4:00

And so, you know, I do sort

4:02

of long-form features and profiles for them

4:04

about nature and science, but I've also

4:07

freelanced as well for The

4:10

Atlantic, National Geographic, The New

4:12

Yorker, Harper's, various other publications.

4:16

And yeah, basically writing broadly

4:18

within the life sciences, earth

4:20

sciences, the environment. And

4:24

so you came to

4:26

science writing and science

4:28

journalism through the sort

4:30

of journalism track, right? Like,

4:32

I often see with science writers that

4:35

it's not a perfect binary, but that

4:37

like there's this core group of people

4:39

who were scientists who decided to learn

4:41

to write, and then there's this core

4:43

group of people who were writers who

4:45

decided to learn science. Where

4:48

do you think you fall in that continuum? Right.

4:50

So I'm one of the more hybrid people

4:53

where, you know, I loved both reading and

4:55

writing and nature and science from a very

4:57

young age, but I didn't

4:59

know any professional writers growing up.

5:01

And to me, making a living

5:03

through writing always seemed like this,

5:05

you know, dream on the distant

5:07

horizon, not an actual feasible reality

5:10

or possibility. And so I thought

5:12

in undergrad that I would go down the scientific

5:14

research route and maybe I would write on the

5:16

side as a hobby or something like that. But

5:18

by the time I graduated, I decided I did

5:20

not want to stay in academia

5:23

for various reasons. And I'd kind

5:25

of stumbled into the larger world

5:27

of science communication. The

5:29

PBS show Nova was filmed not too far from where

5:31

I went to college and I did an internship with

5:33

them and kind of opened my eyes to

5:35

this world of people that love science

5:37

and learn about science and communicate it to

5:39

the public, but don't actually do the day

5:41

to day work of scientific research. And

5:45

so that to me seemed like

5:47

the perfect fusion of my interests

5:49

and, you know, an actual

5:51

feasible way to make a living potentially.

5:53

So I decided to pursue that and,

5:55

you know, see how it went. I

5:59

love it. course, you know,

6:01

your sort of beat is

6:03

not terribly narrow. Like you

6:06

write about a lot of different topics, don't you?

6:09

Yeah, I'm definitely more of a generalist

6:11

than a specialist. I mean, if it

6:13

involves, you know, living things or the

6:16

planet, I'm probably interested. So I've written

6:18

about everything from, you know,

6:20

neuroscience and health to human

6:22

evolution and genetics to, you

6:25

know, basic fundamental biology and

6:27

ecology. Don't

6:29

so much stray into things like,

6:31

you know, astronomy, astrophysics, you know,

6:33

hard chemistry, math, but generally, you

6:35

know, broadly within the more life

6:38

sciences, I've written a lot about

6:40

a lot of different subjects within

6:42

that realm. And

6:44

then it's interesting when those things do, you

6:47

know, cross paths, because I think I feel

6:49

the same way, but and granted, I don't, I

6:51

don't write much, but I do a lot

6:53

of psych com and I've tended towards like, I

6:58

guess, human behavior a little bit

7:00

more, even though I'm still very

7:02

interested in the life sciences, physics,

7:06

astronomy, those kinds of things are just

7:08

it's a different level of expertise that

7:10

I don't have. And my interest isn't

7:13

as deep there. But it is always

7:15

really interesting when you're talking about something

7:17

where you have to kind of bone

7:19

up on your physics or on your

7:22

chemistry, like, and especially when you're talking

7:24

about life, those things are

7:26

fundamental. Absolutely. I mean,

7:28

you know, thermodynamics and how energy

7:30

and matter work and you know,

7:32

with each other and organic chemistry

7:34

and all of that is underlying,

7:36

you know, the phenomenon we refer

7:38

to as life. So and

7:40

I think that's actually, it's

7:43

actually interesting to look through the history

7:45

of science and to see how different

7:47

scientists from different fields have

7:49

approached that question of, you know, of

7:51

what, what really is life, you

7:53

know, using their own perspectives and engineers and physicists

7:56

tend to have a different way of looking at

7:58

it then, then scientists who

8:00

have been fully immersed in just evolutionary

8:02

biology or genetics do. Would

8:05

you say that that sort of

8:08

curiosity, that that grappling

8:10

was one of the

8:13

motivations or one of

8:15

the inspirations for writing

8:17

this book? Because

8:19

it's a pretty big topic. And

8:22

so I'm curious how you decided,

8:24

yeah, I can cover that topic

8:26

in a book. Yeah,

8:29

the scope is quite ambitious,

8:31

quite wide. And I do think

8:34

that interest in the fundamental

8:36

nature and definition of life, which

8:39

has been a long-running interest for me, is

8:41

definitely one of the threads, one of the

8:43

undercurrents feeding into this project. Because

8:46

to me, life is the

8:48

single most fascinating phenomenon that

8:50

we know of. And

8:52

obviously, it has captivated all kinds

8:54

of scientists for millennia. And

8:57

yet we still don't have a

8:59

consensus definition of life. You

9:02

open a textbook and you get these long lists

9:04

of supposed criteria that distinguish the

9:06

animate from the inanimate, but not

9:09

a beautiful, elegant, simplified

9:12

sentence that can just define what

9:14

life is as a fundamental phenomenon.

9:16

We're still trying to figure that

9:18

out. And we don't

9:20

have that robust scientific framework to

9:23

really explain what we mean by

9:25

life. So I think

9:28

that creates a really interesting intellectual

9:30

space, because in

9:32

some ways, it's not the kind of question that can

9:34

be easily or definitively answered just

9:37

by finding the right expert or the

9:39

right source. It's almost like

9:41

it's between science and philosophy, because nobody actually

9:43

knows yet. So we're all still trying to

9:45

figure it out. It's

9:48

also deeply reflective of cultural

9:50

values. It's so funny, because I

9:52

literally, I think it was last

9:54

night or maybe the night before.

9:56

I'm a bit of a documentary

9:58

phenomenon. attic and so I watch

10:00

probably like a documentary a day

10:02

if I have time. I don't

10:06

always have time, but recently I

10:08

watched I think it

10:10

was called the Lakota Nation versus

10:12

the United States, which

10:17

is a visually

10:19

stunning and really compelling story

10:22

of kind of the long

10:24

history of colonialism in

10:26

the US and kind of how it

10:28

continues to impact indigenous

10:31

cultures. And obviously one of the threads,

10:33

one of the themes that you often

10:35

see is that like

10:38

earth is alive. Like we are

10:41

existing in a system and if

10:43

you kill things and if you

10:45

extract things, you are actually harming

10:47

a living, breathing,

10:51

interconnected life, not

10:53

just some sort of like terra

10:55

forma that then living things stand

10:57

on top of. Right,

11:00

exactly. So this fundamental concept

11:02

of the world being alive,

11:05

of earth being a living

11:07

entity is ancient, and it

11:10

is one of those ideas that is

11:12

almost ubiquitous. We see it in so

11:15

many different world religions and mythologies. And

11:17

I think for many indigenous

11:21

cultures and probably for

11:24

our human ancestors going back

11:26

into deep, deep human

11:28

evolutionary time, it was just sort of assumed,

11:30

it was just sort of a basic precept

11:33

about the world that of course everything around

11:35

us was alive as well. Right,

11:38

it was moving, it was doing stuff,

11:40

so it felt alive. Exactly, yeah, it's

11:43

so, everything is so dynamic and interconnected,

11:45

so why wouldn't it be? But

11:49

then of course we have

11:51

more recent evidence that maybe

11:54

we've been on to something all this time. Right,

11:57

so if you if we look at the history of science... system

14:00

that is used by

14:02

people. And it is

14:04

the people's biases and

14:06

the people's culture-bound perspectives

14:08

that massively influences

14:11

not just the way

14:13

that science is done, but the kinds of questions

14:15

we want to ask and how we interpret the

14:17

results. Yeah, absolutely. I

14:19

mean, it's interesting because in some ways,

14:22

science and especially modern

14:24

experimental science is an attempt to

14:27

become as inhuman as

14:30

possible, to divorce ourselves from all these

14:32

biases and prejudices as much as possible.

14:34

And yet it is still a product

14:36

of humanity and it is still conducted

14:38

by people. And so it is impossible

14:41

to fully escape our internal

14:43

biases and prejudices and flaws, even though that

14:45

is kind of the illusion, right?

14:47

It's that here's this amazing technique

14:49

that we can use to understand the world

14:52

without those things. Yeah,

14:54

we're often trying to convince ourselves that that's

14:56

the case. Right. But you're right.

14:58

It is a bit of an illusion. And I feel

15:00

like I'm glad we got that out of the way

15:02

at the beginning because that's like almost an important foundational,

15:06

I guess, axiom or

15:08

I don't know, self-reflection that is important when

15:10

we start to talk about these kinds of

15:12

things because they are very zeitgeist-specific.

15:15

And right now, we're moving into

15:17

a sort of new era. So,

15:19

you know, the book that you

15:21

wrote, it's called Becoming Earth, How

15:23

Our Planet Came to Life. And

15:25

of course, there are a lot

15:27

of stories in this book about

15:29

these kind of fundamental changes, these

15:32

fundamental shifts. And we'll get a

15:34

little bit into like what happened

15:36

billions of years ago. But we

15:39

kind of have just been touching on

15:41

one of the foundational themes of the

15:43

book, which is this concept, I guess,

15:45

there's a name for it now, right,

15:47

of what's

15:50

this new field, Earth System Science. Can

15:52

you tell us a little bit about

15:54

that? Right. So, Earth

15:56

System Science is a comparatively

15:58

young field. if we're comparing

16:01

it to biology and chemistry and physics.

16:03

But it is well established at this

16:05

point. And the whole

16:07

idea is to take a much

16:09

more holistic, integrated approach to look

16:11

at what has traditionally been

16:14

considered the inanimate planet, all the geology,

16:16

and then all the living components, all

16:18

of the life on the planet, as

16:20

a single integrated system that cannot be

16:23

separated and is best understood as a

16:25

whole. So to look

16:27

at how biology and geology have

16:29

changed each other through time, how

16:32

intimately intertwined they are, and

16:34

just to try and understand the Earth

16:37

as a single interconnected system, not as

16:39

a planet that is then inhabited by

16:41

life, but rather as a living planet

16:44

as some scientists have come to call

16:46

it. Yeah, it's almost, I

16:49

mean, maybe this is not a good

16:51

characterization, but from a sort of lay

16:53

perspective, I feel like it's almost like

16:56

ecology expanded. Because I do

16:58

feel like the field of

17:00

ecology very much

17:04

is founded on this concept of interconnectivity.

17:07

And this one thing changes and all

17:09

these other things change. They're all deeply

17:12

related. But it's sort of taking that

17:14

concept of plants and animals and extending

17:16

it to environmental phenomena, extending it to

17:19

geology, extending it to all

17:21

of the ways that these systems are

17:23

sort of stochastic and plastic and always

17:25

changing. I absolutely

17:27

agree. I think there's been this

17:30

growing recognition in recent decades that,

17:32

for example, all biology is by

17:34

necessity ecology. Any individual complex multicellular

17:36

creature is in effect its own

17:39

ecosystem and can only be understood

17:41

in those terms. And

17:44

I think the difference now is it's really

17:46

a matter of scale, like you were saying.

17:48

Even Rachel Carson, one of our

17:51

greatest ecological thinkers ever, she

17:53

wrote that life's

17:56

influence on the planet as a whole was

17:58

very slight because that... was the thinking back

18:00

in the 50s and 60s. Now

18:03

we know that's completely untrue, that life

18:05

has profoundly changed the planet. And it's

18:07

just a matter, it's in part a

18:09

matter of scale. It's understanding that life

18:12

is not just changing its environment locally,

18:14

it's changing its environment on the scale

18:16

of a continent, the ocean, the atmosphere,

18:18

or indeed the entire planet. Yeah,

18:21

so I was hoping that you would maybe

18:23

take us back a little while, and the

18:25

funny thing is I'm having to catch myself

18:28

in how I even frame this question, because

18:30

I wanted to say, take us back to

18:32

before there was life. But then I was

18:34

like, ah, we're sort of radically redefining life

18:37

here. Maybe take

18:39

us back to the time

18:41

before what we think of

18:43

as organism life, what we

18:45

think of as the simplest

18:47

kind of creatures,

18:51

maybe back to the building blocks

18:53

of life. What did our planet

18:55

look like? What was going on way,

18:59

way back, millions of years ago? Yeah,

19:02

and I think even your original framing

19:04

is apt, because I do think that

19:06

in the planet's birth,

19:09

in its earliest chapters, it

19:11

was a purely inanimate entity.

19:14

It was really just this

19:16

seething ball of rock and

19:19

lava and early oceans and

19:21

early atmospheres forming. And not

19:23

only were there no living

19:25

organisms, there wasn't really any

19:28

phenomenon that we would call life at that time.

19:31

And so back then,

19:34

this would be four and a

19:36

half billion years ago, somewhere between four

19:38

and four and a half billion years ago, the

19:42

atmosphere was probably orange and

19:44

hazy and full of methane

19:47

and carbon. There

19:50

were no, nothing we would

19:52

recognize as actual, a

19:55

continent to land masses. The

19:57

oceans were probably just beginning to form and

19:59

very... shallow. There may have been some scattered

20:03

volcanic islands here and there. It

20:05

took a while for Earth

20:08

to develop a stable atmosphere.

20:10

There may have been torrential

20:12

rains in the very beginning.

20:14

It was basically, if

20:17

one were to see early Earth from

20:19

space, you would not recognize it as

20:21

Earth. It was just

20:23

too, too different. It's

20:25

fascinating to think too that you mentioned,

20:28

you actually used the word inanimate, which

20:30

is so apropos

20:32

of what we've been talking about. It's

20:34

because, yes, from a perspective

20:36

of animation requiring life, it

20:39

was inanimate. But from the

20:41

perspective of animation meaning volatile

20:43

and full of movement,

20:45

it sounds like it was

20:48

a really volatile place. And there was

20:50

a lot going on then. Oh, yeah.

20:52

The birth of our planet was

20:54

incredibly violet. And it's always been

20:56

an extremely dynamic system. That's never

20:59

changed or stopped. So,

21:01

yeah, I mean purely in the sense

21:03

of life as a biological phenomenon. So

21:07

I'm super curious then where, and I

21:09

know that obviously there are sort of

21:11

conflicting theories about this, but

21:13

you've dug quite deep and done a

21:15

lot of good research and a lot

21:18

of good reporting to try to uncover

21:21

where the sort of scientific perspective is

21:23

or where the controversy lies

21:25

with regard to that tip, that change,

21:27

that sort of, we might call it

21:30

abiogenesis, that thing that happened, or maybe

21:32

it was a lot of things that

21:34

had to happen for either

21:38

early life to occur or the things

21:40

that would then become life to occur.

21:42

So what did that sort of look

21:44

like, or at least what do we think we

21:47

know about that right now? Right.

21:49

So when I was taking on this

21:51

book project, I knew from the

21:53

beginning that I didn't really want

21:56

to retell the history of life

21:58

on Earth because that's been done so many times,

22:00

you know, and we've all heard about, you

22:02

know, the RNA world hypothesis and, you know, how

22:04

did these little bits and molecules come together and

22:07

form the first protocells and all of that. And,

22:09

you know, rather I wanted to focus on how

22:12

the planet came to life and how

22:14

life profoundly altered the planet through time.

22:17

And so to be honest, I don't spend, you know, I

22:19

don't spend like a huge

22:21

number of pages going into detail

22:23

kind of rehearsing the initial

22:26

origins of life, as

22:28

you know, is typically told. But

22:30

basically the way I've come to think about it

22:33

is that bits

22:35

of Earth itself, you know,

22:37

bits of the planet rearrange

22:39

themselves into the

22:41

first proteins and molecules and

22:43

genetic molecules and cells. And

22:46

those evolved into what we would recognize

22:49

as microorganisms, you know, these were the

22:51

earliest and smallest and most ancient forms

22:53

of life that arose on the planet.

22:56

And, you know, and I think, you know,

22:58

the older view might be that,

23:01

you know, life is something that

23:03

is happening on Earth as opposed

23:06

to parcels of Earth coming

23:08

together and rearranging themselves and becoming life.

23:10

And I think that that is the

23:12

beginning of what for me has been

23:14

the single biggest revelation, perhaps,

23:17

in writing this book, which

23:19

is that I think we have to stop

23:21

thinking of life as something that resides on

23:23

the planet or inhabits the planet and start

23:26

to see life as literally a physical

23:28

extension of the planet, you know,

23:31

an expression of the planet. And

23:33

I like to make the analogy

23:35

to a vast beach. So if

23:38

you imagine a beach from which

23:40

sand castles and intricate sand sculptures

23:42

spontaneously emerge, these sculptures

23:44

are not suddenly divorced from the rest

23:47

of the beach just because they've attained

23:49

a higher level of complexity and organization.

23:51

They're still made of the same particles

23:53

of sand that surrounds them. They're still

23:55

literally part of the beach. And I

23:57

think it's the same way with life. and

24:00

Earth. So life emerged from Earth,

24:02

literally, is made of Earth, returns

24:04

to Earth. It is an extension

24:06

of Earth. I

24:10

love that. And it almost, it's

24:12

funny, try to stay with me on this because

24:14

it's a half-baked idea that is just coming to

24:16

my mind right now, but I'm often trying to

24:18

connect things to metaphor,

24:22

to analogy that

24:24

exists in my mind. And of

24:27

course, being a psychologist, I'm

24:29

really fascinated by the philosophy of

24:31

psychology and the philosophy of the

24:34

mind. And there's this kind of

24:36

long debate about monism versus dualism.

24:39

Most modern neuroscientists are

24:41

monists. And sort of this

24:44

description that's often used is that the

24:46

mind is an emergent property

24:49

of the brain. There is no mind

24:51

without brain. It's not an entity that

24:53

acts on the brain. It is brain,

24:57

yet it is somehow measured differently than

24:59

brain. And this concept of the emergent

25:01

property, which

25:03

is a very philosophical concept to try and describe

25:06

a very physical thing, I

25:09

can't help but see a parallel there, that

25:11

life is an emergent property of Earth. Oh,

25:14

absolutely. I think there's huge resonance

25:17

between those ideas. And

25:19

I think most mainstream scientists

25:22

accept that life is a material

25:24

phenomenon, but we just are not

25:26

yet able to fully explain it.

25:28

So something is happening. When matter

25:30

and energy interact in this way,

25:34

the phenomenon we call life emerges from

25:36

those interactions. So it is that this

25:38

emergent level. And we're still trying to

25:41

figure out what exactly causes that, very

25:43

similar to consciousness, the way we talk

25:45

about it, like you're saying, is that somehow this

25:48

incredible tangle of neurons and all the

25:50

connections between them and having that many

25:52

nodes interconnected results in this

25:55

emergent phenomenon of consciousness. Yeah.

25:57

And it is interesting that there's even

25:59

parallel. parallels there with kind of

26:01

the measurement difficulty. I think the one

26:03

place where my analogy breaks down is

26:06

that it may be the case that

26:08

consciousness, you know, it's not a measurable

26:10

thing. We can only measure it by

26:12

proxy, by neuronal activity, whereas

26:15

we can physically like poke things that

26:17

are alive, you know? We can interrogate

26:19

them in the lab in a way

26:22

that it's harder to do with the

26:24

phenomenon that is mind or consciousness. It's

26:28

cool to think about it in these more, I

26:30

think, philosophical terms because I

26:32

think it's also a good exercise

26:35

in, I don't know,

26:38

neuropsychological humility. It's an exercise

26:40

in scientific exploration,

26:43

allowing the complexity

26:46

of thought on these ideas. I think

26:48

it can be very expansive for us

26:50

to think in this way. It's

26:54

a very creative way to think without

26:56

in any way rejecting,

26:59

denying, or minimizing

27:02

the value

27:04

and the necessity of kind

27:06

of hard science and hard

27:09

metrics within science. Absolutely.

27:13

So I'm curious what you did decide,

27:15

or how, I guess maybe before

27:17

we get to the what, let's talk about the how. Based

27:21

on that sort of change

27:23

in your thinking, that big

27:25

paradigm shift in your thinking

27:28

which underlies this project of

27:30

describing our planet

27:32

coming to life, how did you

27:34

choose to organize your thoughts when

27:36

you went to lay this out

27:38

on paper? Right. So

27:41

structuring this, I mean, I think

27:43

structuring any nonfiction book that isn't

27:45

based on a single central character

27:47

or has a straight narrative through

27:49

line is always quite challenging. And

27:51

it was particularly so in this

27:53

case. If there is

27:55

a central character in this book, I would say that it's

27:57

Earth, that it's the living planet itself. And that's kind of

27:59

the main story we're following. But

28:02

because I didn't want to do a straight

28:05

linear chronology, and

28:07

I also wanted to give a sense

28:09

of rhythm and waves and sort of

28:12

feedback cycles, because those are so fundamental

28:14

to the Earth's system and how it

28:16

operates, I decided to use

28:18

a three-part structure in which we kind

28:21

of trace a similar arc within

28:23

each of those three sections. So

28:26

the book is divided into

28:28

rock, water, and air to

28:30

reflect the three main spheres of the

28:32

planet, the lithosphere, the hydrosphere, and the

28:34

atmosphere, and also the three main

28:38

elements, material elements, that compose the

28:40

planet. And within each

28:42

of those sections there are three

28:44

chapters that trace this evolutionary arc.

28:46

So the first chapter begins with

28:48

the earliest and smallest organisms, the

28:50

microbes, and how they changed that

28:52

layer of the planet. Then the

28:55

second section looks at later more

28:57

complex organisms like animal plants and

28:59

fungi, and the third and final chapter

29:01

in each section looks at what our species

29:03

has done most recently in the past few

29:05

centuries. So

29:07

you do have a significant

29:09

focus, which I love because I think

29:11

sometimes we try to think about geologic

29:15

time and we, yes, we are but

29:17

a blip in geologic time, but sometimes

29:19

it's not just about the chronology, it's

29:21

about the impact. And even though we

29:24

are but a blip, goodness

29:26

have we changed the fundamental nature

29:28

of our planet in a way

29:31

that almost, you know,

29:33

maybe I shouldn't say no organisms did

29:35

in the past because, like you said,

29:37

when we first had microbes, things changed

29:40

a lot. But there is something kind

29:42

of impactful

29:44

in a really,

29:47

really, I can't even find

29:49

the right word, like, magnificent and

29:51

devastating way that happened

29:53

when human beings started

29:55

to, geo-engineer,

29:58

started to industrially. realized,

30:00

started to utilize agriculture, all of

30:02

these different things. So we'll get

30:04

to that, but let's go back

30:07

to how those microbes started changing

30:09

things so much. Right.

30:11

So I think if we had

30:14

to choose probably the single most

30:16

profound transformation caused by

30:18

life, you know, so first

30:20

of all, microbes are, you know, they're

30:23

responsible for some of the most fundamental

30:25

transformations and they continue to be the

30:27

foundation of all ecosystems. And

30:30

when earth goes through its cataclysms, you

30:32

know, it often shrinks down to microbial

30:35

type life and then then everything kind of

30:37

resprings from there. So microbes

30:39

are why we

30:42

have a breathable atmosphere, a

30:45

blue sky, fire, high

30:47

mineral diversity, fertile soils. I mean,

30:49

they really kicked it all off.

30:52

So it all started with

30:54

cyanobacteria in the oceans about two and a

30:56

half billion years ago. So

30:58

cyanobacteria innovated oxygenic

31:01

photosynthesis. So they're taking

31:03

common resources, sunlight, water,

31:05

carbon dioxide, performing photosynthesis

31:07

and releasing oxygen as

31:09

a byproduct. They

31:11

began, they initiated this very

31:13

long process of oxygenating

31:15

earth's atmosphere. Now that took

31:18

a really long time. I think it took close

31:20

to two billion years to like

31:22

really complete that process. But

31:25

it completely changed everything about the

31:27

planet because it went from an

31:30

environment in which there

31:32

was essentially no free oxygen in

31:34

the atmosphere whatsoever to an oxygen-rich

31:37

environment, a highly oxidizing environment. So

31:39

now you have an

31:41

atmosphere in oceans that are much more suffused

31:43

with free oxygen with O2 than they were

31:45

before. You have all kinds

31:47

of chemical reactions going on that were

31:50

impossible before. You have new

31:52

minerals forming. Fire is

31:54

only possible in a high oxygen environment,

31:56

which did not exist before life oxygenated

31:58

the environment. without fire, human

32:00

evolution would not have been what it was. So

32:04

it just creates this incredible

32:06

chain of consequences. It's even

32:08

possible that the emergence

32:10

of complex multicellular life was either

32:12

dependent upon or dramatically accelerated by

32:14

this oxygen-rich environment. Because once organisms learn

32:17

to take in oxygen and use

32:19

that for their metabolism, they take that

32:21

up to a new notch and they

32:23

become more energy efficient. And that allows

32:26

them to get bigger and more

32:28

complex. So that the

32:31

oxygenation of Earth, begun by cyanobacteria,

32:33

later continued by algae and land

32:35

plants, is probably the

32:37

single most profound way in which life changed

32:39

the planet. And

32:42

there's something kind of interesting when I

32:44

think about cyanobacteria, this kind of

32:48

like, what we, don't we

32:50

sometimes call it blue-green algae? So

32:53

when I think about this organism,

32:55

this very simple, very

32:58

primitive, early

33:00

organism that had such a dramatic

33:03

effect on all of these

33:05

different systems of the planet, I think

33:08

something that's curious is that often

33:10

when we think about evolution and

33:14

life, the way that

33:16

life changes, we like to categorize

33:18

things. We like to think about like low complexity

33:20

to high complexity, which doesn't always hold, we try

33:22

to, you know, we're always trying to put things

33:24

into buckets, right? And make these different constructs. But

33:27

one thing that's striking to me is

33:29

that cyanobacteria has

33:31

always been and continues

33:34

to be. It's

33:36

not like certain

33:39

other life forms where we see

33:41

this growth and change and then

33:43

those, I guess,

33:45

earlier forms are no longer adaptive and

33:48

they die off. And that's what's really

33:50

curious to me. And I mean, I'm

33:52

sure that maybe I'm not sure, maybe

33:54

you can tell me, genetically are the

33:56

ones we have today the same as

33:58

the ones from billions of years. ago?

34:00

Are they very, very highly conserved? But

34:02

the fact that these basic things continue

34:04

to have a niche and

34:07

continue to be

34:09

so fundamental on our planet is

34:12

fascinating. Absolutely.

34:14

And so this gets to the

34:16

whole idea of a living fossil,

34:18

right? An organism or species that

34:20

is so similar through geologic time

34:22

that it's almost as though it

34:24

had never changed. And

34:26

so my understanding is that there

34:29

are indeed species that

34:31

retain their fundamental characteristics

34:33

for inconceivably long times

34:36

because natural selection

34:38

has already hit upon a

34:40

system that works so well for

34:43

that species and their environment that

34:46

basically it's not coming across any

34:48

new changes that are advantageous enough

34:51

to merit being proliferated. My

34:54

understanding is that genetically evolution

34:56

never stops so that the genomes

34:59

of the modern cyanobacteria

35:01

are different from the

35:03

ancient ones, but not nearly

35:05

as different as say a species

35:07

that has gone through much more

35:09

dramatic adaptation or evolution.

35:12

And it is like, I guess

35:15

we can think of these species

35:17

as kind of the longest branches

35:20

on the tree of life. These are the

35:22

most unbroken branches that go as far back

35:24

as we can trace them. Whereas

35:27

others have ended a long time ago,

35:30

and that's just been the end

35:32

of their line completely. And others

35:35

have morphed and diverged in

35:37

much more complex ways. And so there's

35:39

some lineage today that we can trace

35:41

back, but their ancient forms are very

35:43

different from what they are now. And

35:45

then there's things like alligators

35:47

and crocodiles that have basically

35:50

that body plan and lifestyle has

35:52

evolved many times and kind of

35:55

been lost and re-evolved. And

35:58

it's similar with trees. trees

36:00

are not a closely related

36:03

group of plants taxonomically or

36:05

familiarly, it's a lifestyle choice

36:08

that plants come upon. That has

36:10

evolved many times. Some

36:12

of the first trees were actually ferns

36:15

that grew to the size of trees.

36:17

If you've ever seen a modern tree

36:19

fern, basically any plant that gets tall

36:21

enough and branches and

36:24

builds up enough woody masses is thought

36:27

of as a tree. There

36:29

are these lifestyles and

36:32

ecological approaches that just are extremely

36:34

successful and they've stayed around for

36:36

a really long time or if

36:38

they've been lost, they've come back.

36:41

Yeah, I love thinking of that as

36:43

a lifestyle choice. It's such

36:46

a good conceptualization. I

36:48

think it really clicks it into a clear

36:50

view. I can't help but think

36:52

about this concept like we

36:54

were talking about of long evolutionary

36:56

times, certain things being more conserved,

36:59

other things changing rapidly and almost

37:01

not even being

37:03

recognizable compared to their earlier

37:05

ancestors. I can't help but think

37:08

about this other quirk that has

37:10

occurred in life wherein organisms

37:14

actually engulfed

37:17

other organisms and became a

37:19

part of themselves. It's not

37:21

just now about these different

37:23

branches of evolution, but this

37:25

endosymbiosis. We could

37:27

not exist without having

37:30

consumed certain types of bacteria

37:32

and actually utilizing

37:34

them within our own body cells.

37:37

That's fascinating. I

37:40

agree. I think about that all the

37:42

time, that we are all composite creatures.

37:44

We are this hodgepodge of

37:46

the animal and

37:48

the microbial. Like

37:51

you're saying, every modern

37:53

plant is the descendant

37:55

of this primordial fusion in

37:58

which an ancient ocean-dwelling microbe

38:02

engulfed subsumed a cyanobacteria,

38:04

which eventually became chloroplasts

38:06

and plant cells, as

38:09

well as the bacteria that eventually

38:11

became mitochondria. And then

38:13

we animals just have the mitochondria part of

38:15

that. And then our

38:17

genomes, as multicellular animals,

38:20

our genomes are riddled

38:22

with genetic information from

38:24

various microbes and viruses,

38:26

a large percentage of our genomes,

38:28

in fact. And then horizontal gene

38:31

transfer, we know, now occurs not

38:33

just between bacteria, which are known

38:35

to be very genetically promiscuous and

38:37

able to exchange genetic information all

38:40

the time, but also across different

38:42

species and even kingdoms of life.

38:44

So you have plants and insects

38:46

and microbes trading genes in unexpected

38:48

ways. And that has all

38:51

required, you know, that's been one of the

38:53

substantial updates to kind of modern evolutionary theories,

38:55

that we now have to add all these

38:57

cross-links between the branches on

39:01

the trees of life. Or I like to think of it as, you

39:04

know, a mischievous wind that is blowing

39:06

pollen from one branch and one flower

39:08

to another in kind of unpredictable, whimsical

39:10

ways. And we have to kind of

39:13

go back and reverse-engineer all the connections.

39:16

Oh, it's so complicated, but in

39:18

the most ambitious way. And

39:21

it's interesting, too, to think about,

39:23

you know, this, like

39:25

we were talking about, this sort of complexity

39:28

of I

39:30

become you and you become me. And, you

39:32

know, this organism has

39:35

these bits and pieces in both

39:37

its cellular anatomy and also its

39:39

DNA from these other organisms. But

39:42

you mentioned when you were talking about a

39:45

lot of this horizontal gene transfer and this

39:47

sort of sharing of genetic information, not

39:49

just bacteria, but you mentioned viruses.

39:52

And of course, we can't talk

39:54

about life without talking about viruses.

39:56

And so I'm curious how you

39:58

grapple with this. question, kind of

40:00

going back to that earliest conversation

40:03

we had about what is alive

40:05

and how do we define it?

40:07

Because viruses are pesky,

40:09

aren't they? They are complicated. Yeah,

40:12

viruses are probably one of the more famous

40:17

thorns in this whole business

40:20

of trying to define life. And probably,

40:23

it is divisive amongst

40:25

mainstream scientists, but I

40:28

think there's a pretty significant contingent

40:30

of scientists who think that viruses

40:32

are either alive or they're

40:35

at the threshold of life. So for

40:37

me, it's difficult to exclude viruses from

40:42

the realm of life because I

40:44

don't see how on a fundamental

40:46

level they are really that different

40:48

from a multicellular parasite that is

40:50

also completely dependent on its host

40:53

to survive or reproduce. And so some

40:56

people will say, well, but a multicellular

40:58

parasite, a parasitic worm, it's made of

41:00

many different cells. It has its own

41:02

metabolism and such. True,

41:05

but if you remove it from the right

41:07

environment, it's completely useless and it's completely dead.

41:09

And it will die. Yeah. So

41:12

how is that really fundamentally different from

41:14

a virus needing a cell environment to

41:17

replicate itself? So I think viruses

41:19

qualify. I guess, yeah, I mean,

41:21

I've come to think

41:26

of the defining quality of

41:28

life as this capacity to

41:30

sustain oneself, to actively sustain

41:33

oneself. So

41:38

thermodynamics dictates that everything

41:40

is heading towards this

41:42

homogenous mush, right? It's

41:45

all going to dissolve into this homogenous mush

41:48

and nothing can escape

41:50

that fate in the end. But

41:52

what we call life are systems

41:54

that temporarily evade that fate by

41:57

actively using free energy to reduce their internal

41:59

energy. and maintain what would otherwise

42:01

be an incredibly improbable

42:04

high level of organization and

42:06

complexity. And so

42:08

viruses are doing that. They're just

42:11

hijacking another system to accomplish it.

42:13

But really, all living things are

42:15

dependent on other systems around them

42:17

to remain alive. There

42:19

is no such thing as an organism that

42:22

isn't dependent on its environment in

42:24

some way. So I don't really see them as unique in

42:26

that sense. Yeah, it's

42:29

interesting that there is...like, how

42:31

do we even define that

42:33

sort of cognitive threshold or

42:36

that cognitive stopping point that we often have?

42:38

And it's almost a feeling

42:40

more than a thought. Like,

42:43

yeah, but a virus, sure, it,

42:46

you know, thinking about, okay, virus versus parasitic worm,

42:48

for example. And yes, the worm has a digestive

42:50

tract and the worm has maybe like some sort

42:52

of nuclei where it can

42:55

experience sensations and

42:58

can be reactive to the outside world. And how

43:01

the hell does a virus do that with

43:03

nothing? It's so fundamentally basic. It's

43:05

got some sugar. It's got a little

43:08

bit of really basic nucleic

43:10

acid. And yet it's able to

43:12

continue to replicate

43:14

and to break on in there and

43:16

to fuck stuff up. And it's like,

43:19

I think the part that is fundamentally

43:22

freaky about viruses is the

43:24

fact that they can

43:27

exist. Yeah, I mean,

43:29

in some ways it makes me think also

43:31

of crystals. You

43:33

know, like, so crystals are able

43:35

to grow. Like, you can grow

43:37

a crystal at home and they

43:39

will faithfully replicate these

43:42

fairly complex, very orderly

43:44

structures. That's what defines a

43:46

crystal is just how orderly its structure is.

43:48

And I think

43:51

of ice, like, you know, we've all

43:53

seen snowflakes under a microscope. I mean,

43:55

isn't there something so incredibly organic feeling

43:57

about the intricacy of a... snowflake,

44:00

you know, seen at that resolution. And

44:03

that's exactly what ice crystals do as

44:05

well. It's like if an ice crystal

44:08

gets, you know, if an ice crystal is in

44:10

the right environment, it's going to create a chain

44:12

reaction of ice crystals, you know, through that liquid

44:14

environment. So there are these fundamental

44:17

processes, you know, occurring below

44:19

the threshold of what we

44:21

typically consider life that are

44:23

very, that very strongly resemble

44:26

what we could call some of the simplest

44:28

living entities are doing. And there's prions, right,

44:31

or even simpler than viruses, right? And they

44:33

manage to replicate themselves as well quite powerfully.

44:35

So, prions,

44:37

oh, man. Fascinating.

44:40

So, so, okay, I

44:43

want to make sure that we're sort of

44:45

jumping back into like this, this structure that

44:47

you developed. So we talked about microbial,

44:50

very, very early microbial

44:52

life, and sort of

44:54

the, in, in tense,

44:57

probably the largest, most dramatic

44:59

shift of Earth coming from

45:02

that, that change. And so

45:05

what's next? What is the next kind of

45:07

big shift? And how did that occur? So

45:11

one of the, you know, one of

45:13

the things I keep having to remind

45:15

myself of when I was writing this

45:17

book is that for the vast majority

45:19

of Earth's history, it was a purely

45:21

microbial planet, you know, for multiple billions

45:23

of years, it was purely

45:25

microbes. And, you know,

45:27

complex multicellular life is such a comparatively

45:30

recent introduction. So we don't even get

45:32

to the complex multicellular life

45:34

like animals and fungi and plants until,

45:36

let's say, roughly, you know, 500 million

45:39

years ago. And so between

45:42

the cyanobacteria kicking

45:47

off the oxygenation of Earth and 500 million

45:49

years ago, microbes

45:52

continue to do a lot of

45:54

interesting things to ocean

45:56

chemistry, you know, different types of

45:58

microbes may have dyed

46:00

parts of the ocean red

46:03

or pink or white, you know,

46:05

just depending on whatever chemical

46:07

reactions were going on in their bodies and what

46:10

kind of byproducts they were releasing. But

46:13

the major change was the one we talked

46:15

about, was the oxygenation of the ocean and

46:17

the atmosphere. And then

46:19

you get this explosion

46:22

of complex multicellular

46:24

life. Then there's

46:26

a really interesting event called

46:28

the Cambrian Substrate Revolution. So

46:30

many people have heard of the Cambrian

46:32

explosion, which is when all of these

46:34

incredible early animal forms

46:36

came onto the scene and they

46:39

had a lot of interesting exoskeletons

46:41

and claws and teeth and they

46:43

were kind of evolving complex prey

46:45

predator relationships for the first time.

46:48

But an interesting side story

46:50

to that is that as a

46:52

result of these new adaptations, many

46:55

of these creatures started to very

46:58

dramatically disturb the sea floor.

47:00

So early on, the sea floor

47:03

was kind of covered by this

47:05

thick microbial mat and these weird

47:07

Ediacaran life forms that we don't,

47:09

they're so bizarre, we don't even know if

47:11

they were animals or fungi or something else.

47:13

They would kind of move along these microbial

47:15

mats grazing on them. There are these weird

47:18

sessile fern-like things, you know, waving in

47:20

the currents attached to these mats. So

47:22

then the Cambrian animals come in and

47:24

they start tearing all these

47:26

mats up, digging into them to hide

47:29

themselves, digging into them to forage and find

47:31

prey. Scientists

47:34

have compared that to what settlers did

47:36

to the prairies when they came through

47:38

and kind of tore them all up

47:40

and converted them

47:42

to farmland. And so these animals-

47:44

The dust bowl. We had a big dust

47:46

bowl coming, huh? Yes. In

47:49

some ways, it was devastating for the

47:51

former Ediacaran life forms that depended on

47:53

this, you know, various sedates, closed

47:56

in environment. But ultimately, it made

47:58

the ocean much more habitable. because

48:00

it irrigated all of these layers of

48:02

seafloor sediments. And scientists have compared that

48:04

irrigation to a system of veins and

48:07

arteries. So it opened all these oxygen

48:09

and water rich channels, created

48:11

new layers of niches that new

48:13

species could evolve to occupy. And

48:17

now these kinds of microbial mats are

48:19

quite rare. They only exist in very

48:22

oxygen poor environments. And

48:25

most of the seafloor is much

48:27

more layered and diverse and inhabited

48:29

than it ever used to be

48:31

before the advent of these Cambrian

48:33

animals. So that's a very

48:35

powerful example of how

48:38

a evolutionary biological change can result

48:40

in a geological change, which can

48:42

then loop back to influence evolution,

48:44

which happens again and again. With

48:48

your Amex card

48:50

entertainment benefits like

48:56

special ticket access and pre-sales to select

48:58

campus events while supplies last, make every

49:00

tap music to your ears. So

49:03

the King's new lemonade lineup is

49:05

here. Name and a lemonade The

49:08

Smoothie King Way try strawberry. Guava

49:10

Lemonade ask refresher over ice

49:12

a power up in it

49:14

can energize, or a blueberry

49:17

lemonade smoothie lead it up

49:19

being. Made with

49:21

real fruit. Real juice for a

49:23

real sipping good summer. Yeah yeah,

49:26

Data is no Smoothie Kings New

49:28

lemonade lineup of for a limited

49:30

time. Who. Stars Day. Yeah,

49:34

I was gonna say even this

49:36

very simple organization, right, of like

49:39

rock, water, and air sort of

49:41

breaks down here. Oh, yeah. Because

49:44

where does the water end and the rock

49:46

begin? Exactly. It's also interconnected. It's almost

49:48

impossible to neatly separate it. I

49:51

love it. And then of course, I mean,

49:53

I'm gonna skip a lot in

49:55

between. Like we're like, okay, we've

49:57

got this explosion. And then. we

50:00

get on the scene at some point eventually, and

50:03

obviously a lot of things happen in

50:05

between, but I do

50:08

want this to be like a three-hour podcast, but

50:11

I'm not going to make this a three-hour

50:13

podcast. So I'm curious, obviously, there's

50:16

a million things that we could be talking about,

50:18

but in the way that

50:20

you kept your organizational structure, how

50:26

much do you get into the

50:28

in-between this massive microbial change and

50:30

this explosion into these little, I

50:32

don't know, anomocules before

50:34

you start to talk about the

50:38

massive change that again happens,

50:40

like bookending this story at

50:42

least as far as we know it

50:44

today, which is the Anthropocene.

50:46

Are there a lot of

50:50

dynamic changes between

50:52

this Cambrian era and the

50:54

Anthropocene era that are as

50:56

massive? One

50:59

of the things that writing this

51:01

book allowed me to do was

51:03

to better visualize these incredible evolutionary

51:05

arcs. There's one

51:07

that I think is particularly relevant to

51:09

your question that I did not properly

51:12

understand before taking this Earth System Science

51:14

approach. Sinobacteria

51:18

kick off the oxygenation of Earth, and

51:20

then that is later continued

51:22

by land plants more like 400

51:25

something million years ago, with the

51:27

advent of land plants and the

51:29

spread of forests. They

51:31

brought the level of oxygen up to

51:33

its current level and even pushed it

51:35

beyond so that in the Carboniferous, you

51:38

had maybe today we have 21 percent oxygen,

51:40

it was maybe 30-35 percent oxygen. This

51:44

was the period of time when you had

51:46

massive insects and arthropods like you

51:48

had dragonflies that were at least the

51:50

size of pigeons if not larger. I

51:54

know, and he had millipedes the size of

51:56

surfboards, so they were all bathed in this

51:58

incredible. incredibly oxygen-rich environment.

52:01

And it was also an extremely

52:03

flammable environment because it was so

52:05

oxygen-rich. There was a lot of raging

52:08

wildfires, far more

52:10

intense than what we see today. And

52:12

this period is called the Carboniferous because

52:14

this is when a lot of Earth's

52:17

coal deposits formed. Right.

52:20

So these are a lot of the fossil fuels

52:22

we're still using today. Exactly. So this

52:24

helps us better understand where fossil fuels

52:26

come from. So fossil fuels are called

52:28

fossil fuels because they are literally made

52:31

of the remains of ancient life that have

52:33

been compacted and cooked deep within the Earth.

52:36

So coal is mostly terrestrial plant

52:38

matter that was, you know, got

52:40

buried in swamps and compacted and

52:42

cooked. And then oil, gas, is

52:45

mostly plankton and, you

52:47

know, photosynthetic ocean life that was

52:49

buried on the seafloor and got

52:51

compacted and cooked. And

52:55

I'm going to forget the exact

52:57

numbers now, but Vaclav Schmiel, this

53:00

environmental scientist and analyst, has shown

53:02

that, you know, even a

53:04

mere gallon of gasoline is equivalent

53:06

to some ridiculous amount of living

53:09

matter. I think it's like, you

53:11

know, like, it's

53:13

like 20 elephants or something, let's say, you

53:15

know, worth living better. Yeah, we never

53:17

even think about that. I mean, obviously, because it is one

53:19

of the richest, most dense energy

53:22

sources where you, like, this is,

53:24

you know, going back to this

53:26

idea of everything being interconnected in

53:28

the most profound way. This is death

53:31

that was compounded

53:34

and now we're extracting that death

53:36

and utilizing it as a form

53:39

of energy. Of course, it's

53:42

going to be something like 20 elephants or whatever

53:44

the number may be because it's

53:47

such a rich source of energy

53:49

and we utilize it, like, without

53:51

a thought. Exactly. I

53:53

mean, it is extravagant. It

53:55

is ludicrously extravagant. I call

53:58

fossil fuels, Ecosystems in

54:01

an urn, you know, it's like you're saying

54:03

yeah, it is it's literally it is these

54:06

Condensed cemeteries of ancient life and

54:09

and all of the ancient sunlight

54:11

that they have harnessed and that

54:13

we are now unburying and unleashing

54:17

and so When we you know

54:19

when you properly realize that that is what

54:21

we are doing that we are going into

54:23

the earth and we are Unburying all of

54:25

this ancient life that is meant to be

54:27

sequestered and I say meant to be in

54:30

the sense that That is

54:32

how the carbon cycle has worked for

54:34

so long You know is that the

54:36

the planet's climate is largely dictated by

54:39

where carbon is stored and how it

54:41

is moving through the various reservoirs of

54:43

carbon in the earth system When

54:46

there's excess carbon in the atmosphere

54:48

the planet heats up when there's

54:50

excess carbon Sequestered in the crust

54:52

and the deep ocean the planet

54:54

cools down and we have come

54:56

along and Unburied huge amounts of

54:58

carbon and release it to the

55:00

atmosphere causing this Incredibly rapid change

55:02

and going back to your point

55:05

earlier. I do think it is

55:07

possible that our species is

55:10

Moving more carbon to the atmosphere more

55:12

quickly than any than at any other

55:15

time in the entirety of earth history

55:17

Over the past four and a half

55:19

billion years and that's truly saying something

55:21

when you know, just how you know

55:24

dramatic Transformations earth has

55:26

gone through And over

55:28

what time scales to this is like in in

55:30

in an eye Exactly,

55:32

and that's the thing It's the combined

55:35

speed and scale of our changes that

55:37

that really stand out that make our

55:39

influence so outsized No

55:41

other species before us has changed the

55:43

planet and changed so many layers of

55:45

the planet so quickly You

55:48

know the the oxygenation of earth is

55:50

certainly as profound if not more profound

55:52

than what's happening right now but that

55:54

was an incredibly gradual process compared to

55:57

fossil fuel driven climate change Yeah.

56:00

What a profound topic. I

56:04

feel like we just have to take a breath and breathe on that.

56:06

But even going back to what you just

56:08

mentioned about the extraction

56:11

of these incredibly energy

56:13

rich dead

56:18

organisms, for lack of a better

56:20

way to describe

56:22

that. I

56:24

think about this fact that

56:27

this is a zero-sum

56:29

game. That

56:31

will never happen again, not

56:34

to the extent that it had. We

56:36

are extracting billions of

56:38

years of life. We're

56:41

not extracting 10,000 years of life. The

56:46

more that we take, the less

56:48

that there is. Like

56:50

you mentioned about the carbon

56:53

cycle, when it's sequestered the

56:56

climate cools, when it's released

56:59

into the atmosphere, the climate

57:01

warms, even beyond that

57:03

very simple calculus. When we

57:05

use this stuff, there's

57:08

less in the future. Also,

57:11

this genie out of the

57:14

bottle phenomenon is

57:16

really profound. You mentioned

57:18

it's meant to be

57:20

there, and then you qualified, which I think

57:22

was so important. Not because there's some

57:25

plan, there's no

57:27

intentionality here. Nobody designed it to

57:29

be this way. But when it's

57:31

no longer in situ,

57:35

when it's no longer held in

57:37

the place,

57:39

the layer, the mix

57:42

that it naturally deposited

57:44

over billions of years,

57:48

the entire system

57:50

is dramatically transformed.

57:54

We don't know what that

57:56

means for a system to unleash the.

58:00

energy of a spring into

58:02

it. Everything changes at that

58:04

point in ways that are

58:06

like even our best models

58:08

can't really predict. That's

58:11

one of the truly most

58:13

terrifying aspects of anthropogenic climate

58:15

change is that there is

58:17

so much that is unknown.

58:19

Right now, scientists are even

58:21

seriously questioning whether we

58:24

have already tipped the climate

58:26

into a new state. Is

58:29

that the reason for what seems like

58:33

this accelerated rate of sea

58:35

temperature increase and such? Right,

58:38

like a runaway effect. Right.

58:41

Or is it just

58:43

a multi-year blip and then things

58:45

are going to continue on a

58:47

more affected trend

58:49

after that? There

58:52

are so many complex feedbacks that

58:54

it's impossible to precisely predict them.

58:57

Because this has never happened before,

58:59

not only in human history, but

59:01

potentially in the entire history of

59:03

the planet, we don't have any

59:05

precedent to rely on. All of

59:07

those unknowns are

59:10

just so scary to contemplate

59:13

that. We are really pushing

59:15

ourselves. What we know

59:17

is already bad enough, but then to be pushing

59:19

ourselves into even unknown territory beyond

59:22

that is so much worse. I'm

59:26

curious then, coming around full

59:28

circle to your experience sitting

59:31

down to report on

59:34

this book, to write it, to put all of

59:37

this research and all of the

59:39

insights and the paradigm shifts

59:41

that occurred within you as

59:44

you began to think about these things

59:46

in new and exciting ways. The

59:48

detached scientist journalist

59:51

who looks at these

59:53

fascinating phenomena and tells these

59:55

stories from a position

59:58

separate. than

1:00:00

them is maybe a happy

1:00:03

scientist, journalist,

1:00:05

or at least one with

1:00:07

a neutral mood. But the

1:00:10

minute that we really start to introspect

1:00:12

and reflect in a major way, and

1:00:14

that sort of realization creeps up that

1:00:16

like, uh-oh, I'm a part

1:00:18

of this story. This is

1:00:20

not a story I'm reporting on

1:00:23

from outside. This is my environment,

1:00:25

and this is my reality, and

1:00:27

that of everything and everyone I

1:00:29

ever loved. It is that of

1:00:31

the planet of which

1:00:33

I am inextricably linked.

1:00:36

How do you handle the existential

1:00:38

dread that comes from that, Faris?

1:00:42

Yeah, I do. I do find myself toggling

1:00:45

or even careening between very

1:00:47

different emotional states that

1:00:49

have come out of this kind of research, because,

1:00:51

you know, so going back to that idea of

1:00:54

all life being an extension of Earth, so I

1:00:56

really have come to see myself and all of

1:00:58

us as this literal extension

1:01:00

of the planet. And so,

1:01:02

and when I think of what we

1:01:05

are doing to the overall system and

1:01:07

how it comes back to harm, not

1:01:10

only us, but countless non-human species, and

1:01:12

then of course all of our future generations,

1:01:14

it is so difficult

1:01:17

not to be overwhelmed with this mix

1:01:20

of, you know, anger and

1:01:22

despair, you know? And

1:01:24

then when I, but then

1:01:26

this research also requires you to

1:01:29

take this completely inhuman geologic

1:01:31

cosmic perspective, to

1:01:35

contemplate billions upon billions of years.

1:01:38

And I do find a kind of solace

1:01:40

in this, and I think that

1:01:42

a lot of geoscientists and related

1:01:44

thinkers have talked about this, that

1:01:46

when you are forced to take

1:01:48

that perspective, you

1:01:50

do, I keep coming back to the incredible

1:01:52

resilience of the Earth system as a

1:01:54

whole. I mean, we can't escape the

1:01:57

fact that Earth has been alive for

1:01:59

something like this. four billion years

1:02:01

and has remained alive that whole time.

1:02:03

Now, of course, that involves, you know,

1:02:05

repeated catastrophes and the loss of most

1:02:08

extant species at the time in each

1:02:10

one of those catastrophes. So it's no

1:02:13

consolation for any individual species

1:02:16

or civilization. But

1:02:18

it's more of a planetary level

1:02:21

solace that this Earth system we

1:02:23

inhabit and are just a small

1:02:25

part of is an astonishingly resilient

1:02:27

and beautiful and complex entity. And

1:02:29

there's just something I just find,

1:02:31

you know, a certain kind of

1:02:34

faith in that, that the

1:02:37

Earth as a whole is going to keep going.

1:02:39

It's going to take a lot to completely

1:02:42

kill the planet. You know, I don't know

1:02:45

what is in store for humanity in

1:02:48

our future, but I think that some people,

1:02:50

you know, they have concerns about

1:02:52

the planet as a whole, you know, being completely annihilated

1:02:55

or obliterated or dying. And I think

1:02:57

that's going to be really, really difficult

1:02:59

to, you know, for a planet

1:03:01

to actually reach that point. Yeah,

1:03:04

I would agree. I mean, I think obviously there's going

1:03:06

to be a point cosmically where that

1:03:09

happens because of like, you know, like

1:03:12

these larger planetary dynamics. But

1:03:14

from within, I would

1:03:17

agree with that. And that's why I

1:03:19

sometimes think it's funny when I'm watching

1:03:21

Hollywood portrayals of like, that are set

1:03:23

in post-apocalyptic eras, and you see these

1:03:26

huge geologic shifts, you

1:03:29

know, and these huge kind of environmental shifts. And

1:03:31

you're like, we would not still be there. Like,

1:03:34

we would not be the characters in this

1:03:36

play. Definitely not. But

1:03:39

that takes us back to that weird

1:03:41

concept, though, of ingenuity

1:03:44

and technology and, you

1:03:46

know, this sort of

1:03:48

human capability to build

1:03:51

things that like for our

1:03:53

survival to become in

1:03:56

our narrow and anthropocentric

1:03:59

view more. important than the survival

1:04:01

of anything and everything else. And well, I'll

1:04:03

just make a machine for that. And

1:04:06

that's kind of a really interesting approach

1:04:08

that we have. And, and I think

1:04:10

one that contributes to this devastating feedback

1:04:12

loop. Yeah, absolutely.

1:04:14

And I think, um, I think grappling

1:04:16

with all of this, you know, reckoning

1:04:19

with all of this also forces one

1:04:21

to realize, to accept that in

1:04:23

a way, you know,

1:04:26

it is, we always inhabit

1:04:28

a world of both wonder

1:04:30

and horror. You know, they've

1:04:32

always been simultaneous. Um, and

1:04:34

it is, you know, it is equally, um, misguided

1:04:37

to fixate on one over the other.

1:04:39

You know, living kind

1:04:41

of requires you to embrace both.

1:04:45

Um, you know, so it is, it is a time of

1:04:48

horrific wildfires. And

1:04:50

yet that doesn't erase the existence of

1:04:53

the flowers that are dependent on fires,

1:04:55

um, to bloom and to exist at

1:04:58

all. You know what I mean? Like,

1:05:00

there's, there's both the miracle of life.

1:05:03

Um, and the horrors of what we've done

1:05:05

to the planet are still coexisting. And I

1:05:07

think that is what in some

1:05:09

ways we are fighting or should be fighting

1:05:12

even harder to save, right? Is to, um,

1:05:15

preserve that, um,

1:05:18

uh, incredible, you know, beauty

1:05:20

and complexity and wonder, and

1:05:23

really just this, the miracle that life is

1:05:25

that any of this exists at all, that

1:05:27

any of this happened at all, right? That

1:05:30

this incredible chain of events even began in

1:05:32

the first place. It's

1:05:34

so, so funny. I feel like here in

1:05:36

this, in these last few minutes, the

1:05:39

thing that, uh, I hate it

1:05:41

because it's a shift. It's a little bit of a

1:05:43

shift away, but again, thinking about those parallels and it's

1:05:45

my show, damn it. So I'm going to do what

1:05:47

I want to do. But, um, I think about the

1:05:49

work again that I do as

1:05:51

an existentially oriented psychologist that

1:05:55

very often when I'm working with patients, especially

1:05:57

patients who are dealing with a lot of.

1:06:00

issues around mortality and

1:06:03

big questions about meaning and purpose

1:06:06

and death and all of these

1:06:08

things, we often get

1:06:10

into the existential. One of the

1:06:13

fundamental tenets of a lot

1:06:15

of existential theory,

1:06:17

thought, and practice

1:06:20

is that it's

1:06:23

too much to bear. That

1:06:26

literally life is deeply

1:06:31

full of suffering and

1:06:33

incredibly anxiety inducing and

1:06:36

overwhelming. Many theorists will

1:06:38

call that being in

1:06:40

the ontologic mode or being in the

1:06:42

existential mode, but then our

1:06:44

brains don't let us stay there

1:06:46

for that long in that sheer

1:06:48

contemplative terror. We

1:06:51

are then brought out into what we call

1:06:53

the normal mode of being where we start

1:06:55

watching bullshit reality TV and we buy things

1:06:57

on Amazon and we get back

1:06:59

into these rhythms of distraction

1:07:01

and we go back

1:07:04

and forth and back and forth.

1:07:06

That balance is what allows us

1:07:08

to both handle

1:07:11

the heaviness of the

1:07:14

unbearable lightness of being, but

1:07:17

also the absurdity and

1:07:20

the joy. I cannot help but see

1:07:22

a parallel with what

1:07:25

you just said about that

1:07:27

balance between fire that wipes

1:07:30

out an entire ecosystem, but then

1:07:33

allows something else to thrive

1:07:35

in its place. It can't be

1:07:37

one without the other. Yeah,

1:07:40

I love that idea of

1:07:43

the necessity of moving between

1:07:45

very different modes of thinking,

1:07:48

very different intellectual spaces. That really

1:07:50

resonates with me. I

1:07:52

spent so much time in this

1:07:55

project moving between very different realms,

1:07:57

moving between the microscopic and the planetary. and

1:08:00

trying to connect them between the human and

1:08:02

the non-human and trying to connect them. But

1:08:05

I think we're seeing, you know,

1:08:08

it sounds so trite in some way,

1:08:10

but it's like the just the importance

1:08:12

of connections themselves has been such a

1:08:14

powerful theme in ecological thinking and

1:08:17

recent books about ecology,

1:08:19

you know, entanglement, connection,

1:08:21

intertwining. And I

1:08:24

think that's in part because the current

1:08:27

planetary crisis is forcing us to

1:08:29

realize the importance of such connections.

1:08:31

They're kind of, they've always been there,

1:08:33

but they're kind of glowing or searing

1:08:36

with renewed importance right now. And

1:08:39

they require a shift

1:08:42

in the type of thinking

1:08:44

that generally comes easy. And

1:08:46

I don't know if that's

1:08:48

fundamentally neurological or if it's

1:08:50

deeply socialized, but as a

1:08:53

species, we really like

1:08:55

black and white thinking. We

1:08:57

really like clarity and certainty.

1:08:59

But what you're talking about

1:09:02

is like the

1:09:04

definition of interconnectivity is being in

1:09:07

the ambivalence space. It's being in

1:09:09

the in-between and saying, no, I'm

1:09:11

not here and I'm not there.

1:09:14

I'm both and I'm neither. And

1:09:17

that is a deeply, profoundly threatening

1:09:19

experience to a lot

1:09:21

of people. But just

1:09:23

like in my work as a

1:09:26

psychologist and just like in your

1:09:28

work doing the reporting on this

1:09:30

book, if we allow ourselves to

1:09:34

exist in that sort of liminal

1:09:36

space, we allow

1:09:38

ourselves to see suffering

1:09:40

and beauty at the same time.

1:09:43

And I think we allow ourselves

1:09:45

to have a more authentic relationship

1:09:48

to life. Right.

1:09:50

And I think that it's often

1:09:53

in the in-between spaces and also

1:09:55

at the extremes of things that

1:09:57

we often come to our greatest

1:09:59

insight. You know, I think one

1:10:02

of the reasons there's been a

1:10:04

lot of resistance within mainstream science

1:10:07

to thinking of anything outside

1:10:10

the level of the cell or the organism

1:10:12

as alive is

1:10:14

that a lot of scientists do not want

1:10:16

to conflate an ecosystem or

1:10:18

a planet with an organism. And it

1:10:21

gets to this whole controversy,

1:10:23

this whole history surrounding the idea of

1:10:26

a superorganism. And I totally understand that

1:10:28

because, you know, an organism

1:10:30

as defined today is not identical

1:10:33

to an ecosystem. I

1:10:35

personally don't think of Earth as an organism, even

1:10:37

though that's some way that people have interpreted

1:10:40

this whole idea of Gaia or a living

1:10:42

planet over time. I

1:10:44

think that we have to recognize that life is

1:10:46

a multiscaler phenomenon. It happens at different

1:10:48

scales and it's not identical at each

1:10:50

of those scales, but it rhymes

1:10:53

at each of those scales that there will be

1:10:55

resonance between each of them. And so there

1:10:57

is, I can't really say any logical reason to

1:10:59

say, no, viruses and

1:11:01

anything below the cell is not alive

1:11:04

and anything above the organism is not

1:11:06

alive. I think we need to look

1:11:08

at that whole spectrum from, you know,

1:11:11

virus cell, organism, population, ecosystem, planet, and

1:11:13

recognize that the phenomenon we call life

1:11:15

emerges at each of those scales and

1:11:18

will be similar in some ways, but not exactly

1:11:20

the same at each of them. And

1:11:23

so what I take away from

1:11:25

what you just said is that

1:11:27

there is a way for us

1:11:29

to fully embrace these views without

1:11:31

being pseudoscientific and woo-woo. Like we

1:11:33

can have it both ways. We

1:11:35

can see this in a very

1:11:37

deeply scientific way, but we

1:11:40

can still, it can still resonate

1:11:42

with us in this kind of

1:11:44

complex and meaningful and

1:11:46

profound way without having to

1:11:48

make these wild leaps or

1:11:51

make these claims that tend

1:11:53

into the kind of, into the woo. Exactly.

1:11:56

I mean, I think the, you know,

1:11:58

the fact that life is profoundly. change

1:12:00

the planet is now a well accepted

1:12:02

and extremely well supported fact. And

1:12:05

this concept or you know,

1:12:07

framework viewpoint of seeing Earth

1:12:10

as a vast interconnected living

1:12:12

system is gaining acceptance. That's

1:12:14

the conclusion I've come to. And

1:12:17

you know, so while it remains

1:12:19

provocative to just plainly state Earth

1:12:22

is alive, there is

1:12:24

I believe a meaningful, that is a meaningful

1:12:26

statement, there is a scientific way to approach

1:12:28

and to look at that. And

1:12:32

yeah, absolutely. I think that, you know, so

1:12:34

much of these ancient

1:12:36

insights and intuitions and beliefs are,

1:12:38

you know, now being echoed by

1:12:40

the most recent scientific thinking. I

1:12:44

love it. Well, gosh, I feel like

1:12:46

that is such a good kind of

1:12:48

stopping point, even though we could go

1:12:50

on forever. This was a really inspiring

1:12:54

and like motivating conversation

1:12:56

for me. And

1:12:59

I hope that the folks who are listening kind of feel

1:13:02

the same way. You know, maybe this

1:13:04

feels like one of those episodes that

1:13:06

we might want to go back and

1:13:08

listen to again, because there's so much

1:13:11

there. And maybe it'll inspire some really

1:13:13

interesting debates and conversations within

1:13:15

your own life. Everybody, the

1:13:17

book is Becoming Earth, How Our

1:13:19

Planet Came to Life by Faris

1:13:22

Jaber. Thank you so much, Faris,

1:13:24

for being

1:13:26

on the show, for doing

1:13:28

this important work and also

1:13:30

for kind of tickling us

1:13:32

intellectually today. No, thank you. It's

1:13:34

my pleasure. And everybody listening, thank

1:13:37

you for coming back week after week. I'm

1:13:39

really looking forward to the next time we

1:13:41

all get together to talk to you. At

1:13:47

Planet Fitness, a lot has changed since 1998, but

1:13:50

our membership has always been just $10 a month. On

1:13:53

June 28, that rate will increase to $15

1:13:55

a month for new members. So if you've

1:13:57

been thinking about joining, now is the perfect

1:13:59

time. to lock in $10 a month for good. Once

1:14:02

you join, your rate will never increase for the

1:14:04

life of your membership. Enjoy free fitness training and

1:14:06

equipment for every workout, all in the Judgment Free

1:14:09

Zone for $10 a month. Don't

1:14:11

miss out. Offer ends Thursday, June 27th. Rejoining

1:14:14

after cancellation will result in change in membership price. See

1:14:16

club for details. It's time for

1:14:18

today's Luckyland Horoscope with Victoria Cash.

1:14:21

Life's gotten mundane, so shake up the

1:14:23

daily routine and be adventurous with a

1:14:25

trip to Luckyland. You know what they

1:14:27

say, your chance to win starts with

1:14:29

a spin. So go to luckylandslots.com to

1:14:32

play over a hundred social casino style

1:14:34

games for free for your chance to

1:14:36

redeem some serious prizes. Get lucky today

1:14:38

at luckylandslots.com. Available

1:14:40

to players in the US, excluding Washington and

1:14:42

Michigan. No purchase necessary. VGW group, void where

1:14:45

prohibited by law. 18 plus terms and conditions

1:14:47

apply.