunger seems to be mommies as baby hunger.

[2420] We want our mommy when they're 20.

[2421] Ew.

[2422] Well, ours is reverse.

[2423] I don't understand whatever.

[2424] That's more of an evolutionary thing, I guess.

[2425] They seem fertile.

[2426] Anywho, all of us have mommy and daddy issues.

[2427] I guess what I'm saying is there should be really no weirdness if I dated a 60 year old There's not you know what there would be from me It's just concern He's gonna be dead shortly And you're gonna have the rest of your life That scares me I want a partner for you that Do you have a crush on a 60 year old You can't bring out this very specific number Are you dating a 60 year old that I don't know about No I was just again like I was saying after the dog I mean you know I do want to date Brad Pitt Yeah that's true Like, that should be an option to me I can get behind that one I also think maybe he's rich enough He'll figure out how to live too long You know, longer than one should If that becomes available Well, he just seems, you know what I like about him Tell me Duck Duck Goose, tell me What you like about Brad Pitt How fucking hot he is?

[2428] Well, yes But also I know through people That he's like really Truly nice Yes, oh, incredibly.

[2429] And I think for me, that almost seems impossible.

[2430] Yes.

[2431] And I'm like, how can that person behave the way he's behaving and be so generous?

[2432] Because you're talking about Anthony Bourdain felt fucking claustrophobic?

[2433] I mean, that dude can't go to China in the jungle.

[2434] And, oh, yeah, that scares me just thinking about it.

[2435] He's still able to maintain.

[2436] And I don't think, like, nice, like, platitude nice.

[2437] Like, I think he's, like, really a good person.

[2438] From what I've heard about him, too, he's just, I think he's always been a sweet, sincere dude from Missouri.

[2439] Yeah.

[2440] Like, I think he's a good, like, country boy.

[2441] And hasn't got...

[2442] All fucked out.

[2443] Yeah.

[2444] I mean, I'm sure he's fucked up in his own way.

[2445] Well, everyone is, but I mean, like, he...

[2446] In the kind that's kinky in the bedroom, hopefully.

[2447] Yeah.

[2448] Oh, my God.

[2449] I just find that, like, astonishing, so I want to date him for that.

[2450] Okay, okay, I sign off on that, for sure.

[2451] I'd date him, too.

[2452] If I dated him publicly and said, I'm sorry.

[2453] still straight.

[2454] This would be like the women we've interviewed who fall in love with one woman.

[2455] Yeah.

[2456] Right?

[2457] Yeah.

[2458] That could happen to me and Brad.

[2459] It could happen.

[2460] The young kids are doing this.

[2461] Yeah.

[2462] They're not putting labels.

[2463] They're just falling in love with who they love.

[2464] I hear that, but I have to meet one of these young kids, but maybe.

[2465] No, they are.

[2466] Oh, they are.

[2467] The really, like, 11 -year -olds and stuff?

[2468] No, I'm serious.

[2469] Oh, my God.

[2470] I'm serious.

[2471] Wait, 11 -year -olds aren't sexual, hopefully?

[2472] No, but they're like, they're already embracing.

[2473] love this person, period.

[2474] Yeah, it doesn't.

[2475] I'm not, like, so focused on their gender.

[2476] I mean, the hard thing for you, I guess, would be the sexual experience.

[2477] Where the rubber meets the road.

[2478] I know.

[2479] I've kind of thought about it.

[2480] Maybe you could still have sex with Kristen.

[2481] Maybe she'll allow it.

[2482] Allow me to have sex with her while I'm dating Brad.

[2483] Yeah.

[2484] I hope so, yeah, because that part does make me nervous.

[2485] It's also very triggering from my history.

[2486] I know.

[2487] Yeah, that's okay.

[2488] To be engaged in a sexual activity with a guy against my wishes.

[2489] Well, it wouldn't be.

[2490] Well, that's the part that I feel like no matter how much I convinced myself going into it.

[2491] Yeah.

[2492] I can't imagine I wouldn't be like, oh, I don't like this.

[2493] Yeah, I'm sure it would just, of course.

[2494] You don't have to.

[2495] Okay, I'll try.

[2496] Don't worry.

[2497] Duck, duck goose.

[2498] I guess, like, Aaron and I have.

[2499] have a very physically intimate relationship.

[2500] I wonder how many times I hug him during a day when we're together.

[2501] But it's a dozen.

[2502] That's nice.

[2503] Like we'll be talking and then we're laughing and then I just like, I need to hold him for a second.

[2504] That's really cute.

[2505] But nothing, there's nothing sexual going on.

[2506] No, I know.

[2507] From my end.

[2508] I don't know what's happening in Aaron's slacks.

[2509] I guess we'll never know.

[2510] He would tell us.

[2511] Yeah, check next time.

[2512] Speaking of Aaron, we've been meaning to play something for a bit.

[2513] Oh.

[2514] Okay.

[2515] Oh, let's see what these are.

[2516] But when you sent me You can get behind me And in front of me Can you dig it?

[2517] That's from Dolomite Oh Because Joy made a Ted Seeger's commercial for us Oh Ted Seekers You can get in front of me And behind me Wow That was great I don't fuck with too many honkies But what I do is Ted Seekers Mm, he can get in front of me and behind me Oh, I really like the way she says and behind me Yeah, she's got her own take on it I like it.

[2518] Isn't that great?

[2519] I'll play it one more time.

[2520] I don't normally fuck with honkies.

[2521] I don't fuck with too many honkies, but what I do is Ted Sears.

[2522] Mm, he can get in front of me and behind me. Can you believe how good that is?

[2523] Wow, that's amazing.

[2524] Oh, shit.

[2525] Sorry, that was a D -2.

[2526] That was a duck, dog, d 'clock.

[2527] I liked that.

[2528] Okay, just play Aaron's.

[2529] You sent me a voice memo that Aaron sent, and I laughed, and then I said, we have to play this on the next fact.

[2530] Oh, okay.

[2531] I found it.

[2532] I'm a big boy, and I shouldn't cry, aye, aye, as much as I do.

[2533] Oh, oh, oh, oh.

[2534] Yeah, it started with me sending him on and said, Big girls.

[2535] Uh -huh.

[2536] And I just sang it sincerely.

[2537] They don't cry, and then his was big boys cry.

[2538] One more, can you play one more time?

[2539] Yeah.

[2540] I'm a big boy, and I shouldn't cry, aye, aye, as much as I do.

[2541] I shouldn't cry.

[2542] Oh, so cute, cutie cute.

[2543] Well, we haven't done any facts, and I have a lot.

[2544] Oh, shit.

[2545] Well, okay.

[2546] It's too rapid -fired.

[2547] Well, this was a really very cool episode.

[2548] Yeah.

[2549] Yeah, it was an incredible one.

[2550] It goes in the category of Ryan Cox and Ed Young for me. Yeah.

[2551] Which those two are the only people.

[2552] And now, Steve, it's a category of three.

[2553] Okay.

[2554] Mind expansion.

[2555] Party of three.

[2556] Mm -hmm.

[2557] Yeah, he was so fun.

[2558] And he was a big white socks fan.

[2559] Oh, yeah.

[2560] He bonded with Rob.

[2561] Yeah, they Chicagoed out before we got here.

[2562] They windy city doubt.

[2563] Okay.

[2564] Rapid Fire.

[2565] The fossils that he showed us, they were a present.

[2566] He did give us fossils.

[2567] Right.

[2568] You got a turtle.

[2569] Or I got a turtle.

[2570] You got a turtle.

[2571] I got a crocodile tooth or alligator tooth.

[2572] That was a fact.

[2573] He did give us them.

[2574] That was fact number one.

[2575] Okay, you said there are a lot of possums.

[2576] But you're likely to see one.

[2577] Exactly.

[2578] So California Wildlife Center admits an average of 250 opossums yearly.

[2579] Of this number, 40 to 50 are adults, while the remainder are orphans.

[2580] But as disgusting as the animals may appear, they actually do quite lovely work in the garden.

[2581] Oh, I see what I did.

[2582] These are people who have adopted?

[2583] No, these are two articles I've seen.

[2584] smashed.

[2585] Conflated.

[2586] So the first line is from one article.

[2587] That was about the number.

[2588] The second is about...

[2589] But they've taken in 250 strays.

[2590] Is that what they're saying?

[2591] I mean, there's more than 250 possums.

[2592] I think it's saying there's only 250 possums.

[2593] Oh, wow.

[2594] And you happen to see them all the time.

[2595] There's hundreds of thousands.

[2596] I've never seen one.

[2597] You haven't?

[2598] When you said that, I was like, huh?

[2599] They're a little more popular on the west side.

[2600] Like, we'd regularly be...

[2601] Like, even I want to say, Favreau's backyard.

[2602] You hear something in the tree and was in a fucking possum.

[2603] Really?

[2604] Pops out of Scotty's house.

[2605] they would pop out always at my old apartment.

[2606] I'd be walking and there was like a brick wall between our sidewalk and the next apartment over and I'd look over and there'd be a fucking opossum like right at face level.

[2607] But apparently they're gentle.

[2608] They're scared is what I think they are.

[2609] There was like a big campaign to fix what people thought of possums.

[2610] Oh, a rebrand?

[2611] A year ago, yeah.

[2612] Oh, there was.

[2613] Yeah, well, I'm about to engage in the cause.

[2614] Okay, great.

[2615] Okay, but as disgusting as the animals may appear, They actually do quite lovely work in the garden.

[2616] Apossums are nature's cleanup crew, working the graveyard shift.

[2617] Like little dust busters, they cruise the landscape, round ears tilted like satellite dishes, fleshy pink snoots to the ground.

[2618] This one is, this person loves apostles.

[2619] Yeah, they're in a relationship.

[2620] They feast on snails and slugs, perhaps even a cockroach or two.

[2621] Oh, yeah.

[2622] Well, that's why they were by my apartment, so we had so many fucking corn.

[2623] They come where the food's at.

[2624] Grumblies.

[2625] Oh, my God.

[2626] So many detours.

[2627] One, Grumblies reminded me when I was listening to this other podcast.

[2628] The podcast is called Nobody's Listening, right?

[2629] It's Elizabeth Lane and Andy Rosen.

[2630] And they brought up Armiture Expert on the last podcast.

[2631] They did not.

[2632] Well, now it's my favorite podcast.

[2633] Was it in a derogatory way or positive?

[2634] No, it wasn't.

[2635] It was talking about Kristen when she was on, and she was.

[2636] She was kind of describing her life philosophy as minimizing suffering.

[2637] Okay.

[2638] Minimizing suffering and maximizing happiness was the phrase.

[2639] Elizabeth couldn't quite remember it, but she liked that.

[2640] Oh, great.

[2641] And she called her an American treasure, so shout out.

[2642] So not as much about A .E. and a little bit more about this.

[2643] Not really about us.

[2644] That's fine.

[2645] But she did say armchair expert.

[2646] She got the name right.

[2647] Yes.

[2648] Okay, great.

[2649] It was like, me, um, Melania, Sheila.

[2650] And I'm Michelle love the good place.

[2651] But remember that shout out that Obama gave me on the Instagram?

[2652] Yeah, I do.

[2653] And it wasn't about me at all.

[2654] He forgot my question.

[2655] Before I get to the question, I just want to say, Michelle, Malia, Melania.

[2656] No, Sasha.

[2657] Sasha?

[2658] Well, no wonder he doesn't.

[2659] Wow, he doesn't deserve it.

[2660] I know.

[2661] Look, I'll be honest.

[2662] Be honest, because this is what we do.

[2663] But I hurt my feelings.

[2664] On the podcast or Obama?

[2665] Yes, of course.

[2666] How could it not?

[2667] Because I'm like in taking all these episodes, I love them.

[2668] I posted about it.

[2669] I'm upset.

[2670] I really, I love them.

[2671] And I love that podcast.

[2672] Is this the same one that went away and came back?

[2673] Yes.

[2674] Okay, okay.

[2675] And we did it.

[2676] We did their podcast.

[2677] We did their podcast.

[2678] And it means a lot to me. Like I listen to it so much.

[2679] Seminal.

[2680] It really.

[2681] I mean when I first moved here like really got me through so you know I'm like falling asleep and I'm listening and I had already listened to I had already listened to this episode but I had fallen asleep halfway through so it was a re -listen so I'm giving them two listens and in the second half yeah I mean she's just talking about her own thing and then she says if there was this armchair expert episode and I was like oh yeah I got excited and you thought it was a ding ding ding ding I thought maybe my name would come up.

[2682] I don't know because I'm on this podcast every day.

[2683] You sure are, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[2684] A real integral role on the podcast.

[2685] So it wasn't, and my feelings were hurt, and I almost had to take an ad -a -van, but I didn't.

[2686] Oh, good, good, good, good.

[2687] I'm glad it didn't get that bad.

[2688] Anyway.

[2689] So it's a duck, duck, duck, goose.

[2690] That's a major duck, douged goose.

[2691] Why did I bring that out?

[2692] You're listening to your favorite podcast, and you think it's going to be about you, and that's about someone else?

[2693] Yeah.

[2694] And it's a duck, duck, goose.

[2695] But no, I'm sorry.

[2696] So in one of those episodes, Andy had a bug in his headphones.

[2697] Oh, okay.

[2698] And now I think about that with our headphones because of our ostensibly the same headphones.

[2699] So like we should start looking.

[2700] You should look because I was in here writing the other day and I was looking up at the ceiling at the A -frame and I saw a fucking savage -looking spider spin down and go on the cross members here, those wooden beams.

[2701] Did you kill it?

[2702] Well, I was like, okay.

[2703] I mean, it looked like a black widow or something.

[2704] It had a very fierce look.

[2705] That's scary.

[2706] It was the size of like probably a nickel or maybe a little bigger.

[2707] And I thought, I got to get up there.

[2708] But then I was like, what in here am I going to stand on?

[2709] Then I'm going to be above those rafters so I can actually see when I try to kill it.

[2710] I'm liable to just get bit by this fucking thing.

[2711] And I've never seen it lower than those things.

[2712] I decided to let it go.

[2713] Oh, no. Yeah, so do look in your headphones because we have a carnivorous spider here.

[2714] And it's left babies now.

[2715] We're going to many killer spires at some point.

[2716] I hate that story.

[2717] We could get, we could, let's call H &R.

[2718] H &R blog.

[2719] Yeah, get them in here, exterminate.

[2720] They're useless.

[2721] Oh, you just checked your headphones?

[2722] Make sure you dig in around.

[2723] I know that.

[2724] I think that is.

[2725] They hide in the crevices.

[2726] But don't use your finger because I don't bite you.

[2727] Oh, fuck.

[2728] We're going to have to get like special, um, those, those hair lice.

[2729] I feel itchy.

[2730] Liz.

[2731] Liz, where are you?

[2732] What if this fact check never ended And Rob just had to start posting it real time Oh my God, that would be my best life Me too, just to live inside of this conversation Yeah, I agree I'd be so happy Very I'm really itchy Yeah, you're struggling on over there Okay Okay, back to the opossums Okay And fixing their reputation Yeah, re -warning Perhaps even a grumbly or two Gardners may blame opossums for the messes and mischief Made by rambunctious raccoons skunks and squirrels Routing out insect grubs But the reality is that opossums don't dig They can't The soft pink skin on their paws Is too delicate for such manual labor Their weak nails are built for tree climbing That seems not Okay they're really trying to pull at our harsh shoes They thought we'd miss that.

[2733] Well, I'm going to feel bad for anything that's got bendy weak nails.

[2734] That's what I got.

[2735] They break all the time.

[2736] I have them too, yeah.

[2737] I feel bad for us.

[2738] Me too.

[2739] These species that calls Southern California home is actually the Virginia opossum, didal fist virginiania.

[2740] The only marsupial living in the wilds of North America.

[2741] As with the kangaroo, koala, and other marsupials.

[2742] Oh, my God.

[2743] You have, you're like someone on acid who thinks there's bugs all over their face.

[2744] Stop, I really can quickly go there.

[2745] Okay.

[2746] Do you have your head of hand with you?

[2747] The female opossum nurtures her underdeveloped pups in a pouch.

[2748] Possums, for the record, are distant relatives found only in Australia.

[2749] Okay, so now do you like them?

[2750] I love them.

[2751] I hope I can become friends with one.

[2752] I really do.

[2753] How many pounds is the average ostrich now?

[2754] 140 to 320 pounds.

[2755] 320 pounds.

[2756] I know, but I don't like that that's...

[2757] That's such a wide range.

[2758] Okay, the word is scintillating.

[2759] Oh, scintillating.

[2760] That is a nice word, scintillating.

[2761] We talked about whales having belly buttons, so then I wanted to know how big they were.

[2762] Eight inches.

[2763] Whoa.

[2764] That's the size of a large male penis.

[2765] and are they and I put are they innies or outies I didn't find if there were any's or outies but there is a picture of one if it isn't outy then we are talking about a male penis it probably is an outy though right because I feel like I would have seen them but aren't innies like they're standard it's the way you know it's the way you cut the cord and no one's cutting these whale cords so they're very smart they might get in their gnaw the cord If they're gnawing, I think it's an outy.

[2766] Okay.

[2767] It is curious that we cut the cord.

[2768] I always think about this.

[2769] Like, how the fuck did the cord come off in old days without scissors?

[2770] And then it eventually falls off.

[2771] Well, but it's a tad.

[2772] It's so long.

[2773] So babies must have had, like, fucking three feet of umbilical cord just hanging off their body.

[2774] For days?

[2775] You know what you could do, though?

[2776] But did they have string?

[2777] Maybe they had, like, little plant string.

[2778] You could tie a knot around it.

[2779] That's what they do to, you know, bowls, testicles.

[2780] They put a rubber band around them And then they eventually just fucking fall off And it's all sealed up in there That seems mean Did I tell you that I got the I ordered the dermatologist machine?

[2781] No, you did not I did it's on its way The Lancer The it's called an electro I forget the name of it But it's a zapper You can zap off skin tags Wait, okay Do you have any?

[2782] Yes Because my first, as soon as I ordered it I sent Aaron a voicemail It was like I just got this thing The next time you're over I'm going over your whole body and I'm going to zap everything.

[2783] Wait, Dax, okay.

[2784] You need to do a lot of research first.

[2785] I watch a couple videos already.

[2786] And I've watched them do it to me in the office.

[2787] I know, but I don't count that.

[2788] Okay, that is a ding, ding, ding.

[2789] I don't really want to share this.

[2790] Yeah, but.

[2791] You know a skin tag?

[2792] Not a skin tag, but I had this mole.

[2793] Okay.

[2794] It can't get rid of moles, but go ahead.

[2795] Oh, fuck, really?

[2796] What I would have to do, it could be used in concert.

[2797] What I would have to do is I would inject the local anesthetic.

[2798] I'm trying to figure out where I can get that.

[2799] And what you do is you inflate the mole.

[2800] You inflate it.

[2801] So it raises it up.

[2802] And then you take a scalpel or a small razor blade.

[2803] You cut that off.

[2804] And then you immediately get the thing I just bought and it coterizes the whole thing.

[2805] Yeah.

[2806] All right.

[2807] This thing can treat like five different common dermological issues, like a hypoplasia, this and that.

[2808] Also, I'm looking for a lab I can send samples into because there's no reason I can't do also the other part.

[2809] That seems so easy to just squirt, squirt, lob it off.

[2810] Again, I've watched them do this on my body, put it a little Ziploc, send it to the lab, find out if it's cancers or not.

[2811] Now I'm one -stop shop for most of my dermatological needs, except for I can't do any diagnostic work yet.

[2812] I don't really know the difference between most of these things.

[2813] Okay, wow.

[2814] But my lab would tell me. So what are you going to start with?

[2815] Oh, fuck.

[2816] I've got like seven or eight little areas, little things on my chest.

[2817] I want to zap.

[2818] What if it burns your skin or something?

[2819] Well, it will burn my skin.

[2820] That's how it works.

[2821] Okay, but it's maybe better to just have those things instead of a bunch of burnt skin?

[2822] If you got genital warts, I could probably take care of that.

[2823] Okay.

[2824] I'll keep that in mind.

[2825] We'll get some sign -offs on that.

[2826] But that goes for you too, Rob.

[2827] If you get a genital wart, let me know because I've got the device now.

[2828] I can zap it off.

[2829] Well, once Brad and I. get together i might have some stuff yeah you're gonna have some stuff god i'd love to get working on him i know you would get them all cleaned up for your guys he's already very clean he is he's the cleaners but i have performed a single surgery on you and it went really well and it fixed everything and i think the people are bummed we can't post that video at some point in your life if you ever change your mind let me know some things don't have to be shared they can just be between us it's just so satisfying i know i think carly has watched it 300 and then that she's allowed to yeah because you guys are friends yeah yeah okay okay the five animals that grieve i have two again two articles that say different things all right one said there are five animals that grieve elephants monkeys dolphins giraffes and dogs okay okay and then this other one says elephants gorillas and songbirds I'm more inclined to think that one but who it was discovery all the fucking someone determined if an animal's grieving.

[2830] But what happens with the elephants is they have elephant graveyards, and on their migration, they always stop.

[2831] And they spend a day or two playing with the bones and picking them up and, like, interacting with the dead family member.

[2832] There's always the stories of, like, the dog by the soldier's grave.

[2833] Yeah.

[2834] Yeah, but they could just be lost.

[2835] They could just be waiting for a treat.

[2836] Yeah.

[2837] Like, oh, once this motherfucker going to wake up and get a church?

[2838] I think dogs definitely grieved.

[2839] Yeah, I do too.

[2840] Yeah, they cry and shit.

[2841] Like when their owners leave, they cry.

[2842] Like those little...

[2843] You love dogs now.

[2844] I love dogs.

[2845] It hurts my feelings that you love dogs.

[2846] My feelings about dogs have not changed since you met me. Okay, I've loved two dogs and I'm nearing love with her.

[2847] Once I identified that he was me, of course, in an egotomaniacal way, he's just, he's so scared.

[2848] But, Dax, he's not you because he only has three legs, he's very small.

[2849] I know.

[2850] But he's got so much trauma.

[2851] He's so nervous all the time.

[2852] He does have a lot of trauma.

[2853] I know.

[2854] And then what he, he stopped shaking when he's next to me because he knows I'm on the clock.

[2855] Like, I got it.

[2856] You love it because you can be his protector.

[2857] Yes.

[2858] And it's like, he has PTSD.

[2859] And he's sweet.

[2860] He just, like, sits next to my leg all the time.

[2861] He is a very sweet dog.

[2862] Oh, remember that movie Must Love Dogs?

[2863] You could do Must Hate Dogs.

[2864] Oh, that's not my brand.

[2865] Right.

[2866] Or all the dogs go to hell.

[2867] Guys, this isn't who I am.

[2868] I almost fosters.

[2869] Yeah, you could do a voiceover, a cartoon for all dogs.

[2870] Go to hell.

[2871] Oh, thank you.

[2872] And then must dislike dogs.

[2873] That's not my brand.

[2874] Elephants.

[2875] Scientists have long known about elephant's response to death.

[2876] When a living elephant comes in contact with a dead elephant, it usually falls silent and often spends several minutes investigating the body with its trunk and feet.

[2877] In her 2013 book on Annalian's, morning king, someone king, described several elephant's responses to the death of Eleanor, the elderly matriarch of an elephant family living on Sombrough National Reserve in Kenya.

[2878] In her final hours, Eleanor had grown weak and collapsed.

[2879] Within a few minutes, Grace, the matriarch from another family used her trunk to get the dying elephant back on her feet, but Eleanor was very near death and collapsed again.

[2880] This is a sad day.

[2881] King writes that Grace grew visibly distressed by Eleanor's condition.

[2882] She stayed with Eleanor, vocalizing and pushing at her body.

[2883] After Eleanor died, elephants from five different families visited her body.

[2884] The survivors hovered over it, rocked it back and forth, and pulled on it with their trunks.

[2885] While some of Eleanor's visitors were merely curious, King Rice said those behaviors by grace and other elephants clearly involved greed.

[2886] Yeah.

[2887] Are you crying?

[2888] No, I wish I was.

[2889] I know you would like that more.

[2890] I would.

[2891] But I am sad.

[2892] There's a layer, too, that makes me extra sad because I also think they're.

[2893] not fully smart.

[2894] Well, they're not like humans.

[2895] They're like 10 -year -olds, I think, trying to deal with it.

[2896] Like, just so confused and sad.

[2897] Can I, back to the grumbly thing?

[2898] Can I go?

[2899] I almost brought it back to Anthony Bourdain, but you're going to take it to grumblies.

[2900] Okay, I always wonder if I had what it takes to be like a caveman where you just got to get so gross and gnarly.

[2901] Like you've got to kill some with a spear and then you get tear it all apart.

[2902] And I've always thought, I can't.

[2903] I don't have the constitution for that.

[2904] But I will say the one time I thought, oh I do have it in me it was that grumbly infestation because we'd come in the house Brie would turn on the light in the kitchen and there would be so many fucking grumblies which are cockroaches yeah she called them grumblies so that we could she rebranded them really nicely because the notion of living with cockro is so disgusting it was so disgusting I mean it was a real grumbly infestation I'd set those bombs off in the apartment all the time we could go in there for a while so we'd come in she'd flick on the light ah grumblies and I'd go in there and I just start smashing with my...

[2905] Were they everywhere?

[2906] With your hands?

[2907] Yes, with my hands.

[2908] Because fucking they had to die.

[2909] Didn't have time to get paper towel.

[2910] The first step was they all had to die.

[2911] I'd be like, hammering all over.

[2912] They're hard to kill.

[2913] No. I bet sometimes I would kill 30 to 40 in one chaotic, like murderous spree.

[2914] And I was like, I don't give a fuck.

[2915] You had that many in there?

[2916] Oh, you, the sink.

[2917] Ew, that.

[2918] It was so.

[2919] Oh, my God.

[2920] bad but this apartment building forget it like eight people lived below me in a one -bedroom apartment like there's somebody dead in that apartment likely likely no they were the most lovely family i love them but there were so many fucking grumblies in this apartment complex and i just got to killing them and i didn't give a fuck of course i didn't care i understand it's not okay this is back to my whole point ding ding ding every day that insect is not the same as a human You're not going to be able to kill humans The way you killed Grumblies Or I'm not even talking the moral thing I'm talking the gross out factor Like when I think about them murdering These animals with sticks And it takes forever to...

[2921] Like did that on Anthony Bourdain Yeah, and it's just...

[2922] I'm like, I don't want to be around that I don't want intestines anyway You know, I don't have it in me But I will say our daily war with the grumblies makes me think When the shit is the fame Push comes a shove When the tough gets going The going get tough I think I have it in me I think you have it in you yeah Los Angeles Grumblies are different than the ones in the South they're very hard to kill the L .A. Grumblies or the Southern ones?

[2923] The Southern grumblies are hard to kill.

[2924] Oh really?

[2925] Yes they can't...

[2926] Stronger exoskeleton or like really will bang on them and then they just crawl right out.

[2927] Oh wow respect.

[2928] Yeah the Southern peeps are tough resilient.

[2929] Okay guerrillas The scientific literature contains several accounts of mourning by other non -human primates.

[2930] In 2019, researchers in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo described three instances of gorillas mourning they're dead.

[2931] On one occasion, researchers watched as two mountain gorillas, a 35 -year -old dominant adult male and a 38 -year -old dominant adult female, died of natural causes within a few hours of each other.

[2932] Surviving gorillas, they had social bonds but spent a lot of time with the dead.

[2933] A juvenile spent two days with one of the bodies and slept next to it in a nest.

[2934] One of the female sons groomed his mother's corpse and even tried to suckle despite having been weaned.

[2935] On another occasion, researchers watched as a group of grower's gorillas came across one of their dead in Cahoozy Bega National Park, Democratic Republic of Congo.

[2936] Much like the surviving mountain gorillas, the grower gorillas that found the body sat near and looked at the disease while occasionally sniffed, and poking the body.

[2937] Some mourners also groomed and liked it.

[2938] This is a weird dingles.

[2939] Okay.

[2940] So we went to bed last night.

[2941] The girls and I watching the Obama National Parks thing.

[2942] Have you seen that?

[2943] It's on something.

[2944] I didn't realize it's actually a nature show, and he's narrating.

[2945] So they go to this little island in Japan, and I said, oh, girls, I bet there's going to be Japanese macaques.

[2946] And then he comes down and he's like, on a little island of such and such Japan.

[2947] the macaques, the Japanese macaques, and he said macaques.

[2948] And the girls go, Daddy, you said it wrong.

[2949] It's macaques.

[2950] And I said, girls, who was president and who majored in primatology?

[2951] Oh, wow.

[2952] I basically said I knew more than the president in that moment.

[2953] And did you get comfort?

[2954] Did you fact check it?

[2955] They liked it.

[2956] Okay, so no, you didn't look into it.

[2957] No, because I was in classes, and my primatology professor said macaques.

[2958] But what if that was just his, like...

[2959] He said macaque.

[2960] Japanese macaques.

[2961] But what if that was just...

[2962] like the accent of your professor.

[2963] No, it's spelled like macaque, but it's macaque.

[2964] Do you spell that?

[2965] Japanese, it's like M -A -C -Q.

[2966] Oh, wow.

[2967] What if it's it, what if when you say how to play it, it's him?

[2968] McComb.

[2969] Boy, this could be...

[2970] Japanese macaque.

[2971] Oh!

[2972] I was scared.

[2973] Good job.

[2974] I was really scared when you hit play.

[2975] I applaud you.

[2976] I was like, I bet I'm about to fucking go down right now.

[2977] That was really good.

[2978] Okay.

[2979] You would think they'd have someone checking his pronunciation.

[2980] No, that's the thing when you're Obama, no one corrects you.

[2981] You can really fuck yourself over because no one, you got no, everyone's like, well, if he said it, that must be right.

[2982] Even the primatologist in the room are probably like, well, shit, he's Obama.

[2983] Well, also, who knows what he's like on set?

[2984] Like, you know, sometimes you get a little angsty on set.

[2985] You can if people are trying to tell you stuff.

[2986] Very Bordane.

[2987] So what?

[2988] He could be a diva.

[2989] Yeah, so what if they're like, fuck, he can't.

[2990] He'll be really mad if we.

[2991] interject right now.

[2992] Yeah, set them off.

[2993] You already blew up like four other times.

[2994] Yeah.

[2995] Maybe that was the best version of it.

[2996] Maybe you've been corrected five times.

[2997] What if he said, on the small island of something in Japan with the Japanese macaque who unfortunately cannot watch the good place that me, Sasha, Malia, and Michelle love Kristen Bell.

[2998] Okay, songbirds, last one.

[2999] Okay.

[3000] Recent research suggests that songbirds use death as an opportunity to grow closer.

[3001] In an experiment, reported in proceedings of the Royal Society, B. researchers from Oxford University show that the number and intensity of social relationships strengthened among, quote, surviving birds after researchers temporarily removed one wild great tit.

[3002] Oh, yeah, they're called tits, which I think is fun.

[3003] I'm going to say they're called titties.

[3004] I know you do.

[3005] From a group of their flockmates.

[3006] The researchers followed a flock of 500 birds for the winter and occasionally removed randomly selected birds to see how the others would react.

[3007] We found that individual birds adapt to losing a flockmate by increasing not only the number and tightness of their social relationships to others, but also their overall connectedness within the social networking of remaining individuals.

[3008] It seems like a stretch.

[3009] I had a Monica moment during that one.

[3010] Okay.

[3011] Yeah, I was like, oh, what am I going to eat today?

[3012] I was just thinking about, like, should I think about, should I buy something online?

[3013] Well, we've been doing this for an hour and a half, so that's why.

[3014] No, you know what it was?

[3015] It was too many long words at the beginning of it.

[3016] It was like recent research.

[3017] I mean, since the university was assigned to McKee.

[3018] And then bird names I don't understand.

[3019] And then there's so many words I didn't understand in a row that I just went somewhere.

[3020] I understand.

[3021] But where I actually went was thinking about that you thinking about shopping.

[3022] Yeah.

[3023] I love shopping.

[3024] Okay.

[3025] How endangered are blue whales?

[3026] There's only about 10 ,000 to 25 ,000 blue whales left in the world today.

[3027] Okay.

[3028] I said Prince George.

[3029] was five, but he's eight.

[3030] Who's Prince George?

[3031] You know, Prince William and Kate Middleton's daughter.

[3032] Okay.

[3033] I mean, son, sorry.

[3034] Well, we don't know.

[3035] Well, we don't know.

[3036] Yeah, because he's not even 11, so he really is in the age.

[3037] They do not care.

[3038] Nope.

[3039] Okay.

[3040] He said 20 ,000 years for Earth's Wobble, about 26 ,000 years.

[3041] I thought it was 49 ,000.

[3042] I don't know why I had that in my mind.

[3043] I'm glad I didn't say it out loud.

[3044] I would have had that wrong.

[3045] Yeah.

[3046] 26 ,000.

[3047] There's so much you don't.

[3048] Don't learn when you're young.

[3049] But like the wobble?

[3050] Yeah.

[3051] Yeah, I learned that in astronomy class.

[3052] In college.

[3053] Yeah.

[3054] Yeah, but why don't they teach us that?

[3055] It's too much to handle.

[3056] It takes so much time to teach you to read, write, and do fucking math.

[3057] That's your first five years.

[3058] And then six through eight, you're just trying to get some girls' attention.

[3059] Okay, yeah.

[3060] And then nine through 12, you're like, what job am I going to get?

[3061] Yeah.

[3062] That's how my life is.

[3063] Yeah, that's really true.

[3064] All right, well, that was a blast.

[3065] What a doozy.

[3066] That was a donker.

[3067] And it was already a good length interview in person, right?

[3068] It was.

[3069] This could be four or five hours.

[3070] Yeah.

[3071] All right.

[3072] Love you.

[3073] Love you.

[3074] Follow Armchair Expert on the Wondry app, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[3075] You can listen to every episode of Armchair Expert early and ad free right now by joining Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts.

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