Speaker 1: Welcome to the nonprofits.
Speaker 2: Our fourth and final segment this week is about our
Speaker 2: old friend evolution. Kelly, you're a resident scientist. Why don't
Speaker 2: you give us the lowdown here?
Speaker 3: Sure, I'd love to Scott scientists in Sweden they've been
Speaker 3: discovering some really interesting data as part of a decade
Speaker 3: long study on snails. Yes, snails, those often overlooked animals
Speaker 3: populating our shorelines, lakes and ponds across the world. In
Speaker 3: a long term study, they've been able to observe a
Speaker 3: species of snail common to the coast of Sweden actually
Speaker 3: change phenotypes within a few generations and even follow predicted paths, prediction,
Speaker 3: of course, being a very important part of the scientific method.
Speaker 3: While this might seem like a victory for Lamarcki and
Speaker 3: ideology with them just changing in a couple generations, I
Speaker 3: want to make sure our viewers understand the science behind
Speaker 3: this and things like horizontal gene transfers, a relatively new
Speaker 3: idea among genetic biologists, while not downplaying how important a
Speaker 3: discovery is in the meantime. Now, this isn't an amazingly
Speaker 3: new discovery. We had discovered things like this before, but
Speaker 3: it does fortify our ideas about how genetic changes can
Speaker 3: occur without sexual activity and gives us way more understanding
Speaker 3: into the science of genetics. This story is from Popular
Speaker 3: Mechanics and was written by Daniel Orf on October eleventh,
Speaker 3: twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2: All right, excellent, Kelly, thank you very much. Now you
Speaker 2: mentioned Lamark, and he's known for promoting the now pass
Speaker 2: a idea of inheritance of acquired characteristics. Yes, how a
Speaker 2: parent can develop some characteristic and then that would get
Speaker 2: passed on to the children after that.
Speaker 3: So I like to use the example of the fi.
Speaker 3: If the dad lifts weights a lot and becomes real strong,
Speaker 3: his children will be stronger.
Speaker 1: Exactly exactly.
Speaker 2: So how's Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection?
Speaker 1: How's that different from Lamarck?
Speaker 2: And why does this information support Darwin's specifically and not Lamark?
Speaker 3: First off, I want to make I want to make
Speaker 3: sure it was Russell who came up with natural selection.
Speaker 3: It was dar when you came up with evolution off
Speaker 3: of Russell's natural selection. So I just want to make
Speaker 3: that clear before we go any farther, because Russell is
Speaker 3: he's like the black sheep of the evolutionists and nobody
Speaker 3: remembers who he was. But it differs in that natural
Speaker 3: selection doesn't happen all in one generation. It's something that
Speaker 3: takes occurrence over quite amount of time, and it's done
Speaker 3: because the organism is trying to adapt better to its environment,
Speaker 3: which in Lamark the organ that you could actually create
Speaker 3: these things that you would pass out to your children,
Speaker 3: which of course we know is not true anymore. So
Speaker 3: I hope that kind of cleared up the idea between
Speaker 3: natural selection and Lamarcky and ideology. Now people are still
Speaker 3: keeping Lamarcki and ideology alive, and it's had its ups
Speaker 3: and downs, and the Soviet Union it got real popular
Speaker 3: under trophrom Lyshenko and he actually became Minister of Agriculture
Speaker 3: in the Soviet Union under Stalin, mostly because he was
Speaker 3: a yes man, but he was using Lamarckian ideas and
Speaker 3: it led to a lot of problems with the agricultural
Speaker 3: programs there.
Speaker 2: So how do the specific findings of these scientists support
Speaker 2: Darwin over Lamark? I mean, because you know, we're assuming
Speaker 2: that you know, there's massive amounts of scientific evidence supporting
Speaker 2: evolution in general, another mass of of inform of scientific
Speaker 2: research specifically supporting Uh, the idea of evolution by natural selection?
Speaker 2: What does this contribute to that? I was going to
Speaker 2: say conflict, but it's not really. I mean, there's there's
Speaker 2: definitely strong scientific consensus in one direction, but as you mentioned,
Speaker 2: there's still people kind of pushing Lamarck's thoughts here. So
Speaker 2: what's what's stopping the Lamarckians from jumping on this as saying, see, see,
Speaker 2: we told you the whole time.
Speaker 1: I would.
Speaker 3: The way I like to explain is like as the
Speaker 3: red haired child, right, you can have a recessive gene
Speaker 3: that is still there that will later become useful. And
Speaker 3: what was happening here there was one species of sale
Speaker 3: with two different female types, one that lived off on
Speaker 3: rocks off the coast and one that lived on the shoreline.
Speaker 3: They were the same species, but they had different characteristics. Now,
Speaker 3: they took some of the shoreline snails, dropped them off
Speaker 3: on some of the rocks, and within thirty years they
Speaker 3: became the rock snails. And what had happened was that
Speaker 3: gene was already there. It was recessive, it was not
Speaker 3: being used, and they just picked it right back up
Speaker 3: and became just like the ones that had been living
Speaker 3: there before them.
Speaker 1: So they were kind of just keeping it in their
Speaker 1: hip pocket for the time being.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, that's a great way to explain it.
Speaker 2: Sure interesting. Okay, let's jump to Damien here. So Kelly
Speaker 2: was contrasting Lamarck and Darwin here. But how does this
Speaker 2: discovery shed light on the split between evolution in general
Speaker 2: and creationism?
Speaker 4: Very good question. Well, look at creationists going to creation
Speaker 4: if that was a really bad, really bad sentence. But
Speaker 4: as I think, as ken Hoven would say, I can't
Speaker 4: believe I'm quoting ken Hooven here, but ken Hoven would say,
Speaker 4: but they're still snails.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 4: It's like, if we're trying to use this article to
Speaker 4: prove that evolution is true, I really don't think this
Speaker 4: is this is going to be It's a really interesting article.
Speaker 4: And look, I'm I'm personally fascinated by how, you know, creatures,
Speaker 4: how organisms adapt to their environment. And I think my
Speaker 4: favorite example of this is the naked mole rat, which
Speaker 4: is this little African rat that lives in the desert
Speaker 4: underground and it's virtually blind and has like two teeth
Speaker 4: and all that. But the way that this particular rat
Speaker 4: has has adapted to the desert environments fantastic, But I
Speaker 4: do want to take point with the article. There was
Speaker 4: one sentence that they said that kind of maybe go huh,
Speaker 4: and it's says once the snails found themselves in that
Speaker 4: familiar environment, they access that genetic information, which in turn
Speaker 4: fueled rapid evolution. I would like to know how snails
Speaker 4: access genetic information, like do that have labs and like
Speaker 4: you know, DNA sequences and all that kind of stuff,
Speaker 4: or what it's like.
Speaker 3: That isn't really interesting choice of words can because we love.
Speaker 2: That they don't have highly can labs.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, it's fifty until we.
Speaker 5: Know, right, because I you know, especially in previous years,
Speaker 5: you know, I used to get into quite heated discussions
Speaker 5: with creationists and one of the things that they would
Speaker 5: say is, you know, biology makes extraordinary claims that sound ridiculous,
Speaker 5: And to be fair in this instance, I have to
Speaker 5: agree snails have no way of accessing their own genetic information.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 4: I agree that genes change, but I don't think I
Speaker 4: did it to themselves.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, right, Steven, I'd like to step over to
Speaker 2: you for a second. I know you've been itching to
Speaker 2: chime in on this subject here in the movie Jurassic Park,
Speaker 2: the character Ian Malcolm, who's famously played by Jeff Goldbloom.
Speaker 2: He says the famous quote life finds a way, right,
Speaker 2: So what kind of light do these results cast on ideas?
Speaker 2: Like doctor malcolms, uh, yeah, like I wish that I
Speaker 2: wish I had more hope for the future.
Speaker 6: I'm sorry, adults, I think like all the billionaires are
Speaker 6: like getting as much money and they're going to hop
Speaker 6: onto Elon's rockets and they're just going to head into
Speaker 6: space and leave us peons down here until until the
Speaker 6: world is used up or is destroyed. And in that scenario,
Speaker 6: in that darkest scenario, it is encouraging for me to
Speaker 6: think that, you know what, life does find a way,
Speaker 6: that you know, like we are not like as great
Speaker 6: as humans think they are. It is encouraging for me
Speaker 6: to just be reminded of how how small we are
Speaker 6: in the overall life narrative, that even snails are doing
Speaker 6: this really amazing thing where they're evolving back and forth.
Speaker 2: They're operating high tech labs in Sweden there, right.
Speaker 6: Yeah, in Sweden, of all places, those countries are funding everything,
Speaker 6: even the snail.
Speaker 2: Labs that's going to lind up in some conservative political ad.
Speaker 2: I think, you know, atheists claiming that the Swedish scientists
Speaker 2: are actually snails.
Speaker 4: As in disguise.
Speaker 6: I think it's yeah, yeah, I just think it's encouraging.
Speaker 6: It helps me appreciate my place within the greater tree
Speaker 6: of life to remember that, you know, life will find
Speaker 6: a way, and even if we mess up this planet
Speaker 6: so badly that our way of living becomes a thing
Speaker 6: of ancient history, that life is going to find a
Speaker 6: way even without us.
Speaker 4: Now, Kelly, you put in the notes, think of the
Speaker 4: gene that causes red hair. I would love to get
Speaker 4: your thoughts on that.
Speaker 3: Well, that's what I was talking about. We have this
Speaker 3: this gene that that's a recessive gene. It's not good
Speaker 3: for it. We're not using it right. It just pops
Speaker 3: up every once in a while. And that was kind
Speaker 3: of like the gene that was accessed by the snails
Speaker 3: in Sweden.
Speaker 4: Yes, got it.
Speaker 2: So we're going down here, So we got to hurry
Speaker 2: up and finish up this segment here.
Speaker 4: So where are we going to see the red headed
Speaker 4: sails of Sweden?
Speaker 3: That's you know, that's what I was wondering. Next, you know,
Speaker 3: I did mention earlier, there's any introduction that this wasn't
Speaker 3: like the first kind of study we've done like this.
Speaker 3: There were several studies with Italian wall lizards and I'm
Speaker 3: in populations of wall lizards and those were kind of
Speaker 3: interest thing too, and they and we find out these
Speaker 3: lizards would do the same thing. They would change phenotypes
Speaker 3: just within a few generations to better adapt to the
Speaker 3: new environment that they were put into, like being brought
Speaker 3: to a different island with different.
Speaker 4: What is a phenos hype? Like, explain the phenotype and
Speaker 4: genotype because you know, when when someone discusses evolution, they
Speaker 4: will throw they will use these words. But to even
Speaker 4: to someone who is scientifically literate like me, you say phenotype,
Speaker 4: I go, I.
Speaker 3: Do dogs a species? Labrador is a phenotype. Poodle is
Speaker 3: a phenotype. Subspecies not because they're the same species. Well,
Speaker 3: they're just a variation of there are just a variation
Speaker 3: of the species, but they're still within the species.
Speaker 1: Okay. I contrast that with genotape.
Speaker 4: Then what is a genohype.
Speaker 3: That would be a subspecies There would be an actual
Speaker 3: genetic difference.
Speaker 1: Okay, so we're talking about.
Speaker 3: We're talking about I think we'll we're and now I'm
Speaker 3: not a biologist. Got to remember, I'm a geologist. I
Speaker 3: won't deal with dead things. But I think what we're
Speaker 3: talking about here is the amount of difference if you
Speaker 3: have and we and and I'm thinking this because we
Speaker 3: do this with minerals too. You know, if we have
Speaker 3: just a just too much manganese instead of iron, it
Speaker 3: becomes a different mineral. Right, So but if they're you
Speaker 3: can still have just enough iron in it and it
Speaker 3: doesn't change being a mineral that's into a new mineral.
Speaker 3: So I'm thinking, I'm thinking, I'm assuming, not knowing biology
Speaker 3: that well, that that's what we're looking at here. The
Speaker 3: difference between a phenotype and a genotype. It's a certain
Speaker 3: amount of percentage difference.
Speaker 2: Right, I always, I always, And I might be wrong
Speaker 2: here too, not too I'm saying Kelly's wrong.
Speaker 1: I might be wrong.
Speaker 3: Hey, I could be totally wrong. I said, I deal
Speaker 3: with rocks.
Speaker 2: You know, I always learned about it as like genotype
Speaker 2: is correlates to a cause, and phenotype correlates to an effect. Right,
Speaker 2: if the pheno type is the outwardly observed differences we see,
Speaker 2: like like Kelly was saying, differences in dog breeds and
Speaker 2: things like that. And then the genotype is differences in
Speaker 2: the foundational the genes, right, it's the difference from at
Speaker 2: the DNA level.
Speaker 1: So I don't know. I suppose that could be a
Speaker 1: way to look at it as well.
Speaker 2: But Kelly, I want you, I want you were talking
Speaker 2: about the genotypes and the genes and genes lying in weight.
Speaker 1: I think was the phrase that the article used.
Speaker 2: I talked about having it in the hip pocket, that
Speaker 2: kind of thing. How does that affect our understanding of
Speaker 2: adaptation and the potential for adaptability of other species? If
Speaker 2: this species can adapt rapidly due to these genes lying
Speaker 2: in weight that may have been developed in the past
Speaker 2: and then set aside and unused, or you know, there
Speaker 2: could be any number of reasons how these could have
Speaker 2: gotten developed. But what does that tell us about assumptions
Speaker 2: that we might make of other situations about the adaptability
Speaker 2: of other species.
Speaker 3: Well, I don't I don't know that we can say
Speaker 3: that about all species can do, can can do this,
Speaker 3: can access that iron you can access that information in
Speaker 3: their little animal labs, So I know, I know, like
Speaker 3: we've done studies with the Wallers or the Italian Wallers,
Speaker 3: we know they can do it. We've done studies with
Speaker 3: these snails. We know they can do it. But it's
Speaker 3: hard to do this kind of a study because you
Speaker 3: need to isolate the population to make the change happen,
Speaker 3: and you need to isolate it into a position in
Speaker 3: an environmental position where it has that gene to be
Speaker 3: used to adapt to that situation. It has to have
Speaker 3: that gene in its back pocket for that environmental situation,
Speaker 3: if you will.
Speaker 2: So in some ways it's a matter of coincidence or
Speaker 2: is that what you're doing.
Speaker 3: No, it's not really a coincidence, because that gene was
Speaker 3: already there. In this case with the snail, there were
Speaker 3: two populations, right, so they just and at one time
Speaker 3: they were probably one population, but the ones in the
Speaker 3: shore line stopped needing the characteristics that the ones out
Speaker 3: living out on the rocks off the shoreline need it.
Speaker 3: So they kind of just kind of, like you said,
Speaker 3: stuffed it in the back pocket and stopped using it.
Speaker 3: But now we're going to take them out to the
Speaker 3: We're going to isolate them out on one of these scaries,
Speaker 3: these rocks, and they go, hey, you know, great grandpa
Speaker 3: knew how to do this, and pulled, they bring it
Speaker 3: right back up. So that was almost the silliest access thing,
Speaker 3: it wasn't it. You want to do this?
Speaker 2: Hey, you know the gloves are off tonight, right, the
Speaker 2: gloves are off.
Speaker 1: We're we're just hitting it. We're telling it like it is.
Speaker 1: That's the deal.
Speaker 2: You're seeing it here right here on the nonprofits. I
Speaker 2: want to go back to Damian real quick here. So
Speaker 2: what does this tell us about? Because because they this
Speaker 2: was something that they discovered in the wild, and and
Speaker 2: you know, we hear critiques of evolution talking about, you know,
Speaker 2: you've never observed this kind of thing, and and even
Speaker 2: if this type of thing is observed in the laboratory,
Speaker 2: it's set aside as well, you were intelligently manipulating the scenario.
Speaker 2: So what does the impact of finding a situation like
Speaker 2: this where we do see these drastic changes over a
Speaker 2: relatively short period of time in the wild, though, what's
Speaker 2: the what's the significance of that, of the fact that
Speaker 2: this was in the wild versus the laboratory?
Speaker 4: I think absolutely nothing. To someone who is absolutely convinced
Speaker 4: that life as we know it was created by an
Speaker 4: intelligent agent more or less in its current form, you
Speaker 4: could just dismiss all of this as variations, you know,
Speaker 4: and this is something that Kent Hoven we're probably like
Speaker 4: ken Hoven, we hear he would probably say, this is
Speaker 4: all these variations variations on a kind. There's still snails,
Speaker 4: there's still you know. And this is what I think
Speaker 4: I mentioned this before, is that you know that we're
Speaker 4: not creationists are looking for that like Pokemon type change
Speaker 4: where now I don't know about Pokemon very well, but
Speaker 4: you know, someone give me a Pokemon that changes quickly.
Speaker 2: Pikachu, the Pokemon poke Pokemon.
Speaker 4: Right, Okay, I'm trying to give a example of a Pokemon.
Speaker 4: But yeah, like creationists are looking for that Pokemon that
Speaker 4: goes from one form to another within one generation. So
Speaker 4: we can we can prove via numerous different means, how
Speaker 4: genes change, how genes affect body plans. You know, we
Speaker 4: can see the fossil record that goes all the way
Speaker 4: back also all the way down in geology, all that
Speaker 4: kind of stuff. But you're never going to convince someone
Speaker 4: who doesn't want to be convinced. But I think from
Speaker 4: from a rational from.
Speaker 1: A rational as practical matter, it doesn't make a difference.
Speaker 4: Is what you're saying no, I don't think so this
Speaker 4: is this will be one more data point that they
Speaker 4: could ignore, because then the battleground would go from how
Speaker 4: do they get the genetic information in the first place
Speaker 4: to you can't explain consciousness? How does a how does
Speaker 4: a person made up a material match to have a
Speaker 4: brain to be able to understand this in this place?
Speaker 4: It must be because of the god.
Speaker 2: Damien's turning into a presop over here. I think we're
Speaker 2: watching it. We're seeing it in real time here, that's.
Speaker 3: Not scientific by saying and I think Damian brought it
Speaker 3: up earlier. Yeah, but it didn't change kind. It's it's
Speaker 3: still a snail, so it didn't make kind and kind
Speaker 3: doesn't mean shit in science, right, It's just it's a word.
Speaker 3: So when you're trying to talk to people in the
Speaker 3: Bend about stuff like this, they don't even understand the
Speaker 3: language that's supposed to be used. And it's really difficult
Speaker 3: to get these ideas across. And I want to point
Speaker 3: out that we did. We have watched the new species
Speaker 3: evolved that happened in the Glopico silence in the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 3: It's called the big bird finch. It's a species of
Speaker 3: finch that came off of one of the native finches,
Speaker 3: and a ground finch that was accidentally blown there during
Speaker 3: a storm, and there is now an established colony of
Speaker 3: these animals. It was a whole new species that was
Speaker 3: born and we were able to watch it happen. So
Speaker 3: we have actually seen in real time evolution happy in
Speaker 3: creating a new species. And I have talked to creationists
Speaker 3: about that, and yeah, but it didn't change kind.
Speaker 4: And this proves my point, Kelly, is that to someone
Speaker 4: who is adamant that a deity was involved, or even
Speaker 4: people who believe that evolution is essentially eugenics, or that
Speaker 4: you know that evolution was why Hitler did all the
Speaker 4: things he did, you know, you can point to a
Speaker 4: group of snails in Sweden that access the genetic information
Speaker 4: and you'll not convince the creationists that evolution happens anything
Speaker 4: more than anything more than minor variations.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I do want to point out one thing really quick here,
Speaker 2: and our director apparently knows much more about Pokemon than
Speaker 2: we do, because he's been cranking out names of Pokemon's
Speaker 2: in the in the show chat here. So just I
Speaker 2: just want to get that on the record, there, but
Speaker 2: I want to go back to Stephen. So this kind
Speaker 2: of implies that there is at least the potential for
Speaker 2: some species to adapt and evolve rapidly if maybe if
Speaker 2: things go back to a previous state where they might
Speaker 2: have seen before, you know, they've had an opportunity to
Speaker 2: evolve in that. Does that have any impact on our
Speaker 2: human perception of conservation of the environment. You know, we
Speaker 2: talk about how the environment is changing global climate change,
Speaker 2: and it's affecting our ecosystem negatively in such a way
Speaker 2: that it's making it more and more difficult for us
Speaker 2: to survive. Does this give us hope that maybe we
Speaker 2: can overcome something like that? Or what are your thoughts
Speaker 2: on that? I mean, does it have an impact on
Speaker 2: our views on conservation?
Speaker 6: Like I it gives me. It gives me a warm,
Speaker 6: fuzzy feelings to consider the fact that even if we
Speaker 6: mess up the planet so severely that we can't live here,
Speaker 6: that other species will be able to pull into genetic
Speaker 6: material that maybe will help them at least survive. That
Speaker 6: makes me feel happier that that other species will be
Speaker 6: able to survive our colossal fuck ups even if we can't. Yeah,
Speaker 6: just the idea that that that you know that other
Speaker 6: creatures that share this planet can be more adaptable and
Speaker 6: can adapt quickly. I think that'll be a tremendous advantage.
Speaker 6: And I worship our I welcome our soon snail overlords
Speaker 6: as they.
Speaker 2: Are redheaded Swedish snail laboratory.
Speaker 1: They got the white coats on and everything, and apparently
Speaker 1: iron worship.
Speaker 2: They've evolved that iron fist and they lead with ruthlessness.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: I hope they don't revive their old snail religions though,
Speaker 2: as long as they leave.
Speaker 4: You guys, I've loved you since.
Speaker 6: I met you.
Speaker 2: Boy, we've sure gotten to that place, haven't we. All right, well,
Speaker 2: maybe this was that I think this would be a
Speaker 2: good place to stop here.
Speaker 1: We've we've we've split
Speaker 2: Off on as many tangents as we possibly can with
Speaker 2: this subject.