Doomed to Fail - Ep. 47: Doomed to fail species? The story of the passenger pigeon

Episode Date: September 11, 2023

Join us for the story of the Passenger Pigeon - America’s most prolific bird that flocked in the billions until we discovered they were easy to kill and also delicious. Within 100 years, they went from blocking out the sun with their flocks to being totally extinct. Learn their history and the possibility of their future with de-extinction technology. Listener poll: Should we bring back dinosaurs? Farz says 100% yes, Taylor says we’ve been through this, and it’s never a good idea. Pics via the Creative Commons & #midjourney #AIWhat Caused the Mass Extinction of Billions of Passenger Pigeons?38. Back From The Dead And Ready To Party: Passenger Pigeons, De-extinction, & Cloning with Revive & Restore's Ben Novak - Grow Everything Biotech PodcastThe Birds | The New YorkerDid not read but should have read - Amazon.com: A Feathered River Across the Sky: The Passenger Pigeon's Flight to Extinction (Audible Audio Edition)Passenger Pigeons – On Wildlife  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail]   Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

In the matter of the people of the state of California, first is Hortonthal James Simpson, case number B.A.019. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can go ahead and kick things off. And then we can head straight at the answer land. All right. Exciting. Welcome to doomed to fail. The podcast, we cover two stories, one historical, one true crime, about things that are doomed to fail. I'm Farr's joined here by Taylor.

Hi, Taylor. hello and we are we're just discussing how we're such a jet-setting podcast group the most jet setting i'm in california at the moment and then i'm going to have dinner with fars in texas later today and then i'm leaving for seattle the next day gross i mean cool you don't love seattle you don't love seattle what do you not love seattle um it's like I don't, it's dirty, it rains there, and I was really disappointed by the, what's it called, Space Needle? Oh, yeah, yeah, that's not. Like, go to Las Vegas and see the stratosphere. That's like way better.

Yeah, I mean, I don't even know. I think Seattle, I might have been to Seattle at this point, like, 180 times. Like, I'm over it. Yeah. I could see the value the first 10 times I went, and now it's just like another place I have to go. So I only went once that it was for your wedding and it was fine. They had really good Pizzolay, which is not a Seattle dish, but I just happened to go to a Mexican restaurant and have really good soup. Really? Which restaurant? That's all that. I have literally no idea of Mars. It was like a million years ago. I don't, when I even get married, I got married seven years ago. I was pregnant with my beautiful boy, but other than that, I don't know.

Yeah. Yeah. And then I need to send you suggestions for where we should go get dinner tonight. Yay, excited, downtown Dallas. Unless you have preferences. I absolutely do not. Okay, then we will, I will figure something out. What do you, um, so okay, let's go ahead and kick things off because you got to scurry off the airport, um, and I got to get about doing life stuff.

So you go first this time, I think, right? I do. Yep. Okay, so my drink is going to be an espresso martini, which I think I've done before, but it just feels like an espresso martini kind of a do i always say is all you drink all you drink is like that's all you drink now it's weird how many calories in espresso martini um i don't want to know great i'm happy for you that you love them so much i found this one place in austin that is a really fun one which is they take they have a nitro cold brew station so they fill nitro cold brew and then pour the liquor in on top of that and then put little powdered sugar and stuff oh it's so good

so rich and delicate. You're going to die. It's like a four logo. I know. I know. It's like diabetes. It's really bad. But it's delicious.

Awesome. Well, great. That's exciting. Mine is an Astoria cocktail, which I just picked because it was number one on the list of the top cocktails in 1914. because my story ends in 1914. So the story of cocktail is one dash of orange bitters, two-thirds of a jigger of Tom Jinn, and one-third a jigger of French vermouth.

So it's like a martini with orange bitters. Sounds lovely and old-timey. Yeah, yeah. I think it is too. Okay, so I will go and get started. So I was in New York last week, and I was like, there are so many people here. I don't know what to do.

Like, I saw more people, maybe I said this, but I saw more people last weekend that I've seen in like six years. That tracks. Physical people. And then I was like, oh, my God, there's so many people. Then I was thinking, what if I didn't do a person this time and did something else instead?

So I looked around New York City, and I was like, what else do I see? And I saw a pigeon. So today we're going to talk about the passenger pigeon. Do you know anything about the passenger pigeon? Is it, it's a generic pigeon that was trained, right? Nope. Wow. So, okay, it's a species of pigeon.

Yes. Okay. Well, interesting. And it is, and so we'll get into it. But it is, it is extinct. It no longer exists, the passenger pigeon. Oh. It's one type of pigeon. Yeah, it's a sad story. It's really weird. So another thing that happened when I was in New York, let me look at this right now. So there was this, I was on the street and there was a woman and she was like looking at a bug and taking a picture of it. And then she like really dramatically stomped on it.

And I was like, that's weird. But then I like let it go. And then later I saw an article, I think of the New York Times, there's this bug called a, I think it's a spongy moth. it is a moth and it is red on the inside I believe it's this one and New Yorkers are and they told everybody in New York

to kill them on the spot spongy moth yeah it's like red and blue I don't know or maybe lantern flies is it a lantern fly it's a lantern fly okay wait

now I'm back on the New York Times there's a lantern fly and anyway they're like red in the middle they're actually kind of pretty but they're invasive and they can hurt plants and trees yeah but like

it's just like kill it, but it was just so weird to say a woman, like, frantically stomping this red bug in the street, and I was like, what is that? But anyway, that is a weird level of aggression to, like, you just witness random life. It was just, yeah, I was like, it's so weird to be like, everyone in the city kill these bugs. They are, but they're bad, but they're baddies. They're trying to trick you, I guess. Anyway, that just, I thought about that. But, so, Fars, I want you to imagine that it's 1813. And you are hands, and you are hands. out with your good friend John James Audubon and John James Audubon fucking loves birds.

You've heard of his society. I've heard of the Audubon Society, yes. For the longest time I thought it had to do with cars and then I learned better. Oh, yeah. My Porsche on the Autobahn? Yes. It sounds like Audubon, exactly. Yeah, totally.

So, John James Audubon loves birds. And he loves birds in a natural history is new kind of way. So like a pre Teddy Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt's like born a couple decades later. But he loves it in like a rich dude way of loving natural history. So when I was at Hyde Park to bring it back to FDR and in the Roosevelt's, there are cases and cases of birds in their house. Like just like behind glass, like these birds that FDR him. himself killed stuffed and like cataloged you know like that was like a pastime for these like rich rich young boys and they like wanted like his dad was like you can do it but like make sure you're

cataloging it you know what i mean like don't just like shoot these animals for fun like do it in like a scientific research by which is ridiculous um it just like not not ridiculous but like weird well no that that sounds funny do you remember the um the two kids the which kids who wanted to commit commit commit the perfect murder yes yes leopold and lobe yeah yeah yeah like i think one of them his stuff ended up going into like the museum of science and history or whatever yes i remember that and they won't tell you which ones are his because people would get mad exactly i remember that yeah um yeah so exactly so it's i think it's weird because it's like a rich guy in a really rural guys hobby, right? It's like I just picture like a dude in the middle of like Texas and like a

small town killing birds. And I also picture like Taye Roosevelt killing birds. There was a weird there's a weird overlap between like the rich and the poor where like hobbies eventually come back together. It's just like in different orders of magnitude. One is yachting in the ocean and the other one is like hunting alligators in the swamp. Exactly. Exactly. Um, So, yeah, FDR, he gave the rest of his birds to the natural history museum, and I saw them like that the day after I saw them at his house. And I think it's so interesting. This is nothing to do with passenger pigeons. But he had a really special thing where FDR knew his place in history.

Like he knew that his home was going to go to the public and be a museum. Sometimes I think about, like, what if I, like, roped off my office and people would like look into it and be like, oh, this is where Taylor had an office. You know what I mean? We are going to be famous enough to where that will happen to us. Yeah. Anyway, so Teddy Roosevelt did that as well. He escaped into nature a lot when he was sad. I don't know if you know this, but Teddy Roosevelt's mom and wife died on the same day.

And it was terrible, and he kind of disappeared to the wilderness. He went to school and everybody was like, this dude is weird because he has all these dead birds in his room. You know, just like something that they did. But before them, Audubon is drawing birds and killing them, but drawing them very beautiful. If you look at his images, they're beautiful. He does beautiful wildlife paintings and drawings. So, again, it's 1813, and you and JJA, John James Audubon, are on horses riding through the plains of America, like in the Northeast.

I don't know exactly where. And I'm going to read you a quote, and it's pretty long, but I'm going to read you the whole thing. So imagine you and him riding horses out in the woods. in America. Got it? Same page. I can't see your face, but I feel like, yes, I love this. Okay. So, here's what he said. On a horse. I dismounted, seated myself on an eminence. Okay, I'm sorry, over. I dismounted, seated myself on an eminence, and began to mark with my

pencil, making a dot for every flock that passed. In a short time finding the task which I had undertaken impracticable, as the birds poured in countless multitudes. I rose, and counting the dots then put down, I found that 163 had been made in 21 minutes. I traveled on and still met more the farther I proceeded. The air was literally filled with pigeons. The light of the noon day was obscured by an eclipse. The dung fell in spots, not unlike melting flakes of snow, and the continued buzz of wings had a tendency to low my senses to repose. I cannot describe to you the extreme beauty of their aerial evolutions when a hawk chance to press upon the rear of the flock at once like a torrent, and with a noise like thunder, they rushed into a compact mass,

pressing upon each other towards the center. In these almost solid masses, they darted forward and undulating in angular lines, descended and swept close over the earth with inconceivable velocity, mounted perpendicularly so as to resemble a vast column and went high, were seen wheeling and twisting within their continued lines, which then resembled the coils of a gigantic serpent. Before sunset, I reached Louisville, distance from Hardensburg 55 miles, and the pigeons were still passing in undiminished numbers and continued to do so for three days in succession. That is a very posh way to describe a murmuration. It's a shit ton of pigeons.

It's a shit ton of pigeons. Yeah. What he was seeing was like probably a billion passenger pigeons. They would fly overhead for a days and days and days. So right now in America, we have billionaires, you know, and people, have you seen those graphs where it's like, how do you conceive a billion dollars?

Yeah, yeah. It's orders of magnitude that are like so dramatic that your brain can't comprehend. Exactly. So a million seconds is 11 days. A billion seconds is 31 years. You know, like it's just so much more.

So like a billion passenger pigeons is like eight times as many regular pigeons as we have today. like so many fucking pigeons it's unbelievable um so that was in 1813 where ottoman is seeing them in the air the they're flying over you for days and days and days um in 1900 the last passenger pigeon was killed in the wild and in 1914 101 years later after that account the last passenger pigeon martha washington died in captivity at the Cincinnati's there. Wait,

you're 19, what? What happened? 1914. That's what you said 1914. Got it. Yeah. That's when Martha died. So what happened?

How do you go from like a billion of something to zero of something in such a short amount of time? So the passenger pigeon lived in North America from the Great Lakes down to Mexico. They were probably always there in these huge flocks. also were in smaller flocks as well. It wasn't like, they didn't have to be in the huge flocks, but most of the time they were. They were, there were so many pigeons. I feel like I wrote so many pigeons in caps so many times in this outline, because it's just so many fucking pigeons. They would like come and roost in a tree and they would break the tree. They would be on every

branch of the tree, you know, and the trees would break. So I also, there was a, there's like a thing, a meme i saw like many years ago but it was like god gives birds the gift of flight and the pigeon says no thank you i'll get there by walking through the home depot parking lot i love that um but so they there were so many passenger pigeons that would snap trees when they would land i mean of course because you have like a billion birds like landing on a forest they would like destroy the forest destroy the trees. They were together in those big groups, you know, to keep their numbers up

and to stop predators from attacking them. They also left behind a lot of bird poop. Of course. And that quote above, it's like when Audubon was like, it's falling like the snow. That's fucking disgusting. And then they would leave like up to a foot of bird poop on the ground

after they were done like nesting. They're really pretty. they're really pretty they're an elegant pigeon they don't look like they're not like they're like more dove-like than current pigeons and you see like that's yeah i want a dove is a pigeon is it really but yeah it's like so they're they're more genetically similar to like the morning dove um which is also a pigeon oh wow it's like the same this is i got a little bit into genetics a little bit later But, like, yeah, it's like there's the same, like, you know, family or whatever. Oh, yeah, the Columbidia family is doves and pigeons.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So the dove gets the good rep and the pigeon gets the bad one. But so they would, so they do these big fox. They poop all over the ground. Sometimes it helped the land. Sometimes it didn't.

As we know, like land needs to rest. So that's why there's like, you know, burning of land. And you have to like, rotate. your crops and things like that. So sometimes it helped those a little bit. Sometimes it just would destroy land if there was a ton. They are, you're talking about what they look like. So what's rare for this type of bird is they have sexual demorphism, which means

the male and the female look different. Obviously, we see that in like, um, Pycocks, like, you know, like, yeah, yeah. We see that in like all sorts of animals, but usually not in pictures. pigeons, but in the passenger pigeon, they were different. They both had black feet. Oh, they had red feet and red eyes, which is terrifying. Red eyes, black beaks. And then the man, the male had a red belly and the women's,

women's, whatever, was great. So that's red and great. I know. I'm like, what am I doing? The female, it was great. So they, you know, they looked a little bit different. They ate nuts and seeds and berries. Farmers didn't love that.

So now we're, like, farming the land because obviously they lived in the land with, like, native people for, you know, centuries. And then they, farmers would be like, oh, they're eating all of our, you know, all of our seeds. They eat some acorns, but not, like, terrible. They could eat insects if they wanted to, if they, like, had to, but not a ton. Animals would, you know, eat them. Obviously, they had natural predators, but, like, they didn't even make a dent. Like, an eagle isn't going to kill a billion passenger pigeons. Right.

know um but you know who is going to kill a billion passenger pigeons people people and you know why we killed them food swab yeah they were delicious yeah um they were delicious that's like eating that's like eating because i'm so used to l a pigeons it's like i know once you've seen one you're like oh my god and so did you watch i can't remember did you watch succession I've seen bits and pieces So their mom So obviously it's about their dad But their mom

There's like There's so much like symbolism in it I'm sure But their mom is like This like British woman who's very very thin And she has this thing where she like doesn't Well she hates her children and she's like pretty awful But she doesn't eat very much And she like does things like

They come to visit and she's like Oh I didn't bring I just didn't buy a lot of food I figured you wouldn't want to eat You know stuff like that And she'll be like like oh she hates her oldest son and she's like why don't we just like do have this conversation while we're eating and then she like doesn't show up for that egg eating but at one part of it she's like oh I'm so glad you guys here I all of our pigeons are here and she's like little

pigeons like cooked on the table for them to eat just like little birds and like the the Kieran Culkin is like you like mom fuck you like it's just really funny because like she's just gross and like she just like has this gross relationship with food and anyway that's the last time I saw someone eating a pigeon sounds like that's not some yeah but they're delicious but also they're small so like you can eat a couple of them before you get full you know like they're not like a turkey there's like it's like a very little meat on it um they were easy to hunt because there were so many of them there's like legends that you could just like put a stick up into the air because they would fly low and just like stab one you know kind of like

a reverse stabbing a fish in the water yeah it's like they were would, there were traps. They would set the, um, the trees on fire to make the passenger pigeons all fall out of the tree. Um, they would burn sulfur underneath the trees and they would fall. So you could kill like tens of thousands of them at the same time. And, um, with the, with like the advent of the railroads. Um, you could eat a passenger pigeon, you know, in the country and in New York City at a fancy restaurant. You know, they were like everywhere. I mean, they must have been good if you were trying to eat them that badly. yeah i mean i think it felt like a unlimited resource of meat right you know um very little meat though i'm looking at pictures of it and it's like yeah very little meat exactly yeah it's not they're not exactly they're not like a turkey um so they were the population probably had ebbed and flowed for all time um the passenger pigeons that like we know of that we like saw they had low genetic diversity so we talked about that a little bit we talked about the volcano which means that like something happened and then they were all from the same like pool of pigeons so they could have had like a big group of

them and then it could have gotten down but they were from like a small a small group but then they grew to like this huge group pretty quickly in this time up until the 1890s there's no regulation on wildlife in the United States. like you can do whatever the fuck you want you know um then in 1913 um a little bit later there's an act called the weeks mclean act and that said that you couldn't hunt during mating season because they needed like they're like okay we're like killing a bunch of animals it's like not good and we're not giving them the opportunity to like have more babies you know also both the passenger pigeon and other birds and i've heard i can't remember where i heard this

but a lot of birds were close to extinction or went extinct because during this time, it was very fashionable to put feathers in your hats, like, for real. And they would kill birds just for their feathers, you know? We're so wasteful. I know. So they had to stop doing that as well. So all kinds of animals are being, you know, obviously, like, ruined by people being here and seeing them. in the early 1900s the last passenger pigeon was shot in the wild and in 1895 Martha the last passenger pigeon ever she was born in Chicago at like a in the University of Chicago there was a professor who was trying to understand the passenger pigeon she Martha is an endling which is the last of your species which is like such an amazing terrifying word she she yeah I'm

So she, there was some, like, they brought some males with her. She ended up she didn't have, you know, they didn't mate. They tried to find a mate for her. They were like, we'll give anyone $1,000 if they could find a mate for her out in the wilds. And like, no one could. And she died on September 1st, 1914. And as soon as she died, they froze her in a block of ice and sent her to a lab to, like, try to, like, understand, like, what, you know, what she was like. And then they took a bunch of pictures of her, did a bunch of stuff, and then they skinned her, and you can still see her.

She's stuffed in a museum. So she was the last one, and then, you know, that was it. So imagine, like, you have all of these, something is everywhere, and then it's nowhere, like, literally nowhere in the 100 years. So the question then is, like, what's next for the passenger pigeon? because there actually can be a next because there's people who want to bring it back from extinction, which is something that's technically possible. So in 2013, so about 10 years ago, this was like a big thing people were talking about. There was a TEDx symposium called The Extinction about like bringing, you know, other extinct animals back besides the passenger pigeon, just like what we could do with that.

And I listened to some podcasts for this. Oh, I didn't tell you my sources, but I listen to some podcasts. There's a book that I did not read, but I wish I would have. It's called A Feathered River Across the Sky, The Passenger Pigeons Flight to Extinction. But I also listened to a podcast called back from, I don't know what it's called, but well, oh, sorry, Grow Everything, Biotech podcast with Revive and Restore. And the dude that works there, his name is Ben Novak, but he was talking about, he did a TEDx D-extinction talk.

And one thing that they want to do at Revive and Restore, which is, where he works is, you know, bring back, you know, animals that are extinct or also save animals from extinction by cloning animals and, like, helping them, you know, breed faster. Also, I listened to, like, several podcasts, and it took a very long time for anyone to mention Jurassic Park, which I was very disappointed. Because, like, we know that this is a bad idea, technically. We also know how to do it. Just find the mosquito first.

Yeah. Yes, that's true. That's true. It's a little bit different with birds, which is actually funny because birds are dinosaurs now that I think about it. But it's easier to clone a mammal than it is to clone a bird because of like the way that the eggs are. Like having an egg inside a body is easier than having an egg outside of a body with a shell for genetic reasons. But so they've been cloning. So they have this idea that we're going to clone the passenger pigeon 10 years ago. Everyone was really excited about it. All these books came out. they ended up, they didn't do it. And they didn't do it, I think, because there are other things that are more pressing. So there's animals that are so close to extinction that we need to save them somehow. So on December 10th, 2020, they cloned a black-footed ferret. Her name was Elizabeth Ann. So it's the first time that a U.S. endangered species was cloned. And so they can do that now with mammals. They also cloned a horse. It's called the Preswalski's horse. And what they're trying to do with that is restore genetic diversity in the horse population. So they're just like making more horses so they can like breed and then they'll have more and then they'll be able to, you know, not be extinct. So they're not extinct yet, but they were on the path to being extinct. Does that make sense? Yeah. I've never heard of this

and I didn't know the world needed more ferrets, but it's still cool. Well, so that's the question. Like, what do we need and what don't we need? You know, like, do we need more ferrets? I mean, whatever, probably not. But also, like, should we not let animals go extinct? I feel like that answer is yes. Like, we should try to save them if we can. I also think that, like, we talked about this a little bit when I talked about, like, the genetic diversity of humans after the volcanic eruption of Mount Toba.

So they looked back and they can say, oh, we're all from this population that survived 70,000 years ago. and they also found the same in like pandas and lions like they also had the same like genetic bottleneck and we know that but the reason that we know that about those things is because they're cute you know like who gives a shit about an ugly animal we want to know about cute animals so we are you know cloning these cute animals because they're the ones that we would be like most sad if they went extinct i don't know man have you seen a californic condo they're fucking disgusting looking yeah but also have you seen like them fly yeah i've not seen the bird show at okay have you seen the bird show at the la zoo i cry every time is there Is there a condor there? It's incredible. Yes. Okay.

So the last congour went extinct in the wild in 1987. That's wild. I think that but the bird, yeah. But then we're able to like save them and bring them back, which I think is so cool. And like, honestly, if you ever go to the bird show at the LA Zoo, it's like so beautiful. And you're like, can I dedicate my life to birds? Like they do a really good job. It's really nice.

So, yeah. Well, yeah, they're trying to like save these animals. Oh, this is where I also, like, there was a bald eagle at the big bear zoo that I saw recently, and she was blind because in, like, the 80s, she ate a fish that had been poisoned with DDT from, like, a thing. So, like, I mean, those are the things. You're like, yeah, we should fix that because that was our fault, you know? And, like, same with the passenger pigeon. Like, that was 100% our fault. If we brought them back, what would happen?

We have no idea. Like, what would they be like in the wild? you know would they be there's like a thing where they can like put passenger pigeon DNA and also in this researching this they talk about how about junk DNA and it just blows my mind that like most of our DNA is junk that like cannot be true I don't know why I like don't believe that so hard but I'm like how can it mean nothing it's crazy but so they can put passenger pigeon DNA they don't really have oh we don't have the DNA they have like a little bit of like tissue from like an old one because it was like a long time ago, but they can, if they put it into like another pigeon,

it's something where like that pigeon would have to continue to have babies and those babies have babies. And then out of 100,000, you might get one actually genetically perfect passenger pigeon. You know, it's like a whole thing is wild. So they're like, you know, they're working on that, but they don't know what it would be like in the wild. Would it be, do we need a billion pigeons flying around? probably not you know but also like should we try to have some pigeons also like i know this is silly but like what would they be thinking you know like this is weird round tears like me i don't think it's or they don't they think it's well no because it's a new thing that comes back so it's only frame of reference is what it sees today it doesn't have

like markers from like the 1800s to understand that its ancestors there's like a hundred year gap in its ancestry you know right totally but also like what does it do what does it do it instinctually you know i think probably what any pigeon does right it's flies forms these large walks around the home depot parking lot yeah it probably just run into your windshield like you just be a stupid bird right like it's not that complicated of an organism i was looking up this one's really sad the um the rhinos like there's a picture of like the last rhino that died in um his name was it was a boy it was a male name sudan and it was in sudan and there's it was the last northern white rhinoceros and it had 24-7 armed guards that like walked around with it because of poachers

that shit it's like heartbreaking it's like that makes me sad like the very last one it died in 2018 That's so sad. Yeah, I feel so sad for Martha. You know, like I feel so sad for the whole thing. But like the good thing, the good news with that rhino at least is that we can't, because it died so recently, I'm sure that they have tons of its genetic material frozen somewhere. So there's a thing called bio banking where you keep cells and tissues from animals and you freeze them so you can clone them later. So as technology catches up with like this idea, it should potentially get easily. easier and easier. And so there's people like revive and restore this organization who have these like huge things. There's like a frozen zoo at the San Diego Zoo where they have all of this tissue of cells of these animals so that when they can clone them, they will be able to, you know? Oh my God. You're right. Dude, they created three embryos. So that was the last male. They had two females somewhere in captivity and they were able to generate three embryos. So that was the last male. They had two females somewhere in captivity and they were able to generate three embryos in 2019 since the two remaining female

northern rhinos are not suitable to carry pregnancy oh they're going to implant the embryos in a southern white rhino as a surrey it's just so crazy to me but i think but i think like to your wild right how do you decide what to do and what not to i think when it's all human driven and it's all because of us, then, yeah, like, it's not their time to expire. We force upon them. Right. Exactly. So trying to bring them back.

You know, yeah. So, yeah, so that's where we are right now is, you know, the passenger pigeon is on the list to try to clone and bring it back to life. We'll see what happens. I know people want to do some of like the bigger ones, like the woolly mammoths. Like, that seems kind of fun. Also, I was going to say, please don't clone dinosaurs because it's not going to turn out well. Oh, my God. Taylor, we are so in different camps. I'm so going to be in the pro-clone dinosaurs camp. Have you seen what happens? We've been through this.

Every dollar, every dollar you donate to an anti-clon of dinosaur camp. I'm going to somehow crowdfund $10 to give to the pro cloned dinosaur camp. I'm so into this. And I will also put a dollar into a savings account for your funeral when you get eaten by T-Rex. be the first one. I would definitely be one of the first ones. Yeah. So worth it. Oh my gosh. So absolutely worth it. I got something looking at pictures of the rhinoceros. Yeah, it's sad. It's sad. Yeah. So also another thing that was in this when listening to Dan from Revive and Restore talk about it, he was saying that like he's like pro zoo, which is like so funny because like I feel like there's

people who are on the like animal, I love animal sides where they're like they should be in captivity but also like they need to be in captivity to be studied you know and their animals so like you need to be able to have a fair amount of them in captivity to be able to be studied to be able to understand like what they need in the wild to be able to protect them better we have to understand them and you can't really understand them if they're all in the wild you know so some part of the population always needs to be in his opinion and and I think I agree in some sort of captivity just so that we can like understand it you know oh man it really it might depending on like where they're in the zoo. Like if you go to the old LA zoo, like that was

horrible. Of course. It's not 1900. Yeah. Or or when you hear about like the animals and like zoos in Syria where like everybody has to flee and now all these animals like locked in cages waiting to die. Like it's like like you know yes San Diego should have a zoo. But that might be yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. No. totally that that's right i mean obviously like yes of course there's like those places in like asia where you can like sit with a monkey for like a whole day but like it's really bad for the monkey right right exactly right right right exactly if you're doing it like the right way putting tourists on top of like elephants in india like so that they can take their

fucking honeymoon pictures like that's gross yeah no 100 percent i agree um yeah that's it that's the the short story of the passenger pigeon because don't know what they were like before and it's another thing it's another thing just like i think last episode with the weather changing from mount tambora where they like ask the oldest person that they know like weren't there more of these you know yeah like yeah they used to darken the sun and you're like interesting they don't do that anymore you know like i only see a couple and like you kind of like you didn't if you just like you know were born in you know 1900 you didn't know the magnitude of what was lost.

If you remember it, and it happened in people's lifetimes, you know, like, I used to see this thing all the time, and I don't, and I see it now never. Like, that's wild. Yeah, yeah, and it's funny, living in cities, it's like, you don't even really think about it because the only animals you see are, like, the gross pigeons

or, like, disgusting insects. Oh, my God, but there's so many rats in New York. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's so weird. It's so weird. It's something like that. Nobody values can, like, persist and like be completely unkillable and then you have these beautiful rhinos that are just whatever it is

it's life I guess I know um sweet well Taylor thank you for sharing and the we can go ahead and you know cut this off unless you have listed or mail or announcements to make I do I have listed in mail and it is from me because I'm an idiot and I just want to share this with everyone so I sent an email to everyone I fucking know, asking them to subscribe to our podcast. My first few hundred emails got zero traction. So I was like, maybe I'm just like writing a bad email. Maybe as people don't remember me. I don't know.

So I ran it through chat, GPT, and then they made it a little jazzier. And then I sent that email. But in doing that, it broke all the links. And I didn't test it because I'm an idiot. And I know that's email 101 is to test your emails. And like, I used to get so worried about emails and like messing them up. And then like this time I was like, I don't give a shit. I'm just going to do this. I'm really excited about this. I want to share it. And then it took like eight days. And Nicole is a freaking hero. And she's the only person who told me that the links didn't work. And I was like, oh, I was like, obviously thank you so much, Nicole. And so I emailed everybody again. I said, my links are broken. Here's new links. And since then, we've gotten a couple more email signups. Two people, Robin and my mother-in-law Lily have pledged that if we ever want to start charging for our podcast,

they would pay for it, which is very sweet. And yeah, so we have a couple more people who subscribe to our newsletter. If you want to do that, please do. It's in our link tree in our, in our Instagram at Doom to Fail Pod. But I will send an email every Friday with our shows from the week. So a Monday show or Wednesday show. And on Fridays, I'm doing a bonus episode. So I'm usually doing a dividing up some of older episodes and doing them a little bit shorter.

And this week, I interviewed the author of where they burn books. They also burn people, which was super fun. So that's up now as well. Very cool. So for emails, you don't miss anything. A rare, a rare self-written email into our email address, which is great. It's traction. We'll take it.

But if you do have other feedback or suggestions, it's Zoom to Phelpot at gmail.com. Please do write us. We do like it. It's fun. We love it. Great. Cool. I'm going to go ahead and cut this off and the next time you hear us, it will be Wednesday.