September 13, 2012 • 48 mins
City Creatures: Does a crowded street make you care less about your fellow man? Population density manipulates organisms in subtle and shocking ways. Join Robert and Julie as they look at how animals and humans respond to cramped conditions and depleted resources.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, you're welcome to Stuff to Blow
your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas.
We are back in the studio after a long labor
day weekend away. Um, what'd you get up to? Oh,
you know, I just I went to a densely populated
(00:26):
area and hung out, took some notes, watch my fellow humans.
Oh that a good weekend. A good weekend. Then, yeah,
what about you? Well, I've ventured, uh my wife and
I've entured up into the hills of rural Tennessee and
I actually visited the farm which is of course the
hippie commune there in middle Tennessee, um, famous for its
(00:47):
midwifery and and and soy products and tempe and and
all this, uh, which which was pretty interesting. But I
was also talking to my mom, who's a kindergarten teacher,
and she reminded me of of this really cool phenomenon
that kind of ties in with today's episode. You know
how it is with classroom sizes. Oh yeah, talk about
dense populations. Yeah, you end up throwing in more and
(01:09):
more kids, especially at the beginning of the class. So
my mom will start off a school year and she'll
have just an exorbitant number of of kindergarteners there. But
inevitably what will happen is that one or two of
the kindergarteners will develop an extra large jaw with with
extra large teeth, and then it will that kindergartener will
(01:29):
eat several of the other kindergarteners, thus balancing out the
population in the classroom, and then from then on for
the rest of the year, everything is a little more normal.
It's one of those things that people don't normally talk about, right,
but I mean it's it's pretty standard in public schools
in the United States, and it is a good way
to sort of weed down the population and make it manageable. So, yes, indeed,
(01:54):
we are talking about population density and its effects on organisms. Um.
The the kindergartener thing we just went through there, we
will explain a little more detail because because what we
really want to talk about here is the comparison that
can be made between um various organisms and their ways
(02:16):
of dealing with with population density and resource shortage and
humanity's own ways of dealing with it. Where we're similar,
where we're very different and where even are different approaches
are kind of achieving the same ends. Yeah, and this
is where that don't don't part comes in because we've
talked about this before and it's coming. Twenty is estimated
(02:37):
that we will add another two point five billion people.
That's a lot of people. So we're at about seven
billion right now, and right now, fifty percent of us
live in cities. But by of us excuse me, two
thirds of us of us will be living in cities.
And what does that spell for us? That's that's going
(02:58):
to be a lot of people, elbow to elbow. Uh,
So we want to talk about this a little bit
and talk about chicken particular resources that are and aren't
available in this scenario, right because we're talking about more
and more people that need more and more resources, obviously,
and are we gonna be able to meet that need?
Are we space wise we're gonna be able to meet
(03:18):
that need? We've we've devoted an entire episode in the
past to discussing this and about even even if you
started building these vertical cities, even if you you you
become smarter and smarter with how how you use available space,
can you actually keep up with the with the demand. Well, yeah,
we've talked about vertical farming as as a possible um
solution to this, but the fact of the matter is
(03:40):
is that to feed that many people, food production will
need to grow by seven Yeah, that's huge. And to
say nothing of drinking water, which which continues to be
this big illusion here, especially in the United States, and
and I guess much of the western world where drinking
water is considered, this just there's just no end to it, right,
it's cheer it's everywhere we poop into it, which continues
(04:04):
to just like once once you you really think about that,
and lord knows, I spent a lot of my life
not thinking about that, but once you really think about
the fact that in the United States we have clean
drinking water that we defecate into, whereas on the other
side of the world you have people who who don't
even have access to that clean drinking water, and certainly
(04:25):
not as regular. Yeah, and we could do an entire
podcast on it, and in fact we probably that's a
topic that we should investigate further. But yes, that's a
huge problem on the horizon, certainly for the West end.
It's because this dream scenario is not going to continue
for for the for the world, no, no, and UM,
just to add a little more information to that whole
water scenario, current agriculture practices UM use of the fresh
(04:50):
water resources and then it renders a lot of that
really unsafe to drink because of pesticides and fertilizers. So
there you go with that. UM. Obviously that we're gonna
need some more solutions in the future here to fix
that problem. And there's another thing that we're not quite
focused on here in the West end that UM. It's
the existence of slums. Okay, So when I talked about
(05:11):
the fact that fifty percent of us now live in
cities and that of us will live in cities, the
United Nations and the World Healthcare Organization all say that
it's very possible that half of the people who are
living at cities at that point will be living in
slum cities. Again, this is not something that particularly in
(05:32):
the United States that we that is front and center
for us, But in India and other places throughout the world,
you know, we've seen this born out. So that's something
to think about, UM in terms of resources and how
we're all going to get along and what's going to
be available to us. In fact, the u N says
(05:53):
in its State of the World Cities Report that we're
moving towards mega regions that create miles upon miles of
what they call endless cities, capable of holding up to
a hundred million people. So, you know, keep this in context.
Maybe you live in a city right now that has
three thousand people, and that seems quite large. That really
is nothing in comparison to you know, forty years out
(06:15):
from now, when you have these huge, sprawling cities across
miles and miles of land. So let's turn our attention
to the animal world, how to end and take a
look at how certain organisms deal with overpopulation, because this
is something that has occurred, you know, since time out
of mind. You have a successful organism in a given environment,
(06:36):
it's gonna keep growing and growing, but it's eventually going
to press the envelope. You know, it's going to reach
that point where it's it's not sustainable within its own environment.
Resources are gonna dwindle and something's gonna have to give,
right So, one of the more remarkable examples of this
we see with the tiger salamander, which you find in
(06:56):
North America ranges from Florida to northern Mexico southern Canada
rocky mountains. It hibernates during the winter and during the
summer rains, it migrates in larger numbers to breeding ponds.
That this is where the males compete for females, and
after mating, a female lays one or more eggs, egg
masses that have fifty eggs each, depending upon the particular
(07:20):
subspecies of the salamander. All Right, the eggs hatch and
approximately four weeks into larva, and these larva fies with
like feathery gills. You've probably seen photographs. They're they're they're
cute and weird and and wonderfully beautiful in their own
subterranean way, slightly prehistoric. Yeah, And so these larva feed
(07:40):
on aquatic insects, small invertebrates and and even some small fish.
And the larva remain in these ponds an whole late
early August, uh well, late July early August, and then
transformed into air breathing subadults, which are four to five
inches in rank length. But this is where it gets
really interesting. Um. The tigers alamander is particularly unique because
(08:01):
the eggs can develop into two types of larva and
ultimately three types of adults. Now, but those two types
of larva, that's where it gets interesting, and this is
where I got the the deal. For the kindergarten example earlier.
The two types of larva that are produced are normal
tiger salamander larva plant and eating. Yeah, and then there
(08:23):
are the cannibal morphs. The cannibal morphs. Uh, these larva
have larger heads, bigger mouths, more well developed teeth, and
when ponds start to dry up and other food sources
become scarce, the cannibal more larva then turn on the
other salam mander larva in the pool with them and
start eating them, gobbling them up and growing faster. Their
(08:46):
maturing at a faster rate, and they're achieving adulthood at
a faster rate while eating the competing larva. Now it's
worth noting that they they they do not eat kin larva.
I'm less resources are particularly unless they're in dire straits.
Then let's meet the brother or sisters. Yeah, So if
it's a kindergarten classroom, just know that a brother and
(09:07):
sister in the same room and one of them developed
that extra large cannibal jaw. It's not gonna eat it's sibling.
And this is called genetic polyphenism, and I think it's
fascinating because it is a response directly to the environment. Right,
So if they began to run into each other with
her feeling, you know, if the larva are detecting that
the environment and the resources are shrinking, then they will
(09:29):
respond in one of two ways. Yeah. It's kind of
like how Iron Man has different armors for different things,
Like if he's battling Hulk, he has like a Hulkbuster armor,
and he's battling thori as a thorbuster armor. Um, and
it and the the environmental stimuli depends dictates which armor
Tony Stark is gonna put on. It's kind of like
that sept on a on a genetic level, and in
(09:51):
response to environmental stimuli which form this salama, it will
take all right. Um, So let's look at another example
of a high density population with creatures. This is also
an example of genetic polyphenism, except a little less um
grizzly in a way, because the two types that you see,
(10:14):
there's a gregarious morph and a solitary morph, and the
gregarious morph or is the one that arises as response
to population density, and it's more adept at flying, so
it can get the heck out of dodge and it
can find other patches grass or other resources. Yes, so
this would be in a kindergarten classroom environment. This would
(10:34):
be the child that instead of developing giant jaws to
gobble down its classmates, it would sprout beautiful wings and
then fly populated classrooms. That the kid who would pull
the fire alarm or just to get out of dodges
and say yeah. Um. And then there are swarm crickets,
which I think are really interesting. Um, these are Mormon crickets.
(10:55):
That is a good example there. They themselves are a
good sport of protein, okay and salt. So they're just
naturally going to be delicious to one another. Little beef
turkey exactly exactly like think of like, for instance, if
if uh us humans were covered in bacon and resources
were low and straight up like fried bacon skin, bacon skin. Yeah,
(11:21):
and we're just cruising around there's not much to eat.
We might might turn to one another and say, you
look delicious. That's one thing to think you always keep
in mind about cannibalism and humans is that. Um, humans
tend to go for cooked food with with a few
rare exceptions, but but certainly when it comes to eating
other mammals, we tend to like it cooked. And uh,
(11:42):
and we're not that so much into just eating it
living off the bone. But if but if we were,
would that change the same? Would we just peel off
a limb right now? And I just like pull off
one of your digits there, Like if everybody's skin was
like already like tan doorid and cooked and seasoned and all,
I mean it would it would be a different proposition.
Is it wrong that I'm salivating a little bit and
(12:05):
I'm a vegetarian? But no, these It's true. These guys
are their chock full of protein. They are in the
right circumstance, delicious to one another, these these Mormon crickets,
and they actually create these migratory formations. Okay, so um,
this actually creates an order, this march that they conduct.
(12:28):
And the reason why it creates this order is because
they're they're marching in mass, and they're moving like each
cricket is moving away from the one behind it towards
the one in front of it, and it puts them
in a in a very strange position in which they
are both the prey and the predator. So they're they're marching.
Each one is marching towards a cannibalistic feast in a
way from a cannibalistic death. Yes, and again this is
(12:51):
in in the case where the population gets very high,
resources are dwindling. But to me, this is the more
psychological example or a terror actually than the salamander, because
those guys they just come at you with with big
jaws and you know, what's the end. But yeah, and
it's kind of like, it's not nothing personal, it's business. Now.
I've got a giant job with which to eat you exactly,
(13:11):
and I developed that just for this purpose. But this
other one, it's like, you know, it's either be eaten. Yeah.
And and the important thing is that the cannibal morph
is sort of like, all right, we gotta roll out
the cannibal model to deal with this market. Whereas the
crickets are everyone is already on board with cannibalism. It's yeah,
they're ready to go. Um. Now, primates. We have seen
instances of cannibalism before primates, but generally this is not
(13:35):
something that is um is the norm Yeah, as we
just gotted. We had an episode called Finding on Cannibals,
I believe, which I we found out after we released
it that I think some people skipped over it because
they thought it was going to be about human cannibals,
which can be is a fascinating topic, but can be
the more disturbing topic that some listeners want to hear about.
That episode is entirely about animal cannibals. Cannibalism as an
(13:58):
economic factor, uh, in various organisms, and and and as
we highlighted in that episode, cannibalism on an economic level,
remove all the moral um you know what have you
on a on a biological economic level. It can be
a very good proposition, but it but while it drives
(14:18):
really well with some animals like these, like the crickets,
the Mormon crickets, it doesn't necessarily work so well with
other modes of life well, and like primates are a
good example because they're highly social, just like we are.
So um, it's sort of bad form to go around
eating one another. Um. So that generally doesn't happen in
a primate uh community, and I wanted to so we do.
(14:39):
This is why we don't see cannibal morphs among primates,
and certainly not in actual kindergarten classrooms outside of my imagination. No, no,
but if we did, could you imagine like the giant
jaws on Great eight canture, the like the classroom page
in the yearbook, and you being able to pick out
the cannibal morphs like look at the mouth on that
(15:01):
one that way, whoa whoa, Yeah, Jimmy, you're gonna have
to watch out for that one next year. Well, they
get they become buyers at that age too. Not defeed,
this absurd notion any I see what you're saying. You're
trying to make us all feel like there's the undercurrent
of of possible canibalism in the elementary set. Um, I
am going to pull this information or just actually, um,
(15:22):
just highlight this information from a paper called Sociality in
the City, using biological principle pools to explore the relationship
between high population in density and social behavior. Yes, by
Daniel O'Brien and uh and we'll link to this in
the blog post that accompanies this episode, but the entire
paper is available in PDF form on lines and it's
the fascinating, fascinating read. Yeah, he says that Maccaux and
(15:45):
high density populations, do you see an increase in intra
sexual aggressive behavior for females when when the population becomes
much larger, resources dwindle um. But he also says that
this is a companied by an increase in intra sexual
grooming um. Presumably this is the reaction to kind of
try to calm everybody down once there have been aggressive acts.
(16:06):
So it'd be like everyone's a little stressed out by
the overpopulation, but instead of digging nails and claws into
each other, everyone just goes and gets there their hair done,
I think, so it's sort of like, sorry about that,
I didn't mean to do that. Let me gram you
a little bit. Um. But when there is a chimp
population that is artificially elevated, by the way artificially artificially
(16:27):
elevated is important because this is how they're they're testing this.
It was found that aggression actually decreased, but self scratching,
which is an indicator of anxiety, increased, and it's thought
that this is a form of self control, and this
is a deliberate um act that they're doing in order
to avoid any sort of unnecessary conflict. So on one account,
(16:49):
we see pro social actions counteracting stress hormones. Instead of
tearing it up, We're gonna just comb each other's hair
and meet each other's parasites. And we see anxiety and
conflict of avoidant self control. So instead of just completely
freaking out and murdering my my fellow chimps, I'm just
gonna maybe stress a bit and uh stare at the
(17:12):
wall and scratch myself. Yea. And if you look at
all these models, this is actually good news for us, right,
because we're a lot closer to tom a primate than
say a cricket. Um. So when you take this model
and you say, okay, there's going to be an increase
in population, there's going to be a dwindling of resources
for humans. Um, what is this going to look like
(17:32):
for us? How are we gonna act? And we should
probably take a break, But when we get back, let's
talk about how we may all turn into a loose urbans.
All right, we're back, And yes, we've talked about what
happens when salamander's encounter population density and dwindling resources. We've
(17:54):
talked about locusts, we've talked about primates, but really the
big question is what does it mean for humans? Cities
are not the exclusive domain of cannibalistic hordes. Um, obviously
as far as we know, as far as we know,
I mean there might be some underground sex. Yeah, I
mean even when you look in fiction, um, you see
(18:14):
there are just as many cannibalistic hillbilly families as there
are cannibalistic underground dwellers. It kind of balances out. So
so even in the world of the of imagination, we
don't see the tendency towards cannibalism in large cities. But
but undeniably, cities are places where people are just stacked
(18:34):
on top of each other. Resources various, uh you know,
definitions of resources are harder to come by, be it
be it just you know, simply food, water, um, a
livelihood or socialization. There's sometimes there's just less of it
to go around. I have to say, when I was
(18:55):
reading the part about the chimpanzees beginning to scratch themselves,
um and then anxiety, I couldn't help but think of
Woody Allen immediately, who is it? Uh No, I just
kind of was imagining him as as a chimpanzee because
the typical neurotic city dweller exactly, exactly, someone who has
been shaped by his experiences in the city and high density. UM.
(19:16):
So let's talk a little bit about what we do
know when it comes to that sort of situation. We
have talked about the bystander effect before. UM again, this
is I guess you could look at it as a
social norm from not really helping people. And this is
evolved from our continual exposure to these instances that we
just kind of get UM hardened too, I guess you. Yeah.
(19:39):
And this this reminds me of another sort of sort
of in a way, I feel like kind of an
emerging modern Woody Allen Um in some senses we've mentioned before.
Louis c K I believe it's the third episode of
the first season of the show. Louis on fx UM.
He's talking about coming to going to New York Port
Authority picking up a cousin from the country, and they
(20:01):
see a homeless man just lying there against the wall
in dreadful shape, just like madded hair, you know, looks
like he's on death's doorstep. And and the cousin from
the Country's like, oh, whoa, what is he supposed to
be here? What's what should we do should we help him?
Does he need our help? And uh? And and Louie
who has this very very dark at times goofy but
(20:25):
but at times very dark and um and reflective philosophically,
they're very philosophical at times. Um he he he says, well, well, yeah,
he needs your help. He needs your help more than
anything in the world. But but we don't do that
here and don't don't touch him, just keep moving. And
that in essence is the bystander effect. Um. There are
(20:48):
basically four key components. And we discussed bystander effect before,
but but just to refresh their four key components um
self awareness, to perceived the presence of an audience to
his or her action inhibits the individual from acting. He
or she does not want to appear foolish or inappropriate
in front of others. So Louie is in front of
other New Yorkers. He doesn't want There's a there's a
(21:10):
certain sense of being a city person, you know, like
just us, you know, walking around Atlanta, you know not
to gaze up and stare at our few skyscrapers. If
we go to New York, we're conscious of the fact
that we are supposed to be some sort of a
city person, even in this much larger city. So we
don't stare up at the skyscrapers. You're not supposed to
stand around and look lost, because you'll look out of step,
(21:31):
you'll look like an outsider, and I don't know, you'll
be eaten or something. Well, but yeah by the underground cannibals. Yeah,
you don't want to violate the social norms and the
and these and the social rules that are in place,
which say when it is appropriate to do something when
it is not well. And then we've talked about before
too that that there's the psychological component of it, where
(21:51):
you say someone else will deal with that. The more
people that are witnessed to something, the more or the
less likely that person will receive help. Because everybody's sort
of saying that person will help for that personal help.
Eventually that person will the homeless person will go to
a shelter and receive help. Right, I mean this gets
into a diffuse responsibility, which is another aspect of the
bystander effect, which says, then in a situation where only
(22:11):
a small percentage of the bystanders can take action, responsibilities diffused.
So this that say a hundred people are standing by
and there's a guy that it's you know, clearly he
needs help. He's laying there right there on on the
floor of the port authority. We can't all help him, no,
I mean, we can't all go and pick him up.
Only like how many people can pick up a human
being at a time, how many can reasonably take him
(22:34):
to the shelter or to a hospital. And since we
can't all help him, there's this sense that that each
of us has less of a responsibility for helping. Well,
it's a matter of resources too, because if you were
to help every single person, then would you spend your
entire day and your material wealth actually helping that person?
So that is an extreme proposition right there. But but
(22:56):
you know if you were to stop and help in
the high density population like New York City, because spend
your entire day doing that, and some people actually do.
I did want to mention bring okay, just real quick
self awareness and this is just you look to see
what everyone else is doing. No one else is helping
this guy, so maybe I shouldn't either. Um, And then
(23:17):
there's blocking, and this is where there's a perception that
if you take action, uh, you could actually make matters
worse because you're getting the way of somebody else who
can actually do better with this situation. So it's like
I could try and help this guy, but surely, out
of all the hundreds of people walking by, someone else
here is better suited, Like some one of these people
(23:38):
is an actual care worker or they have some sort
of health training. I do not. I am not the
person for this job. And there are a ton of
studies that corroborate this um and in fact, in in
Socuality in the City, the author talks about how a
meta analysis of studies dealing with pro social behavior and
degrees of helping behavior found that population is greater than
(24:01):
three hundred thousand have lower helping behaviors and lower pro
social behaviors. Can you think of a specific example where
you've you've found yourself wrapped up in the bystander effect?
I mean, I probably, especially if you take public transportation
there and dur encounters like this every day. But I
know I have I can't, like I'm the top from
(24:24):
the top of my head, I can't, But I know
that there have been times before I vacillated and and
have finally said, like, could you need help or you
know what I'm saying, you kind of stand there and
try to assess the situation. Yeah, the I guess the
two times that come to mind that we're particularly kind
of interesting for me. Once I was I was walking
This was near Crag Tunnel in in Atlanta. I forgot
(24:46):
that is a great graffiti to great graffiti free zone.
And then what's the name of the of the restaurant,
Historia Historia? Yeah, I was leaving there with with my
wife and our friend j T. And we're walking down
the street there and uh, and we were just talking
about something and we pass a girl that's like passed
out in the gutter there by the We're not really
(25:07):
the gutter, but but the sort of shadowy side of
the road by this restaurant. And we all three passed by.
And then after we've passed by, you know, one of
us pipes up and says, hey, did you guys see
that back there? Should we we should do something? And
then we turned back around and and the three of
us sort of as a combined effort, went back and
checked on her, and she popped up and ran away.
(25:28):
But I see, isn't it interesting that one of you
it took like, you know, the three of you guys
were thinking about it, but it took one person to say, well, hey,
you guys before yes, because before that we were all
it was kind of like we were seeing what is
the social norm here? Do we are? Do we as
Atlanta residents, as city dwellers, as modern humans? Do we
let that go? You know? Do we? Or if we?
(25:50):
Does she know what she's doing? Maybe that's her thing,
you know, And there are all these different levels at
which you can sort of rationalize passing it by until
you actually on the question on yourself and say, no, seriously,
why did you just pass that? Yeah? I think she
was just really drunk, because, you know, because that's a
it's a bar there, and she she seemed fine. She
(26:11):
was not injured or bleeding around. I know that ditch
she I've done that too. You just need to rest sometimes.
The only other time that it comes to mind is
when I saw an unintended package or what I thought
was an unattended package on Marta. And this was this
wasn't like immediately after a terrorist thing, but it was
still you get piped in your head. You see an
unintended package, you need to tell somebody, Well, and that's
our train system, right, so you don't necessarily want to
(26:33):
mess with that. Yeah, And so there was this pack
and like I spent like a whole like if it
was gonna blow up, it had plenty of time to
blow up with me on that train because I'm sitting
there and I'm like, all right, is is that nobody's
And I'm like seeing nobody sitting next to it? And
so I finally ring the bell and then some guy says, hey,
that's my package, And I'm like, well, do why were
you sending halfway across the train from it if it
wasn't filled with bombs? But anyway, I'm sure everyone has
(26:56):
at least a dozen stories of this nature. But I
just thought I mentioned to come yeah, and I'd love
to here um from our listeners to if they have
any stark examples of this um collective efficacy. This is interesting.
This is predicated on humans defending their territory by forging
bonds with neighbors and and displaying an unspoken rule of
(27:16):
order through the way that their own properties look, which
is I think about this less an urban setting, but
this is what the paper um Sociality and the City
is applying it to But I do understand that because
what they're saying, or rather the author Daniel O'Brien is
saying that this is a quote. When collective efficacy is weak,
(27:38):
undesirable behaviors like disorderly conduct and public drunkenness go unpunished
and are likely to rise. Because I guess the point
is is that if you turn a corner in the
neighborhood begins to look like it's in disrepair and nobody
necessarily cares, the idea is that you could get away
with um, some illicit behavior because nobody's necessarily watching or
(27:58):
governing this. So this is this one's kind of interesting,
And then it kind of falls back on sort of
ideas of of of like a Mayberry kind of situation
where everyone knows everybody and everything's harmonious for that versus
a city model where you don't know the person in
the apartment across the hall from you, and it creates
(28:19):
this high sense of isolation and also a less of
a sense that I need to actually do what I
should because I'm I'm held in a social contract with
those around me. Well, the idea is that then if
you're not connected to your neighbors. Then you feel anonymous
and you feel like you're not as empowered. And if
you're the person who is is mischief making, then you
(28:40):
feel like you have a greater degree of freedom or
power because you are anonymous and other people are taking
on the same roles, so you don't have this informal
governance in check. And when we talk about me berry um,
this informal governance is a is a really good thing
to think about. Think about gossip, think about trying to
maintain one's reputation, think about being socially shunned. Think about
(29:02):
setting on your front porch with a jug band as
the sun goes down, which is actually just think about that. Yeah,
but but actually I say that jokingly as as a
may ory reference, but but actually you do see theories
where people say that that that is when everyone got
air conditioning, that that had a huge intrimental effect on
(29:22):
um on neighborhoods because before that you did set on
the front front porch, you did sort of hang it.
That was the only place during the hot summer months
that you could actually feel comfortable. If you're inside, you're sweltering,
and if you're out on the front porch, or within
side of other front porches, people make the rounds, people
say hi to each other. It's not an airtight theory necessarily,
but it's but it's an interesting way of looking at things.
(29:43):
Then we get air conditionings, so instead of setting on
the front porch, we're back inside. In many cases we
actually wall up that front porch and make it into
a part of our our castle. Yeah, and it's interesting that,
you know, even if you were um to try to
organize and know as many neighbors as POSSI will and
try to put an effort into this into two you know,
really crowded areas, the fact of the matter is the
(30:05):
more people that you add, the more fragmented it gets.
So it's a difficult thing to organize. But um, Daniel O'Brien,
the author of Sociality in the City did say, when
when you look at these locustwarms, so there's a silver lining,
because he says that recall that, well, not just the
glimmering wings. No, no, a real silver lining. It's it's
(30:32):
just you know, it's funny that he's pumping up like this,
because I'll tell you what that silver lining is, and
then you decide if it's silver lining um that while
members of the swarm were inclined towards cannibalism, their marching
formation was an emergent adaptation for for avoiding this threat
and others. So I think what he's saying is that
to some degree, we're pretty self organizing and we're going
(30:55):
to prevent as much violence as we can. Um, you know,
like you saw in the primate population, perhaps turned to
scratching ourselves or whatnot to try not to express, um
some of the frustration and anxiety on onto others. In
In his paper, Daniel O'Brien also mentions a Stanley Milgram
(31:17):
system overload theory which was pretty interesting, and this basically
saying population density acts on adaptive psychology in a number
of key ways, one of which is the bystander effect,
which we've covered, but he also says that it creates
an enhanced feeling of vulnerability, which which having just spent
the weekend out in the middle of nowhere in the
country and then return to the city, I mean, I
can I can definitely vouch for that if you're surrounded
(31:39):
by nobody and you're not superstitious or afraid of cryptid
animals and bigfoot attacks, or or the stray bullet of
a hunter who mistakes you for a deer. Then then
you you feel pretty safe out in the middle of nowhere,
out in that splendid isolation. You move into the city
and you're the city is teeming with people you don't know,
(32:00):
people you on site don't trust, and who knows what's
out there? Right, There's just so many people and you
know that this percentage wise, a large proportion of them
are no good. Do you think, yeah, of course, I
don't know. Well, you know, it's like it's like in
a sense there, you know, they're accountable morphs out there,
just show you that they're they're a cannibalistic crickets out there.
(32:22):
Not maybe not they're not actually going to eat you,
but they will definitely take from you. And I'm not
just saying, oh, they're gonna still my law on its
but but you know that there are a lot of
forces out there that if you come into contact with them, um,
it could have a negative effect on you. That being said,
that feeling also plays into this whole loss of connection
with neighborhood. We just trust everyone, and therefore we're less
(32:44):
likely to forge these these neighborhood bonds that can actually
have a beneficial effect on our society, which and this
is something I encounter as a as a homeowner in
in the Atlanta you know, it's like you, and as
also being the kind of person who's not the most
social animal on the planet, I find myself thinking, Oh,
I should I should go meet that new neighbor, you know,
(33:05):
that would be the nice thing to do. But then
I should bring a pie to that. I should bring
a pie to them and tell them about the neighborhood
association and tell them about the dude I know it
was down the street. But then I don't because that's
talking to a new person, and that's that person could
be all sorts of the stripes of nuttiness. Well, no,
it's not so much that it's just like talking to
a new person that's stressful. They could just be normal,
(33:26):
and that's stressful enough for someone like me. Okay, all
right now I'm thinking about all of this. I'm just
taking it in because I take the opposite tact where
if I'm out in the middle of nowhere, then I'm
more frightened than when I'm surrounded by people. I feel
more comforted by being around people. Well, well, of course,
real quick, I should also point out that high levels
of distrust and avoidance of strangers, that's also part of
(33:46):
the system overload theory. But to your point, feelings of
distrust in the in the country versus the city, Like
I said, in our fiction, we see just as many
cannibalistic hillbowy families as we see cannibalistic livers and dwellers
in the subway. And I have to say that, um,
looking at times that I have walked up to a
stranger's door or pulled into a stranger's driveway while lost,
(34:10):
only once have I had a gun pulled on me.
And it was up in the mountains of only once,
and it was like the mountains of Kennasa or someone.
I'm not as good about the geography of the vast
hills surrounding Atlanta. But we were up there for a
wedding or something, and um, no, not worth something. It
was a wedding, Uh should I helped my wife shoot
a wedding for a friend. We attended it, and then
(34:31):
afterwards we were trying to find a bed and breakfast
that we had arranged to stay out and we're trying
to use GPS out there and it can't get a
signal where we're According to it, we're driving on imaginary
roads to nowhere. And then since we were, because we
ended up pulling, like going down this really steep gravel
driveway and some dude like walks out on his front
porch and he's just astounded that we're on this driveway. Yeah,
(34:52):
for twenty years and no one has shown up, and
here you guys are. And so I'm busy trying to
get the car to go back up the gravel road
because it's not really going and I'm having to carefully
figure out how traction works on the steep grade. And
meanwhile my and my wife sees this and she doesn't
tell me till till afterwards, but the guy had had
grabbed a shotgun. She's like, you know, just let you
(35:13):
focus on just trying to get the car out of there.
I understand that. So so yeah, just from my own
personal experience, you know, knock on wood, but that's the
that's the only time that I've had a gun pulled
on me when I was lost and just needed some direction,
and that was in the country. So which makes me
wonder if you can still have an isolationist mentality among
(35:35):
a great number of people. Yeah, because that's what we
see a lot a lot of times politically. So that's
just a sort of fought experiment. Let's revisit really quickly
because we have some thoughts about this. We we've talked
about the population increase, the explosion. I wanted to also
mention something called the youth bulge according to Kenneth Wise,
(35:58):
which sounds like a band, but it's u it does.
It sounds one that you could kind of snicker a
little bit at the title, but it is not. According
to Kenneth Wise, of the l a times of the
two billion or more people who will be added to
the planet by nine, seven percent of the two billion
are expected to be born in Africa, Asia and Latin America. UM,
(36:20):
he says, led by the poor, smoot, volatile countries. Yeah,
and this is worth pointing out to and this is
from the same article. All right, So in many developing countries,
runaway population growth creates hoards of restless young men, and
in about eight percent of the world civil conflicts since
the nineteen seventies UM. They have occurred in countries with young,
(36:41):
fast growing populations. Again, the youth bulges and that's according
the Population Action International nonprofit. So even if you look
back before nineteen seventy, a youth boom contributed the rise
in the Nazis in the nineteen thirties Germany and to
Japan's military ambitions in the Pacific uh and even more
recently you look just you also look to stuff like
(37:01):
Tianamen Square UM protests in China. You see UM, you
see young activists UM. And also in the US, look
at the nineteen sixties, look at the seventies, look at
the Wall Street Occupy Wall Street movement. You're seeing large
numbers of young people engaged in these these activities. Yea,
And I wanted to point out to that. You know,
there are certain parts of which will stabilize in population. China,
(37:23):
for example, right now it has like fifty of the
world's population. By fifty they will add only one percent more.
So really you are seeing the greater growth in Africa,
Asia and Latin America. And Whist does talk about Afghanistan
in his article as an example of this. He says
that since the US lead Envision in two thousand and one,
(37:44):
the population has swelled from twenty three million to thirty
three million, and that nearly three fourths of Afghans are
under the age of thirty, the median age of sixteen
compared to thirty seven in the United States. So he's
saying this is a real problem because if you have
a sluggish, a grarian economy like they do, and you
have men, young men who can't find legitimate employment, and UM,
(38:09):
you also have young men who want to get married
but they require a dowry, then they're going to go
probably toward um illicit activities or towards the Taliban to
get some source of money or food to sustain themselves.
So they're saying like, even if they're not too interested
in the Taliban's politics or agenda, then they're probably gonna
(38:30):
go toward that route anyway because they don't have a
lot of options to choose from. The other huge problem
here is that UM, and again Afghanistan as the model here,
women truly are considered second class citizens and they don't
have many rights, and they don't have access to birth control.
And you will see time and time again that UH,
(38:51):
young girls who are educated who have access to birth
control will delay marriage, they will delay having children, and
will have less of them. UM. And you know, I
bring this up only because when when you're in that
situation Afghanistan in the average amount of children a female
has is seven seven babies. That's that's astounding, UM for
(39:13):
the lack of resources available to those children. Yeah, so
there's there is there's a comparison to be made there.
I mean, you could think of these uh, these angry
young men is larval salamanders in a pool of it's
it's quickly filling up that whether resources are not optimal
and what are they going to do to deal with
that situation. So we've talked about this this problem before
(39:35):
and it's not just a question and and solution of
urban design that certainly helps UM and rethinking agriculture to
meet our needs that helps too, but it really is like,
what is this lookli and how can you help people
best um, particularly this youth bulge, And how can you
help society not just a self governed but to organize
(39:56):
itself to to really accommodate all the very his problems
that could arise. So there you go. If you live
in the city, I hope you'll think about all of
this as you walk the streets today or tomorrow. And uh,
information looking behind information, running from the cannibal behind you
and chasing after that tasty looking stranger in front of you.
(40:18):
And if you live in the in the country, I
I you know, think about all these things when you
plan your next trip to the city or Robert shows up. Yeah,
you've got to protect that mental app I guess. But
that's the only thing I could figure it is, like, dude, dude,
is that crazy about someone showing up? You must have
something to hide or captives in the in the cellar
(40:41):
that I almost that I almost joined. UM, So let's
call over the robit uh and get a few listener
mails from him. And while he's doing that, I wanted
to mention that we had uh an email from Linda
and she wrote into correct me about the f m
(41:01):
l A Act, and I'm very glad that she did. Um.
I had stated that this is the yeah, this is
from the milk episode. I've stated that women get six
weeks of unpaid leave office in fact, twelve weeks. UM,
So I'm glad that she pointed that out. And when
we talk about fm l A, we're talking about the
Family Medical Leave Act and that's not just for for children,
(41:22):
but also for taking care of other members of your family,
and it is available to people who have worked at
their job for a year and two companies they have
to uh, they have to actually offer it if they
have more than fifty employees. Okay, there we go. Cool.
And I should also note uh that I corrected this
on Facebook and Twitter, but for those of you who
(41:42):
don't follow those, I also in the milk episode, uh,
and without thinking, I mentioned Romulus and Remus, and I
think I either said or implied that they breastfed from
a cow, and of course they breastfed from a she
wolf in the Roman mythology. So my apat a duies
to Romulus, my apologies to Remus, and of course my
apologies to the sheet will Well, and I like how
(42:04):
you call the Rami and Remi and Remi. Yeah, well
that was those for their kids names. They're embarrassed when
you call them that now, but at the time. So hey,
let's let's read a couple of these mails. These are
some quick ones. Uh. We we get more mail than
we have space to to read on on air these days,
but and certainly this is a longer episode, so I'll
just read a couple of short ones, uh Andy writes,
and this is dear Julian, Robert just wanted to thank
(42:26):
you for putting out your science podcast. I really love
that you add a lot of philosophical ruminations to the
information you impart It's a great extra element that keeps
me coming back for more. Thanks again, sincerely, Andy. And Yeah,
that's what I mean. That's one of the things we
love about it is UH. It's not only talking about
these these very scientific topics or even kind of out
(42:47):
there topics, but ultimately bringing it all back to the
human condition and in our perception of the cosmos, in
our place in it, and how does it potentially shift
or outright change that proposition. And a lot of the
feedback that we it from you guys really helps to
feel that as well. We've gotten some incredible thoughts from
you all. All right, and here's one from Jerich Jerk
(43:08):
writes in UH in response to our Seven Deadly Sins series,
which which was a real popular one with with you guys.
Send gals, He writes in and says, Hi, Robert and Julie,
I'm a new listener to the show, and I just
finished listening to the Seven Deadly Sin series. I was
wondering if anyone brought up the correlation between the seven
deadly sins and many of America's major holidays. The thought
first hit me several years ago after I had just
(43:30):
stuffed myself with turkey on Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving for gluttony, eat two,
you can't move and take a nap, Valenstein's Valentine's Day
for lust, a whole day dedicated to luthern Wace, Labor
Day for sloth, have a day off you deserve it.
Christmas for greed, presence presence, Fourth of July for wrath,
celebrate your country's independence by blowing up a small portion
of it um and Veterans Day for pride. I don't
(43:53):
have any commentary for this one yet. I don't have
a holiday for envy, but I would love to hear
if you have an idea for for one. I also
realized that you may need need a somewhat cynical point
of view for the holidays, but I submit that a
decent argument could be made for each of the sins.
I really enjoyed your podcast. Please keep up the great work.
Jarek Um. Yeah, all those comparisons I think are pretty apt.
(44:16):
But indeed, is there one for envy? This could be
for envy as well. Could do you do Old Judy
in the Yeah, I mean indeed, because you know, we
talked about the interconnectedness of some of these and indeed,
coming down to at heart, it's about grasping for something
that you don't have on a certain level, So you
(44:37):
could you could see Christmas is that you're you're grasping
for something. You you see things you want and you
desire them, So you could make an argument there, I
think more so than you could for like say Patty's Day,
which is probably just another that's that's cluttony as well.
Yeah um oh. And then Jarek also adds while writing this,
(44:58):
I was listening to the Way of the Sword podcast
and feel it should be noted that watching a real
sword fight is not nearly as entertaining as watching the
movie fights. I have fence for several years in college,
and when friends and family would come to watch competitions,
most would get bored before too long. While the added
blood effects of a real fight would be exciting, I
doubt it would be overly enjoyable to witness an extremely
(45:18):
painful death. So that's interesting that he brings that up,
because you know, I think I thinking to sword fights
that have been most entertaining in in films like that.
I guess that you have to you have to walk
that line between believability and enjoyability. I'm just imagining now
that that fencers should start to smuggle in blood capsules
(45:43):
right and employ them at the right moment. I really
feel like you guys would get huge sponsorship dollars if
you did this, or if they incorporated more of the
the old swash buffling, like you know, you run up
a chair and then you sort of like tip forward
with it. Things like that roll over the back of
the table, so more. If they just held Olympic fencing
events in side crowded pubs, that might that might help.
(46:03):
Although somehow I just doesn't seem like the right fit,
does it. Fencing I think is always going to be
just sort of a white glove thing and beautiful and
and a wonderful art. But blood capsules, pubs, crazy costumes,
you know, paint those suits up. I don't know. I mean,
of course, this is me talking. I've yeah, I tend
to gravitate towards the gravitate towards the professional wrestling because
(46:26):
I find that it is, uh, it is just fake enough, um,
whereas I find real fighting is either boring or disturbing.
But if you if it's if it's fake enough, it's
theatrical enough that I can get behind it. And I
guess I'm kind of the same way with sword fights.
I don't want to see a clinical exhibition of someone's
fencing prowess, but I also don't want to see a
(46:47):
like a plotless just you know, flashing images of laser
swords hitting each other and needs to tell a story.
So what you guys are hearing, I think are the
seeds of a science of wrestling podcasts to come to see. Anyway,
I've rambled enough, uh and now once you're turning to ramble,
So if you have something you would like to share
with us, If you have some interesting notes of by
standard effect in your life, um, if you have thoughts
(47:10):
about cannibal morphs and uh and and just anything regarding
h uh stuff that we've talked about in this episode
or other episodes, let us know about it. You can
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(47:32):
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(47:54):
this and thousands of other topics. Does It How stuff
works dot com One
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, you're welcome to Stuff to Blow
your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas.
We are back in the studio after a long labor
day weekend away. Um, what'd you get up to? Oh,
you know, I just I went to a densely populated
(00:26):
area and hung out, took some notes, watch my fellow humans.
Oh that a good weekend. A good weekend. Then, yeah,
what about you? Well, I've ventured, uh my wife and
I've entured up into the hills of rural Tennessee and
I actually visited the farm which is of course the
hippie commune there in middle Tennessee, um, famous for its
(00:47):
midwifery and and and soy products and tempe and and
all this, uh, which which was pretty interesting. But I
was also talking to my mom, who's a kindergarten teacher,
and she reminded me of of this really cool phenomenon
that kind of ties in with today's episode. You know
how it is with classroom sizes. Oh yeah, talk about
dense populations. Yeah, you end up throwing in more and
(01:09):
more kids, especially at the beginning of the class. So
my mom will start off a school year and she'll
have just an exorbitant number of of kindergarteners there. But
inevitably what will happen is that one or two of
the kindergarteners will develop an extra large jaw with with
extra large teeth, and then it will that kindergartener will
(01:29):
eat several of the other kindergarteners, thus balancing out the
population in the classroom, and then from then on for
the rest of the year, everything is a little more normal.
It's one of those things that people don't normally talk about, right,
but I mean it's it's pretty standard in public schools
in the United States, and it is a good way
to sort of weed down the population and make it manageable. So, yes, indeed,
(01:54):
we are talking about population density and its effects on organisms. Um.
The the kindergartener thing we just went through there, we
will explain a little more detail because because what we
really want to talk about here is the comparison that
can be made between um various organisms and their ways
(02:16):
of dealing with with population density and resource shortage and
humanity's own ways of dealing with it. Where we're similar,
where we're very different and where even are different approaches
are kind of achieving the same ends. Yeah, and this
is where that don't don't part comes in because we've
talked about this before and it's coming. Twenty is estimated
(02:37):
that we will add another two point five billion people.
That's a lot of people. So we're at about seven
billion right now, and right now, fifty percent of us
live in cities. But by of us excuse me, two
thirds of us of us will be living in cities.
And what does that spell for us? That's that's going
(02:58):
to be a lot of people, elbow to elbow. Uh,
So we want to talk about this a little bit
and talk about chicken particular resources that are and aren't
available in this scenario, right because we're talking about more
and more people that need more and more resources, obviously,
and are we gonna be able to meet that need?
Are we space wise we're gonna be able to meet
(03:18):
that need? We've we've devoted an entire episode in the
past to discussing this and about even even if you
started building these vertical cities, even if you you you
become smarter and smarter with how how you use available space,
can you actually keep up with the with the demand. Well, yeah,
we've talked about vertical farming as as a possible um
solution to this, but the fact of the matter is
(03:40):
is that to feed that many people, food production will
need to grow by seven Yeah, that's huge. And to
say nothing of drinking water, which which continues to be
this big illusion here, especially in the United States, and
and I guess much of the western world where drinking
water is considered, this just there's just no end to it, right,
it's cheer it's everywhere we poop into it, which continues
(04:04):
to just like once once you you really think about that,
and lord knows, I spent a lot of my life
not thinking about that, but once you really think about
the fact that in the United States we have clean
drinking water that we defecate into, whereas on the other
side of the world you have people who who don't
even have access to that clean drinking water, and certainly
(04:25):
not as regular. Yeah, and we could do an entire
podcast on it, and in fact we probably that's a
topic that we should investigate further. But yes, that's a
huge problem on the horizon, certainly for the West end.
It's because this dream scenario is not going to continue
for for the for the world, no, no, and UM,
just to add a little more information to that whole
water scenario, current agriculture practices UM use of the fresh
(04:50):
water resources and then it renders a lot of that
really unsafe to drink because of pesticides and fertilizers. So
there you go with that. UM. Obviously that we're gonna
need some more solutions in the future here to fix
that problem. And there's another thing that we're not quite
focused on here in the West end that UM. It's
the existence of slums. Okay, So when I talked about
(05:11):
the fact that fifty percent of us now live in
cities and that of us will live in cities, the
United Nations and the World Healthcare Organization all say that
it's very possible that half of the people who are
living at cities at that point will be living in
slum cities. Again, this is not something that particularly in
(05:32):
the United States that we that is front and center
for us, But in India and other places throughout the world,
you know, we've seen this born out. So that's something
to think about, UM in terms of resources and how
we're all going to get along and what's going to
be available to us. In fact, the u N says
(05:53):
in its State of the World Cities Report that we're
moving towards mega regions that create miles upon miles of
what they call endless cities, capable of holding up to
a hundred million people. So, you know, keep this in context.
Maybe you live in a city right now that has
three thousand people, and that seems quite large. That really
is nothing in comparison to you know, forty years out
(06:15):
from now, when you have these huge, sprawling cities across
miles and miles of land. So let's turn our attention
to the animal world, how to end and take a
look at how certain organisms deal with overpopulation, because this
is something that has occurred, you know, since time out
of mind. You have a successful organism in a given environment,
(06:36):
it's gonna keep growing and growing, but it's eventually going
to press the envelope. You know, it's going to reach
that point where it's it's not sustainable within its own environment.
Resources are gonna dwindle and something's gonna have to give,
right So, one of the more remarkable examples of this
we see with the tiger salamander, which you find in
(06:56):
North America ranges from Florida to northern Mexico southern Canada
rocky mountains. It hibernates during the winter and during the
summer rains, it migrates in larger numbers to breeding ponds.
That this is where the males compete for females, and
after mating, a female lays one or more eggs, egg
masses that have fifty eggs each, depending upon the particular
(07:20):
subspecies of the salamander. All Right, the eggs hatch and
approximately four weeks into larva, and these larva fies with
like feathery gills. You've probably seen photographs. They're they're they're
cute and weird and and wonderfully beautiful in their own
subterranean way, slightly prehistoric. Yeah, And so these larva feed
(07:40):
on aquatic insects, small invertebrates and and even some small fish.
And the larva remain in these ponds an whole late
early August, uh well, late July early August, and then
transformed into air breathing subadults, which are four to five
inches in rank length. But this is where it gets
really interesting. Um. The tigers alamander is particularly unique because
(08:01):
the eggs can develop into two types of larva and
ultimately three types of adults. Now, but those two types
of larva, that's where it gets interesting, and this is
where I got the the deal. For the kindergarten example earlier.
The two types of larva that are produced are normal
tiger salamander larva plant and eating. Yeah, and then there
(08:23):
are the cannibal morphs. The cannibal morphs. Uh, these larva
have larger heads, bigger mouths, more well developed teeth, and
when ponds start to dry up and other food sources
become scarce, the cannibal more larva then turn on the
other salam mander larva in the pool with them and
start eating them, gobbling them up and growing faster. Their
(08:46):
maturing at a faster rate, and they're achieving adulthood at
a faster rate while eating the competing larva. Now it's
worth noting that they they they do not eat kin larva.
I'm less resources are particularly unless they're in dire straits.
Then let's meet the brother or sisters. Yeah, So if
it's a kindergarten classroom, just know that a brother and
(09:07):
sister in the same room and one of them developed
that extra large cannibal jaw. It's not gonna eat it's sibling.
And this is called genetic polyphenism, and I think it's
fascinating because it is a response directly to the environment. Right,
So if they began to run into each other with
her feeling, you know, if the larva are detecting that
the environment and the resources are shrinking, then they will
(09:29):
respond in one of two ways. Yeah. It's kind of
like how Iron Man has different armors for different things,
Like if he's battling Hulk, he has like a Hulkbuster armor,
and he's battling thori as a thorbuster armor. Um, and
it and the the environmental stimuli depends dictates which armor
Tony Stark is gonna put on. It's kind of like
that sept on a on a genetic level, and in
(09:51):
response to environmental stimuli which form this salama, it will
take all right. Um, So let's look at another example
of a high density population with creatures. This is also
an example of genetic polyphenism, except a little less um
grizzly in a way, because the two types that you see,
(10:14):
there's a gregarious morph and a solitary morph, and the
gregarious morph or is the one that arises as response
to population density, and it's more adept at flying, so
it can get the heck out of dodge and it
can find other patches grass or other resources. Yes, so
this would be in a kindergarten classroom environment. This would
(10:34):
be the child that instead of developing giant jaws to
gobble down its classmates, it would sprout beautiful wings and
then fly populated classrooms. That the kid who would pull
the fire alarm or just to get out of dodges
and say yeah. Um. And then there are swarm crickets,
which I think are really interesting. Um, these are Mormon crickets.
(10:55):
That is a good example there. They themselves are a
good sport of protein, okay and salt. So they're just
naturally going to be delicious to one another. Little beef
turkey exactly exactly like think of like, for instance, if
if uh us humans were covered in bacon and resources
were low and straight up like fried bacon skin, bacon skin. Yeah,
(11:21):
and we're just cruising around there's not much to eat.
We might might turn to one another and say, you
look delicious. That's one thing to think you always keep
in mind about cannibalism and humans is that. Um, humans
tend to go for cooked food with with a few
rare exceptions, but but certainly when it comes to eating
other mammals, we tend to like it cooked. And uh,
(11:42):
and we're not that so much into just eating it
living off the bone. But if but if we were,
would that change the same? Would we just peel off
a limb right now? And I just like pull off
one of your digits there, Like if everybody's skin was
like already like tan doorid and cooked and seasoned and all,
I mean it would it would be a different proposition.
Is it wrong that I'm salivating a little bit and
(12:05):
I'm a vegetarian? But no, these It's true. These guys
are their chock full of protein. They are in the
right circumstance, delicious to one another, these these Mormon crickets,
and they actually create these migratory formations. Okay, so um,
this actually creates an order, this march that they conduct.
(12:28):
And the reason why it creates this order is because
they're they're marching in mass, and they're moving like each
cricket is moving away from the one behind it towards
the one in front of it, and it puts them
in a in a very strange position in which they
are both the prey and the predator. So they're they're marching.
Each one is marching towards a cannibalistic feast in a
way from a cannibalistic death. Yes, and again this is
(12:51):
in in the case where the population gets very high,
resources are dwindling. But to me, this is the more
psychological example or a terror actually than the salamander, because
those guys they just come at you with with big
jaws and you know, what's the end. But yeah, and
it's kind of like, it's not nothing personal, it's business. Now.
I've got a giant job with which to eat you exactly,
(13:11):
and I developed that just for this purpose. But this
other one, it's like, you know, it's either be eaten. Yeah.
And and the important thing is that the cannibal morph
is sort of like, all right, we gotta roll out
the cannibal model to deal with this market. Whereas the
crickets are everyone is already on board with cannibalism. It's yeah,
they're ready to go. Um. Now, primates. We have seen
instances of cannibalism before primates, but generally this is not
(13:35):
something that is um is the norm Yeah, as we
just gotted. We had an episode called Finding on Cannibals,
I believe, which I we found out after we released
it that I think some people skipped over it because
they thought it was going to be about human cannibals,
which can be is a fascinating topic, but can be
the more disturbing topic that some listeners want to hear about.
That episode is entirely about animal cannibals. Cannibalism as an
(13:58):
economic factor, uh, in various organisms, and and and as
we highlighted in that episode, cannibalism on an economic level,
remove all the moral um you know what have you
on a on a biological economic level. It can be
a very good proposition, but it but while it drives
(14:18):
really well with some animals like these, like the crickets,
the Mormon crickets, it doesn't necessarily work so well with
other modes of life well, and like primates are a
good example because they're highly social, just like we are.
So um, it's sort of bad form to go around
eating one another. Um. So that generally doesn't happen in
a primate uh community, and I wanted to so we do.
(14:39):
This is why we don't see cannibal morphs among primates,
and certainly not in actual kindergarten classrooms outside of my imagination. No, no,
but if we did, could you imagine like the giant
jaws on Great eight canture, the like the classroom page
in the yearbook, and you being able to pick out
the cannibal morphs like look at the mouth on that
(15:01):
one that way, whoa whoa, Yeah, Jimmy, you're gonna have
to watch out for that one next year. Well, they
get they become buyers at that age too. Not defeed,
this absurd notion any I see what you're saying. You're
trying to make us all feel like there's the undercurrent
of of possible canibalism in the elementary set. Um, I
am going to pull this information or just actually, um,
(15:22):
just highlight this information from a paper called Sociality in
the City, using biological principle pools to explore the relationship
between high population in density and social behavior. Yes, by
Daniel O'Brien and uh and we'll link to this in
the blog post that accompanies this episode, but the entire
paper is available in PDF form on lines and it's
the fascinating, fascinating read. Yeah, he says that Maccaux and
(15:45):
high density populations, do you see an increase in intra
sexual aggressive behavior for females when when the population becomes
much larger, resources dwindle um. But he also says that
this is a companied by an increase in intra sexual
grooming um. Presumably this is the reaction to kind of
try to calm everybody down once there have been aggressive acts.
(16:06):
So it'd be like everyone's a little stressed out by
the overpopulation, but instead of digging nails and claws into
each other, everyone just goes and gets there their hair done,
I think, so it's sort of like, sorry about that,
I didn't mean to do that. Let me gram you
a little bit. Um. But when there is a chimp
population that is artificially elevated, by the way artificially artificially
(16:27):
elevated is important because this is how they're they're testing this.
It was found that aggression actually decreased, but self scratching,
which is an indicator of anxiety, increased, and it's thought
that this is a form of self control, and this
is a deliberate um act that they're doing in order
to avoid any sort of unnecessary conflict. So on one account,
(16:49):
we see pro social actions counteracting stress hormones. Instead of
tearing it up, We're gonna just comb each other's hair
and meet each other's parasites. And we see anxiety and
conflict of avoidant self control. So instead of just completely
freaking out and murdering my my fellow chimps, I'm just
gonna maybe stress a bit and uh stare at the
(17:12):
wall and scratch myself. Yea. And if you look at
all these models, this is actually good news for us, right,
because we're a lot closer to tom a primate than
say a cricket. Um. So when you take this model
and you say, okay, there's going to be an increase
in population, there's going to be a dwindling of resources
for humans. Um, what is this going to look like
(17:32):
for us? How are we gonna act? And we should
probably take a break, But when we get back, let's
talk about how we may all turn into a loose urbans.
All right, we're back, And yes, we've talked about what
happens when salamander's encounter population density and dwindling resources. We've
(17:54):
talked about locusts, we've talked about primates, but really the
big question is what does it mean for humans? Cities
are not the exclusive domain of cannibalistic hordes. Um, obviously
as far as we know, as far as we know,
I mean there might be some underground sex. Yeah, I
mean even when you look in fiction, um, you see
(18:14):
there are just as many cannibalistic hillbilly families as there
are cannibalistic underground dwellers. It kind of balances out. So
so even in the world of the of imagination, we
don't see the tendency towards cannibalism in large cities. But
but undeniably, cities are places where people are just stacked
(18:34):
on top of each other. Resources various, uh you know,
definitions of resources are harder to come by, be it
be it just you know, simply food, water, um, a
livelihood or socialization. There's sometimes there's just less of it
to go around. I have to say, when I was
(18:55):
reading the part about the chimpanzees beginning to scratch themselves,
um and then anxiety, I couldn't help but think of
Woody Allen immediately, who is it? Uh No, I just
kind of was imagining him as as a chimpanzee because
the typical neurotic city dweller exactly, exactly, someone who has
been shaped by his experiences in the city and high density. UM.
(19:16):
So let's talk a little bit about what we do
know when it comes to that sort of situation. We
have talked about the bystander effect before. UM again, this
is I guess you could look at it as a
social norm from not really helping people. And this is
evolved from our continual exposure to these instances that we
just kind of get UM hardened too, I guess you. Yeah.
(19:39):
And this this reminds me of another sort of sort
of in a way, I feel like kind of an
emerging modern Woody Allen Um in some senses we've mentioned before.
Louis c K I believe it's the third episode of
the first season of the show. Louis on fx UM.
He's talking about coming to going to New York Port
Authority picking up a cousin from the country, and they
(20:01):
see a homeless man just lying there against the wall
in dreadful shape, just like madded hair, you know, looks
like he's on death's doorstep. And and the cousin from
the Country's like, oh, whoa, what is he supposed to
be here? What's what should we do should we help him?
Does he need our help? And uh? And and Louie
who has this very very dark at times goofy but
(20:25):
but at times very dark and um and reflective philosophically,
they're very philosophical at times. Um he he he says, well, well, yeah,
he needs your help. He needs your help more than
anything in the world. But but we don't do that
here and don't don't touch him, just keep moving. And
that in essence is the bystander effect. Um. There are
(20:48):
basically four key components. And we discussed bystander effect before,
but but just to refresh their four key components um
self awareness, to perceived the presence of an audience to
his or her action inhibits the individual from acting. He
or she does not want to appear foolish or inappropriate
in front of others. So Louie is in front of
other New Yorkers. He doesn't want There's a there's a
(21:10):
certain sense of being a city person, you know, like
just us, you know, walking around Atlanta, you know not
to gaze up and stare at our few skyscrapers. If
we go to New York, we're conscious of the fact
that we are supposed to be some sort of a
city person, even in this much larger city. So we
don't stare up at the skyscrapers. You're not supposed to
stand around and look lost, because you'll look out of step,
(21:31):
you'll look like an outsider, and I don't know, you'll
be eaten or something. Well, but yeah by the underground cannibals. Yeah,
you don't want to violate the social norms and the
and these and the social rules that are in place,
which say when it is appropriate to do something when
it is not well. And then we've talked about before
too that that there's the psychological component of it, where
(21:51):
you say someone else will deal with that. The more
people that are witnessed to something, the more or the
less likely that person will receive help. Because everybody's sort
of saying that person will help for that personal help.
Eventually that person will the homeless person will go to
a shelter and receive help. Right, I mean this gets
into a diffuse responsibility, which is another aspect of the
bystander effect, which says, then in a situation where only
(22:11):
a small percentage of the bystanders can take action, responsibilities diffused.
So this that say a hundred people are standing by
and there's a guy that it's you know, clearly he
needs help. He's laying there right there on on the
floor of the port authority. We can't all help him, no,
I mean, we can't all go and pick him up.
Only like how many people can pick up a human
being at a time, how many can reasonably take him
(22:34):
to the shelter or to a hospital. And since we
can't all help him, there's this sense that that each
of us has less of a responsibility for helping. Well,
it's a matter of resources too, because if you were
to help every single person, then would you spend your
entire day and your material wealth actually helping that person?
So that is an extreme proposition right there. But but
(22:56):
you know if you were to stop and help in
the high density population like New York City, because spend
your entire day doing that, and some people actually do.
I did want to mention bring okay, just real quick
self awareness and this is just you look to see
what everyone else is doing. No one else is helping
this guy, so maybe I shouldn't either. Um, And then
(23:17):
there's blocking, and this is where there's a perception that
if you take action, uh, you could actually make matters
worse because you're getting the way of somebody else who
can actually do better with this situation. So it's like
I could try and help this guy, but surely, out
of all the hundreds of people walking by, someone else
here is better suited, Like some one of these people
(23:38):
is an actual care worker or they have some sort
of health training. I do not. I am not the
person for this job. And there are a ton of
studies that corroborate this um and in fact, in in
Socuality in the City, the author talks about how a
meta analysis of studies dealing with pro social behavior and
degrees of helping behavior found that population is greater than
(24:01):
three hundred thousand have lower helping behaviors and lower pro
social behaviors. Can you think of a specific example where
you've you've found yourself wrapped up in the bystander effect?
I mean, I probably, especially if you take public transportation
there and dur encounters like this every day. But I
know I have I can't, like I'm the top from
(24:24):
the top of my head, I can't, But I know
that there have been times before I vacillated and and
have finally said, like, could you need help or you
know what I'm saying, you kind of stand there and
try to assess the situation. Yeah, the I guess the
two times that come to mind that we're particularly kind
of interesting for me. Once I was I was walking
This was near Crag Tunnel in in Atlanta. I forgot
(24:46):
that is a great graffiti to great graffiti free zone.
And then what's the name of the of the restaurant,
Historia Historia? Yeah, I was leaving there with with my
wife and our friend j T. And we're walking down
the street there and uh, and we were just talking
about something and we pass a girl that's like passed
out in the gutter there by the We're not really
(25:07):
the gutter, but but the sort of shadowy side of
the road by this restaurant. And we all three passed by.
And then after we've passed by, you know, one of
us pipes up and says, hey, did you guys see
that back there? Should we we should do something? And
then we turned back around and and the three of
us sort of as a combined effort, went back and
checked on her, and she popped up and ran away.
(25:28):
But I see, isn't it interesting that one of you
it took like, you know, the three of you guys
were thinking about it, but it took one person to say, well, hey,
you guys before yes, because before that we were all
it was kind of like we were seeing what is
the social norm here? Do we are? Do we as
Atlanta residents, as city dwellers, as modern humans? Do we
let that go? You know? Do we? Or if we?
(25:50):
Does she know what she's doing? Maybe that's her thing,
you know, And there are all these different levels at
which you can sort of rationalize passing it by until
you actually on the question on yourself and say, no, seriously,
why did you just pass that? Yeah? I think she
was just really drunk, because, you know, because that's a
it's a bar there, and she she seemed fine. She
(26:11):
was not injured or bleeding around. I know that ditch
she I've done that too. You just need to rest sometimes.
The only other time that it comes to mind is
when I saw an unintended package or what I thought
was an unattended package on Marta. And this was this
wasn't like immediately after a terrorist thing, but it was
still you get piped in your head. You see an
unintended package, you need to tell somebody, Well, and that's
our train system, right, so you don't necessarily want to
(26:33):
mess with that. Yeah, And so there was this pack
and like I spent like a whole like if it
was gonna blow up, it had plenty of time to
blow up with me on that train because I'm sitting
there and I'm like, all right, is is that nobody's
And I'm like seeing nobody sitting next to it? And
so I finally ring the bell and then some guy says, hey,
that's my package, And I'm like, well, do why were
you sending halfway across the train from it if it
wasn't filled with bombs? But anyway, I'm sure everyone has
(26:56):
at least a dozen stories of this nature. But I
just thought I mentioned to come yeah, and I'd love
to here um from our listeners to if they have
any stark examples of this um collective efficacy. This is interesting.
This is predicated on humans defending their territory by forging
bonds with neighbors and and displaying an unspoken rule of
(27:16):
order through the way that their own properties look, which
is I think about this less an urban setting, but
this is what the paper um Sociality and the City
is applying it to But I do understand that because
what they're saying, or rather the author Daniel O'Brien is
saying that this is a quote. When collective efficacy is weak,
(27:38):
undesirable behaviors like disorderly conduct and public drunkenness go unpunished
and are likely to rise. Because I guess the point
is is that if you turn a corner in the
neighborhood begins to look like it's in disrepair and nobody
necessarily cares, the idea is that you could get away
with um, some illicit behavior because nobody's necessarily watching or
(27:58):
governing this. So this is this one's kind of interesting,
And then it kind of falls back on sort of
ideas of of of like a Mayberry kind of situation
where everyone knows everybody and everything's harmonious for that versus
a city model where you don't know the person in
the apartment across the hall from you, and it creates
(28:19):
this high sense of isolation and also a less of
a sense that I need to actually do what I
should because I'm I'm held in a social contract with
those around me. Well, the idea is that then if
you're not connected to your neighbors. Then you feel anonymous
and you feel like you're not as empowered. And if
you're the person who is is mischief making, then you
(28:40):
feel like you have a greater degree of freedom or
power because you are anonymous and other people are taking
on the same roles, so you don't have this informal
governance in check. And when we talk about me berry um,
this informal governance is a is a really good thing
to think about. Think about gossip, think about trying to
maintain one's reputation, think about being socially shunned. Think about
(29:02):
setting on your front porch with a jug band as
the sun goes down, which is actually just think about that. Yeah,
but but actually I say that jokingly as as a
may ory reference, but but actually you do see theories
where people say that that that is when everyone got
air conditioning, that that had a huge intrimental effect on
(29:22):
um on neighborhoods because before that you did set on
the front front porch, you did sort of hang it.
That was the only place during the hot summer months
that you could actually feel comfortable. If you're inside, you're sweltering,
and if you're out on the front porch, or within
side of other front porches, people make the rounds, people
say hi to each other. It's not an airtight theory necessarily,
but it's but it's an interesting way of looking at things.
(29:43):
Then we get air conditionings, so instead of setting on
the front porch, we're back inside. In many cases we
actually wall up that front porch and make it into
a part of our our castle. Yeah, and it's interesting that,
you know, even if you were um to try to
organize and know as many neighbors as POSSI will and
try to put an effort into this into two you know,
really crowded areas, the fact of the matter is the
(30:05):
more people that you add, the more fragmented it gets.
So it's a difficult thing to organize. But um, Daniel O'Brien,
the author of Sociality in the City did say, when
when you look at these locustwarms, so there's a silver lining,
because he says that recall that, well, not just the
glimmering wings. No, no, a real silver lining. It's it's
(30:32):
just you know, it's funny that he's pumping up like this,
because I'll tell you what that silver lining is, and
then you decide if it's silver lining um that while
members of the swarm were inclined towards cannibalism, their marching
formation was an emergent adaptation for for avoiding this threat
and others. So I think what he's saying is that
to some degree, we're pretty self organizing and we're going
(30:55):
to prevent as much violence as we can. Um, you know,
like you saw in the primate population, perhaps turned to
scratching ourselves or whatnot to try not to express, um
some of the frustration and anxiety on onto others. In
In his paper, Daniel O'Brien also mentions a Stanley Milgram
(31:17):
system overload theory which was pretty interesting, and this basically
saying population density acts on adaptive psychology in a number
of key ways, one of which is the bystander effect,
which we've covered, but he also says that it creates
an enhanced feeling of vulnerability, which which having just spent
the weekend out in the middle of nowhere in the
country and then return to the city, I mean, I
can I can definitely vouch for that if you're surrounded
(31:39):
by nobody and you're not superstitious or afraid of cryptid
animals and bigfoot attacks, or or the stray bullet of
a hunter who mistakes you for a deer. Then then
you you feel pretty safe out in the middle of nowhere,
out in that splendid isolation. You move into the city
and you're the city is teeming with people you don't know,
(32:00):
people you on site don't trust, and who knows what's
out there? Right, There's just so many people and you
know that this percentage wise, a large proportion of them
are no good. Do you think, yeah, of course, I
don't know. Well, you know, it's like it's like in
a sense there, you know, they're accountable morphs out there,
just show you that they're they're a cannibalistic crickets out there.
(32:22):
Not maybe not they're not actually going to eat you,
but they will definitely take from you. And I'm not
just saying, oh, they're gonna still my law on its
but but you know that there are a lot of
forces out there that if you come into contact with them, um,
it could have a negative effect on you. That being said,
that feeling also plays into this whole loss of connection
with neighborhood. We just trust everyone, and therefore we're less
(32:44):
likely to forge these these neighborhood bonds that can actually
have a beneficial effect on our society, which and this
is something I encounter as a as a homeowner in
in the Atlanta you know, it's like you, and as
also being the kind of person who's not the most
social animal on the planet, I find myself thinking, Oh,
I should I should go meet that new neighbor, you know,
(33:05):
that would be the nice thing to do. But then
I should bring a pie to that. I should bring
a pie to them and tell them about the neighborhood
association and tell them about the dude I know it
was down the street. But then I don't because that's
talking to a new person, and that's that person could
be all sorts of the stripes of nuttiness. Well, no,
it's not so much that it's just like talking to
a new person that's stressful. They could just be normal,
(33:26):
and that's stressful enough for someone like me. Okay, all
right now I'm thinking about all of this. I'm just
taking it in because I take the opposite tact where
if I'm out in the middle of nowhere, then I'm
more frightened than when I'm surrounded by people. I feel
more comforted by being around people. Well, well, of course,
real quick, I should also point out that high levels
of distrust and avoidance of strangers, that's also part of
(33:46):
the system overload theory. But to your point, feelings of
distrust in the in the country versus the city, Like
I said, in our fiction, we see just as many
cannibalistic hillbowy families as we see cannibalistic livers and dwellers
in the subway. And I have to say that, um,
looking at times that I have walked up to a
stranger's door or pulled into a stranger's driveway while lost,
(34:10):
only once have I had a gun pulled on me.
And it was up in the mountains of only once,
and it was like the mountains of Kennasa or someone.
I'm not as good about the geography of the vast
hills surrounding Atlanta. But we were up there for a
wedding or something, and um, no, not worth something. It
was a wedding, Uh should I helped my wife shoot
a wedding for a friend. We attended it, and then
(34:31):
afterwards we were trying to find a bed and breakfast
that we had arranged to stay out and we're trying
to use GPS out there and it can't get a
signal where we're According to it, we're driving on imaginary
roads to nowhere. And then since we were, because we
ended up pulling, like going down this really steep gravel
driveway and some dude like walks out on his front
porch and he's just astounded that we're on this driveway. Yeah,
(34:52):
for twenty years and no one has shown up, and
here you guys are. And so I'm busy trying to
get the car to go back up the gravel road
because it's not really going and I'm having to carefully
figure out how traction works on the steep grade. And
meanwhile my and my wife sees this and she doesn't
tell me till till afterwards, but the guy had had
grabbed a shotgun. She's like, you know, just let you
(35:13):
focus on just trying to get the car out of there.
I understand that. So so yeah, just from my own
personal experience, you know, knock on wood, but that's the
that's the only time that I've had a gun pulled
on me when I was lost and just needed some direction,
and that was in the country. So which makes me
wonder if you can still have an isolationist mentality among
(35:35):
a great number of people. Yeah, because that's what we
see a lot a lot of times politically. So that's
just a sort of fought experiment. Let's revisit really quickly
because we have some thoughts about this. We we've talked
about the population increase, the explosion. I wanted to also
mention something called the youth bulge according to Kenneth Wise,
(35:58):
which sounds like a band, but it's u it does.
It sounds one that you could kind of snicker a
little bit at the title, but it is not. According
to Kenneth Wise, of the l a times of the
two billion or more people who will be added to
the planet by nine, seven percent of the two billion
are expected to be born in Africa, Asia and Latin America. UM,
(36:20):
he says, led by the poor, smoot, volatile countries. Yeah,
and this is worth pointing out to and this is
from the same article. All right, So in many developing countries,
runaway population growth creates hoards of restless young men, and
in about eight percent of the world civil conflicts since
the nineteen seventies UM. They have occurred in countries with young,
(36:41):
fast growing populations. Again, the youth bulges and that's according
the Population Action International nonprofit. So even if you look
back before nineteen seventy, a youth boom contributed the rise
in the Nazis in the nineteen thirties Germany and to
Japan's military ambitions in the Pacific uh and even more
recently you look just you also look to stuff like
(37:01):
Tianamen Square UM protests in China. You see UM, you
see young activists UM. And also in the US, look
at the nineteen sixties, look at the seventies, look at
the Wall Street Occupy Wall Street movement. You're seeing large
numbers of young people engaged in these these activities. Yea,
And I wanted to point out to that. You know,
there are certain parts of which will stabilize in population. China,
(37:23):
for example, right now it has like fifty of the
world's population. By fifty they will add only one percent more.
So really you are seeing the greater growth in Africa,
Asia and Latin America. And Whist does talk about Afghanistan
in his article as an example of this. He says
that since the US lead Envision in two thousand and one,
(37:44):
the population has swelled from twenty three million to thirty
three million, and that nearly three fourths of Afghans are
under the age of thirty, the median age of sixteen
compared to thirty seven in the United States. So he's
saying this is a real problem because if you have
a sluggish, a grarian economy like they do, and you
have men, young men who can't find legitimate employment, and UM,
(38:09):
you also have young men who want to get married
but they require a dowry, then they're going to go
probably toward um illicit activities or towards the Taliban to
get some source of money or food to sustain themselves.
So they're saying like, even if they're not too interested
in the Taliban's politics or agenda, then they're probably gonna
(38:30):
go toward that route anyway because they don't have a
lot of options to choose from. The other huge problem
here is that UM, and again Afghanistan as the model here,
women truly are considered second class citizens and they don't
have many rights, and they don't have access to birth control.
And you will see time and time again that UH,
(38:51):
young girls who are educated who have access to birth
control will delay marriage, they will delay having children, and
will have less of them. UM. And you know, I
bring this up only because when when you're in that
situation Afghanistan in the average amount of children a female
has is seven seven babies. That's that's astounding, UM for
(39:13):
the lack of resources available to those children. Yeah, so
there's there is there's a comparison to be made there.
I mean, you could think of these uh, these angry
young men is larval salamanders in a pool of it's
it's quickly filling up that whether resources are not optimal
and what are they going to do to deal with
that situation. So we've talked about this this problem before
(39:35):
and it's not just a question and and solution of
urban design that certainly helps UM and rethinking agriculture to
meet our needs that helps too, but it really is like,
what is this lookli and how can you help people
best um, particularly this youth bulge, And how can you
help society not just a self governed but to organize
(39:56):
itself to to really accommodate all the very his problems
that could arise. So there you go. If you live
in the city, I hope you'll think about all of
this as you walk the streets today or tomorrow. And uh,
information looking behind information, running from the cannibal behind you
and chasing after that tasty looking stranger in front of you.
(40:18):
And if you live in the in the country, I
I you know, think about all these things when you
plan your next trip to the city or Robert shows up. Yeah,
you've got to protect that mental app I guess. But
that's the only thing I could figure it is, like, dude, dude,
is that crazy about someone showing up? You must have
something to hide or captives in the in the cellar
(40:41):
that I almost that I almost joined. UM, So let's
call over the robit uh and get a few listener
mails from him. And while he's doing that, I wanted
to mention that we had uh an email from Linda
and she wrote into correct me about the f m
(41:01):
l A Act, and I'm very glad that she did. Um.
I had stated that this is the yeah, this is
from the milk episode. I've stated that women get six
weeks of unpaid leave office in fact, twelve weeks. UM,
So I'm glad that she pointed that out. And when
we talk about fm l A, we're talking about the
Family Medical Leave Act and that's not just for for children,
(41:22):
but also for taking care of other members of your family,
and it is available to people who have worked at
their job for a year and two companies they have
to uh, they have to actually offer it if they
have more than fifty employees. Okay, there we go. Cool.
And I should also note uh that I corrected this
on Facebook and Twitter, but for those of you who
(41:42):
don't follow those, I also in the milk episode, uh,
and without thinking, I mentioned Romulus and Remus, and I
think I either said or implied that they breastfed from
a cow, and of course they breastfed from a she
wolf in the Roman mythology. So my apat a duies
to Romulus, my apologies to Remus, and of course my
apologies to the sheet will Well, and I like how
(42:04):
you call the Rami and Remi and Remi. Yeah, well
that was those for their kids names. They're embarrassed when
you call them that now, but at the time. So hey,
let's let's read a couple of these mails. These are
some quick ones. Uh. We we get more mail than
we have space to to read on on air these days,
but and certainly this is a longer episode, so I'll
just read a couple of short ones, uh Andy writes,
and this is dear Julian, Robert just wanted to thank
(42:26):
you for putting out your science podcast. I really love
that you add a lot of philosophical ruminations to the
information you impart It's a great extra element that keeps
me coming back for more. Thanks again, sincerely, Andy. And Yeah,
that's what I mean. That's one of the things we
love about it is UH. It's not only talking about
these these very scientific topics or even kind of out
(42:47):
there topics, but ultimately bringing it all back to the
human condition and in our perception of the cosmos, in
our place in it, and how does it potentially shift
or outright change that proposition. And a lot of the
feedback that we it from you guys really helps to
feel that as well. We've gotten some incredible thoughts from
you all. All right, and here's one from Jerich Jerk
(43:08):
writes in UH in response to our Seven Deadly Sins series,
which which was a real popular one with with you guys.
Send gals, He writes in and says, Hi, Robert and Julie,
I'm a new listener to the show, and I just
finished listening to the Seven Deadly Sin series. I was
wondering if anyone brought up the correlation between the seven
deadly sins and many of America's major holidays. The thought
first hit me several years ago after I had just
(43:30):
stuffed myself with turkey on Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving for gluttony, eat two,
you can't move and take a nap, Valenstein's Valentine's Day
for lust, a whole day dedicated to luthern Wace, Labor
Day for sloth, have a day off you deserve it.
Christmas for greed, presence presence, Fourth of July for wrath,
celebrate your country's independence by blowing up a small portion
of it um and Veterans Day for pride. I don't
(43:53):
have any commentary for this one yet. I don't have
a holiday for envy, but I would love to hear
if you have an idea for for one. I also
realized that you may need need a somewhat cynical point
of view for the holidays, but I submit that a
decent argument could be made for each of the sins.
I really enjoyed your podcast. Please keep up the great work.
Jarek Um. Yeah, all those comparisons I think are pretty apt.
(44:16):
But indeed, is there one for envy? This could be
for envy as well. Could do you do Old Judy
in the Yeah, I mean indeed, because you know, we
talked about the interconnectedness of some of these and indeed,
coming down to at heart, it's about grasping for something
that you don't have on a certain level, So you
(44:37):
could you could see Christmas is that you're you're grasping
for something. You you see things you want and you
desire them, So you could make an argument there, I
think more so than you could for like say Patty's Day,
which is probably just another that's that's cluttony as well.
Yeah um oh. And then Jarek also adds while writing this,
(44:58):
I was listening to the Way of the Sword podcast
and feel it should be noted that watching a real
sword fight is not nearly as entertaining as watching the
movie fights. I have fence for several years in college,
and when friends and family would come to watch competitions,
most would get bored before too long. While the added
blood effects of a real fight would be exciting, I
doubt it would be overly enjoyable to witness an extremely
(45:18):
painful death. So that's interesting that he brings that up,
because you know, I think I thinking to sword fights
that have been most entertaining in in films like that.
I guess that you have to you have to walk
that line between believability and enjoyability. I'm just imagining now
that that fencers should start to smuggle in blood capsules
(45:43):
right and employ them at the right moment. I really
feel like you guys would get huge sponsorship dollars if
you did this, or if they incorporated more of the
the old swash buffling, like you know, you run up
a chair and then you sort of like tip forward
with it. Things like that roll over the back of
the table, so more. If they just held Olympic fencing
events in side crowded pubs, that might that might help.
(46:03):
Although somehow I just doesn't seem like the right fit,
does it. Fencing I think is always going to be
just sort of a white glove thing and beautiful and
and a wonderful art. But blood capsules, pubs, crazy costumes,
you know, paint those suits up. I don't know. I mean,
of course, this is me talking. I've yeah, I tend
to gravitate towards the gravitate towards the professional wrestling because
(46:26):
I find that it is, uh, it is just fake enough, um,
whereas I find real fighting is either boring or disturbing.
But if you if it's if it's fake enough, it's
theatrical enough that I can get behind it. And I
guess I'm kind of the same way with sword fights.
I don't want to see a clinical exhibition of someone's
fencing prowess, but I also don't want to see a
(46:47):
like a plotless just you know, flashing images of laser
swords hitting each other and needs to tell a story.
So what you guys are hearing, I think are the
seeds of a science of wrestling podcasts to come to see. Anyway,
I've rambled enough, uh and now once you're turning to ramble,
So if you have something you would like to share
with us, If you have some interesting notes of by
standard effect in your life, um, if you have thoughts
(47:10):
about cannibal morphs and uh and and just anything regarding
h uh stuff that we've talked about in this episode
or other episodes, let us know about it. You can
find us on Facebook, where we are stuff to blow
your mind. You can find us on Twitter, where our
handles blow the mind and new to us. You can
also find us on Tumbler, where we are stuff to
blow your mind one word, do a search for that.
(47:32):
And also I've been linking to it off the other profiles.
We just started that up. We're really getting into tumbler,
still learning all the awesome things that can do. So
if that's your thing, find us there and follow us,
and always feel free to send us a line at
blew the Mind at discovery dot com for more on
(47:54):
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