Speaker 1: It's Maria's MUDs and Stuff. What a great idea on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Maria's MutS and Stuff with me today is Well,
Speaker 2: he's a scientist, he's an explorer, he's an author. It
Speaker 2: is Neil Shubin. So Neil, thank you for taking some
Speaker 2: time to talk about Ends of the Earth, your most
Speaker 2: recent book, and all of your travels and everything else.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for having me on.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So okay, So you've been going up to the polls
Speaker 2: thirty years, right, A.
Speaker 1: Very very about three decades to both polar regions. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the late eighties. Actually, wow?
Speaker 3: And how did that all begin?
Speaker 1: Well, it all began when I was a student. I
Speaker 1: was training to become a fossil hunter, a paleontologist and
Speaker 1: graduate school and one of the professors, one of the profts,
Speaker 1: was leading an expedition to Greenland, the east coast of Greenland,
Speaker 1: and he invited me, you know, a small four person
Speaker 1: team who I be a part of, to a search
Speaker 1: for early dinosaurs and mammals and things like that. The
Speaker 1: problem was this, I grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia.
Speaker 1: I never really camped as a kid, so I had
Speaker 1: an all those you know, because basically, you know, this
Speaker 1: exhibition is going to be removed from about one hundred
Speaker 1: coup few hundred miles from the nearest settlement, you know,
Speaker 1: sub zero temperatures, small camp, living in nylon tents, you know,
Speaker 1: the whole thing. Anyway, So that was my first one,
Speaker 1: and you know, I was terrified. Yeah, I was hooked
Speaker 1: as soon as I got to these landscapes where you
Speaker 1: see the glaciers and you see the you know, you
Speaker 1: see the tundra, you see the coast. It just changes you.
Speaker 1: Working in the polar regions, which I've done, you both
Speaker 1: in the Arctic and Antarctica for the last few decades,
Speaker 1: it really changes the way you see the world, honestly,
Speaker 1: and that's what motivated the book, that's motivated my research
Speaker 1: as a scientist too.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: I mean that's fascinating to me, especially the fact it's
Speaker 2: you know, growing up in Philly, you had cold temperatures,
Speaker 2: but not the same as what you experienced there.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Plus I was in a house with a fireplace
Speaker 1: or a heater. Here I'm you know, in Niel tent delivery.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like, how do you how do you?
Speaker 2: I mean, I guess I know from your book you
Speaker 2: eventually get used to the cold. But I mean the
Speaker 2: first time that you were there, that had to be like,
Speaker 2: how did you prepare for that?
Speaker 1: Well, the first time I was there, I brought all
Speaker 1: the wrong gear, right, I just didn't know what I
Speaker 1: was doing, and so you know I had leather boots
Speaker 1: and all. Yeah, right, well, no it is. You know,
Speaker 1: we got it down to a little more of a science.
Speaker 1: And you know, you bring the right clothes, the right layers.
Speaker 1: You learn how the layer you're closed have, you know,
Speaker 1: wicking layers close to the body, insulating layers further out.
Speaker 1: So forth you learn how to behave So for instance,
Speaker 1: an Antarctica where the temperatures well you know, can get
Speaker 1: down to minus twenty, you learn to change in your
Speaker 1: sleeping bag. You know, you learn these little tricks, and
Speaker 1: it's the little tricks that keep you going, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's fueling the fires of your body, like learning
Speaker 1: you know, which high calorie foods to eat and things
Speaker 1: like that, not to overheat, not to underheat, all that
Speaker 1: good stuff.
Speaker 2: Right. Yeah, like I saw in your book, you have
Speaker 2: all the rules and that's like your first two rules, right,
Speaker 2: don't get cold, don't get hot.
Speaker 1: Don't get cold, don't get hot. Don't get cold, right
Speaker 1: because it's hard to heat up. And don't get hot
Speaker 1: because you'll sweat, and once you sweat, and you know,
Speaker 1: in those cold temperatures, it's not a good thing, not
Speaker 1: a good thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, it was fascinating.
Speaker 2: Your book is fascinating, by the way, and especially for
Speaker 2: I mean I told you earlier. I really I don't
Speaker 2: tolerate cold, and the older I get, the worse it is.
Speaker 2: So it's fascinating to me just that you've done so
Speaker 2: much there and did it all in the cold, which
Speaker 2: is kind of like an insignificant fact to it all,
Speaker 2: if that makes sense.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, you know, what's the amazing thing about
Speaker 1: these places is for several hundred years people have made
Speaker 1: profound discoveries, scientific discoveries, which is a big theme of
Speaker 1: the book. Sure in these places, you know, so there's
Speaker 1: so you learn about yourself by being there, right, But
Speaker 1: you also learn about other animals, the other living beings,
Speaker 1: and how they adapt to these incredible landscapes and what
Speaker 1: their marvelous adaptations are. You learn about the cosmo because
Speaker 1: you know the meteorites that hit there. We can work
Speaker 1: on you learn about climate change, you learn about our future,
Speaker 1: our past. There's just so many lessons, you know. So
Speaker 1: it's a really incredible place, such a privileged to work there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and speaking of those discoveries and the animals, ancient
Speaker 2: fish that were walking on land, that's like my fun,
Speaker 2: my fun part.
Speaker 3: Tell us about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So my team and I I was part of
Speaker 1: a team that did this, is we designed a series
Speaker 1: of expeditions beginning in the mid nineteen nineties to try
Speaker 1: to discover fossil evidence for the first fish to walk
Speaker 1: on land. You know, all life was in the water
Speaker 1: for a long period of time. Then at about three
Speaker 1: hundred and eighty three hundred and seventy five million years ago,
Speaker 1: that's a long time, long time ago, aged dinosaurs just
Speaker 1: took their first steps on land, you know. So we
Speaker 1: designed an expedition up to the Canadian Arctic, largely because
Speaker 1: the they had that area in rocks that were not
Speaker 1: covered by ice. So if you had rocks of the
Speaker 1: surface that weren't covered by ice, they were kind of
Speaker 1: the perfect rocks to hold fossils like this. The problem was,
Speaker 1: it took us about four working seasons over six years,
Speaker 1: you know, it took a long time to be successful,
Speaker 1: but eventually we found a fish about four feet long
Speaker 1: that has scales in its back and fins with fin
Speaker 1: webbings webbing, but it had both lungs and gills. It
Speaker 1: had inside its fins bones bones that correspond to our
Speaker 1: upper arm, forearm, even parts of our wrist, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean inside of in in a fish. So it
Speaker 1: just goes the power of working in these regions, you know.
Speaker 1: So we weren't just camping there randomly, and we were
Speaker 1: there with it.
Speaker 3: We were we were there with yeah mission, Yeah, you
Speaker 3: had a mission. Yeah, I mean it's fascinating to me.
Speaker 2: And you know, then your Arctic wooly bear caterpillar, no,
Speaker 2: talk about that.
Speaker 1: Well, there's just you know, when you encounter these special
Speaker 1: creatures that live there, it just again changes the way
Speaker 1: you see life. Okay, so here's a caterpillar, you know,
Speaker 1: just a regular counterpiar, but it's a hairy caterpillar. So
Speaker 1: can we stand the cold? It comes out for like
Speaker 1: two or three weeks in the just feeds voraciously. Then
Speaker 1: you know, it gets cold, and this is the Arctic summer.
Speaker 1: And then as it gets cold in the Arctic, it
Speaker 1: freezes over and the thing has anti freeze inside its
Speaker 1: body that keeps it from you know, the ice from
Speaker 1: destroying its tissues. And then it freezes over, only to
Speaker 1: thaw again in June and feed for another few weeks
Speaker 1: in July, only to freeze again. So it does this freeze, thaw, freeze,
Speaker 1: the aw for seven years, then to hatches a moth,
Speaker 1: reproduce for two weeks, and then die. So think about
Speaker 1: that life cycle. It's incredible, and it's incredible these special
Speaker 1: adaptations you see, these animals like this one has anta
Speaker 1: freeze inside its body, a chemical antifreeze. You know, there
Speaker 1: are all kinds of other creatures that have anti freeze
Speaker 1: in their and their blood and their bodies that keep
Speaker 1: them from freezing up in these regions. And some of
Speaker 1: them they replace the water in their body with a
Speaker 1: sugar that turns their body when it drives out and
Speaker 1: gets cold, that turns their body entirely into glass, glass
Speaker 1: likes substance. And they exist as this glass like substance
Speaker 1: for I don't know for as long as it takes,
Speaker 1: could be decades. So when you had water, they come
Speaker 1: back to life. It's incredible, it is incredible.
Speaker 3: It's like a sci fi movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, only for real, only for real, right.
Speaker 3: It's true.
Speaker 2: I mean you would think, like the way you're describing it,
Speaker 2: and it's like, wait, I think I saw that in
Speaker 2: a movie, you know, like an old Twilight Zone.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, speaking of a movie, I mean it
Speaker 1: gets crazier. So, like, the ice of Antarctica is miles thick, right,
Speaker 1: you know, And so the Russians and others have drilled
Speaker 1: into the ice about two two and a half miles
Speaker 1: into it, and there are underneath the ice of Antarctica
Speaker 1: miles over two and a half miles of ice are lakes,
Speaker 1: freshwater lakes that lie underneath the ice. And these lakes
Speaker 1: are are filled with living things, you know, microbes that
Speaker 1: have been removed from the rest of the planet for
Speaker 1: millions of years.
Speaker 3: I mean just incredible, incredible.
Speaker 2: And those organisms that live in those lakes, they don't
Speaker 2: live anywhere else on the earth.
Speaker 1: Is Zachary, Well, there are relatives that there no not
Speaker 1: those species, but not those.
Speaker 2: Species, which is again another amazing fact.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then you know you think about it, these
Speaker 1: things under the ice, there's no sunlight, right, there's you know,
Speaker 1: they have to have a whole different ecosystem. You know,
Speaker 1: the energy that comes into these systems is not based
Speaker 1: on the sunlight. Well, it's pretty incredible when you start
Speaker 1: to realize that. You know, there are about six hundred
Speaker 1: of these lakes under the ice in Antarctica, right and
Speaker 1: their whole world's yet to discover, that doesn't even know about. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And even the plants, like, how there are plants there?
Speaker 2: How do they survive?
Speaker 1: They're not going to Yeah, there are so like you
Speaker 1: know where we work up in Greenland and Nilsmere Island
Speaker 1: near the North Pole, there are no trees. So you know,
Speaker 1: when you're on this landscape, you don't see standing trees,
Speaker 1: so you lose kind of perspective that way. But there
Speaker 1: is a tree that lives in the tundrup there. It
Speaker 1: just doesn't grow up. It grows sideways. It's called the
Speaker 1: Arctic willow, and it hugs the ground as it grows.
Speaker 1: It never rises more in a couple inches off the ground,
Speaker 1: and you see branches of it, but they extend, you know,
Speaker 1: along the ground, never rising high. So it's a it's
Speaker 1: a tree. It's a real tree with leaves and everything,
Speaker 1: roots and all that good stuff. In fact, the wooly
Speaker 1: bear caterpillar feeds on it, as do spiders and things
Speaker 1: like that. But yeah, it's it has all these adaptations
Speaker 1: not to grow up, but to go sideways, go sideways.
Speaker 2: And this willow probably isn't anywhere else in the world.
Speaker 1: Correct, No, it's a willow, so it's of the willow. Yeah, articulous.
Speaker 1: I don't like that, no way. Yeah, it's some pretty
Speaker 1: remarkable and remarkable organisms.
Speaker 3: It is.
Speaker 2: It sounds like everything up there is remarkable.
Speaker 1: You know. It's been a great privilege for me to
Speaker 1: work in these places. And then, you know, I kept
Speaker 1: on coming back to that as as the writing ends
Speaker 1: of the Earth. I mean, you know, I was trying
Speaker 1: to tell the stories of the other scientists and explorers
Speaker 1: and the indigenous communities that have lived up there and
Speaker 1: worked there, and just their sheer breadth and importance of
Speaker 1: the things they've discovered has been remarkable. You know. It's
Speaker 1: been a real, real treat.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And honestly, I mean the tone of your book
Speaker 2: is also a love affair from your perspective. I mean,
Speaker 2: that's what I got out of it, that you just
Speaker 2: you just love it there and loved working about it.
Speaker 1: I love I'm in love with the landscape. I'm in
Speaker 1: love with these animals, you know, And I was writing,
Speaker 1: you know, a three hundred pays love letter.
Speaker 3: No, but real, No, but for real.
Speaker 2: It wasn't like you were just writing facts.
Speaker 3: You know what I mean.
Speaker 1: No, I mean it's just you know, I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: I was sad when you know, sometimes when you're writing,
Speaker 1: you know, it's a real slock. This one. I just
Speaker 1: I just grew so much in these landscapes. It's been
Speaker 1: just such a part of me, you know, just standing
Speaker 1: there after the you know, helicopter drops us off for
Speaker 1: a camp and you know, we have all our food,
Speaker 1: and then they leave and there's the last other people
Speaker 1: that we see for you know, four to six weeks.
Speaker 1: I usually just take a deep breath and look around me,
Speaker 1: and I'm a little bit nervous and scared, but I'm
Speaker 1: just excited to you know.
Speaker 3: You're probably still in the law to a.
Speaker 1: Lot to discover. Yeah, you're in awe and discovery. And
Speaker 1: part of it is, you know, there is a wonder
Speaker 1: almost like a childlike kind of wonder and awe that
Speaker 1: comes from being in places that are as dramatic as these.
Speaker 1: You know, we all experience that, right you go to
Speaker 1: the Grand Canyon or something like that. Sure, you know,
Speaker 1: you feel that wonder in awe of nature, you know,
Speaker 1: And yeah, the article, you just feel it every day
Speaker 1: when you step outside the tent.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I was going to say, the fact that you've been
Speaker 2: there so often and you still feel that way definitely
Speaker 2: says something about it there.
Speaker 1: It really does. It really does. And you know, these
Speaker 1: the more I you know, we study these places, you know,
Speaker 1: we the more we realize how fragile they are. You know,
Speaker 1: they change on the you know, just on a dime, right,
Speaker 1: and they're very, very delicate, fragile landscapes that can be
Speaker 1: perturbed very easily and disappear very quickly. Of course, in
Speaker 1: the history of the planet, they've come and gone. Ice
Speaker 1: has come and gone at the poles many times. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, and that's effected the entire planet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I'm I mean, we have to talk about
Speaker 2: it because there are so many deniers, which is very frustrating.
Speaker 2: But climate change, I'm sure you've seen an in three
Speaker 2: decades a change.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it's hard to deny just the fact
Speaker 1: on the ground. I mean, so if you look at
Speaker 1: a satellite and aerial photos taken of this region, say
Speaker 1: forty to fifty years ago, and then you compare them
Speaker 1: to satellite photos today, you could see that the ice
Speaker 1: is retreated. You know. Even more, you can use satellites
Speaker 1: or ground stations to measure the temperature of the Arctic
Speaker 1: and it's very clear. You know, it depends on where
Speaker 1: you measure it, but you can average it out that
Speaker 1: the Arctic is heating about four to five times faster
Speaker 1: than anywhere else on the planet, you know, and that
Speaker 1: heating is only accelerating. And so what that means is
Speaker 1: obviously ice melts. As ice melts, the place gets warmer
Speaker 1: because ice reflects the sun where the ground does not,
Speaker 1: and so it just gets warmer and warmer and warmer.
Speaker 1: And you know, those are a effects we we as
Speaker 1: a species and other species feel regularly. In fact, it's
Speaker 1: going to be an increasing part of our future as
Speaker 1: these areas melt.
Speaker 2: Sure, sure, and I'm sure that there are you know,
Speaker 2: animals and plants species there that are probably dying out
Speaker 2: because of.
Speaker 3: The warming up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what you're seeing is southern species that are warm
Speaker 1: adapt are moving north, and then the cold adapt species
Speaker 1: are retreating to places that are remaining cold, and those
Speaker 1: are those refuges are getting.
Speaker 3: Fewer in numbers, getting smaller.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll tell you. One of the things that's happening
Speaker 1: is so, for instance, killer whales, killer welles are now
Speaker 1: extending their ranges further north with you know, with each
Speaker 1: passing decade, to the point where they are now the
Speaker 1: leading predator in the Arctic region, you know, threatening the
Speaker 1: narwhals that are you know, the resident habit near the
Speaker 1: normal residents of that area, right, So they've displaced a
Speaker 1: lot of other predators, you know. So if southern species
Speaker 1: moving north and northern species trying to find you know,
Speaker 1: over time refuges. Yeah, so it's definitely you know, dynamic,
Speaker 1: and it's changing very rapidly up.
Speaker 3: There, right.
Speaker 2: And I was I was going to ask you what
Speaker 2: was probably what you feel is the most dangerous part
Speaker 2: of being up there, But I have a feeling you
Speaker 2: just answered it by saying it's climate change.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think for all of us, you know, I think,
Speaker 1: you know, for the for the average listener, for somebody
Speaker 1: who's in Chicago or New York or LA. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's really the effects we're going to feel in our
Speaker 1: feeling now, and that is changes to the ocean the
Speaker 1: sea level, changes to global weather patterns, you know, changes
Speaker 1: to the salinity of the ocean. These are all things
Speaker 1: that you know. The thing about it is, you know,
Speaker 1: you walk around during the day and you don't think
Speaker 1: about polar regions, right, but the ice at the poles
Speaker 1: is really a big part of our lives today because
Speaker 1: they only are eight percent of the surface area of
Speaker 1: the Earth, but about eighty percent of the fresh water.
Speaker 1: So so much of the water of the Earth is
Speaker 1: locked in the polar regions. And that's dynamic, that melt,
Speaker 1: that co in trees, and so that is really sort
Speaker 1: of an invisible part of our lives because it shapes
Speaker 1: the coastal regions. It affects weather patterns, it affects with
Speaker 1: the currents and the seas, and all these things affect economies,
Speaker 1: political boundaries, you name it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, And.
Speaker 2: I feel like it's I don't know, is there one solution.
Speaker 2: There are numerous solutions.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean it's we as a species are going
Speaker 1: to have to figure that out now because these areas
Speaker 1: are heating fast. But they're heating fast also politically, just
Speaker 1: witness the news. They're heating fast, you know, in terms
Speaker 1: of the economic potential that people are seeing up there, military, geopolitical,
Speaker 1: all that stuff. So you know, these areas are going
Speaker 1: to be increasingly part of the news, as you've witnessed
Speaker 1: in the last month, you know, obviously with the President
Speaker 1: Trump talking about Greenland. Yeah, you know, it's but it's
Speaker 1: that's just the first of many salvos you're going to
Speaker 1: see from many different countries.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, Well, people just need to wake up, you know,
Speaker 3: wake up. So what's next for you?
Speaker 1: What's next for me? Is I am planning other expeditions.
Speaker 1: We're always planning new expeditions. We just finished an expedition
Speaker 1: in July to the to the Arctic, to her Island,
Speaker 1: probably looking at another one if we can get our
Speaker 1: act together. It takes about a year to plan for
Speaker 1: an expedition, so they just don't it's not like you
Speaker 1: just get on the plane and go.
Speaker 3: You got it, right, Wow, it takes a year. I
Speaker 3: didn't take them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And now what we're doing is we're doing the
Speaker 1: research on things that we found over the summer. So
Speaker 1: we found new fossils uh huh up in Ellesmere Island
Speaker 1: in July and we're doing the research on them. Right
Speaker 1: now it's really fun.
Speaker 3: Oh that's great.
Speaker 2: And then so from that research that you did in July,
Speaker 2: the trip in July and the research that you're doing,
Speaker 2: will that be another book or another book will be
Speaker 2: from another expedition.
Speaker 1: Well, those will be probably scientific papers, so we know
Speaker 1: we're going to be publishing the scientific results. So those
Speaker 1: talking to the scientific community. You'll probably read about a
Speaker 1: few of them in the news. And yeah, and so
Speaker 1: we're going to do that and there'll be another book
Speaker 1: somewhere in my future. I don't know, I can't. I
Speaker 1: just love this stuff so much. Yeah, it's really part
Speaker 1: of me.
Speaker 3: And you just did this one.
Speaker 2: But I think your stuff is just so fascinating and
Speaker 2: it's not like you know, it's people traveling to Italy.
Speaker 2: You know, you're going to a part of the world
Speaker 2: that not many people go. So we do need you,
Speaker 2: Neil Shubin, and we need your research and your books.
Speaker 2: So yeah, keep doing what you do. So tell me
Speaker 2: where can my listeners get ends of the.
Speaker 1: Earth, well and see the earth? Think about it? To
Speaker 1: find booksellers everywhere, hopefully not the fine ones too, So yeah, Amazon, Online,
Speaker 1: Barnes and Noble, you know, your local independent bookstore. All
Speaker 1: the above, you know, so it's out there. It's on
Speaker 1: sale on Tuesday, February fourth.
Speaker 3: Perfect well.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Neil, Thanks for your time, Thanks
Speaker 2: for all that you do and keep doing it for us.
Speaker 1: Please appreciate it. Thank you so much. Take care.
Speaker 3: Shar has never been a radar operator in the Spot
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