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Speaker 1: Hello everyone, and welcome to Talk Nerdy. Today is Monday,

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July sixth, twenty twenty six and I'm the host of

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the show, Doctor Kara Santa Maria, and as always, I

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want to thank those of you who make Talk Nerdy possible.

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This week's talk patrons include Chuck Blell, David J. E. Smith,

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Daniel Lang, Will Defrain, David Compton, Brian Holden, Gabo, Jay

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Ulrica Hagmann, Pasqually Gelati, Rika Maharaj and Joe Wilkinson. If

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you're interested in pledging your support on an episodic basis,

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all you've got to do is visit patreon dot com

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slash talk Nerdy to learn more. All right, let's get

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into it. This week I had the opportunity to speak

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with doctor Jessica Riskin. She's a professor of history at

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Stanford University, where she teaches both modern European history and

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the history of science. She's written for a ton of outlets,

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and she's a newly elected member of the American Philosophical Society.

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She has a new book out and it's called The

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Power of Life. The Invention of Biology and the Revolutionary

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Science of Jean Baptiste Lamarck. So without any further ado,

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here she is doctor Jessica Riskin. Well, Jessica, thank you

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so much for joining me today.

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Speaker 2: Thank you so much. I'm really happy to get to

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talk about my book with you.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and I love that we are connecting from across

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the globe. You're in Paris right now, but you're usually

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up in Stanford.

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Speaker 2: Right, that's right, that's right. Well, I teach at Stanford.

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I live in Berkeley, California.

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Speaker 1: You know, Jerkley. Oh yeah, I love Berkeley. Yeah, so

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we are both West Coasters. I'm down in southern California.

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I'm in Los Angeles, but a little bit more of

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a time zone difference today. So A, I'm very appreciative

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of you kind of bending your schedule for us, and

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B you know, sometimes when we connect from so very

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far away, there are like big delays, but I feel

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like our connection is very clean today, So I'm appreciative

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of that as well.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, so far, so good.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, So I have to ask what time is it

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in Paris right now? It's first thing in the morning

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here in La.

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Speaker 2: Yes, I know. I should thank you for being willing

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to meet so early over here. It's very civilized. Five

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forty PM. It's not a very civilized temperature. I will

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say it is incredibly hot in Paris. It is a

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huge heat wave that just is sitting over the city

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and refuses to budge. And every day, you know, they

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extend how long they expect this heat wave to go on.

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Speaker 1: And there was a there. I mean, this is so

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not relevant for the show, but there was a heat

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advisory in La a few days ago and I looked

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and it was like, it will be eighty five degrees

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and I was like, oh no, Like what ridiculous heat advisor.

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But my assumption is that in the high desert it

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was probably pretty brutal. So yes, come back to us soon,

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but don't really, because I love Paris and I'm very

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jealous that you're there. So I'm so excited to talk

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about your newest book, and this is gosh, is it

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your third or have you written even more?

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Speaker 2: It is my third, yeah, my third kind of single

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author book. I've done edited volumes and kind of collective books,

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but this is my third one that I just wrote

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by myself, and it takes centuries for me to write

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a book. So that's why I'm especially happy to get

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to talk to you about it is that it takes

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so long and it's pretty solitary, and then when I

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finished with that, I'm just really eager to talk to

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people about it and be out in the world. You know.

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That's the fun part that.

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Speaker 1: Gives me such joy. And like, I love that you're

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like it takes centuries to write a book, because you're

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also writing about things that were centuries ago. Before we

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get into the actual book itself, I'd love to learn

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a little bit more about you and about your work.

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So you are a history and do you specifically focus

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on the history of science?

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Speaker 2: I do, Yeah, I do. So, you know, my position

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is in I teach in the history department at Stafford

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and it's just a regular old mainstream history department with

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historians of different areas and different emphasies and so, but

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my area of expertise is the history of science, and

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I have a background in French history and sort of

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European history broadly speaking seventeenth to nineteenth century, and so.

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Speaker 1: You kind of combine those areas And do you really

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enjoy focusing on this science which is such an interesting

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time for science, but the science in those regions at

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that time where gosh, there was so many discoveries going on.

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There were so many people saying, no, you're wrong, there's

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no way it could possibly not be the way we've

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always thought it was. Right.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I think partly so I've always been interested in

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science kind of how shall I put it, kind of

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on a meta level, like why is this how people

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understand the world, And how did it come to be

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the way people understand the world, and how has it

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looked in the past and so on, And I think

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that I was drawn to this, you know, seventeenth eighteenth,

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early nineteenth century because people were not specialized, you know,

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in that period, so people really did work in many areas.

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They worked in many areas of natural science, but also

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in humanities and literature and art, and so, you know,

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I really love that lack of specialization and kind of

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broad philosophical outlook on everything. I think that's what drew

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me to that period. I have to say I love

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that too.

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Speaker 1: As as a fellow holder of a PhD, I think

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that it has lost its Maybe it hasn't lost its

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meaning as much, but for many people who have PhDs

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in the modern era, a Doctor of Philosophy degree, they

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get very little philosophy training and so, you know, I'm

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a psychologist. I think in some ways I'm lucky because

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I'm still in a field that is very much an

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intersection of science and humanities. But a lot of people

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who have hard science degrees don't even take a history

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and systems course. They don't even grapple that much with

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how we know what we know. And it breaks my

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heart because I think that there was a historical era

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going back, you know, pretty much forever where in order

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to be a quote scientist, you had to be a philosopher,

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you had to be a I don't know, like a sociologist.

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You had to be all of these different things.

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Speaker 2: Absolutely, you know, absolutely, and I think just what you

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just said, you know that many scientists are not trained

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in the histories of their disciplines and what that means,

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you know, that's I think that's sort of impoverishing for

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them because they don't have a sense of sort of

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how the questions that they're asking, how did those get

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to be the questions they're asking. How did the assumptions

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that they're making to be the assumptions, you know, And

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so they can't really I think, you know, one of

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the most valuable things about the history of science is

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for the present, maybe that it can kind of reopen

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perspectives and questions that have gone by the wayside, and

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certainly in the history of evolutionary theory, that's something that

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I hope you know that I've been really interested in

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kind of ways of thinking about life and about the

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evolution of life that were kind of marginalized in the

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history of evolutionary theory. And one of the most exciting

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things about working in that area for me has been

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that I've gotten to no biologists who are actually interested

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in the history of their field and in kind of

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trying to reopen some questions that have gotten very narrowed

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and closed down. So yeah, I think the sciences need

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the humanities, and vice versa. We need each other. We're

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operating in two specialized and intellectual world and we need

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each other across those lids.

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Speaker 1: I agree wholeheartedly, and I feel like one of the

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lucky things about my own education is that I was

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able to do way back, way back when I did

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my undergraduate degree because I took a long time off.

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I worked as a journalist before I went back to school,

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but early on I did an undergrad in psychology with

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a philosophy minor, and then I did my masters in neurobiology.

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So I did three wildly different fields, but they're really

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not that different. They all play off of each other.

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But it took a lot of navigating on my part

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because they were all in different departments and they all

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had different you know, advisors and major professors. But I

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loved some of the philosophy courses I took early on,

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you know, philosophy of natural sciences, philosophy of psychology in

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the mind, learning about constructivism, all of these things that

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I think not just applied to my work as a

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and because I'm a clinical i'm practicing psychologist, but not

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just to that work. My work is a human being.

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How do we know what we know? Is very important

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for getting I think unstuck in the dogma. It's very

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easy to go, oh, that's just the way it is.

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I take that for granted because that's what I was taught,

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and now so often we're learning maybe that doesn't have

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to be the way that it is.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I wonder if psycho psychology might be another one

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of those fields like history, that draws people who are

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trying to find a way to not be too specialized

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because anything kind of connecting with human experience seems to

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me as fair game for a psychologist and the same

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thing for a historian, you know. And there are fields

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I think that attract people who want to think integrally

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rather than in a specialized way. And my daughter is

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interested in languages. She's studying to be a linguist, and

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she likes that partly, I think because language pretty much

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gets you a passport to any subject, so.

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Speaker 1: Absolutely, and you can always become specialized later. Like now

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I work. I'm very specific. I'm like an existentially oriented

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psychologist in a cancer center, you know. I have a

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very specific focus on life, limiting disease, end of life.

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But to get there, there was so much philosophy. There

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was so and of course I think it lends itself right,

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because what are we grappling with at the end of

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our lives or when we get very sick? These big

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picture questions. I love talking about these big picture questions.

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And I think that's what drew me to your book

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and having you on the podcast, was the very question

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of life of how how did we get to where

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we are? How are all of the different forms right,

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all of the different morphologies, the specific species that are

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on the planet right now, how did they get to

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be where they were? And I think we take for

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granted a very narrow Darwinian perspective now, which is most

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people I think don't even understand fully and there's so

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many things we're going to get you into with that.

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But I think and it's also very easy for us

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to look back at somebody like and sort of be like, oh,

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that's laughable. But I'm so excited to talk about all

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of the nuance here. So let's let's back up a

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little bit, and maybe where do you think we should start? Like,

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who was Jean Baptiste La Mark?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I was thinking maybe this is a good moment

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to introduce my protagonist. So he was Jean Baptiste la Mark.

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He was the guy. Well, I'll start by saying he

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coined the word biology in eighteen oh two. He invented

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that word wow, and he invented it to name a

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science that didn't yet exist.

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Speaker 1: You know.

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Speaker 2: He thought that there should be a science of all

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living things and only living things. And in the world,

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you know, as it existed. Then there were larger sciences

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like natural history, which included inanimate things as well as

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animate things, and there were more specialized sciences like like

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you know, physiology or botany or zoology, but there was

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no science of life. And he thought there should be

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a science of life, so he coined that word biology.

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And then in eighteen oh non he published his big,

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you know, magnum opus called The Zoological Philosophy, in which

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he introduced the first theory of evolution, which was at

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the center of his new science of biology. And so

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the poor guy like he, I think the reason many

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of us think of him as, you know, kind of

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a laughingstock is that we were taught to think of

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him that way. I mean, most biology textbooks and biology

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courses up until today represent him as having been kind

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of all wrong about Basically, what he said was that

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living beings transformed themselves in response to their environments in

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teeny teeny tiny little ways. But then those changes are

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inherited and they're added if you add them together from

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generations to generation, they they produce big changes. And the

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example everyone always turns to. Of course, probably many of

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our listeners are already have giraffes in mind, because people

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always think of what he said about giraffe. It's like

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one little paragraph in all of his voluminous, many many writings,

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but he did have this or maybe two little paragraphs

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about giraffes in which he said, the giraffes, by stretching

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their necks to reach high up leaves in the trees,

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they elongate their necks a tiny bit, and then they

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pass that on and it gets added up over generations

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to make the giraffes long neck. And so you know, biologists,

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you know, professors and textbooks and things even today tend

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to kind of represent that as a totally crazy idea

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and all wrong. And I could talk more about that,

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but anyway, I was fully interested in kind of the

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whole of his work and the whole of his ideas

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and how they kind of shaped biology both from within

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and then also, you know, when they were banished, how

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they kind of continued to act from outside of mainstream

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science and now they're returning to mainstream science. So it's

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really an interesting story for historian to trace.

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Speaker 1: You know, when we think about this question of like evolution,

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sort of how how did the giraffe become the giraffe

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that we know? Now? How did we you know, become

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who we are as a species? Now, Lamark can't have

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been the first person to have grappled with that right

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like he had his very specific theory. But this must

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be a question that goes back to ancient philosophy. No sure.

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Speaker 2: So he was working though, in a time when the

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kind of established dominant theory was the theory of special creation.

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Basically a rational designer God had made every living thing specially,

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designing it for its place in the natural world, and

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so you could even the argument was, you could even

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demonstrate the existence of this God by the perfection of

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you know, living things, everyone suited to its environments, to

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its special place in the world. That shows you and

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the famous example of the argument from design was written

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by a man named William Paley in eighteen oh two,

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the same year that Lamark published I'm Sorry, the same

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year that he yet he published the word biology for

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the first time. William Paley gave the example which became

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quite famous, of you know, if you're what he says.

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If I were walking across a heath and my foot

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hit a rock and someone asked me how did that

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rock come to be there? I could say, well, I

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don't know, maybe it's been there forever. But if my

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foot hit a watch, I couldn't say that a watch

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is such an intricate, complex mechanism. Obviously there has to

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have been a watchmaker.

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Speaker 1: Uh oh, watchmaker. Here we are. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: So that was the argument from design. And well, I'll

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come to Dawkins. We can talk about Dawkins, because I

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think that a lot of that argument from design has

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been transported into not Darwin's version of evolutionary theory, but

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the neo Darwinist theory that came after Darwin's death incorporated

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a lot of that earlier kind of natural theology argument

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from design. Anyhow, Lamark was confront a world in which

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that was the dominant way of thinking about why living

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beings had the structures that they had, That they've been

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designed that way by their creator, and they remained how

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they'd been designed, you know, fixed their forms were fixed

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that way. And people had begun, just in recent decades

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to suggest more developmental ideas, but not in any systematic way.

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So Lamark was really the first to develop. He was

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very radical and revolutionary. He basically usurped God's monopoly on

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creation and he reassigned it to living beings, and he

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worked out a whole theory of how that you know,

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how living beings are the real creators, you know.

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Speaker 1: It's what's interesting to me is this question. I think

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a lot of times when we talk about this early

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evolutionary theory, we will couch it in terms of design, creation,

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all of those things, and we speak, gosh, I'm trying

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to figure out even how to put my words here, well,

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speak in terms of sort of the evidence or the

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description that these individuals developed along their work, you know,

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throughout their work. But it seems to me like we

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cannot decouple the actual science from the person's personal religious

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philosophy or theology. And it's easy for me to say,

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living in twenty twenty six, looking back as somebody who

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was like raised Mormon and who is now like an

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abject atheist, you know that it has no religion in

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my life at all, to look back and go like,

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you know, people at the time like everybody was religious

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or were they all was like lamark as secret atheist

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or like Darwin. I know, he grappled his whole life

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with that question, and he was like, oh, my whole

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you know, I'm kind of heretical to my people. But

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at the same time, like I think there was a

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lot of like self turmoil right as Darwin was grappling.

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What was Lamarck's personal philosophy?

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Speaker 2: Absolutely, yeah, so well, I think that the kind of

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world that Lamark entered into when he he you know,

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at a certain point he kind of moved into the

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Garden of Plants, the big botanical garden in central Paris,

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and he lived and worked there throughout his career, and

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in fact, during the Revolution there was a natural history

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museum that was established in the garden where he was associated.

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He had the very wonderful title of Professor of Insects

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and worms that museum. And in that that kind of

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world people had been much less devout, you know, the French.

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The middle of the eighteenth century in France was a

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period in which people really were challenging traditional religious accounts

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of the world and trying to develop naturalist ones. And

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so Lamark had the advantage of kind of coming toward

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the end of this period of kind of ideas, natural

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philosophical ideas in which people were trying to understand the

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world without recourse to a supernatural designer. But I should

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also say though, that his arch nemesis was a man

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named Josh Cuvier, a colleague in the in the Natural

343
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History Museum, also a zoologist at a paleontologist, and Cuvier

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was a devout Lutheran who believed in the doctrine of

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special creation. He was absolutely opposed to Lamarck's idea of

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transformation of living forms, and Cuvier basically believed that he

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actually did very important work to establish the reality of extinctions.

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Cuvier did, but he thought that extinctions were the result

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of big, big disasters like floods or fires, like in

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the like in the Bible, like in the Book of Genesis,

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and then they would be followed by new acts of creation.

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So Lamark was confronting that that religious picture, and Cuvier

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was very I would say, very important and undermining Lamarck

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and his reputation in the long term.

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Speaker 1: It's so funny because I think about, like today, I

356
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can't help but come back to, like right now, in

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the all of the socio political debates that can you know,

358
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rage even til now, even with all of the evidence

359
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that we have, because I think sometimes our own perspective

360
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of the evidence, our own sort of construction of reality,

361
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is based very often or at least I don't know,

362
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it's kind of steeped in our personal obligation to our

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religious perspective. Like I think about my own father, who

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is a Mormon man who has a degree in engineering,

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who is a very intellectual and very pro academia, somewhat

366
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concerned not somewhat very conservative Christian, and like he believes

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in evolution. His wife was a biology teacher throughout her

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entire career. And yet when it comes down to it,

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and I start to question him because he doesn't believe

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in like special creation per se. He believes in evolution,

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but he does not think it is responsible for speciation,

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which to me just blows my mind because that's kind

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of the point of it all, you know. And so

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I think that there's there's always ways for individuals to

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have kind of special pleading and seek out evidence that

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confirms whatever their fundamental sacred cows are. And then you

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have these individuals who say, you know what, I'm going

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to challenge my sacred cow, which is a very brave

379
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thing to do.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, So you mentioned Darwin. Charles Darwin. He's a great example,

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I think because he, as you said, I mean, I

382
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think he really struggled with this question over the course

383
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of his life, and by the end of his life.

384
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You know, in his autobiography, which he wrote just for

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his family. It was his family ended ended up being published,

386
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but he wrote it just for his family. And in

387
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his autobiography he talks about his loss of faith, so

388
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he you know, he really left the faith that he

389
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had grown up in, and I think he became, you know,

390
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at least agnostic. Actually, his friend Thomas Henry Huxley, I believe,

391
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coined the word agnostic. But Darwin, you know, there are

392
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a couple of different moments in his life. One of

393
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them was the loss of his very beloved daughter at

394
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age ten from tuberculosis, and I think that, you know,

395
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that was instrumental in but also his work obviously on

396
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natural history and evolution, and he talks about in one

397
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really kind of powerful passage, he talks about these Igneumoniday,

398
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these wasps that inject their eggs into a living caterpillar,

399
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and the eggs hatch in there and they eat the

400
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caterpillar from inside at the larvae, you know, eat the

401
00:22:48,039 --> 00:22:52,440
caterpillar from the inside, and they save the vital organs

402
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for last, so that the caterpillar will remain alive and fresh,

403
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you know, while they're eating it. And Darwin says, you know,

404
00:22:59,279 --> 00:23:03,119
how can what kind of benevolent god, you know, could

405
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be consistent with a system like that, you know, and

406
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so he moved away from it. But at the same time,

407
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I mean, and this maybe is relevant for your father,

408
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that Darwin was really very concerned to make sure that

409
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people didn't feel they had to choose between God and Darwin.

410
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You know, so he really wanted to insist that, you know,

411
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his theory was consistent with a god kind of working

412
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from behind the scenes, and he really wanted his ideas

413
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to be adopted. And that was you know, partly why.

414
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But he was adamant that people not have to feel,

415
00:23:35,519 --> 00:23:37,359
you know, they had to be atheists in order to

416
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believe in evolution.

417
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Speaker 1: It's definitely easier if you're an atheist, that's for sure.

418
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But you're right, there are plenty of people out there,

419
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I mean even today, who have their own personal religion

420
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and who can take evolutionary theory and they can find

421
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some sort of theology, some sort of common ground. And

422
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something I always talk about with my page, you know,

423
00:24:00,799 --> 00:24:03,079
who are often nearing death or who are grappling with

424
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their own mortality is sort of when it comes to religion,

425
00:24:06,119 --> 00:24:07,599
just like, when it comes to a lot of things,

426
00:24:08,240 --> 00:24:12,359
a culturation is a good example as well. You take

427
00:24:12,400 --> 00:24:14,359
what you like, you take what serves you, and you

428
00:24:14,480 --> 00:24:17,200
leave the rest right like, you make your own version

429
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of it. And it does seem like these are things

430
00:24:19,039 --> 00:24:23,920
that many of these scientists were grappling with. So let's

431
00:24:23,960 --> 00:24:30,720
get into the actual kind of the evolution of Lamarque maybe.

432
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I mean, we did talk a little bit about situating

433
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him in his time, but is there any other kind

434
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of zeitgeist context that you think is necessary for this conversation? Oh?

435
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Speaker 2: Sure, Well, one thing I could say, he lived through

436
00:24:41,680 --> 00:24:45,559
these extraordinarily tumultuous times politically. He lived right through the

437
00:24:45,559 --> 00:24:50,480
French Revolution and through the various you know, through Napoleon,

438
00:24:51,119 --> 00:24:54,119
the various phases of Napoleon, and into the restoration of

439
00:24:54,160 --> 00:24:57,160
the Bourbon monarchy. So it was sort of constant political turmoil,

440
00:24:58,240 --> 00:25:03,400
and he he was hated by Napoleon. And I think,

441
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you know, maybe this brings me to you know, it's

442
00:25:05,799 --> 00:25:07,799
a good time to mention what I think is really

443
00:25:07,839 --> 00:25:11,119
most important about Lamarck's theory. I've sort of hinted at

444
00:25:11,160 --> 00:25:16,000
it already, but he really his whole theory is founded

445
00:25:16,039 --> 00:25:21,119
on the agency of living organisms, the creative agency, their

446
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ability to create and transform themselves and the world around them.

447
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And he thinks that begins with the very very simplest organisms,

448
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which he says are spontaneously generated from heat and electricity

449
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and you know, other natural forces acting on inani it

450
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matter that causes the spontaneous generation of the very very

451
00:25:40,279 --> 00:25:44,400
simplest just like algae and single celled organisms. And then

452
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from that moment they begin to act, and they act

453
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in more and more complex ways as they grow in complexity. Oh,

454
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I should say, he thinks he kind of hypothesized a

455
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force that he thinks is intrinsic to living matter, organic matter,

456
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which he calls the power of life, the pouv woilduna vi,

457
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the power of life. So that's where I got the

458
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title of my book. I had wanted to call it

459
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The Professor of Insects and Worms because I thought that

460
00:26:08,000 --> 00:26:10,559
would sound like a novel, and that's it was his title,

461
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But in the end my editor persuaded me that the

462
00:26:13,160 --> 00:26:14,480
Power of Life was a better title.

463
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Speaker 1: Anyway.

464
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Speaker 2: It's all about the agency of organisms to create and

465
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transform themselves and the world around them. I think that's

466
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what made his ideas so very controversial Napoleon, you know,

467
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I mean, first of all, religious people like Cuvier didn't

468
00:26:29,519 --> 00:26:32,240
like that for obvious reasons. You know, he was usurping

469
00:26:32,240 --> 00:26:35,640
God's it's creative agency. People like I don't think Napoleon

470
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was very devout, but he also did not admire a

471
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theory that distributed creative agency all throughout the living world.

472
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He was more into the consolidation of power.

473
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Speaker 1: And I think, like he may not have been devout,

474
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but he was probably pretty like xenophobic and racist, right, Like,

475
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My assumption is that there a lot of this stuff

476
00:26:54,519 --> 00:26:56,759
also is steeped in the idea that like, some are

477
00:26:56,839 --> 00:26:59,759
better and some are worse, and so it's very important

478
00:26:59,759 --> 00:27:03,720
that everybody has the same sort of agency and power.

479
00:27:03,680 --> 00:27:08,359
Speaker 2: Well exactly and so well, and so coming back to Darwin,

480
00:27:08,480 --> 00:27:11,960
I mean, Charles Darwin took on board actually a lot

481
00:27:11,960 --> 00:27:16,079
of Lamarck's ideas, including Darwin. So this is something I

482
00:27:16,119 --> 00:27:20,119
want to really emphasize because people deny it all the time.

483
00:27:20,480 --> 00:27:23,039
Darwin believed in what we now call the inheritance of

484
00:27:23,039 --> 00:27:26,559
acquired characteristics, or what he called the inherited effective use

485
00:27:26,599 --> 00:27:30,119
and disuse. He took that he took you know, sort

486
00:27:30,119 --> 00:27:33,039
of he adopted, in keeping with lamark the idea that

487
00:27:33,240 --> 00:27:36,319
living forms are always changing, and also the idea that

488
00:27:36,880 --> 00:27:40,400
living organisms change themselves in ways that are inherited so

489
00:27:40,440 --> 00:27:43,039
that they have you know, Darwin's whole theory of sexual

490
00:27:43,039 --> 00:27:47,119
selection also had to do with the animals exerting their

491
00:27:47,319 --> 00:27:50,599
aesthetic preferences and their creative agency in the world. But

492
00:27:50,720 --> 00:27:54,119
then Darwin's followers after he died, I think I already

493
00:27:54,160 --> 00:27:56,400
mentioned the neo Darwinis at the turn of the nineteenth

494
00:27:56,440 --> 00:28:02,440
and twentieth century eradicated all of the kind of Lamarckian aspect.

495
00:28:02,720 --> 00:28:06,480
They rendered living beings completely passive, as passive as they

496
00:28:06,480 --> 00:28:12,039
had been under the old argument from design. And that's

497
00:28:12,079 --> 00:28:14,319
what this is a long way of responding to what

498
00:28:14,359 --> 00:28:17,359
you were saying about rankings of human beings, is that

499
00:28:17,400 --> 00:28:20,240
the establishment of that neo Darwinist theory went hand in

500
00:28:20,279 --> 00:28:24,480
hand with the establishment of eugenics. So the idea that

501
00:28:24,519 --> 00:28:28,079
living organisms are the kind of passive objects of kind

502
00:28:28,119 --> 00:28:33,880
of biological determinist you know, ultimately genetic programming and then

503
00:28:33,960 --> 00:28:37,039
outside forces acting on them, that was a very congenial

504
00:28:37,079 --> 00:28:41,640
idea for eugenicists and eugenics and the development of neo

505
00:28:41,720 --> 00:28:45,400
Darwinists evolutionary theory really went hand in hand. Wow.

506
00:28:45,480 --> 00:28:49,279
Speaker 1: Yeah, So because in order to think like a eugenicist,

507
00:28:49,319 --> 00:28:52,319
you don't necessarily need to be religious. It doesn't have

508
00:28:52,359 --> 00:28:55,559
to be God who ordained you know, this as more

509
00:28:55,599 --> 00:29:00,720
pure or more having better fitness, or more worthy of reproduction,

510
00:29:00,880 --> 00:29:04,119
and that over there as being somehow damaged and needing

511
00:29:04,119 --> 00:29:06,039
to be taken out of the gene pool. It doesn't

512
00:29:06,079 --> 00:29:07,599
there doesn't have to be God, but there does have

513
00:29:07,640 --> 00:29:11,799
to be some arbiter of what are quote good genes

514
00:29:11,839 --> 00:29:14,160
and what are quote bad genes. So it does kind

515
00:29:14,160 --> 00:29:17,240
of take on its own religious fervor even if it's

516
00:29:17,279 --> 00:29:21,400
not I guess supernatural, right right?

517
00:29:21,480 --> 00:29:24,519
Speaker 2: Yeah. Julian Huxley, who was an a British biologist who

518
00:29:24,599 --> 00:29:26,839
was one of the founding figures in this you know,

519
00:29:26,920 --> 00:29:30,599
neo darwin is new interpretation of evolutionary theory that banished

520
00:29:31,000 --> 00:29:34,359
all ideas of Lamarckian inheritance and animal agency and all

521
00:29:34,400 --> 00:29:36,880
that he said, isn't this great? We can become the

522
00:29:36,960 --> 00:29:39,480
managing directors, I think he said, the general manager or

523
00:29:39,519 --> 00:29:42,759
the managing directors of evolution, and we can you know,

524
00:29:43,160 --> 00:29:46,680
design humans as we think they should be designed. So

525
00:29:46,759 --> 00:29:48,720
that was one of the really eye opening things about

526
00:29:48,720 --> 00:29:51,039
working on the book for me, because the first three

527
00:29:51,079 --> 00:29:54,440
parts of the book take place during Lamarck's lifetime, and

528
00:29:54,480 --> 00:29:59,160
then the last part, the part four, follows his science

529
00:29:59,400 --> 00:30:04,160
from his up into the present. And I was, first

530
00:30:04,160 --> 00:30:06,680
of all, I was surprised the degree to which the

531
00:30:06,880 --> 00:30:11,720
kind of banishment of Lamark was definitive of theo Darwinists

532
00:30:11,720 --> 00:30:16,279
evolutionary theory, and also the degree to which neo Darwinist

533
00:30:16,319 --> 00:30:21,319
evolutionary theory was basically eugenic. I mean, all the major

534
00:30:21,359 --> 00:30:23,960
figures pretty much with that exception, were eugenicists.

535
00:30:24,880 --> 00:30:27,079
Speaker 1: You know, I think about there's I remember going to

536
00:30:27,119 --> 00:30:32,960
a talk once about modern perceptions of evolutionary theory and

537
00:30:33,079 --> 00:30:36,000
the speaker gosh, I wish I could remember who it was.

538
00:30:36,240 --> 00:30:38,960
I've mentioned this on the show before. They shared a

539
00:30:38,960 --> 00:30:42,359
photograph that was just so incredibly like it, Like you

540
00:30:42,400 --> 00:30:44,799
could hear an audible gasp in the audience when they

541
00:30:44,799 --> 00:30:48,359
saw this photograph. Somebody had gone into the periodical's room

542
00:30:48,400 --> 00:30:51,200
of a large university, and anybody who's been to like

543
00:30:51,240 --> 00:30:53,480
one of these, you know sections of the library, all

544
00:30:53,519 --> 00:30:55,599
the books look the exact same, because they're these bound

545
00:30:55,640 --> 00:30:58,599
copies of every journal ever and they had taken a

546
00:30:58,599 --> 00:31:01,640
photograph of the year. I just googled it nineteen fifty

547
00:31:01,680 --> 00:31:04,799
four where the journal which was established in nineteen twenty

548
00:31:04,799 --> 00:31:08,599
five by Pearson, the Annals of Human Human Eugenics. No,

549
00:31:08,680 --> 00:31:10,599
it's called the Annals of Eugenics.

550
00:31:10,160 --> 00:31:12,279
Speaker 2: Eugenics, yes, and in nineteen.

551
00:31:11,960 --> 00:31:14,880
Speaker 1: Fifty four, and they took a picture and you could

552
00:31:14,920 --> 00:31:18,640
see it change over right, And it's like, if you

553
00:31:18,799 --> 00:31:22,519
have any question of the history of this, you know

554
00:31:22,960 --> 00:31:26,039
of this school of thought and where we were at

555
00:31:26,039 --> 00:31:30,240
this particular time, and who the architects were, please understand

556
00:31:30,640 --> 00:31:33,160
that there is a lot of intentionality here. And it's

557
00:31:33,160 --> 00:31:35,960
so interesting that you are grappling with the time period

558
00:31:36,319 --> 00:31:41,200
that predates this, but was the beginnings of all of

559
00:31:41,240 --> 00:31:43,839
this type of thought and all of the arguments within

560
00:31:44,519 --> 00:31:50,079
the different disciplines. And again you cannot you cannot extricate

561
00:31:50,119 --> 00:31:54,400
it from religion and from sort of superiority of thought.

562
00:31:54,480 --> 00:32:00,960
You can't extricate the science from the political foibles of

563
00:32:01,039 --> 00:32:02,720
the individuals doing the science.

564
00:32:03,400 --> 00:32:08,160
Speaker 2: No, that's absolutely right. Yeah, And I mean, you know,

565
00:32:08,640 --> 00:32:12,319
it is really kind of astounding. As you say, the

566
00:32:12,319 --> 00:32:15,279
Annals of eugenics became the Annals of Genetics. But also,

567
00:32:15,480 --> 00:32:19,960
you know, all of the important major scientists involved in

568
00:32:20,160 --> 00:32:24,880
kind of these early genetics and the founding of this

569
00:32:24,960 --> 00:32:29,319
kind of new interpretation of evolutionary theory were eugenesis. So

570
00:32:29,359 --> 00:32:32,559
I'll give the example. I always think of this example

571
00:32:32,960 --> 00:32:35,319
of a conference in London in nineteen sixty two that

572
00:32:35,440 --> 00:32:38,759
had all of these major scientists present at it, and

573
00:32:38,920 --> 00:32:41,119
one of them is So they were talking about the

574
00:32:41,240 --> 00:32:44,720
problem as they saw it, that rich people have fewer

575
00:32:44,799 --> 00:32:47,880
children than poor people, and they assumed that rich people

576
00:32:47,880 --> 00:32:52,079
were biologically superior to poor people. And so if that

577
00:32:52,119 --> 00:32:53,960
continued to be the case, they said, you know, the

578
00:32:54,000 --> 00:32:55,839
human race is going to degrade. What do we do

579
00:32:55,920 --> 00:33:01,039
about it? And so Francis Krik, the Nobel laureate said,

580
00:33:02,559 --> 00:33:05,640
you know, discoverer of the double one of the discoverers

581
00:33:05,759 --> 00:33:11,279
of the double helix of DNA, the DNA molecule, along

582
00:33:11,319 --> 00:33:17,480
with Rosalind Franklin and James Watson. Anyway, he said, it

583
00:33:17,519 --> 00:33:22,359
should be a simple matter too for any government to

584
00:33:22,400 --> 00:33:25,319
put a sterilizing agent in the food supply. And then

585
00:33:25,440 --> 00:33:28,000
if people want to have children, they can apply for

586
00:33:28,079 --> 00:33:30,279
a license. And if they're given a license, they also

587
00:33:30,400 --> 00:33:33,480
receive an antidote. And he said, maybe that wouldn't be

588
00:33:33,480 --> 00:33:36,519
a very popular idea, you know, chuckle, chuckle, but it

589
00:33:36,559 --> 00:33:39,759
should be. It should be doable anyway. And in the room,

590
00:33:39,920 --> 00:33:42,640
like everybody was on board with this, except for like

591
00:33:42,680 --> 00:33:44,599
all the scientists pretty much were on board with it.

592
00:33:44,640 --> 00:33:47,680
The people who raised objections were not scientists. There was

593
00:33:48,000 --> 00:33:50,039
Alex Comfort, who was going to go on to write

594
00:33:50,039 --> 00:33:52,319
The Joy of Sex. I think he hadn't written it yet,

595
00:33:52,640 --> 00:33:55,559
but there was a guy named Derek desla Price who

596
00:33:55,559 --> 00:33:58,440
was a historian of science at Yale. There was an

597
00:33:58,440 --> 00:34:03,279
Anglican minister I think. But the scientists, you know, all

598
00:34:03,319 --> 00:34:06,559
thought that was a reasonable idea. So yeah, it's just

599
00:34:06,599 --> 00:34:09,239
an example of how deeply ingrained that was.

600
00:34:10,840 --> 00:34:12,840
Speaker 1: And I can't help but also point out, not that

601
00:34:13,039 --> 00:34:15,519
I'm going off like really a far afield now, but

602
00:34:15,559 --> 00:34:17,920
probably that room was only full of men, right.

603
00:34:18,400 --> 00:34:21,280
Speaker 2: Yes, I believe it was all men. I believe it

604
00:34:21,360 --> 00:34:24,960
was all men. Actually, this is an occasion maybe also

605
00:34:24,960 --> 00:34:27,320
for me to say something about Lamark, which was that

606
00:34:28,079 --> 00:34:32,760
one of the striking things about him, he you know,

607
00:34:32,880 --> 00:34:35,960
almost alone among his contemporaries and the people around him,

608
00:34:36,360 --> 00:34:40,199
he never ranked human beings by sex, by race, by class,

609
00:34:40,239 --> 00:34:43,880
by anything else. All around him, people were very busy

610
00:34:44,000 --> 00:34:50,039
coming up with, you know, biological explanations of why you know,

611
00:34:50,119 --> 00:34:54,639
rich people were superior poor people, and European white people

612
00:34:54,679 --> 00:34:58,840
were smarter than Africans, and you know, etc. Where men

613
00:34:58,920 --> 00:35:02,480
were smarter than women. He never did that. Although, I mean,

614
00:35:02,519 --> 00:35:05,440
as an invertebrate zoologist, he spent all of his a

615
00:35:05,440 --> 00:35:09,599
lot of his career taxonomizing, coming up with classifications, and

616
00:35:09,639 --> 00:35:12,039
he named over six thousand species, and he was very

617
00:35:12,039 --> 00:35:17,639
interested in taxonomy. But for human beings, he everything he

618
00:35:17,639 --> 00:35:19,639
had to say about human beings was universal, you know,

619
00:35:20,679 --> 00:35:22,960
And I really think that's striking. I mean, I think

620
00:35:22,960 --> 00:35:24,840
it has to do with the fact that his theory

621
00:35:24,880 --> 00:35:28,480
of living beings, including human beings, was not reductive. It

622
00:35:28,559 --> 00:35:31,840
was really about kind of creative potential, self potential for

623
00:35:31,880 --> 00:35:35,920
self transformation and action agency in the world, and not reductive.

624
00:35:36,239 --> 00:35:38,960
So it's not like he couldn't have come up with

625
00:35:38,119 --> 00:35:43,159
a racist, you know, way of thinking consistent with that,

626
00:35:43,199 --> 00:35:44,840
but he didn't. You know. The fact is, as far

627
00:35:44,840 --> 00:35:46,719
as I at least as far as anyone can tell,

628
00:35:46,800 --> 00:35:49,159
he didn't do that. And I do associate it with

629
00:35:49,199 --> 00:35:51,800
the anti reductiveness of his general way of thinking.

630
00:35:52,480 --> 00:35:56,519
Speaker 1: That's fascinating. And so what is it about. I guess

631
00:35:56,559 --> 00:36:00,679
I'm always curious about kind of who I'm like, how

632
00:36:00,719 --> 00:36:04,280
do I put this? I think that in modern history

633
00:36:04,320 --> 00:36:07,400
of science and and sort of modern journalistic takes on

634
00:36:07,679 --> 00:36:11,719
the the scientific story, more and more we're having we're

635
00:36:11,719 --> 00:36:15,519
grappling with the reality that there that's whole myth or

636
00:36:15,559 --> 00:36:20,239
that whole narrative of like the lone scientist kind of

637
00:36:20,280 --> 00:36:23,599
coming up with all of this really interesting and important

638
00:36:24,280 --> 00:36:28,599
paradigm shifting thought is sort of a myth that very

639
00:36:28,599 --> 00:36:30,880
often there were like many people involved, and there were

640
00:36:30,920 --> 00:36:32,639
you know, obviously a lot of women or people of

641
00:36:32,679 --> 00:36:35,519
color or other you know, voices that just like never

642
00:36:35,559 --> 00:36:39,800
made it into the into the the the record because

643
00:36:39,960 --> 00:36:43,480
well we know why. But I'm curious about because Lamark

644
00:36:43,760 --> 00:36:46,800
he does seem to be one of these sort of

645
00:36:46,880 --> 00:36:50,840
like lone wolf type scientists. Do you think that that

646
00:36:51,119 --> 00:36:53,880
is maybe an overblown description?

647
00:36:54,760 --> 00:36:57,079
Speaker 2: Oh well, that that's of such an important question. Thank

648
00:36:57,079 --> 00:36:59,840
you for asking that question. There are a few different

649
00:36:59,840 --> 00:37:01,679
things I would say about that. One thing is that

650
00:37:01,719 --> 00:37:03,800
he did have the advantage as I was mentioning of

651
00:37:03,840 --> 00:37:06,559
coming sort of at the toward the end of a

652
00:37:06,599 --> 00:37:09,440
period in which people were he had the benefit of

653
00:37:09,519 --> 00:37:11,760
the work of people who came before him to try

654
00:37:11,800 --> 00:37:15,039
and understand the living world in more naturalist terms. And

655
00:37:15,079 --> 00:37:17,960
so in the French Enlightenment, you know, in the eighteenth

656
00:37:18,000 --> 00:37:20,880
century in France, there were I'll mention a couple of names.

657
00:37:21,719 --> 00:37:26,519
Direau Don di rou was a philosopher who suggested something

658
00:37:26,639 --> 00:37:30,400
like a transformation of living forms over time. His but

659
00:37:30,480 --> 00:37:34,400
Lamarq's mentor in the Garden of Plants, George Bouffont, his

660
00:37:34,480 --> 00:37:37,480
sort of protector, great naturalist and director of the Garden

661
00:37:37,480 --> 00:37:41,599
of Plants was another example. And you know, in general,

662
00:37:41,639 --> 00:37:44,239
people had been doing all kinds of work in that direction,

663
00:37:44,519 --> 00:37:47,440
and he came sort of toward the end of that work.

664
00:37:48,159 --> 00:37:51,760
Another really important thing to mention is that he had

665
00:37:51,800 --> 00:37:55,599
the great advantage that he was sitting at the seat,

666
00:37:55,719 --> 00:37:58,239
you know, at the kind of focal point of an empire,

667
00:37:59,400 --> 00:38:04,800
and he uh, he did very little traveling. He never

668
00:38:04,920 --> 00:38:07,199
traveled on the ocean, and as far as I know,

669
00:38:07,639 --> 00:38:10,559
never saw the sea, even though he introduced the idea

670
00:38:10,599 --> 00:38:13,400
that the sea was the cradle of life. I don't

671
00:38:13,400 --> 00:38:16,360
think he ever actually saw the sea, but he received

672
00:38:16,559 --> 00:38:21,519
huge numbers of specimens from French imperial travelers who went

673
00:38:21,559 --> 00:38:24,280
all over the planet, you know, and so he had

674
00:38:24,280 --> 00:38:27,960
that enormous advantage. And those travelers included all kinds of people,

675
00:38:28,000 --> 00:38:31,679
including a woman named Jean Varret who cross dressed, she

676
00:38:31,840 --> 00:38:35,440
dressed as a valet, as a male valet to accompany

677
00:38:35,480 --> 00:38:40,440
her lover Commerson on the around the world voyage of Bougainville.

678
00:38:41,400 --> 00:38:44,039
And so she was a heroic, really heroic figure who

679
00:38:44,119 --> 00:38:46,599
collected a lot of the specimens that ended up in

680
00:38:46,639 --> 00:38:51,119
Lamarq's hands. And of course those French travel those French

681
00:38:51,119 --> 00:38:54,800
imperial travelers were also getting the benefit of, as you said,

682
00:38:54,840 --> 00:38:59,000
of indigenous helpers and people who gave them information all

683
00:38:59,000 --> 00:39:01,320
over the world, you know. So so Lamark certainly had

684
00:39:01,320 --> 00:39:02,400
the benefit of all of that.

685
00:39:03,199 --> 00:39:05,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh gosh, I want to see a film about

686
00:39:05,000 --> 00:39:08,760
that woman's life. That sounds amazing. Yeah, she's what a badass.

687
00:39:08,760 --> 00:39:11,519
And how sad that so many of those stories are

688
00:39:11,679 --> 00:39:15,000
you know, they're not lost to history is such a

689
00:39:15,039 --> 00:39:18,079
gross euphemism, but like, just people don't know about them, right,

690
00:39:18,079 --> 00:39:20,480
They weren't the elevated stories and we have to dig

691
00:39:20,519 --> 00:39:23,199
deep in order to learn about them, which I think

692
00:39:23,239 --> 00:39:25,920
is it's such an important aspect of the work that

693
00:39:26,000 --> 00:39:29,599
you do, both as a historian but also as somebody

694
00:39:29,599 --> 00:39:33,320
who popularizes or who's able to take this very academic

695
00:39:33,880 --> 00:39:38,599
knowledge and put it into narrative form, you know, for

696
00:39:38,679 --> 00:39:40,880
the public, for like a trade publication. I think that's

697
00:39:40,920 --> 00:39:43,920
so important to be able to hear about these stories

698
00:39:43,960 --> 00:39:47,559
and to understand again, like all of the forces at

699
00:39:47,599 --> 00:39:51,840
play and all of the plurality of hard work and

700
00:39:51,920 --> 00:39:56,960
labor and voices and perspectives that ultimately, I guess are

701
00:39:57,000 --> 00:40:01,000
the foundation for sometimes you know, these lone white dudes

702
00:40:01,000 --> 00:40:02,760
who get all of the credit.

703
00:40:03,719 --> 00:40:06,400
Speaker 2: Yeah, very true. I do sometimes feel like we keep

704
00:40:06,400 --> 00:40:09,119
on telling the same you know, five stories over and

705
00:40:09,159 --> 00:40:10,840
over and over and over, and there's a whole world

706
00:40:10,880 --> 00:40:15,079
of people out there, you know that would be interesting

707
00:40:15,159 --> 00:40:16,920
to talk about. Why do we just keep talking about

708
00:40:16,960 --> 00:40:18,079
the same five people?

709
00:40:18,360 --> 00:40:22,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so I'm often you know, all scientists, I

710
00:40:22,039 --> 00:40:28,079
think a big part of their mental labor is grappling

711
00:40:28,239 --> 00:40:33,519
with the concept of categorization, right of lumping and splitting

712
00:40:33,599 --> 00:40:37,639
and and you know, labeling and taxonomy and classification. These

713
00:40:37,639 --> 00:40:42,039
are just like I think very large like philosophical concepts

714
00:40:42,159 --> 00:40:46,199
within many science fields, but especially biology. And I'm even

715
00:40:46,239 --> 00:40:48,559
doing it right now because I was about to ask

716
00:40:48,599 --> 00:40:52,199
you the question of, like, you know, kind of based

717
00:40:52,239 --> 00:40:55,360
on all of the work that you've done, based on

718
00:40:55,639 --> 00:41:00,679
all of the ability to sort of situate in time

719
00:41:00,840 --> 00:41:04,079
and reflect back from obviously this hindsight position that we have.

720
00:41:04,599 --> 00:41:07,199
I was going to ask, like, what did Lamart get right?

721
00:41:07,280 --> 00:41:09,679
And what did Lamart get wrong? You know, kind of

722
00:41:09,719 --> 00:41:12,360
like why do we think of him as like that

723
00:41:12,400 --> 00:41:15,400
guy who is wrong? And then oh, and then Darwin

724
00:41:15,519 --> 00:41:17,960
is that guy who is right? Because it's really a

725
00:41:18,000 --> 00:41:21,039
more complex picture than that, isn't it.

726
00:41:20,760 --> 00:41:23,880
Speaker 2: It really is, yeah, very much so. So I think

727
00:41:23,920 --> 00:41:25,480
the reason we think of him as the guy that

728
00:41:25,639 --> 00:41:31,320
was wrong is because there has been really a kind

729
00:41:31,320 --> 00:41:34,239
of tradition from one moment to the next of how

730
00:41:34,280 --> 00:41:36,239
shall I say, there's been a kind of orthodoxy, an

731
00:41:36,239 --> 00:41:39,480
involving orthodoxy about the wrongness of Lamark. So I mentioned

732
00:41:39,480 --> 00:41:44,000
that first there was Cuvier, his nemesis and colleague, who

733
00:41:44,079 --> 00:41:49,800
actually ironically had the task of writing his eulogy and

734
00:41:49,880 --> 00:41:53,039
when he died. When Lamark died, Cuvier was the director

735
00:41:53,079 --> 00:41:56,000
of the Institute, the National Institute, and had the job

736
00:41:56,000 --> 00:41:59,559
of writing Lamark's eulogy, and it must be the most

737
00:42:00,039 --> 00:42:03,320
nasty eulogy ever written, in which he basically said Lamarck's

738
00:42:03,440 --> 00:42:07,559
science was poetry and not science, and that you know,

739
00:42:07,599 --> 00:42:09,719
I mentioned Napoleon already. You know, I think there's been

740
00:42:09,760 --> 00:42:13,480
sort of an ongoing kind of handed down from generations

741
00:42:13,519 --> 00:42:19,599
generation tradition of marginalizing Lamark's ideas again, because I think

742
00:42:19,599 --> 00:42:26,519
his ideas have been threatening to initially to religious you know, orthodoxy,

743
00:42:26,599 --> 00:42:31,119
but then also to the powerful, to Napoleon, to people

744
00:42:31,119 --> 00:42:35,039
who were you know, I mean, the alternative of a

745
00:42:35,119 --> 00:42:38,199
kind of passive living world was much more attractive to

746
00:42:38,800 --> 00:42:43,639
the powerful. So that's why I think, you know, there

747
00:42:43,639 --> 00:42:45,920
has been this kind of tradition that has led us

748
00:42:45,920 --> 00:42:47,639
to see Lamark as the guy who got everything wrong.

749
00:42:48,079 --> 00:42:51,639
The last this is a spoiler a spoiler alert. The

750
00:42:51,719 --> 00:42:54,159
last sentence of the book is Lamarck was right. And

751
00:42:54,199 --> 00:42:56,719
I realized that that's a very provocative last sentence. But

752
00:42:56,800 --> 00:42:59,320
what I mean by it is not necessarily that he

753
00:42:59,400 --> 00:43:03,400
was right about you know, the specifics of how living

754
00:43:03,519 --> 00:43:08,159
beings transform themselves from generation to generation, but simply that

755
00:43:09,000 --> 00:43:16,599
organisms have evolutionary agency, that organisms, by their actions affect

756
00:43:16,679 --> 00:43:19,800
the course of evolution, and that is something that I

757
00:43:19,840 --> 00:43:24,199
think is returning to mainstream biology and many fields today,

758
00:43:24,519 --> 00:43:29,039
in fields like epigenetic inheritance in the study of animal

759
00:43:29,079 --> 00:43:34,400
behavior and how it leads natural selection in niche construction,

760
00:43:34,519 --> 00:43:39,480
which is about how animals create the environmental niches that

761
00:43:39,519 --> 00:43:42,079
then exert selective pressure on them, so that it's a

762
00:43:42,159 --> 00:43:45,079
kind of two way street. So broadly speaking, what I

763
00:43:45,119 --> 00:43:49,039
mean by Lamark was right is that organisms have evolutionary

764
00:43:49,039 --> 00:43:53,280
agency of many kinds, and biology has kind of overlooked

765
00:43:53,280 --> 00:43:57,079
that for a long time and is finally coming back

766
00:43:57,559 --> 00:43:59,920
to kind of take a better look at that.

767
00:44:01,519 --> 00:44:05,119
Speaker 1: I love that because I think what that shows is

768
00:44:05,159 --> 00:44:11,039
that scientific thought and really we can say sort of

769
00:44:12,639 --> 00:44:15,480
whether we're talking about a quote theory or really like

770
00:44:15,760 --> 00:44:20,880
a philosophy that is developed through scientific observation and experimentation,

771
00:44:21,320 --> 00:44:26,000
it's a lot more than just the tagline that we

772
00:44:26,119 --> 00:44:28,760
take away. You know, so and so discovered that X

773
00:44:28,920 --> 00:44:33,400
is hy no. So and so developed a way of

774
00:44:33,519 --> 00:44:37,440
thinking about something with all sorts of nuance, and even

775
00:44:37,480 --> 00:44:40,800
if X ultimately didn't equal why, a lot of the

776
00:44:40,880 --> 00:44:46,039
processes there may have had real staying power. And I

777
00:44:46,119 --> 00:44:48,760
love that it takes that gray and that nuance, and

778
00:44:48,800 --> 00:44:52,239
it really shows us that it's not just that entire

779
00:44:52,280 --> 00:44:55,719
person's life work or that entire tone is you know,

780
00:44:55,800 --> 00:44:59,199
throw out the baby with the bathwater versus you know

781
00:44:59,239 --> 00:45:00,760
it's all true.

782
00:45:00,840 --> 00:45:03,079
Speaker 2: Because that's never how science works.

783
00:45:03,079 --> 00:45:06,559
Speaker 1: We're always iterating and having to add all these little

784
00:45:06,639 --> 00:45:10,199
new developments and subtract things that are no longer holding

785
00:45:10,639 --> 00:45:13,760
you know, explanatory power. And I think it's such an

786
00:45:13,800 --> 00:45:18,079
important way of thinking about the scientific process, both within

787
00:45:18,199 --> 00:45:23,239
somebody's lab or lifespan or you know, the paradigms within

788
00:45:23,400 --> 00:45:27,480
our sort of life cycle, but also like science as

789
00:45:27,480 --> 00:45:31,400
a whole. And I think about the fact that, like,

790
00:45:31,440 --> 00:45:33,280
where was I going with this? There was an important

791
00:45:33,320 --> 00:45:34,519
point and maybe it wasn't important, but.

792
00:45:34,519 --> 00:45:36,960
Speaker 2: A point that important.

793
00:45:37,800 --> 00:45:39,519
Speaker 1: A point that I wanted to make is that sometimes

794
00:45:39,559 --> 00:45:41,719
when we think, oh, Lamark was wrong, I think we

795
00:45:42,000 --> 00:45:47,440
erroneously throw Lamark on the same pile as somebody Likelysenko,

796
00:45:48,440 --> 00:45:50,519
And I think, you know, we have to be very

797
00:45:50,559 --> 00:45:53,920
careful when we think wrong and right, or like the

798
00:45:54,159 --> 00:45:58,000
early phrenologists like Gaul, well you know what, yes, phrenology

799
00:45:58,079 --> 00:46:00,760
is pseudoscience, and yes, there's a lot of bullshit there,

800
00:46:00,800 --> 00:46:03,760
but also, you know, Broadman then was able to define

801
00:46:03,760 --> 00:46:07,480
all these specific areas of the brain that really is

802
00:46:07,599 --> 00:46:10,719
very similar in some ways to phrenology. So it's like

803
00:46:10,760 --> 00:46:12,679
take the good and leave the rest behind.

804
00:46:13,280 --> 00:46:16,119
Speaker 2: Although interestingly, Lamark rejected phrenology. He thought that was a

805
00:46:16,119 --> 00:46:18,320
really stupid idea. He thought it was a big mistake

806
00:46:18,800 --> 00:46:23,199
and that you know, and he specifically said, this is

807
00:46:23,239 --> 00:46:29,039
all wrong, this is a that's hilarious. But let me

808
00:46:29,079 --> 00:46:31,559
say about Lysenko. Actually, oh, there are too many things.

809
00:46:31,559 --> 00:46:33,119
You just open up too many directions. Now I don't

810
00:46:33,119 --> 00:46:34,840
know which direction to go. But I'll let me pick

811
00:46:34,880 --> 00:46:38,840
up Lasenko first. So I think many people I've already said,

812
00:46:38,880 --> 00:46:40,639
you know, I think a lot of people associate Lamark

813
00:46:40,679 --> 00:46:43,280
with drafts. We've already talked about that. Another thing, like

814
00:46:43,360 --> 00:46:47,239
the next association is Lysenko, because so Lysenko was a

815
00:46:47,280 --> 00:46:53,480
Soviet agronomist biologist who in the nineteen forties he claimed

816
00:46:53,519 --> 00:46:56,559
that he could change the germination season of wheat by

817
00:46:56,800 --> 00:46:59,599
subjecting it to cold and moisture, which in fact he

818
00:46:59,639 --> 00:47:02,360
could do. Farmers already did that, but then he said

819
00:47:02,599 --> 00:47:05,280
that the changes would be inherited in the next generation,

820
00:47:05,360 --> 00:47:08,960
and that was false, and he invoked Lamark. Now it

821
00:47:09,039 --> 00:47:12,920
wasn't really properly speaking Lamarckian because he was talking about

822
00:47:13,000 --> 00:47:17,079
changes inflicted from outside rather than emerging from within. But anyway,

823
00:47:17,559 --> 00:47:24,440
he invoked la Mark Stalin adopted his ideas, and you

824
00:47:24,480 --> 00:47:28,480
know it was no joke. I mean, there was one geneticist,

825
00:47:28,519 --> 00:47:32,960
for example, named Vavilov who was arrested and died in prison.

826
00:47:33,199 --> 00:47:35,559
So it became very very hard to do genetics research

827
00:47:35,559 --> 00:47:39,280
in the Soviet Union and even dangerous. But at the

828
00:47:39,280 --> 00:47:42,039
same time, in the West it became so just because

829
00:47:42,079 --> 00:47:44,800
the Soviet Union was ideological about this doesn't mean that

830
00:47:44,840 --> 00:47:48,239
the West wasn't ideological. So in Europe and Western Europe

831
00:47:48,239 --> 00:47:51,840
and in America it became very hard to do research

832
00:47:51,880 --> 00:47:57,199
on any element outside of random genetic variation and natural

833
00:47:57,239 --> 00:48:01,800
selection for equally ideological reason. And Julian Huxley, who who

834
00:48:01,800 --> 00:48:03,639
I've already mentioned, one of the founders of the neo

835
00:48:03,679 --> 00:48:07,840
Darwinist modern synthesis, he seized on this moment on Lisenko

836
00:48:08,320 --> 00:48:12,760
to represent basically Lamarckism with Soviet Communism. With the death

837
00:48:12,800 --> 00:48:15,679
of science, you know, And what he said was the

838
00:48:15,760 --> 00:48:22,119
Soviets can't accept genetics because they can't accept the genetic inequality. Basically,

839
00:48:22,199 --> 00:48:25,960
we are all unequal, and the Soviets are radical egalitarians.

840
00:48:26,000 --> 00:48:28,440
They can't accept inequality. But we in the West, we

841
00:48:28,519 --> 00:48:33,480
know that we're unequal. And our motto is free but unequal.

842
00:48:33,519 --> 00:48:37,119
He literally said, our motto is freak or free and unequal.

843
00:48:37,360 --> 00:48:39,199
And the idea was that he was going to channel

844
00:48:39,320 --> 00:48:42,320
genetic inequality through eugenics to improve you know, this is

845
00:48:42,360 --> 00:48:46,039
going to be sort of Western freedom. So yeah, Lisenko,

846
00:48:47,039 --> 00:48:50,400
it is very That's there's a Lisenko episode in the book.

847
00:48:50,960 --> 00:48:54,280
Speaker 1: For sure, it's incredible. And then it's like and then

848
00:48:54,360 --> 00:48:57,280
we constantly come back to where we are now and

849
00:48:57,320 --> 00:49:01,079
we situate ourselves as the end all be all, sort

850
00:49:01,079 --> 00:49:03,760
of the terminal point of the story. And I think

851
00:49:03,800 --> 00:49:07,360
this is one of the biggest frustrations and difficulties with

852
00:49:07,480 --> 00:49:12,719
the human experience of trying to understand evolutionary biology. And

853
00:49:12,760 --> 00:49:16,679
why so many I think lay people but even scientists

854
00:49:16,960 --> 00:49:22,039
really struggle is we rely so heavily on hindsight bias

855
00:49:22,119 --> 00:49:24,400
that we think everything was leading up to this moment

856
00:49:24,800 --> 00:49:26,880
instead of saying no, no, no, we are just one of

857
00:49:26,920 --> 00:49:29,639
many moments and it will continue on. And it had

858
00:49:29,679 --> 00:49:33,840
no goal orientation towards becoming us like we are not

859
00:49:33,960 --> 00:49:37,719
somehow the perfect form that it was all working towards.

860
00:49:37,840 --> 00:49:40,239
But I think it's really hard not to see through

861
00:49:40,239 --> 00:49:44,199
that lens, because you know, we're all the main actor

862
00:49:44,199 --> 00:49:44,920
in our own play.

863
00:49:45,360 --> 00:49:48,719
Speaker 2: Well, very true and Lamark actually interestingly, he started with

864
00:49:48,760 --> 00:49:52,760
an idea that was more like progressive toward better and

865
00:49:52,800 --> 00:49:55,800
better and better, and you know, more and more are

866
00:49:55,840 --> 00:50:00,480
sophisticated and complex and advanced. And he struggled, you know,

867
00:50:00,599 --> 00:50:05,639
to try and make his taxonomy fit that model, and

868
00:50:06,239 --> 00:50:07,760
gradually he had to give it up. You know, he

869
00:50:08,400 --> 00:50:13,280
had so many examples where two different species were different

870
00:50:13,280 --> 00:50:15,800
from one another, but you couldn't say one was more

871
00:50:15,840 --> 00:50:18,000
complex than the other because one was more complex in

872
00:50:18,039 --> 00:50:20,480
certain ways, but the other, you know, in other ways.

873
00:50:20,639 --> 00:50:22,039
And so he ended up with this what he called

874
00:50:22,159 --> 00:50:26,400
very branchy structure, which is sort of outward, not just upward,

875
00:50:26,440 --> 00:50:29,880
but outward. And I think that that's really like an

876
00:50:29,880 --> 00:50:32,039
important feature of his theory also was that he had

877
00:50:32,159 --> 00:50:36,079
ultimately had to relinquish that kind of strict hierarchy. Oh,

878
00:50:36,119 --> 00:50:38,159
I wanted to say a couple other things. Actually there's

879
00:50:38,960 --> 00:50:41,079
they're kind of tangents, but they think they're relevant. So

880
00:50:42,400 --> 00:50:48,199
one of them was that Lamarck. He he was the

881
00:50:48,320 --> 00:50:50,960
I think people associate with Darwin the idea that humans

882
00:50:50,960 --> 00:50:54,559
have descended from earlier primates, But Darwin actually cited Lamark.

883
00:50:54,679 --> 00:50:58,519
Lamarck had had introduced that idea much earlier. And but

884
00:50:58,760 --> 00:51:00,599
when lamar is so, lamar said, you know, there were

885
00:51:00,599 --> 00:51:02,920
these primates who probably came down from the trees and

886
00:51:03,320 --> 00:51:07,320
wanted to walk upright and use their hands and for tools,

887
00:51:07,360 --> 00:51:10,880
and you know, so they by pursuing these projects, they

888
00:51:11,039 --> 00:51:14,239
kind of transformed themselves over time into human beings. But

889
00:51:14,280 --> 00:51:17,079
then the story he tells is not such a beautiful

890
00:51:17,119 --> 00:51:20,199
story because these human beings, the way that they kind

891
00:51:20,199 --> 00:51:24,280
of made themselves human, he says, is by oppressing the

892
00:51:24,320 --> 00:51:27,199
other primates and making their lives a misery and driving

893
00:51:27,239 --> 00:51:29,519
them off to the kind of impoverished corners of the

894
00:51:29,519 --> 00:51:33,239
earth and hounding the geese and so and he says,

895
00:51:33,280 --> 00:51:36,320
you know, this is sort of something that he sees

896
00:51:36,320 --> 00:51:39,599
in human nature that he really worried about toward the

897
00:51:39,679 --> 00:51:42,440
end of his life, and his last last thing he published.

898
00:51:42,800 --> 00:51:44,960
He has this very despairing so at this point he

899
00:51:45,119 --> 00:51:49,679
was elderly and blind, and his very devoted daughter was

900
00:51:49,719 --> 00:51:52,599
helping him write this last work, and he has this

901
00:51:52,679 --> 00:51:56,639
despairing passage in which he says, he talks about deforestation

902
00:51:57,239 --> 00:52:02,360
and you know, the destruction of habitats and plot really

903
00:52:02,480 --> 00:52:05,760
environmental change, and he says, it looks as though, you know,

904
00:52:05,880 --> 00:52:11,320
humans keep going on waging wars. And you know, he

905
00:52:11,360 --> 00:52:14,119
had witnessed the industrial revolution firsthand, and he had seen,

906
00:52:14,440 --> 00:52:16,719
you know, trying to extract pp profit and he said,

907
00:52:16,719 --> 00:52:19,360
it looks like we're going to make the globe uninhabitable,

908
00:52:20,239 --> 00:52:23,800
were the human human kind will render itself extinct by

909
00:52:23,840 --> 00:52:27,400
making the globe uninhabitable. And so he wrote that in

910
00:52:27,440 --> 00:52:30,400
eighteen twenty you know, something like eighteen twenty three or something.

911
00:52:30,800 --> 00:52:36,480
So I mean, yeah, it really, it really is kind

912
00:52:36,480 --> 00:52:40,000
of extraordinary to think of that that he already had

913
00:52:40,039 --> 00:52:41,480
those those concerns.

914
00:52:42,519 --> 00:52:44,920
Speaker 1: So I know we mentioned this at the beginning, but

915
00:52:44,960 --> 00:52:49,920
I'm curious maybe to put a button on it and

916
00:52:49,960 --> 00:52:52,880
to understand a little bit more fully how was he

917
00:52:53,000 --> 00:52:58,079
received throughout his lifespan, Like how I know it's probably

918
00:52:58,320 --> 00:53:01,599
not monolithic. But you know, from the beginning of his

919
00:53:01,719 --> 00:53:05,679
work until you know, with different works that he published,

920
00:53:06,039 --> 00:53:09,639
and whether we're talking about within like French intellectual circles

921
00:53:09,800 --> 00:53:14,840
or beyond, what was the sort of general reception to

922
00:53:14,920 --> 00:53:15,719
Lamarq's work.

923
00:53:16,519 --> 00:53:20,280
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's a complicated story because on the

924
00:53:20,280 --> 00:53:23,239
one hand, he had the support of people like George Bouffont,

925
00:53:23,480 --> 00:53:28,400
who was very very influential, and another Geoffois Santideo. You know,

926
00:53:28,440 --> 00:53:31,119
there were people around him who were very supportive and

927
00:53:31,320 --> 00:53:36,840
very receptive to his ideas. But then there were very

928
00:53:36,920 --> 00:53:40,840
important and powerful enemies like Cuvier and then Napoleon. There's

929
00:53:40,840 --> 00:53:47,320
a famous story when he went to present his great work,

930
00:53:47,400 --> 00:53:50,719
The Zoological Philosophy to Napoleon in eighteen oh nine. The

931
00:53:50,800 --> 00:53:54,840
story is told was told by a young well an

932
00:53:54,840 --> 00:53:57,679
astronomer named Flocois Arago, who was a young man at

933
00:53:57,679 --> 00:54:00,400
the time twenty three I think, who happened to be

934
00:54:00,400 --> 00:54:03,880
standing nearby Lamark and who witnessed this. They were in

935
00:54:03,920 --> 00:54:06,719
the Tuileries Palace and the Emperor. You know, they were

936
00:54:06,760 --> 00:54:08,519
all supposed to be presenting, all the members of the

937
00:54:08,519 --> 00:54:12,920
Institute presenting their new works to the Emperor, and Napoleon came,

938
00:54:13,039 --> 00:54:16,320
you know, marching in and when Lamark tried to present

939
00:54:16,400 --> 00:54:20,159
his work, his book, Napoleon snatched it from him and

940
00:54:20,239 --> 00:54:22,360
you know, growled, I'm taking this only out of respect

941
00:54:22,360 --> 00:54:25,840
for your white hair, and sort of publicly humiliated him.

942
00:54:26,400 --> 00:54:31,400
And so then moving on, you know, through through the ages,

943
00:54:31,480 --> 00:54:37,679
I mean after that, I think Darwin certainly read Lamark

944
00:54:37,840 --> 00:54:42,280
and used Lamarck's ideas and cites them, but he also

945
00:54:42,920 --> 00:54:47,039
knew that an association with Lamark would be quite damaging

946
00:54:47,079 --> 00:54:51,280
because people associated Lamarckism with atheism and the French Revolution

947
00:54:51,599 --> 00:54:54,800
and regicide and all of these things. And so Darwin

948
00:54:54,920 --> 00:54:58,000
was sort of mixed in what he said about Lamark.

949
00:54:58,079 --> 00:55:00,039
You know, sometimes he speaks about him very scathing, the

950
00:55:00,159 --> 00:55:04,480
other times he cites his ideas admiringly, and so, you know,

951
00:55:05,079 --> 00:55:07,440
I just think it's been a kind of complicated situation

952
00:55:07,599 --> 00:55:12,599
all throughout, you know, from Lamarque's lifetime up until today.

953
00:55:13,159 --> 00:55:16,480
And maybe that's because he was such a radical thinker

954
00:55:16,519 --> 00:55:19,800
that his ideas have been very inspiring but also have

955
00:55:19,920 --> 00:55:22,920
provoked a great deal of controversy.

956
00:55:23,559 --> 00:55:28,480
Speaker 1: Wow, So what is your sort of big I don't know,

957
00:55:28,519 --> 00:55:30,920
what was it that drew you to him. Why did

958
00:55:30,960 --> 00:55:36,119
you grapple so deeply with this complicated man, with the

959
00:55:36,119 --> 00:55:39,159
complicated legacy of his work, and you know, want to

960
00:55:39,199 --> 00:55:43,079
commit yourself to this, as you mentioned, centuries long project.

961
00:55:43,440 --> 00:55:46,400
You know, this is this really intense. I mean, you

962
00:55:46,440 --> 00:55:49,360
did a lot of work here. What is it that

963
00:55:49,480 --> 00:55:50,280
kept you going?

964
00:55:51,559 --> 00:55:54,800
Speaker 2: Well? I think first of all, what first brought me

965
00:55:54,880 --> 00:55:57,360
to him was that I had written this earlier book

966
00:55:57,360 --> 00:55:59,960
called The Russell's Clock, which is about a kind of

967
00:56:00,039 --> 00:56:02,920
struggle as I see it in the life sciences between

968
00:56:03,519 --> 00:56:06,440
active and passive bottles of life. Basically those people who

969
00:56:06,519 --> 00:56:10,719
wanted to see living beings as kind of passive design

970
00:56:10,840 --> 00:56:15,280
machinery versus a tradition of active you know, seeing living

971
00:56:15,320 --> 00:56:19,480
beings as active and self baking and self transforming. And Lamark,

972
00:56:19,599 --> 00:56:21,800
I mean, I kind of wrote my way through this book,

973
00:56:22,599 --> 00:56:24,800
and again it took me centuries to write that book too.

974
00:56:24,960 --> 00:56:26,599
I got to the very final stage of it and

975
00:56:26,599 --> 00:56:29,280
I thought, oh my gosh, this whole book should have

976
00:56:29,320 --> 00:56:33,559
been about Lamark, but I just cannot bear to rewrite

977
00:56:33,559 --> 00:56:36,480
it again, so I will just have to write him

978
00:56:36,480 --> 00:56:38,280
a new book, you know, write another book about him.

979
00:56:38,639 --> 00:56:40,760
So that was I think, how it began. But then

980
00:56:40,920 --> 00:56:44,039
what I also wanted to try is, you know, this

981
00:56:44,079 --> 00:56:47,559
is my first book for a trade press, trying to

982
00:56:47,559 --> 00:56:50,639
write for a larger audience, and the fact that it's

983
00:56:50,679 --> 00:56:53,559
a life story makes it, you know, and the life

984
00:56:53,559 --> 00:56:55,719
of somebody who lived through all of this tumult and

985
00:56:55,800 --> 00:56:59,880
kind of these extraordinary times. It lent itself to being

986
00:57:00,800 --> 00:57:03,079
more of a narrative. And I've really found out that

987
00:57:03,159 --> 00:57:06,280
I really love writing that way. You know, I love

988
00:57:06,360 --> 00:57:11,320
reading novels, y, I'm a novels addict. Yeah, And I

989
00:57:11,440 --> 00:57:13,719
found out that actually writing in a more narrative way

990
00:57:13,840 --> 00:57:16,400
is more fun in the way that reading novels is fun.

991
00:57:16,760 --> 00:57:19,960
So I really enjoyed doing that, and I think it

992
00:57:20,000 --> 00:57:23,679
also helped to have so the advice that I've heard

993
00:57:23,719 --> 00:57:28,480
often for people who write trade nonfiction is that you

994
00:57:28,519 --> 00:57:31,519
should try to write for, you know, a college sophomore,

995
00:57:31,559 --> 00:57:34,360
a smart, smart college sophomore. Like so, my students at

996
00:57:34,360 --> 00:57:37,639
Stanford are a good example. They're very smart, very curious,

997
00:57:37,800 --> 00:57:39,840
very eager to learn stuff, but they're not expert in

998
00:57:39,880 --> 00:57:41,960
anything yet, so you know, that's what you're trying to

999
00:57:42,400 --> 00:57:45,159
And and my children were also kind of that age.

1000
00:57:45,320 --> 00:57:47,599
I have two children who are around that age when

1001
00:57:47,679 --> 00:57:49,440
when I was working on this book, and so I

1002
00:57:49,480 --> 00:57:52,760
also had them in mind, even more personal idea of

1003
00:57:52,760 --> 00:57:56,480
an audience in mind, and so I really, you know,

1004
00:57:56,639 --> 00:57:58,840
I really loved trying to tell a little Mark's life

1005
00:57:58,920 --> 00:58:01,719
story in a way that would this larger argument about

1006
00:58:01,880 --> 00:58:05,679
the history of ways of regarding living beings and maybe

1007
00:58:05,719 --> 00:58:09,360
even kind of a plea for a return to taking

1008
00:58:09,920 --> 00:58:11,199
the agency of living beings.

1009
00:58:11,199 --> 00:58:15,320
Speaker 1: Seriously, I love that, and I think you're absolutely right,

1010
00:58:15,360 --> 00:58:17,519
you know, reading these words, I think what is so

1011
00:58:17,639 --> 00:58:21,639
important is the sort of narrative nature, the storytelling component.

1012
00:58:21,760 --> 00:58:24,239
That is, you know, we are as human beings we

1013
00:58:24,280 --> 00:58:26,960
need story, and we we're desperate and hungry for story.

1014
00:58:27,000 --> 00:58:29,840
And so if if something reads that way, it's always

1015
00:58:29,840 --> 00:58:32,719
going to keep our attention. And you know, one thing

1016
00:58:32,719 --> 00:58:35,480
that I always say in my kind of career as

1017
00:58:35,480 --> 00:58:37,679
a science communicator, I have I have a talk I

1018
00:58:37,719 --> 00:58:41,519
sometimes give about about science communication and sort of the

1019
00:58:41,559 --> 00:58:45,199
you know, the important I don't know rules quote unquote

1020
00:58:45,199 --> 00:58:47,519
of science communication, and one of them is always, and

1021
00:58:47,519 --> 00:58:48,800
it flies in the face of a lot of other

1022
00:58:48,800 --> 00:58:53,199
people's advice, but never underestimate the intelligence of your audience.

1023
00:58:53,280 --> 00:58:58,039
But always underestimate their vocabulary, like they're not specialists. You know,

1024
00:58:58,119 --> 00:59:00,280
they don't know all of these words, but that doesn't

1025
00:59:00,280 --> 00:59:02,960
mean they don't understand the concepts.

1026
00:59:03,000 --> 00:59:05,599
Speaker 2: Right, right, right, that's very nice. I like that very much.

1027
00:59:05,679 --> 00:59:07,360
I'm gonna I'm gonna keep that in mind. I'm gonna

1028
00:59:07,440 --> 00:59:08,159
use that myself.

1029
00:59:08,719 --> 00:59:11,280
Speaker 1: And I think you did use it without using it right,

1030
00:59:11,360 --> 00:59:14,719
like you know that like telling these stories, these are

1031
00:59:14,760 --> 00:59:17,960
not too complex for people to understand. They're right in

1032
00:59:17,960 --> 00:59:22,000
that sweet spot of intellectual curiosity and questioning, and they

1033
00:59:22,079 --> 00:59:26,840
do that work. That's that fundamentally important academic work of

1034
00:59:27,280 --> 00:59:30,440
making us stop and think, making us question our assumptions

1035
00:59:30,840 --> 00:59:32,719
of you know, kind of putting us in a position

1036
00:59:32,760 --> 00:59:36,079
of opening our minds just a little bit more than

1037
00:59:36,119 --> 00:59:39,840
they were open before, and also learning something along the way,

1038
00:59:39,880 --> 00:59:42,159
but not scaring us off, not making us think, oh

1039
00:59:42,159 --> 00:59:44,159
this is too much for me, or I'm never gonna

1040
00:59:44,199 --> 00:59:46,519
get this. And I think that is that beautiful sweet

1041
00:59:46,519 --> 00:59:50,519
spot when it comes to science communication. And I think

1042
00:59:50,559 --> 00:59:53,480
that you know, as you mentioned before, psychologists may be

1043
00:59:53,599 --> 00:59:59,360
fundamentally curious about not being kind of isolated or too

1044
00:59:59,559 --> 01:00:03,840
silo in their work. I think that historians are often

1045
01:00:04,360 --> 01:00:09,280
in a unique position of being able to tell masterful

1046
01:00:09,440 --> 01:00:14,480
stories that keep us just wrapped about what we know now.

1047
01:00:14,519 --> 01:00:16,800
How we know what we know now. We're never going

1048
01:00:16,880 --> 01:00:20,639
to understand without the narrative, without the story of how

1049
01:00:20,679 --> 01:00:23,679
we got to this place. And so you know, I

1050
01:00:23,760 --> 01:00:25,639
love these kinds of books. So I'm so glad that

1051
01:00:25,679 --> 01:00:27,960
you wrote it first of all, but I'm also just

1052
01:00:28,000 --> 01:00:31,599
so so glad that you shared shared so much interesting

1053
01:00:31,639 --> 01:00:33,039
information with us today.

1054
01:00:33,960 --> 01:00:36,159
Speaker 2: Well, thank you so much. It's been really, really a

1055
01:00:36,159 --> 01:00:37,519
pleasure and a joy to talk to.

1056
01:00:37,480 --> 01:00:41,800
Speaker 1: You, absolutely everybody. The book is The Power of Life,

1057
01:00:41,840 --> 01:00:45,920
The Invention of Biology and the Revolutionary Science of Jean

1058
01:00:45,960 --> 01:00:49,960
Baptiste Lamarck, by doctor Jessica Riskin. Jessica, thank you so

1059
01:00:50,039 --> 01:00:53,239
much for being here and everybody listening. Thank you for

1060
01:00:53,320 --> 01:00:56,440
coming back week after week. I'm really looking forward to

1061
01:00:56,519 --> 01:00:59,320
the next time we all get together to talk. Nerdye