S2E10 - Nature (Evolution redux) - Gaming with Science

Episode Transcript
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Unknown (00:00):
Jason.

Brian (00:06):
Hello and welcome to the gaming with science podcast
where we talk about sciencebehind some of your favorite
games.

Jason (00:10):
Today, we will be talking about nature by North Star
games. Hey everyone, welcomeback. This is Jason.

Brian (00:18):
This is Brian.

Thiago (00:19):
I'm Thiago

Jason (00:20):
again, Thiago, so y'all may remember Tiago Moreira from
our episode on evolution back inseason one. He is back with us
today to talk about nature,which is the next evolution of
evolution. So Thiago, can yougive our listeners a quick
refresh on who you are and whatyour background is?

Thiago (00:38):
Hi, of course. My name is Thiago Moreira, I'm a
assistant professor of honorsand biology at George Washington
University in Washington, DC. Ido have a background in zoology,
and my PhD was in evolutionarybiology, and my object of
studies are spiders.

Brian (00:54):
So Tiago has the questionable honor of being our
first returning guest.

Jason (01:00):
All right, we're going to assume that is a high honor.

Thiago (01:03):
I consider an honor.

Jason (01:05):
And Tiago, I don't know if we asked you this the first
time, but we're making it ahabit to ask our guests what
their favorite game is. What'syour favorite game?

Thiago (01:13):
Tabletop game?

Jason (01:14):
Sure.

Brian (01:14):
Well, I mean, it doesn't have to be.

Thiago (01:17):
I get into the habit of like playing tabletop games,
like board games later. So like,as a gamer, my favorite was
always role playing games. AndI'm from Brazil, and in Brazil
at the time that I was a kid, wedidn't have DND officially
there, so we have others. Solike, I play some very old
school ones, but I guess the onethat marked my teenage years and

(01:39):
young adult years more was likeVampire the Masquerade.

Jason (01:43):
Oh, okay, I never played that one, but I did play several
other of white wolf's Orpheus ismy personal favorite.

Thiago (01:49):
Okay,

Brian (01:50):
so you were sort of in the sort of 90s renaissance of
indie tabletop roleplay

Thiago (01:54):
kind of, yeah.

Jason (01:56):
So did you like, have cape and fangs and all that sort
of stuff?

Thiago (02:01):
I never do the the live action was, it's always
tabletop, like, always rollingdice and like, that's it.

Brian (02:07):
That seems like a shame, Tiago, because I think you'd
make a pretty good vampire.

Thiago (02:12):
I tried once. Didn't work.

Brian (02:13):
Okay,

Jason (02:14):
well, let's move on to our fun science fact. Tiago, as
our guest, you get to go first.What do you have for us from the
world of science.

Thiago (02:21):
So I got this news the other day, like and like
something that is probably goingto be very influential in what I
do. I'm a systematic person, soI do work with systematics,
trying to uncover the tree oflife. And we use a lot of
molecular data. And this wasthis news from, apparently,
people in NorthwesternUniversity, they found something

(02:43):
that actually preserves DNAbetter than actually what we use
currently, which is ethanol. Soapparently when they use EDTA,
which is a food preserver, itactually preserved the DNA
samples more efficiently thanactually ethanol,

Brian (02:57):
just like a suspension, like a solution of EDTA?

Thiago (03:00):
Yeah, they made a kind of solution to it. And actually,
they found this by accident,apparently. So they just got a
sample that fell in there, like,and apparently it works.
Apparently it says here that,like, they got some samples from
fish in ddta, and they obtainhigh quality DNA in large
quantity. So they just pull upsomething from a food
preservative. And it worksreally well.

Jason (03:21):
That's interesting, because in my graduate work, we
work with RNA, so DNA is lessstable, more interesting cousin,
and we always had to use EDTA,because what the chemical does
is it binds metal ions, and itbasically keeps them from
interacting with the RNA or theDNA. That's what kind of makes
it fall apart. RNA is tricky towork with, because that one

(03:44):
difference of the one hydrogen,or, sorry, the one oxygen. So
the deoxy in deoxyribonucleicacid, that makes a huge
difference in chemicalstability. And if there are
metal ions around, the RNA willactually cleave itself. And
there's all sorts of proteinsaround that are meant to break
apart RNA, because it's meant tobe temporary. You literally
sweat RNAses, they're called,enzymes designed to tear apart

(04:06):
RNA, so it's tricky to workwith, and we'd use EDTA to keep
them intact. I'm just surprisedthat it works so well on DNA. I
would have expected thatdegradation would still happen,
and I guess not

Brian (04:16):
A lot of the enzymes that cut DNA as well. Nucleases
generally need these metalcofactors as well. DNA stores
information, but it is achemical, right? So what we do
is we keep it at a buffer thatkeeps it at slightly basic so
that it improves stability, andthen you suck up all of the
metal ions, so the enzymes thatwould cut it up can't do that.

Jason (04:35):
I'm just surprised it works better than ethanol, which
basically dehydrates everything,so nothing can work.

Thiago (04:40):
Yeah, that was surprising as well. I personally
didn't during my PhD, but likesome of my lab colleagues, they
would, they were working withtranscriptome, so they do have
to work with, like, a RNA andlike, the whole extraction was
like painful, the whole rituals,especially when they have, like,
to preserve the specimens in thefield to do it. It was not fun.

Jason (04:59):
How about you, Brian, you also had a science fact right?

Brian (05:03):
I did okay. So based on the game and what we're going to
talk about later, I heard aboutthis story first, actually, from
Will and David from CommonDescent, while we were at Dragon
Con, we had a panel called, "Areyou really going to eat that?"
which was about unusual dietaryhabits in the animal world. So
for instance, alligators willpursue and eat fruit actively,

(05:23):
it's not an accident. They willactually eat it if it's
available. This is a story fromCurrent Biology in 2021 it's a
correspondence so it's not afull length paper documenting a
tortoise hunting, killing, andeating a baby bird.
So herbivores eat what?

Thiago (05:39):
they're very opportunistic. Apparently, like
those turtles,

Brian (05:42):
carnivores eat meat, herbivores eat plants. But an
herbivore will be happy to takemeat if it is available, and
lots of things will basicallyeat baby birds if they have the
opportunity. They are veryhelpless, not very good at
protecting themselves. And thisis an instance of a tortoise on
an island group that is just onthe west of Africa. And it's a
video of a tortoise just huntingthis baby tern chick that fell

(06:05):
out of the nest, sort of slowlybacking away as the tortoise
slowly walks toward it, tryingto bite it, trying to bite it,
until it eventually bites itshead and kills it and eats it.
So we can have a video of thatif you're interested in watching
a tortoise hunt and eat a babychick.

Thiago (06:19):
that tortoise like was not known to eating meat before?

Brian (06:23):
No, I think that they've been scavenging. Yes, and
evidently, this is not the onlytime that this has been
observed, but this is the firsttime it's been documented from
the process of actively hunting,killing and eating.

Jason (06:35):
There are also some very horrifying videos online of
horses eating baby chicks aroundfarms. So there's a lot of
things that will eat meat if yougive them the opportunity. It
turns out,

Brian (06:45):
yeah, things will eat eggs, and things will definitely
eat baby birds if they have theopportunity to do so. I guess
birds primarily have to defendthemselves by flying. Baby birds
are not going to be able to dothat.

Jason (06:54):
This actually ties very into the game, so we're now
going to transition to the gameitself, because the game
actually has a card calledopportunistic which lets your
foragers, your herbivores starteating some meat. So let's jump
into this game. So the game fortoday is nature by North Star
games. It is basically the nextevolution of the game, evolution
which we covered back in seasonone, basic stats of the game.

(07:14):
It's for one to four players,although there are very easy
optional rules to extend it upto six, ages 10 plus 30 to 45
minutes for the base game, andabout a suggested retail price
of $35 Wow, that's good, yeah.The thing about nature is we
make the joke that nowadays,whenever you release a game, you
already have the first threeexpansions planned. Nature went

(07:36):
beyond that. They made the gamemodular. So it is meant to have
these other module expansionsadded on. They had the first

Brian (07:40):
So it's games as service.
five modules launched with theoriginal Kickstarter, and the
idea is that you mix and matchthese. Each one provides a
slightly different style ofplay. Each of those is about
another 20 to 25 bucks, and youcan see from a gameplay it
provides a lot of replayabilitybecause you can mix things
around. You can customize it towhat you want. But let's be

(08:02):
honest, also from the businesspoint of view. This lets them
continue to make expansions forthe next 10 years and release
one to two every year as aconstant stream of income.

Thiago (08:08):
Its the DLC of like tabletop games?

Brian (08:13):
Is there actually? Can you subscribe to just get the
next module? Did they have asystem like that in place?

Jason (08:19):
Yes, and it's called Kickstarter. Okay, no, actually,
as we're recording this, theyjust launched the Kickstarter
for the sixth module, likeyesterday or the day before.
Okay, so that's the climatemodule, which is the inheritance
of Nature Climate, which is whatwe did, the sorry, evolution
climate, which we did the firsttime around.

Brian (08:37):
You had mentioned that they had taken a poll of the
community to see what modulespeople were prioritizing. And I
was happy to hear that the onesabout fantasy creatures, people
were not too generallyinterested in that, right?

Jason (08:49):
Yes, they looks like they did a poll to ask which other
modules should we make in thefuture. And they had all sorts
of things I'm looking over now.It's got like microbes, plants,
the Cretaceous era, the StoneAge, but they also have things
like flying dragons, cryptids,fantasy animals and such. All
the fantastical ones, the onesthat don't actually exist,
pretty much pulled dead last soit looks like the fans of nature

(09:10):
want things to keep to the realworld nature theme.

Brian (09:14):
Hooray. Those are my people. I appreciate that. I
just okay. Look, if you want togo play your fantasy games,
there are endless options,right?

Thiago (09:21):
Let nature geeks be nature geeks,

Jason (09:23):
yeah. So the first five of them are flight, which I
actually got to test out. Itbuilds itself as for players who
want to avoid conflict becausethere's more resources your
species literally fly away whenthey're full, so they can't be
hunted. Jurassic, which makesgiant things and helps with
hunting. It's for people want tofeel invincible. Natural

(09:45):
disasters, which is a bunch ofrandom stuff that happens.
Arctic tundra. Didn't read therules much on this, but it's for
players who love a challenge. SoI think it's basically hard
mode. And Amazon rainforest,which has bluffing and
surprises. I think basicallythere's the question of, are you
poisonous if I eat you? I don'tknow until I try and. Yeah,
climate, which they're justkickstarting right now. So each
of these is meant to change alittle bit. We're going to be

(10:08):
primarily focusing on the corenature game, and maybe mention
some of the modules in passing.But mostly we're talking about
nature itself, which is thiscore engine around which the
other things are meant to go andit's kind of obvious it is meant
to be the core and is meant tobe added on to you can play it
by itself. But from thebeginning, it's pretty obvious
that the creators intend you tobe able to add these various
modules on.

Brian (10:26):
Yeah. I think you said there's only, like, eight
different power cards that youcan add eight different traits.

Jason (10:32):
Yeah, we'll get to that. So that what the game consists

Thiago (10:32):
I was telling Jason that I didn't have the chance of
That's it, right in the basegame.
of is you have a centralwatering hole, which is where
all the plant food goes.Everyone has their species,
which is represented by a littlespin dial that shows your size,
and then some little tokens thatrepresent how many population
that species has. And then yourtrait cards, which, as with
evolution, these are whatdetermine the traits your

(10:52):
species has to attack, todefend, to get food better. And
yes, in the core nature game,there are only eight unique
cards, or nine, if you happen toget the Kickstarter off of it,
and most modules only add fiveadditional ones, so there's not
that much variation in the coregame. Adding even one module
adds significantly more. If youadd two, suddenly you're playing
playing with another person Iplayed the app.
an entirely different game,almost because of how much

(11:13):
change there is.

Brian (11:19):
Oh, cool,

Thiago (11:20):
yeah. And like, I saw like, a video about, like, how
the play with the tabletop gameworks, the video that is on
North Star website. And I don'tknow if we want to talk about
this right now, but like, I sawa lot of similarities about,
like, some concepts from natureand evolution,

Jason (11:38):
yeah, this is definitely a refinement and reimagining of
the core evolution game. It isnot an entirely new game. You
have a very similar thing, whereat the beginning of each turn
you put food out, you draw cardsin this game, you get a new
species automatically instead ofhaving to pay for it. Then you
go through the adaptation phase,where you play various cards out
from your hand. The cards are,once again, beautifully

(12:00):
illustrated this time. They areof real creatures, not of
fantastic, but realistic ones.And actually, all of them have a
little science fact at thebottom.

Thiago (12:09):
It has to do flavor text,

Jason (12:10):
yeah, a little fact, and it's usually about the creature
that is shown on there. So wewere talking about the
opportunistic card earlier. Itshows a red panda stealing some
eggs. And a bit of the bottom istalking about how red pandas are
opportunistic, and it lets thembe able to survive better, etc.
The goal is to eat as much foodas possible, which can be plant
food or can be meat. Yourspecies all start as foragers.

(12:31):
You can play cards on them thatmake them opportunistic, or
scavengers, so they can eat meatbased off of certain events that
will happen. Or you can play thehunter card, which, unlike
evolution, is always available.So there's a stack of Hunter
cards you can take. They'redouble sided, so you can't hide
them face down. What you do withmost traits at the start? And
then you actually flip your sizedial over, so it goes from a

(12:53):
green forager to a red Hunter.So it's very obvious whenever
that happens, everyone can seethat as with evolution,
defensive traits tend to appearbefore there's actually hunters
to hunt them, just in case,because no one likes being
hunted. And the idea is thatover the course of four rounds,
game only lasts four rounds, youeat as much food as possible,
either from the plants in thecenter, or from these

(13:13):
opportunistic things, or fromhunting other species. And it's,
again, a bit of an enginebuilding game. You get the right
combinations of cards together,you can easily do one feeding
action and get 6,7,8, food offof it, which actually happened
several times while we wereplaying the game. At the end of
the game, whoever ate the mostfood wins. Basically, there are
some minor bonus points for eachspecies you still have surviving

(13:35):
that didn't starve to death orthat didn't get hunted to
extinction, but that's actuallyrelatively minor. Most of the
points comes from the fooditself, and that's basically the
overview. So if you've playedevolution, you're about 80% of
the way towards playing natureand vice versa. We're not going
to go into a lot of details onthe individual differences.
We're going to focus more on thescience that cover it, basically,

Brian (13:56):
I think. So one thing I did want to mention is that,
again, this game has been madeincredibly I'm trying to all of
the friction points have beenremoved. Everything's been
sanded off. If your creaturedies out for some reason, if
it's driven extinct, right?There's a mechanic there where
you you're never losingresources. The traits go back to
your hand, even if your creaturegets eaten, that population then

(14:16):
rolls on to your next species.And if you get wiped out, you
get to add the size to the nextspecies. I think that there are,
at least to some degree, this isreflected in the metaphor that
we're going to get into later.But I really appreciate that
it's like you never really,you're never really going to
fall behind. You know, you don'tfor an evolution game. I think
it would be very easy to get tothe point where, if you're
playing against like a Jason,for instance, he's built some

(14:38):
impressive, crazy engine, andeverybody gets wiped out and you
have nothing to do. You willnever have that in this game.
You're always going to havesomething to do.

Jason (14:44):
Yes, that is one change. They seem to focus on that it
was possible in evolution to getlocked into a state where you're
just behind and you will neverbe able to catch up because of
how far behind you are. Andthis, they seem to have
consciously made it so thatdoesn't happen. And some players
like that, and some playersdon't. I definitely have some
friends who do not like thatbecause they figure games should
be hardcore, but I think mostpeople probably enjoy that

(15:05):
better.

Brian (15:06):
Yeah, they can play the Ice Age version.

Thiago (15:09):
Then one thing like, I will actually ask you guys
opinions again. I didn't playthe game by itself, so it might
be just an impression. But I,when I was watching this video,
my my impression about, like,the game mechanics and how
everything is going for seems tobe more complex than like, the
evolution in terms of a kind oflike the mechanics are. I don't
know if it's harder to learn orharder to explain or if just

(15:31):
seemed to me, but like you guysfelt was harder, or like will be
something more difficult toexplain to somebody who don't
have a gaming background orsomething like that.

Brian (15:40):
I feel like we're losing our perspective on this. I felt
like this was easier than mostof the games we've played.

Jason (15:45):
same i i thought it was easier and easier to get into
than evolution itself. Okay, allright. Last thing I want to
mention that they did keep theirsense of humor. So the first
player marker this time aroundis not a dinosaur meeple. It is
a snow leopard, meeple, whichlooks beautiful, and the rule
book calls it, and I quote oneof the most awesome first player
markers in evolutionary history.So they are very proud of their

(16:07):
snow leopard. And the victorycondition tiebreaker is that if
you end up having the samepoints, you check something you
check something else, and ifthey're still tied, you order a
meat lover's pizza and a veggiepizza, and then you play again.
Love that. I like the small bitsof humor like that anyway. So
that's the game. Let's go intothe science. And now, since we
covered a lot of evolution inour episode on evolution, we'll

(16:29):
refer you back to that seasonone, episode six, for a lot of
details for now, Tiago, forlisteners who it's been a while,
or maybe who didn't catch thatepisode, can you give us, like,
a five minute overview ofevolution and natural selection
before we get into stuff wedidn't have a chance to cover
last time?

Brian (16:44):
Yes, speed run. Speed run. Evolution,

Thiago (16:46):
sure. So in a very simple way, evolution is merely
what to talk about, biologicalevolution. Biological evolution
is the change of species overtime, the change of populations
and species over time, right?Evolution, per se, you can see
that it's just change. But ifyou want to talk about
biological evolution, you haveto talk about changes that are

(17:06):
like pass over the generations,and those modifications stay.
And while you have one that isusually the most famous of all,
we have different processes ofevolution, namely four. Gene
migration is where like things,genes move away from population
to population. We have geneticdrift, which is the loss of gain

(17:27):
of a characteristics merely bychance mutations, which is a new
feature arising because ofmodifications in your DNA. And
perhaps the most famous one,that is natural selection, which
is the one who actually it's aconjugation between what the
environmental pressures you todo and therefore makes you more
able or not to survive in thoseconditions. And the second part

(17:48):
is the ones who are actuallyable to survive those conditions
are usually are the ones whoactually going to reproduce more
and leave those abilities thatmake them more prone to survive
to the next generation. That'swas the idea of, like, evolution
and natural selection on a veryshort way.

Jason (18:04):
Yeah. And I like how you said that migration is the
movement of genes, because asfar as evolution is concerned,
all of us are just carriers forthe genes. The gene is the
actual unit of evolution that isgoing on. That's a very famous
position by Richard Dawkins fromback in the 70s or something,
but it's basically held up allright? So we covered those
basics last time. So now on tostuff we didn't get to talk

(18:25):
about, because there's a veryrich field of evolution. There's
all sorts of stuff we can talkabout. One area I want to talk
about is convergent evolution.So this is where things will
independently end up evolvingthe same in the game. This is
basically you have players whoare playing the same traits,
claws or opportunistic orwhatever, on their species
independently. But in naturethis, this also happens. So I

(18:48):
guess Thiago, the question foryou is, why does this happen?
And is everything actuallyevolving into crabs?

Brian (18:55):
Also, do you have a favorite example of convergent
evolution?

Thiago (18:59):
Uh, sure, yes. And I don't know about the crabs,
though, but like so I'll thinkthe easiest way of talking about
convergence is getting back tonatural selection. So I can
mention the one of the unsungheroes of like the theory of
natural selection as we knownowadays, which is Wallace.
Alfred Russel, Wallace, soWallace was actually the guy who

(19:23):
noticed that species are veryattuned to their environment,
and they feel like, okay, sothose guys, they are so attuned
to their environment, they seemso well fit. Why is that? And in
between the malaria, peak offeverish dreams and the other he
wrote, his ideas are like, Well,I believe that the environment

(19:43):
is actually pushing certainpressures, and the In response,
the species actually modifythemselves to actually fit in
this environment.

Brian (19:52):
I did not know that part of the story that there was a
fever dream epiphany moment.

Thiago (19:56):
Well, that might be an exaggeration, but the truth is,
like when he was writing this,he was in the Malay
archippelago, and he got malariawhen he was there.

Jason (20:03):
So and importantly, this was completely independent of
Darwin. In fact, it was Wallacewriting to Darwin and asking him
about ideas that finally spurredDarwin to actually put out the
stuff he'd been working on for20 years.

Brian (20:14):
Yeah, get off his duff and publish already,

Thiago (20:16):
right? Like when Joseph Dalton Hooker actually received
a letter from like Wallace. Hesaid, like, you better get your
act together, because this kidis going to totaly scoop you.

Brian (20:27):
Hey, there's an example of convergent thinking, right?

Thiago (20:30):
So completely about the convergence, as those ideas
converge, like, while Wallacewas more focused on the
environment and Darwin was morefocused on the sexual selection
part, what we realize is kind oflike, well, you have an
environment, and because ofconstraints in life, like, we
don't have an unlimited amountof like solutions for the same

(20:51):
problems, right? So if, let'ssay that you're a predator in
the ocean, there's a few thingsthat you can do different, but,
like, there's some things that,like, you cannot escape from.
You need to be fast, so you needto be able to actually bite and
hunt and detect your prey and soon and so forth. So you probably
need a body that is moreconducive to swim where, like

(21:12):
limbs are more prone to swim,and usually you want to have
like sharp teeth. And this thiskind of adaptation. So hence we
got things kind of like sharksand orca whales. They both, more
or less have the same solutionfor a similar problem, how to
hunt in the deep water or theocean, right? So, but one is a
fish, the other one is a mammal.They're kind of far away in the

(21:34):
tree of life. So what I like tosay is like, because the
environment pressures them to dosomething similar, and there's
not many options. They convergeto certain themes, and that's
how we call those conversionevolution. They converge to a
more hydrodynamic body, to haveflippers, instead of like legs
and sharp teeth and so on and soforth.

Brian (21:53):
So the physics sort of dictate a solution to the
problem.

Thiago (21:57):
Kind of the laws of physics dictate. The laws of
chemistry dictates, what can youdo to adapt? For instance, you
probably won't produce newchemical in your body out of the
scratch. Evolution doesn't workfrom the scratch, right? It
always gets things that arealready there and kind of
repurpose it

Jason (22:13):
descent with modification, basically

Thiago (22:15):
Precisely so. For instance, you have frog who most
of the diversity of frogs is inwarmer environments. But you do
have some frogs who live inAlaska, for instance, how they
can withstand the cold? Well,some of them, for instance, they
have, like, extra glucosedissolve in the blood, which
kind of works in an anti free isnot a novel chemical. It's just

(22:36):
more of the same, the repurposein a way. So there are what we
call historical constraint thatworks on that. For instance, why
don't we see a Pegasus in reallife? Because horses are
tetrapods, and they're not goingto evolve extra pair of limbs
out of the blue. So we don'thave any vertebrates with more
than four limbs that are on theland. So that those are what we

(22:56):
call historical constraint.Other constraints that we might
have is kind of like, just tradeoff at some point something that
I give you cannot, like, modifysomething infinitely without
moving something in the otherdial right when, like, you have
different optimizations in thebody. For instance, compare a
marathon runner with a sprintrunner, they have different
muscle fibers involved in theprocess, while one of them has,

(23:17):
like, more red muscle fibers whoallow for storage of oxygen, and
therefore they can actually runfor longer periods, so more
stamina. The Sprinter has morewhite muscle fibers who are more
into the part of like explosion,like faster movement.

Brian (23:32):
So one of my favorite examples of convergent evolution
is the vertebrate eye versus thecephalopod eye.

Thiago (23:38):
Oh, that's a good one.

Brian (23:40):
They are physically almost identical and did not
evolve from a common ancestor,sort of independently hit on
almost the same solution. Infact, there are some key
differences. The cephalopod eyeactually has the photoreceptors
in front of the veins and nerveslike you'd think it should be,
because it's more efficient thatway,

Thiago (24:00):
exactly

Brian (24:00):
the vertebrate eye does not. The photoreceptors are
actually behind the veins andnerves, which involves things
like why we have blind spots.Now that's just a coincidental
happenstance of, like you said,a combination of ancestry and
function. It was set up that wayto begin with, and you really
certain things are just veryhard to change,

Thiago (24:18):
right? So there's not many different ways of actually
having a camera that forms animage to send to your brain. So
eventually those solutions willactually look similar and
converge

Jason (24:29):
yeah, and like vertebrates, they did it through
one set of tissue that involvesit turning inside out during
development, which is why thethings that actually intercept
the light are behind all theveins and nerves and stuff,
whereas cephalopods, it's moredirect, and a few other things
anyway. So for those of you whoare wondering about the crab
comment, the internet's darlingof convergent evolution is
crabs, and I didn't know why, soI had to look into this.

Brian (24:51):
Like, how hermit crabs aren't crabs?

Jason (24:53):
Yeah, well, apparently, like, 100 years ago, there was
someone who knows, like, Oh,hey, a crab, like, body shape
has evolved. Solved fiveseparate times among
crustaceans. And so he coinedthe word carcinization for this,
of the tendency of to turnsomething into a crab. Now the
thing is, these were all likelobster like things anyway, so
that wasn't that big. They justgot shorter around her and such.

(25:14):
And then somehow someonementioned this in 2019 on like
Twitter or something, and thenit went viral. And so now you
look all over there all sorts ofmemes about things turning into
crabs. There's an XKCD comicabout it and everything. But I
gotta admit, when I was doingresearch for this, like I'm
really disappointed that that'swhat we picked. I mean, I am not
that impressed withcarcinization. Actually, it's

(25:34):
five times from five closelyrelated things I was looking
around. Anteaters have evolved12 different times on all three
different branches of themammals tree. So placentals,
like us, marsupials and evenmonotremes, which I assume is
echidnas.

Brian (25:49):
Are we counting the Aye? Aye? Because there's even a
primate Anteater. I guess it'snot an anteater.

Jason (25:53):
Ants or termites, so, okay, they're basically the
same. So those trees, so Brianand I love trees because they're
plants. Everything tries to be atree.

Brian (26:02):
There really should be arborization. Everything there's
every branch of the plantfamily. Tree has plant family
well, tree, you know what? Imean, everything in the plant
family has a member that is atree.

Jason (26:12):
Yeah, I actually wanted to check if that's true. I mean,
you look around so palm treesare a monocot, so they evolved
in trees different from like thedicots, like apple trees and oak
trees, you've got your pines,which are conifers. Anciently,
there were giant tree ferns whenthe dinosaurs were around.
Bamboo is basically grass doingits best job to become a tree. I

(26:36):
don't know about orchids. Arethere any orchid trees?

Brian (26:39):
Ooh, okay, then maybe I, maybe I spoke too soon, but, but
the idea of having a big, tallstem with a canopy to get light
is just a very good way of beinga plant. I guess it's
interesting to realize thattrees are not related to each
other, right? There are theclosest relatives, for many
trees are things that are nottrees.

Jason (26:55):
yeah. And so that's converted because basically,
again, they're trying to solvethe same problem. When you're a
plant, you want light, you wantto get tall, and having a bunch
of leaves down at the bottomisn't as useful as having a
bunch of leaves at the top. Andso you want some way to go high
and then put all your leaves andphotosynthetic stuff up there.
And so you end up with somethingthat looks like a tree. And
there's many different ways thishas been solved. I guess, if we

(27:18):
were to boil it down, convergentevolution sounds like comes down
That about right?
to while there are an infinitenumber of solutions to any
problem, most of them are bad,and there's only a small number
of good solutions, so thingstend to converge on that.

Thiago (27:29):
Yeah, I guess was. Dawkins was also says there's
many ways to be alive, butthere's many, many more ways of
being dead.

Jason (27:37):
I like that. I'm gonna have to remember that one. All
right, so moving on to adifferent topic. We talk a lot
about natural selection, but Iknow we humans have become
essentially a our ownevolutionary force here on the
planet. What are some examplesof humans causing evolution? And
I specifically want to avoiddomestication, because we have a

(27:58):
future episode focusing just onthat, so not things like our
domesticated plants and animals.Yes, we've warped those
incredibly but more theaccidental evolution that we're
causing in the world.

Thiago (28:08):
So whenever I mention anything related to human
influence on selectivepressures, I like to call this
artificial selection, becauseis, in a way, is us taking
place, or nature actuallysetting the condition for like,
what is being selected or not?And in that sense, perhaps you
can talk about, like, one of themost textbook examples of like

(28:31):
selection, which is, like themoths of England, like the
Biston betularia moths, right?

Jason (28:35):
Oh yeah, the peppered moths.

Thiago (28:37):
The peppered moths, yeah. So you have, like, the the
melanic form, which iscompletely black, and more
common form, which was thepeppered one that was white, and
we see both of those in nature.But like the whites were more
common because they blend withthe lichen in some countries, so
they blend better, so they avoidpredators better. But during the
Industrial Revolution, in someareas, like the trees were

(28:59):
covered with soot, so the treesitself become black, so out of
the sudden the game change, andthe pepper moths were the
melanic were Blackish. Theyblend better, so their
population levels exponentiallygrew. So you can call this us
influencing the evolution oflike animals, or setting the
tone for what is selected ornot, right? But I guess my

(29:22):
favorite example is theelephants on Mozambique, the
Gorongosa park. You guys heardabout that?

Jason (29:28):
Yes. Is this where they're selecting for smaller
tusks?

Thiago (29:31):
Yes. So tusks are used by both female and male
elephants for like severaldifferent tasks, like digging
holes, for getting water, liketo take off bark off trees, for
actually eating and so on. Aswell. Any males, they have
extra function, which isactually sexual selection. Like
elephant bulls, they fight witheach other using their tusks,
right? But in that particularplace, in Mozambique, because

(29:53):
they they had a civil war, andlike the guerilla, fighters were
actually actively poaching andhunting elephants. To actually
get their tusks and sell ivoryin the market, in the black
market, to actually fund theirguerrilla efforts. So as a
consequence, they actually put apressure on that particular
population of elephants.Suddenly getting tusks means

(30:14):
that, like, you're more likelyto be dead than alive. So we
start to increase to see apopulation of tuskless females
more than the natural weexpected. So tuskless females
existed before, but they're avery minimal part of the
population. But because of that,they jump from like what used to
be between 10 and 15% toactually 50% of the population.

(30:38):
And there's some studies beingdone now they're like, now
they're like, the Sufi war isover, and all those elephants
are in protected areas. Thosenumbers are falling down again
to actually what's expected tobe the natural existent
population.

Jason (30:50):
Okay? So when humans are hunting, specifically elephants
with big tusks, then it's bad tohave tusks, but when we're not,
then you need them for all theother things. And so it's
shifting back to the previousone.

Thiago (31:01):
righ its the idea that, like, a natural selection is a
balance in between actuallygetting the mates, but actually
also to survive to get toreproductive age. So if you
don't get to the reproductiveage, you're not going to
survive. Of course, you have abalance in that we can get into
talk about, like, what they callrunaway selection, or Fisherian
selection, where, like, thesexual selective traits are

(31:24):
exaggerated to a point that,like they might actually make
survival harder. For instance,the peacocks tail. But the whole
idea there is, like, you makinga situation where the only way
that you can get to reproductiveage is to sacrifice being good,
like, or being better, like,actually extracting bark and
anything, or finding other waysto solve your problem, which is

(31:44):
surviving. So that explains thehigh amount of like tuskless
elephants females in thatpopulation.

Jason (31:49):
I know I've heard of something similar to this
happening here in the US, where,because when you hear a
rattlesnake rattle, thatrattlesnake usually gets killed,
there's now selection forrattlesnakes that have some
mutation so their rattle doesn'twork.

Brian (32:03):
Oh, oh, just busted, like, not less, not smaller,
just does not rattle anymore.

Jason (32:08):
Yeah, just some mutation where the thing that separates
the scale so it can actuallyrattle doesn't work. And so,
like, you can shake its taildoesn't make any noise. And so
we're now selecting for silentrattlesnakes, which is probably
not what we want to do, but it'swhat's happening,

Thiago (32:21):
right? And that's why I mentioned, like artificial
selection is when humans, theyselect by purposely or by
accident, selecting a particularphenotype. One very simple to
understand is when you overharvest, over harvest, or over
fish, a population of fishes.What happens? Like, usually get
the big ones because you wanteat more, you want the bigger

(32:41):
fish, but unintendedly, youended up making the pressure for
the population. So like, Oh, ifI'm big, I'm going to die. So it
better be small,

Brian (32:48):
so they stay smaller, or they'll reach reproductive age
faster. Or you select for thosethat can, I suppose,

Thiago (32:53):
but sometimes those are the only one alive to actually,
they're the only game in townfor the females.

Jason (32:58):
Now I remember reading So Jared Diamond has his book
collapse about like the downfallof civilizations. And one of the
examples he uses in there, Ibelieve it was Rapa Nui, so
Easter Island. And they lookedat midden heaps, so the piles of
shells and stuff left over justover centuries from the natives.
And they saw that over time, theshell size got smaller and
smaller and smaller due to thisselective harvesting of the

(33:21):
biggest oysters or clams orwhatever it was, because we're
humans, we're lazy. We want toget the most for our buck so we
get the biggest things, becausethen we get the most out of it.

Brian (33:28):
That's not just humans, that's all animals.

Jason (33:31):
Yes, we're just particularly good at it.

Thiago (33:34):
Exactly what is believed to be one of the reasons for the
extinction of the Pleistocenemegafauna is not only the Ice
Age, the climate change, butactually anthropic action, like
we hunt the bigger animals thatwe had because we're hungry. So
that's one of the reasons themodels are saying now that,
like, that's why we don't have,like, giant sloths anymore, or,

(33:56):
like many of like those placesseen big mammals that we get
extinct at the time.

Brian (34:00):
This is also the theory of why the only continent that
still has large megafauna isAfrica, where we co evolved with
that megafauna.

Jason (34:08):
It took us a long time to figure out how to hunt well, and
so they had time to adapt,whereas everywhere else, as soon
as humans move in, notimmediately, but over the next
few centuries to millennia, thereally big animals all tend to
go extinct. Again, we're verygood at that. So I want to
transition to the next one says,in the game, we talk a lot about
species, and in the game, thespecies just appear. But in

(34:29):
actual nature, we havespeciation, so things turn into
different species. And we'vetalked about how evolution is
not necessarily one specieschanged into another or
splitting. But I do want to askwhen we're talking about what is
a species, and then how do weget new species occurring?

Thiago (34:44):
Oh, that's a $1 million question, what is a species? So
as a systematisist that's aquestion very dear to my heart,
because it's part of what I do,right? So I describe new
species. It's part of the job,but it might be, kind of seems
like a question that is easy to.Answer. But like, you'd be
surprised. Like, there is thispaper from 2001 that counts more

(35:06):
than 20 different speciesdefinition and Darwin himself,
he was very vague about whatspecies mean to him. Like he
said, like, well, while nonaturalist can they agree on a
certain definition, everybodyknows what they're talking about
when I talk about a species. Soin certain sense, it's kind of
like species, oh, you know whenyou see it. But the concept of

(35:26):
species, and you have plenty ofthem, are kind of like, none of
them are perfect. For instance,take, like, the biological
species concept, which isprobably the most famous one
that was championed by Mayr inthe beginning of like, the new
synthesis. So that concept is,though, is the famous one that
is, oh, species are a group oflike, interbreeding populations
that leave fertile descendants.

Brian (35:46):
So essentially defining species by the genes,

Thiago (35:49):
no basically defining species as organisms that are
able to breed with themselvesand leave fertile descendants
for the capacity ofreproduction. And right there,
if we think a little bit we havea problem. So what about asexual
reproductive organisms? How theytell them apart?

Jason (36:06):
Yeah, we deal with this in bacteria all the time, right?
Most people think about this interms of, like, animals,
invertebrates and stuff, butbacteria, it's like, no one
actually has a good definitionfor a bacterial species and what
separates them?

Brian (36:18):
No, we have conventions, basically, that seem to roughly
correlate to this idea of theones that are more genetically
similar and even share genesmore frequently. So it's sort of
a pseudo biological speciesconcept.

Thiago (36:32):
I heard like about a genetic species concept, but
like, they tell differentorganisms apart. For like, if
they have that particular gene,98% similar is the same thing.
Otherwise is another one. Idon't know if that's what you
guys are mentioning.

Jason (36:45):
It's this all sounds like, basically, nature is very
complex and messy, and we humanstry to draw our little boxes
around it, but there's alwaysgoing to be bleed through.
There's always gonna be cornercases that don't quite fit

Thiago (36:56):
right? When I talk about speciations in my classes, I
talk like that's a veryphilosophical question, because,
do we believe that species arenatural kinds, or not so natural
kind? It's will be somethingthat like without any
subjectivity, has an identity?You can think about this. For
instance, chemical elements arenatural kinds, right? Because

(37:16):
hydrogen is different fromhelium, because they have one
more proton that's quantifiable,that's measurable, and this
actually makes them essentiallytwo different things. The
question for species is, arethose natural kinds? Because if
they are, there's probably thereis a particular idea that we can
find or can tell them apart. Butif they're not, we're just,

(37:37):
again, trying to box things awayin the way that, like might be
imperfect, I like to thinkspecies more like a hypothesis,
right? So we try to explain theworld, and we're trying to
explain biodiversity, and bythat, we hypothesize that, like
certain groups of individuals,they belong to a species. So
they're a cluster of life thatis different from others. And if

(37:58):
you use that, you can actuallychange this, like somebody can
get a better hypothesis of, likethis cluster of individuals, and
it is possible to go there andrepeat, improve, like any
science. So I like to think it'sin species as a hypothesis of
relationship amongst individuals,

Jason (38:14):
sounds to me almost like it's a continuum. Like you have
at one end there are things thatare definitely the same species,
and at the other end you havethings that are definitely
different species. And then inthe middle, you have a bunch of
stuff that is like part waybetween and maybe more similar
or less similar.

Thiago (38:29):
right!

Jason (38:30):
I actually ran across a few examples of these while
doing research for this episode.So, so when they built the
London Underground, there arestable populations of mosquitoes
that only live in the LondonUnderground, and they are now
genetically distinct from theirabove ground cousins, and even
different tunnels aregenetically distinct from each
other and have troublereproducing with each other.

Brian (38:51):
You've got sort of a cave ecosystem or an island ecosystem
effect,

Jason (38:55):
yeah. And apparently, the same thing has happened with
mice in new york city's parks,because, like, the parks of the
green space, where the micelive, and then there's a bunch
of cities separating them all,and they've started to separate,
maybe not completely separateyet, but they are starting to
diverge.

Brian (39:08):
It's a green island. It's like the mountaintop divergence,
right? They're separated byspaces they can't cover. That's,
oh man, I'm gonna forget Tiago.What is it when speciation is
driven by physical barriers?

Thiago (39:20):
Is a epicarious event. Is like a allopatric speciation.

Brian (39:23):
Allopatric speciation, yeah. So populations get
separated and just naturallydiverge, either in behavior or
genetics such that no longer,when they meet again, they're
either unlikely to breed or areincapable of breeding.

Thiago (39:36):
Yeah, so again, when you separate to population by
physical bariers, what we callallopatric speciation. But you
can have speciation in specieswho actually can visit the other
ones. Those are sympatricspeciation, or sometimes,
parapatric, speciation, when youhave some sort of division that
is not exactly physical.

Jason (39:55):
So like allopatric is like a different place.
sympatric, same place.parapatric, like, sort of
neighboring place.

Thiago (40:02):
Yes, it's kind of like, if we imagine, for instance,
like you have a forest,basically the case, like we're
talking about here. So we have aforest, but like this forest
was, like, slowly degrading, soyou only have kind of, like in
the peripheries. You have, like,some leftovers forests. So the
populations were in thisperipheries. They cannot reach
the inner big forest that theyhave. They call this peripatric

(40:22):
speciation because in theperiphery. But the whole idea
is, like, you have isolation forsome reason, right? And that's
isolation might lead tospeciation, or you can have
like, new speciation bycolonization, right? So instead
of like being isolated, you canmove to an isolated place.

Jason (40:38):
It's kind of like the mosquito tunnels. Apparently,
that territory did not existuntil we dug it out.

Thiago (40:44):
And those mosquitoes were, like, colonized there, and
like, they found, like all theyneed to actually thrive by
leave, right.

Jason (40:50):
Okay, all right. Last topic, before we wrap things up,
is that I think in the popularconsciousness, there's the idea
that evolution is towards morecomplex things, because that has
been the trend of things onEarth where we have we start
with very simple life, and thenit gets kind of more complicated
over time. And of course, wehumans are the pinnacle of
evolution, because we are veryegocentric like that. But

(41:11):
evolution isn't directional likethat. That has been a trend that
has happened. But there can beevolution in other directions.
But I don't think people reallycapture this like I know there
are multiple Star Trek episodesthat have to do with the next
stage of evolution being, like,going into an energy being or
something, but that's something.That's not how it works.

Brian (41:26):
Star Trek really gets science wrong on so many levels.
But that's okay.

Jason (41:31):
That's okay. It's fun. I love Star Trek.

Thiago (41:33):
There was this series of books called, like, future
zoology. You guys heard aboutthat was like, they have kind
of, like a science, a biologicalfantasy,

Brian (41:40):
oh yeah, the speculative evolution I've got "After Man"
Dougal Dixon had a bunch ofthose. I think I've got his
whole set.

Jason (41:46):
I have not heard of those. Off to check them out.

Brian (41:48):
Oh, I'll lend them to you. They're they're weird.

Jason (41:50):
So my question about this is, what are examples of the
opposite? What are exampleswhere evolution has selected for
simplicity from something thatwas complex?

Thiago (41:59):
I think like it when you talk about complex and
simplicity, the first thing weshould ask ourselves is, what
does it mean to be complex, orwhat it does it mean to be
simple, right? Because how do wekind of, like define it? For
instance, you can talk about,for instance, parasites, right?
So they can you can think aboutlike, oh, well, they're very
simple organisms. Or you canthink about like, no, they're

(42:21):
actually very complex in termsof specialization. Can you live
in a pH of three? They can inour stomachs, for instance, some
of like those flatforms, theycan live in our stomachs, like,
which is a very high pH place.Other extremophiles, like their
keys, they live in, like, veryinhospitable place that we
cannot so they have probablycomplex physiological

(42:42):
adaptations to do that. Theywork in different ways, but I
guess you're right in the sensethat, like we have this vision
about we expect all complexadaptations in complex
organisms, which is not alwaystrue. For instance, jellyfishes,
they barely have tissues, butthey do not have a central
nervous system. They do not havelike organs and so on so forth.
However, they do have like acomplex organ, quote, unquote,

(43:05):
that you might call rophalia,which has some, like, photo
sensitive cells, some actuallyvery complex. They can form,
like rudimentary images. Andactually they have, like, what
they call a gravitational organthat, like, has, like those
little rocks they calllithocysts. And they can use
that to actually see senses andgravity, which kind of, like,
helps them to orient themselvesinto the water column.

Brian (43:25):
Oh, that's cool. What is that sensor in your cell phone
that, like, tells you when I'mtrying, Jason, what's it? What's
it called when you've got thissensor that can detect how it's
oriented relative to gravity inelectronics?

Jason (43:36):
Not the gyroscope? Is it?

Brian (43:36):
Well, a gyroscope would be one way to do that, but
that's cool. So, so basically,jellyfish have a bunch of unique
organs, so I guess differentsolutions. They can still see,
but they don't have eyes,

Thiago (43:49):
yeah, which is quite complex for an organism who is
so downstream in the tree oflife and don't even have a
central nervous system.

Jason (43:58):
Yeah? Actually, at Dragon Con this past year, I talked on
a panel called slime time. Wetalked about slime molds, which
have no central nervous system,but do a lot of coordination.
They're able to solve mazes andother stuff through basically
exploring and then pruning.

Brian (44:11):
No central nervous system?. They don't have a body
other than the one that they puttogether from time to time as a
convenience.

Thiago (44:17):
Maybe they are more they're smarter than us, because
with very little, they solvesimilar problems. Maybe we're
too complex for our own good.

Brian (44:25):
I'm always, you know, cheerleading for bacteria that
solve amazing problems, andthere's way more of them than
our of us in terms of bothdiversity and number. So really,
it's a bacterial world. We'rejust here.

Thiago (44:36):
Yeah, they're probably going to be here after we're
gone.

Brian (44:39):
Oh, that's not even a question they absolutely would
outlive us, but you know, theywon't be sending signals into
space anytime soon. So

Jason (44:47):
yeah, so this discussion reminds me of Douglas Adams from
Hitchhiker's Guide to theGalaxy, saying on earth that
humans had always assumed thatthey were the most intelligent
species because they'd createdthe wheel and digital wrist
watches and wars and stuff like.That while dolphins were just
like stuck in the water runningaround, having a good time, and
the dolphins thought that theywere the most intelligent
species on the planet forexactly the same reasons. So we

(45:10):
probably have a very homocentricview of what it means to be a
complex, highly advancedorganism.

Brian (45:17):
I think it is important to point out that, like nothing
on earth that is extant is moreor less evolved than anything
else. Everything has been hereand been evolving for the same
amount of time,

Thiago (45:29):
which is a concept that I have, like, no problems, but
like, it's hard, like, for thestudents actually to grasp when
they come to classes like, say,hey, this makes no sense to say,
like, we are more evolved thananything else. We're as evolved
as, right,so.

Brian (45:42):
As the mites that live in your eyebrows

Thiago (45:43):
exactly, or the bacteria,

Jason (45:45):
we're just solving different problems

Thiago (45:47):
in different ways,

Jason (45:49):
all right? So we need to wrap this up. So let's
transition on to grading.Thiago, you got to play the app,
and Brian and I got to play theboard game in person. Thiago,
I'll give you first play onthis. What did you think

Brian (46:00):
we have started doing fun grades and science grades sort
of back to back. So if you wantto give it science and fun
grade, we can do that.

Thiago (46:07):
So in terms of science, I think was really good, of
course, all the liberties thatit takes to actually make this
thing fun, right? But I'll giveyou a solid A- to the science
one. And as for the fun part,I'll give it an A I thought was
really fun. The app was reallyfun. Has a nice tutorial, is
really well explained. I didn'thave the chance to play against
a different person through theapp, but like, it seems fun to

(46:29):
me. It's something I'm dieing totry the tabletopversion.

Jason (46:31):
How about you? Brian,

Brian (46:32):
yeah I'm totally happy with an A as well, a for science
and A for fun. I think that thereplayability is there, and it's
kind of, I was telling Jason,this is sort of the magic the
gathering of evolution-basedboard games, because you can add
in the different modules to addnew mechanics and new systems
and stuff like that. You know,there's always a little bit of
liberties that get taken for thesake of the game. But I think

(46:54):
that the core is there and thecore is good.

Jason (46:56):
I'm probably going to give it, probably in A- to A
range for science, simplybecause, like, what they have,
it seems decent. I feel likethere were probably
opportunities to put a littlebit more in so that they could
explain a bit more, like in theReference Guide, to put a little
bit more, but they have littlebits and pieces that they talk
about. I thought there was anopportunity for more if they so

(47:16):
chose. But overall, what theyhave seems pretty solid for
gameplay. I think I'm gonna haveto give a context dependent
grade. If I only had the coregame and was playing only that,
I'd probably only give it a B toa B+ the core game is fine, but
it's not one that I would goback to for years and years and
years. I think the realreplayability comes through
adding into various modules. Andso the modules boosted up into

(47:40):
like probably into the A range,because you can mix and match
and get the ones that you wantthe most.

Brian (47:43):
The funny thing is, I would say that the base game
almost is like a, what we wouldcall a palette cleanser game, a
short, quick game that you couldplay between things, which, for
what is a relatively complicatedgame, still plays 30 minutes. Is
it's only four rounds. It playsfast, right? And I guess we
didn't do nit picks. But I wouldsay I would like to see more
games with these sort of themes,have that dedicated booklet of

(48:05):
the science in the game, like weget at genius games. I think it
would be, I guess it adds toproduction costs, but it's such
a valuable little resource to beable to put into what you're
doing,

Jason (48:16):
like, even if it's just like one page in the rule book,
it would be good. I'm flippingthrough the rule book now they
have, like, they referenceDarwin on one page and such, but
it's not I think they could havementioned more, but again, maybe

Brian (48:30):
That's all. We're gonna have to start doing this for
that wasn't their goal.
people. I guess

Jason (48:35):
we just need to start writing to all the game comes
like, Look, you need to cater tothe scientists in your audience,
you need to put in the page ofscience stuff on anything that
has something to do withscience.

Thiago (48:45):
Come on. I was telling Jason, before you arrived,
Brian, I can totally knock attheir door like they're just
right next door, like we live inthe same place, the North Star
game students in the Gettysburgwhere I live.

Brian (48:55):
Oh, okay, yeah. Go do that. Go tell us what they say.

Thiago (48:58):
I want to pester them.

Jason (48:59):
Go deliver our petition in person.

Brian (49:02):
Evidently,we need to do an event in DC or something. We
got too many people in DC, huh?

Jason (49:07):
All right, well, we're going to wrap it up there. So
thank you, Thiago, for being onhere. Is there any place you
want people to be able to lookyou up afterwards?

Thiago (49:14):
Ah, no, I'm fine.

Brian (49:16):
Do you want us to point people to your Google Scholar
profile or anything?

Thiago (49:20):
No, it's too shameful.

Jason (49:23):
All right. Well, then thank you for being on here
again. Thiago, we're glad tohave you back. Thank you
listeners for coming. We hopethat if you have nature or have
a chance to play it, you enjoyit, and we're going to wrap up
there. So have a great month andhappy gaming.
hosts, and do not imply endorsements by the sponsors. If

(49:48):
you wish to purchase any of thegames we talked about, we
encourage you to do so throughyour friendly local game store.
Thank you and have fun playingdice with the universe.

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S2E10 - Nature (Evolution redux)

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}S2E10 - Nature (Evolution redux)