Fin vs History - When Birdwatching Goes Too Far | Charles Darwin & The Birth of Eugenics (Part 1)

Episode Date: April 21, 2025

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Wow. We'll see you guys there. Welcome back to Finn versus History. As ever, I'm joined by Horatio Gould. And today we're talking about a man who liked bugs so much that he's now on the 10-pound note. We're talking about Charles Darwin. A bug catcher whose ideas lead to the Holocaust. It's one of the great stories.

It's got something for everyone this story. If you like bugs, you'll love this. If you like the Holocaust. If you want to know where it starts. Exactly. And arguably, it starts with, um, one of the biggest nerds he's ever lived.

Well, he got so nosy he caused the genocide, basically. It's fucking hilarious, this is. In today's episode, we'll be dealing with the man, the nerd at the start of this all,

and in our next episode, the man, the nerd, the legend. In the next episode, I've never been more excited for an episode. We will be dealing with what people do with his ideas.

I've already given a little preview as to what happens, but it's fucking funny. And I will warn you now, part two of this series will be for you with the strongest of stomachs because it will

probably be our least politically correct episode yet. Anyway, I'm rushing ahead. I'm getting excited. Eugene in eugenics. Yeah. I mean, I mean, is that where the name Eugene comes from? I think so, yeah.

Eugenie. He gives me the ick. Eugenics. Well, that's where Eugenics is, isn't it? It's only one who gives you the ick. Well, Prince Andrew's daughter's called Eugenie, and I think it's after eugenics. Because he's into it. Yeah. Well, I guess the royal family is sort of eugenics based, isn't it?

Yeah. In that they only, they sort of inter, they breed amongst cousins. Cousons, isn't it? But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Please, come on. Please restrain. Show some restraint. Don't jizz before you put the condom on.

Yes, don't jizz before you put the condom on. So I said that like it was a saying. We should get that stitched onto a t-shirt. That is helpful advice for a lot of these listeners, I think. Calm yourselves down. Put your dick away. We're going to do the boring bit first. Boring bit first.

And if you're good, if you're good, then we'll get all the fucking skull measuring stuff out on Thursday. Oh, now, Charles Darwin. We could actually have a phrenology session with all four of us because we've got Peter here behind camera, Charlie, me, you fit. It'd be great if you do a bit of skull measuring to see what... Well, I wonder if there's... Because I don't know how I'm going to... No, I know exactly what you're...

You're going to be bottom of the hierarchy, I think. Flatters... Flat as nose gets paid the less. Is that what we'll do? Should we implement this podcast pay structure based on racial... On head shape? Yeah. Well, small head was, I mean, if you go back to the sort of 17th century in alignment, small heads, it was literally who's got the biggest head is the cleverest. So I would have been, I would have been some clinically disabled in there because small heads were calling.

Yeah, well, they don't want to tell you anything because they just won't trust you to remember anything. It was literally how big is your head, how much room is there? Well, you must have a big brain. You're cleverer. Yeah, it's like having a big hard drive with lots of, you know, gigabytes of storage. Exactly. It can't be anything bad in there. Yours is just like a little tiny USB.

I've got a USB stick and it's all charporn. Do you reckon there is a... Because, you know, as you, you know, that's that bit about when a paedophiles caught, they always have so much shit. Yeah,

it's never just a tasteful amount. It's never three or four videos. It's always more than you could watch in a fucking lifetime. It's like a boxette. And he was found with 15 terabytes of child porn. 15 terabytes!

Well, these people are, they're collectors. Yeah, it's... They're hoarders. There was a recent necrophic. who was caught, right? And, yeah, of course, they found 950,000 images of dead people getting fucked.

Well, I get... What do you mean, 950,000? What? Well, if you're into it, you're into it, aren't you? I know, but you're into the Holocaust and you don't have that. You know, it's just the actual scale. NHS failings enabled necrophiliac murderer

to offend for 15 years. Well, he was murderer as well. David fully sexually abused bodies of at least 101 women and girls at Kent hospitals. Wow, so it's sort of like a shitman. is adjacent to Shipman, I didn't realize this. He took Shipman to his logical conclusion. Right, well, much as the Nazis took Darwin

to his logical conclusion. Right, so bugs, bugs change. Kiersi Jones! We're holding off. Hold your horses. Hold on getting hot under the collar here. We need to get back to 809 and Shrewsbury. Sadly, we're back to Shrewsbury.

My God. Where it all begins. The Holocaust begins in Shrewsbury. Have you been to Shrewsbury? No. Yeah, I did. I went there on tour, yeah. Lovely, lovely town. What is it like, just like an old medieval sort of town?

Yeah, it's an old town. There's a nice river. We were there when it was sunny, so obviously, it immediately looks nice. I mean, but I was also in Stockton when it was sunny, and that place is just fucking depressing, whatever the weather. Some British towns in the sun, it is like you've lifted a rock up. Yeah, and you're seeing all the sun's beaming down. Yeah, because in like, in parts of South London, where we record this, the sun comes out, the girls put their little dresses on

and suddenly you're like fuck me life's great but if you do that in some place like Stockton you just see people come out of their house and you go

oh my word and that's where Darwin is getting his ideas from because so you to the little girls with the dresses they come from this sort of monster

shrewsfrey man jailed for child sexes defences it is a hotbed for Peter Finner I should have said that I can imagine no shrop shirt that looks like Jeremy

that looks like Jeremy that looks like my support act on the last door Jeremy Flynn my god that looks like Jeremy who's like rebuilt his life

oh my days is that my support at Jeremy Flynn is that Jeffrey from Phimvers of the internet who's is he living under is he got a false

is he in witness protection now and we've employed him by mistake that would be that would be the most amazing it'd be so on brand to accidentally employ

a paedophile to play my son and Finn versus the internet oh man God that looks so fucking hell that is just I need to call Jeremy after this.

That's brilliant. Anyway, so Shrewsbury is a lovely town. Shropshire, it's a very kind of... Oh, sorry, just look back on the paedophilia for a second. When you're caught with the mugshot, what faces you pull? You've been caught. Why are you asking me, lock up? I don't know.

But I'm always interested, it's like, it's a tough one to know how to pull off that pose. Well, no, because it's like passport photos, isn't it? It's a very narrow pose you're allowed to do for it to be an actual mugshot. Right. Because they need to... Is it just a... Yeah, obviously, there's that one, but he's not... a pedo. The pedo one where you're caught,

you're going away for 20 years. You can't do that if you're the pedo. You can't be like, because then everyone's like, well, yeah. But is it just a more somber passport photo? Like I just do the pedo mugshot. I just don't know how I'd approach it. Well, I guess these people aren't thinking that far ahead, are they? If they're, if they've been petos and they've been caught.

Yeah, I guess so. They're very much, yeah, they're for like short term. I was going to say was that pedos are always caught with terabytes and terabytes. Yeah. But it'd be quite funny for a pido's to be caught with. like a USB stick with just like one image. That's what I'm waiting for. And is that, what is the sentence

proportionate to the amount? But you have a passing interest in child porn? Does no one has like a... No, no, I don't. You do? I don't. Christ. But it's like, yeah, it's like, I don't know, I have a passing interest in rugby. Like, if the Six Nations is on, maybe I'll watch. Yeah, if the pub's showing some child porn, I might buy

a couple of points. I'll find a couple points of Guinness. Ah, you know, I was trying to split the G. The Charporn's got that little glass in the bottom. My friends are into it, so I like it's a good way to hang out. It's weird when you watch that charporn that's got Arabic commentary. That's weird, isn't it? Gaw!

Gaw! Right. Right. Anyway. Trusbury. Come on, Shrewsbury. Shrewsbury is a delightful town in Shropshire, a much sort of overlooked county. Do you think that?

I think so. The border with Wales is sort of sneakily... It's Hereford in Shropshire. That's in Herefordshire. Right. Fair enough. That makes sense. Shrewsbury is the capital of Shropshire.

Right, fine, fine. You can do that with a lot of places. Yeah? Yeah. What about Milton Keynes? Yorkshire. Milton Keynes is an outlier. Milton Keyneshire.

So Charles Darwin is born February the 12th, 1809. Right. So to set this, this is early, this is Victorian time. I think we have. Actually, you're right. We have replaced this completely in context. Yeah. Peter Files in this day and age were being caught with reams of child porn rather than

terabytes. All right. So you go ahead. There was no. digital storage for Peter Pass to use. Yeah, it was a dusty tobe of child porn. Nantes caught with buckets of porn rather than, rather than, you know, it'd be an esteemed library, wouldn't it? It'd be like a walls of, like a ladder.

Ladder to go up. Ooh, what's today? You know, anyway. 1809, Darwin's born. Would you like to place this for us? Right. So this is, I haven't planned this. So this is the first thing that's coming out.

Yeah. This is before the invention of the bicycle. I don't know if it is I don't know if it is That's a bold one I reckon bicycles are around I think you've completely fucked this I think fucked it from the start

Before the invention of the bicycle Oh just Oh my God Yeah you know you're right You're right 1817 Oh yes Wow you've nailed that Okay fair enough

Before the event Just before the invention of the bicycle Bicycles will come out in Darwin's life time He may have ridden the bike And just after the invention The Hot Air Balloon Let's try that

I already use that one but Hot air balloons are before bicycles Yeah That's funny Isn't it Yeah That's a tightly cushioned That's a tightly cushioned

That's Expertly You've snooked The listener there You've placed it perfectly So hot air balloons Are a new thing Yeah

Bicycles are still Someone's still Thinking on that Yeah Now Darwin is a He's born into a wealthy family His dad His dad

His dad or his granddad It's called Erasmus Yes He's a famous guy He's not part Of the Erasmus Court

The reason why you do you take a year aboard. That's a Dutch cut in the 17th century. Erasmus Darwin, I think, writes a book called like Zootonomy or something. Right. Is that Arasma Darwin? He's a big chubby fucker, isn't he?

Arasmus Darwin. I tell plump everyone at those in these days. How rosy-cheeked. Well, at this point, fatness is equated with health. Yeah. Health and wealth. Yeah. Which we kind of come round to that again, I suppose,

isn't it? Plus-sized queens. Plus-sized queens. Erasmus Darwin is a plus-sized queen. But the age of the plus-size-s. is coming to an end now. Do you think? Yes, it is, I think.

I think. Oh, get it off my deli. I'm sick of it. Well, now it's his M-PIC. Yeah, exactly. It turns out that if you could, if there's a miracle drug, I don't just say that, actually. I don't need to do these mental gymnastics.

I can do actual gymnastics now. I've lost weight. I don't need to convince myself that it's a good thing to be more than the obese. Big is beautiful. Unless I can be small, then I'll definitely have that. Is that a miracle small? I'll take that. Yeah.

Is there a shortcut to being small? I'll do that. Erasmus Darlis is a plumpold for. God, he looks like a Christmas goose, this guy. I'd love to stuff him full of sage. It looks like a jazz apple. He is ready to be crunched. Erasmus Darwin is Charles.

And he kind of, he's thinking about evolution and animals. Yeah. He's thinking about where are these animals? These nosy fuckers back then. He's thinking what's for pudding. And we're in the era of Victorian science, which is a... It looks like he's eating mess for breakfast. Yes.

Yeah. Morangues are coming out pre 11 a.m. He's having 11sies. He's having... Sue it. He's cooking. He's a big man for a trifle, this guy.

He's a pudding guy. He's a pudding guy. The Victorian science is probably is one of the things I'm the most, I find the most funny. Yeah. In the same way that you find the middle age. It's naughty science. It's because it's the birth of like,

you know, what we now call science, but we've had to go back and call most of it a pseudoscience because it turns out that it's very problematic. So the British Empire at this point, um, they're sending nerds basically to, uh, you know,

you've got the, the alphas who are sort of crowd control. Yeah, you're sending two different types of kind of, you know, you have a vanguard or big, like, right, come on, let's go, come on, come on, get in the car. In the car, this way. Now, we're going now. It's dads on a holiday. Get in, get in the car. Get in the car. It's dad's who's in cycling. It's those sort of guys. Come on, let's go. A holiday is meant to be more work than work. Come on. In the car. And then after they've suppressed all the people who have lived there for thousands of years, then you send in the In many ways, how when you gentrify a neighborhood, you get a vanguard of lesbians in.

Yes. As the first line. Artistic, dirty lesbians. No, no, no. They're tough. I see what you mean. Right. This is when it's still a grim area.

Yeah. And once they've knocked through a lot of walls. Yeah, yeah. They've added some side returns. Infrastructure. Yeah. Then you get the gays in to decorate. I see.

So that's sort of how the British Empire works. You send the lesbians out. So the lesbians are right. So lesbians go to like Brixton first. Yeah. like the 80s. In a bulldozer. And they're like, yeah, yeah.

And then. And then. And the get, come on, guys. Come on, come on. Let's break through some wars. And then you get the gay guys in who do all the art. Yeah, well, they're just the little things, the decorations, you know. And then the straights with the money come in.

Yes, exactly. Start spending money. And then then you get fucking five guys. Yeah. Right. Oh, that's good to know. I'll tell you what. I've got a good friend of mine is a straight woman who I call a lesbian.

Underrated. You know, it really is. Because calling a straight guy gay is. is one of the oldest pastimes. One of the life, simple pleasures. It really is. It's always fun, implying that a straight man's gay. But implying straight woman is a lesbian

is absolutely brilliant. She has, um, my friend, my dear friend Maud. Quite a lesbian name. She works in set deck, right? Yeah. And so she has a screw fix membership card.

Yeah. She's got dot martins on. She's got to screw fission. No, she's a beaver chasing. She's something beavers. You've got screw fix membership. trapper. She's one of

no one's cause lesbian's fur trap was that's what the revenant was about yeah they're just they're walking around

and they're hanging all the muffs of their victims are hanging off their off their belt and the lascan fur trapper

that's such within lesbian communities slang terms like dyke baby dyke pillow princess lipstick lesbian gold star

butch soft butch and stone butch yeah to be fair I've been saying this on my other

podcast for years we just don't get enough about lesbian culture within the gay men dominate. Well, that's because gay men like to flabber mouths, aren't they? Whereas lesbians famously are the most Presbyterian people on the planet.

They zip up and they get on with it and they don't. There's something Protestant about lesbians. Yes. Yeah, it is a very Protestant. Well, muffdiving is a Protestant thing, isn't it? Because it's grim, it's smelly, but you just put your head, buckle up, fucking pinch your nose and start gobbling. What, deep sea, mothedithing.

It's a Protestant endeavor. Yeah. In that originally, it was like, you know that 50,000 leagues under the sea? 50,000 leagues into the muff. It's that French guy with the big helmet. Well, Cromwell's Britain could have been if lesbians took over, right? I think the most Protestant thing to do is to go down on a woman, and then that's the end of this. That's it.

You don't do any pleasure at all. Yeah, no, I think lesbians are Protestant. I think gay is a Catholic. Yeah. So, yeah, bring it back to the British Empire. We've sent out our kind of lesbians have gone. They've colonized. They've established a fort.

Yeah. There's a base, and then you send in the gaze. And they're wearing sensible shoes. Yeah. And they're trekking. And then you get the gaze out. With the little glasses. With, oh, there's some silk over there. And they, you know, and they're keeping in a little adventry.

Oh, that's very nice. And then you send in the bug chasers. These are the nerds with the big glasses and the binoculars. Right. And, you know, it's kind of heroic to be a nerd at this point. Yeah. There's a whole, you know, the natural sciences is the botany, zoology. This is the real kind of, I guess it's like the...

It's called. social media of the age. Wow. It's like the big, it's the AI. What's the social media of the age? No, no, and I mean social media companies. Right, right. Tech, AI, these are the big

advancements in science in the early 19th century. You know, in the same way you could call Darwin what happens to his ideas. It's a very similar narrative to Zuckerberg in the Zuckerberg like, oh, I just want to rank hot girls and chat my friends and like,

oh, I like your post. And then it ends up with people being fucking idiots. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Live streaming school shootings and stuff. Like, the perversion of a dweeb's ideas. That's what we're dealing with here in this series. In the beginning of that, yeah. So Darwin, he comes from a great family of people

who are already writing books about nature and Bosnia. It comes from a nosy family. They're nosy. They're nerds. But this is one of the funnest times to be nosy because it just feels like the excitement of the 1800s was that they were still uncharted territories. If you're a nosy country,

this is the best time. to do it. There's still, you're still coloring in maps and stuff. There's still loads of species that have not been found. Now, now it's all, it's all just online. Yeah. Now you're just, what are you going to do? You're going to... Now it's about, let's invent the shortest way to get a pizza into my mouth.

Let's pay someone from the Philippines to get a bike and, ah, that's what it is. It's just pizza now. That's, back in these days, it was about, oh, that puff is clever. I've not seen that before. Let's write a book about that. Hello, I'm Elizabeth Day, the creator and host of How to Fail. that celebrates the things in life that haven't gone right. And what, if anything, we've learned from those mistakes to help us succeed better?

Each week, my guests share three failures, sparking intimate, thought-provoking and funny conversations. You'll hear from a diverse range of voices, sharing what they've learned through their failures. Join me Wednesdays for a new episode each week. This is an Elizabeth Day in Sony Music Entertainment original podcast. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts. So Darwin's family, dwebes, he's from a family. family and dweeps, grows up with five sisters. Successful medical doctor, father. Now, his father wants him to get into medicine.

Yeah. So she goes to University of Edinburgh, but he fucking hates blood, Darwin. Yeah. And to be fair to him, I don't think there's a more full-on thing you can study than medicine in the early 1800s. Because this is where... Because they're getting experimental with it. This is where you're in an amphitheatre and it's high.

Yeah. And you're looking down, and some guy is just cutting someone open who's screaming. In this time, surgery, you're more likely to die than live from surgery. Right. Because they just invented chloroform. And that was their only way of getting victims for surgery? Yeah, yeah. They're basically, yeah, they date rape people, essentially.

They'd surgically date rape them. Just without all the dating. So they just douse a lot. Yeah, right date without the date. Date rape without the date. They would just soak a rag in chloroform, put it over their face. And then if they'd wake up, they'd like, I guess we'd be doing more chloroform. So, like, there was no sort of amount of anesthetic.

There was no, they were basically trying to, it was just like, let's get a, fuck it. They get a bodyguard to just hold someone down and cut them open while they're kind of like. And this guy has gone into surgery going, what, I'm going to die. So I might as well increase my own slightly by dying by a doctor. I mean, it's grim. And Darwin hates blood. He doesn't like it But I'm saying they're like

You'll have three surgeons Being like the blue man group With your body right Yeah They're using essentially Like pencils to cut into you Right Because they haven't got like a fine blade

They're using just Whatever the sharpest thing they can find Do you want to bite on this plank Yeah yeah Bight on this plank And then I've lost my I don't have a really sharp knife Could we get used the edge of a table

To try and cut this guy open It's pretty fucking gnarly and so he's a you know he's a he's a he's a he's spent his sort of years in shrews breed fucking pulling the legs off beetles he's a beetle guy right so uh he he drops out of um which is kind of humiliating for a family of um wealthy well it seems like he's got quite like a straight edged father and it looks like well they're very whiggish yes uh which means progressive so they're they're the one of people of their day yeah i guess so they're explained to explain to the folks at home what whigish means in this context it's about progress and

liberal and but they're also they're very they're into aesthetics they're kind of it's sort of just before romanticism right they're anti-slavery which again is very funny considering what happens to his ideas they're anti-slavery they're abolitionist

it's the opposite of Tory but anyway so he drops out of doing at medicine at Edinburgh he then went to Cambridge to study theology they think he's going to become a priest right yeah because I think that's like that's kind of what you do what you do if you're clever

you don't like medicine or whatever but his main interest is rocks right yeah so you know he's on the spectrum clearly sure in that he's he likes cutting into rocks like looking at the layers

again I mean this is sort of is pre dinosaurs dinosaurs dinosaurs aren't really a thing yeah his dad's heartbroken because he's like I thought he'd be a real man as he's chopping off some poor homeless person's leg yeah

um so he He's into rocks. Yeah, dinosaurs. When the dinosaur, it's during his lifetime. Yeah, so the megalosaurus was described and named in 1824. And the term dinosauria was coined in 1842. So it is, it's, you know, he will grow up in the life of dinosaurs.

And there is actually near, very near to where we record this in Crystal Palace, in London. There is these dinosaurs, sculptures. But they were built in the 1860s before they knew what they looked like. So they are guesses at what dinosaurs are. They're fucking mad. They're just sort of massive dragons with the horns. I mean, and they've had to be like corrected.

Yeah. Yeah, they're basically like big crocodiles. They're pretty funny. We should do a dinosaur episode. Oh, we should have me do a dinosaur episode, fully. But Darwin is into like boring, you know, botany, plants. Love botany. Fuck it, yeah.

All that botany shit. Big battenny. Big battene, yeah. Big planty muff. So at Cambridge, he has got a strong interest in really, really boring shit. But at this time, it's exciting shit, because you say the stuff till to discover. Nowadays, it's like, you're into plants, you're a fucking lost course. My dad, my father-in-law has an app that's like Shazam for Birdsong.

Right. So you'll be on a walk and he'll be like, stop everyone, and he'll lift the thing up and he'll be like, oh, that's a finch or whatever. It lost cause. Absolutely gone. And then he'll show you his archive of Bird Songs. Oh, I bet he will. That's what Darwin's got something like that Yeah, sure

At Cambridge, he likes science Whatever he gives a shit He gets sent to whales He starts chopping up He loves shooting though Which is quite funny He fucking loves shooting animals He loves shooting animals

Like, stuffing, taxidermies I think Yes, yeah So in 1831 Right When he is, I think maybe he's like He must be 21, 22 at this point So is his gap year This is on his gap year

Someone asks him Do you want to go on a gap year which is actually quite a risky thing about there in the whole kind of like white saviour thing this is this is really when that really starts in that you are going around touring the colonies essentially

but so the beagle yeah he gets he gets asked to go on the the HMS Beagle which is an exploratory ship which is be given this mission to chart the coast of South America and basically what happens in this time is that you have a captain who's like a

gentleman who's like a yeah a gentleman and he wants to share his bunk with someone who is on the same intellectual level because the ship is obviously staffed by complete thickers and he's like I'm going to be at sea for two years I need someone to talk about the arts with because there's just complete mongs on the ship

five years but yeah it ends up being five it's originally meant to be two years but they're having such fun yeah he's called he's called Fitzroy Robert Fitzroy I think the captain he's only like 26 or something. Right.

It's crazy. But this is when you, if you're posh, you just get the top jobs immediately, right? I mean, now I guess that's more like, they're trying to hide that. But at this point, it's just naked. It's just naked. Like, I need a gentleman on board. Where'd you go to school, brilliant? Oh, do you want to be the head of this career?

I've no idea how to do it. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. You went to school there. It'd be fine. Or like in the World War, all the officers, you just, you know, just take it from private school, you'd be the officers. If you had a certain type of mustache, you get to sit behind the front line.

They need a naturalist. I don't know why Not a naturist Which is off A big confusion Darwin's not a big naturist He's not going to the Galapalus To get his wang out

He is going there To look at other creatures wangs That would be quite funny If they We need someone on board Just to be naked at all times We need an onboard naturist Just not more naturist

Just to go and dominate the animals So they set sail From Plymouth In December 1831 They leave from I mean You can imagine You've been to Plymouth

right? Yes, I have. There's people there with probably more more fingers than teeth they're treating heavily. I probably would have said there's more

biological diversity in Plymouth than Glamath Yeah, you should have stayed in Plymouth and gone something's not right here these people

clearly aren't as evolved as other people he looked at Plymouth and he thought fuck me we're not all from the same surely not these people are closer

to apes than real people so then he goes to those sort of Cape Verde. Yeah, yeah, well, that's where Ronaldo is from. No, it's not. That's Madeira. Is it?

Yeah. Cape Verde is off the west coast of Africa. Madeira's an island of Portugal. Have you ever been to Madeira? But he goes to Madeira after Plymouth. So actually the first place he goes to his Ronaldo. Oh, there you go, Cape Verde. Okay, so he goes to see where Ronaldo is born.

This is that statue of Ronaldo. You see that statue of Ronaldo in the Cape Verdo? Madeira. Madeira Airport, by the way, is, I mean, the landing at Madeira. is fucking crazy. Really? Have you been to Madeira? Yeah, I have.

I went on a family holiday when I was 15. Just out, yeah, Ronaldo fans. We're all just Ronaldo fans, yeah. I mean, this is when he's at United. He's just come through. He's a teenager. So you've got the earrings.

Right, so your whole family are commenting going, Messi's out, Ronaldo number one. Renando de God. Renando de God. Messi doesn't score headers. No. That's my dad, yeah. But when you land in Madeira,

it's like you come out of fucking nowhere. And it's basically all you see from the airplane is just a cliff. like, we're going to just crash into a cliff. And then a runway appears out of nowhere. It's one of the hardest landings you do as a pilot. Oh, right. Only a certain, like, you have to have a certain amount of hours to land.

Did you find out after you'd landed there? Yeah, I bet that's not part under brochure. No, yeah, they don't go. Oh, you want to go Madeira? Can you? It's like a top. Only the best pilots fly to Madira. So they go to Madeira.

I don't know what they do there. They see, well, they see, they pay on much to Ronaldo. The go, then they go down to Bahia in Brazil. And he loves the rainforest, sold Charlie Darwin But he fucking hates the slavery Yes And him and Fitzroy have an argument at one point Where, because Fitzroy is pro-slavery

Because he's a centrist Yeah, right He's like, let's just Yeah, he's like be reasonable Some people really believe in it You know, I'm not anti or for it I'm neutral You know, I believe in work

I believe in the purpose work gives Yeah Centrists at this time really get, history hasn't treated them kindly. No, they're not on the right side of it. It turns out. But they didn't know them. At the time. They didn't know. They didn't know. They may look at our time. They may look at our time.

They're going to, well, the fuck, why you got rid of the slavery? What the fuck are you doing? You know, it's not unprogressive to not get to care about the economy and economic growth. If we grow the pie, then we can pay the slave more. Darwin had several nicknames. As a young naturalist on board the HMS Beagle, he was called Phyllos because of his intellectual pursuits and flycatcher. when his shipmates tired of him filling the ship

with his collections. I bet they call him saltier things than flycatcher. Probably call him a fucking bird nons or something. Yeah. Fruit fairy. Fruit fly. Saint of science. His friend Thomas Huxley privately called him

the Tsar of Down. Right. Is that like a politically correct way of calling him down to the Tsar of Downs and shit? What do you mean privately? Is that behind his back? How fucking intellectual are these circles where behind someone leaves a room and just bloody, the blood? the bloody czar of Downs has gone

what he's calling about the head downs guy was that? Yeah, yeah. His favorite nickname was Stoltis the Fool. I mean, listen, the people...

That was his favorite. Yeah, listen, nerds never good at nicknames, you know. Stoltus the Fool? Yeah, exactly. That's his World of Warcraft name. Stoltus the Fool, 965.

That's his game attack. This is his game attack. So him and Fitzroy have an argument on board the ship about slavery. So bear in mind, they're the only people they can speak to. They're bunkmates.

Everyone else is just rowing. That's why they're both the Tsar of Downs and the other guys are just down to people, just rowing. Right. Big, big fellows with oars. So they have an argument about slavery, because they're cabin mates, for that they're sleeping together.

Yeah. But in a straight way. In a straight way. Gentlemen, you share a sleeping bag. Yeah, yeah. Night, Jeffrey. They're, they're hedger towing. Yeah.

What's you called? Top and tailing. That's what they're doing. Yeah, they're doing straight spooning. Yeah, they're both. Back to back, like this, rigidly holding each other, holding hands. Night night, night. Because basically it's a long old time, and you basically needed someone on the same intellectual level

who'd been to the same right school. I mean, it probably is a bit of hand shandying going on because there's the Navy. Come on. It's all bloke's. The entire ship is blokes. Yeah. And Darwin's getting off an island. He's not going to see women.

Exactly. He's going to see bugs. So where do you reckon? Go on, Fitzroy. Give me a hand shandy. They must be cracking each other off. Surely. It's the fucking 19th century.

These men have urges. Yeah. Surely they're doing sort of, yeah, sort of like, it'll be like a, like a sports day race with who can jack each other off. They're sitting there just across each other. Yeah, and then the first one to come has to,

it's like an armrest. The first one to come has to like, drink a bit of rum or something. It's a bit of fun game. It's what they call, wank rummy or something. Yeah. But they have an argument where,

because Darwin's like an outspoken abolitionist. he's an extremist in this time Fitzroy's a much more reasonable moderate he's pro-slavery He's like the Navar Media posts Yeah yeah yeah yeah He's pretty sort of

Well he's not pro-slaver he is pro-slavery I think But Darwin goes Slavery is shit I really bummed me out Seeing all those slaves in Brazil Yeah And then Fitzroy goes Well you know what

Slavery's great Because I went I've been to a plantation And I've chatted to the plantation owner And the plantation owner got all the slaves out in front of us and he said, who here would rather be a slave

than free? And they all said, yes. They all said they'd rather be a slave. And then Darwin said, do you reckon their answer would have been different if they weren't in front of the slave owner? With the giant whip.

With the giant whip and the fucking gun. And then Fitzroy gets so angry that he kicks him out of his cabin. Which is fair enough. Yeah. It's an extreme position to say. It's rude.

He's the captain. Yeah. But the other guys are like, oh, he's pretty quick-witted and pretty cool. So the big guys, the strongfellows down stairs. They like him because he's like, he's a bit lippy. Right. So he goes and bunks with them. And then Fitts Roy sends.

What, Darwin bunks with the... The chats, yeah. And then this is where he gets the idea of evolution. Because he... He sees how big the heads are on his. He's like, fucking, these guys are thick as shit. How are... And we're better than them.

So he... But then the captain sends someone down to apologize and says, Come on, I'll come back to the bung. Come back to bed, Charlie. Come back to bed, Charlie, whack me off, would you? He's in the doorway. Are you ever going to come to bed, Charles? I'm so sorry, I said, is that?

I'm so sorry, I think about the slaves. So, there's an interesting tension between Fitzroy and Darwin about slavery. But anyway, so the voyage of the Beagle is essentially going all the way, almost entirely around South America. So they go to Brazil, and then they just go down the coast, and at every point, they let Charlie off.

Charlie goes and draws some birds while they go there further down the coast and they come pick them up and then they go down that way they go to the Falkland Islands they think oh this is shit who would have a fuck about these

I wouldn't yeah I wouldn't send troops here I reckon we should just give this back to the Spanish they think around the Cape Horn they go up again and they get to this is where I guess he really is a good time

is in the Galapagos Islands which is yeah I don't actually know where this was before researching this. It's pretty far off the coast of, I think, Ecuador. It kind of isn't clearly any countries. No. I think there are 10 different islands, maybe.

And what he finds is that there's different species of the same, there's different variations on different islands. And he goes, that's a bit fucking weird. Because at this point, people are debating and have been for a couple hundred years where the animals come from the same thing. Or multiple things. Because there are proto-Darwinian thinkers, right? Yes, definitely, definitely.

Well, people are talking about varieties of species and the big question of the age is, are species static or do they change? Right. And people are sort of broadly think around this time that God created things. Well, it's to Noah's Ark, right? Yeah, yeah.

So people think the world is 6,000 years old. Yeah. And they think that, well, I mean, we'll get into the race stuff in the next episode, but they think that God created everything and then and then I guess the cutting edge thought at this time is he created everything

and then it starts to branch out and adapt to survive and stuff. Well yeah that's the mid, yeah, that's the centrist point, right? That's the centrist point of view. So the Galapagos Islands, the first thing he notices is that all the turtles have got different,

they're big fucking tortoises. They're massive. Oh, this is where giant tortoises. Yeah, these are giant tortoises. And they've got massive. They've got different markings on the islands. And he goes, that's a bit weird. But he sees these turtles.

It should also be noted that he eats them all. Right. He's like, fuck me, what's that? Bang. I bet that's delicious. Again, I think there's no better time in a culinary sense than this time. Nothing's protected. Right.

You can just eat anything you see. Everything is an eaty thing, which is very exciting. You've got no guilt. For me, as a former fat kid, this is a great time to be alive. Eity, fucky thing. No one's caring. The conjuring. rights

on September 5th The Conjuring last rights, only in the theater September 5th. Wendy's 5th. of the day has a fresh lineup. Pick any two breakfast items for $4.00. New four-piece French toast sticks, bacon or sausage wrap, biscuit or English muffin sandwiches, small hot coffee and more. Limited time only at participating Wendy's taxes extra. Darwin marvelled at the giant tortoises that lumbered across the islands. He tried to ride them first and then he ate their flesh. There's photos

or there's paintings or whatever of him sitting on a table, all of them sitting on the table all these upturned tortoises in the middle. They're just like... But then he says that... He said that he could taste the differences between the different tortoises and the different islands. Right.

Which I'm like, that's... I don't think that's evolution. That's just... Someone might have cooked it differently. They put a different rub on it, you know. Anyway, so he eats the turtles and then, I mean, the big thing, it's quite boring, but he...

He sees, like, finches. Yeah. And he's like, these are all different birds. They've got different beaks. Yeah. And then he realizes that they're all the same... They're all the same type of finch. Yeah.

but they've adapted to have different beaks for different conditions because the islands are all quite different. It's boring but maybe most important. It's probably the most important thing you've ever discovered but it's incredibly boring. So then the Voyage of the Beagle

they're having such a great time that they fucking go to... Hand chandy galore. They're just wanking it. Do you know what? I don't want to go home. I'm having such a good time debating slavery and wanking each other off

in between debates. So they go from the Galapagos, they go all the way around. They go to Australia. And this is where he meets the... New Zealand. as well on the way. And the Aborigines.

Yeah. And he says, oh, they're quite good humid. Oh, interesting. Yeah. But I reckon he's making notes about the shape of their nose and stuff.

I think he slagged off New Zealand and Australia. Yeah. With the podcast I listen to it. He said it was quite dull. I mean, yeah, it's a cultural wasteland. Oh, I, mate. You're right.

You're all right. Yeah. This is Charles Darwin. Steam geologist. No, my eye. Because Australia at this point is, what, it's like 40 years old? Yeah.

First Fleet 1788, isn't it? Have you been to Darwin? No. That's true. It's named after him, isn't it? Darwin is, I think the Japanese bombed it in the World War II. But Darwin and up near there,

that is the absolute terrifying frontier. You don't want to go there. The white people in the north of Australia. Really? The northwest are, no, the northeast of Australia are fucking lethal.

Right. Like if you have a... Potent whiteness. Potent, you know, if you have a... if you have the wrong type of mother, you're getting shot. You know,

like women getting slapped, that's a good day for them. Great, because they're being pounded. Right. That's like, that's like wife beating ground zero. Right.

So they're Steve Smith kind of batting their wife. I'd say, no, they're not that cultured. They're not Steve Smith. They're fucking, they're like Mitch Marsh.

Right. Slogfest. They're slogging wives. They are, There's no, there's absolutely no grace or a lamb. Nothing's even going over for a four. You know, when boycott hit his wife, right, allegedly, definitely, whatever. Yeah.

He's, you know, he's leaving a lot first. Right, of course. He's had a lot of chances to hit her. He's going, no, no, no. He's wearing her down. He's wearing her down. Wearing in the new, the new fist. He's got to knock in his fist first.

He's just going to wear the new wife down. No, leave that one, leave that one. She comes at him once. bang strokes are through the covers right in darwin in darwin as soon as they come in they're just fucking flinging in their bats around leaning back in 1990s jeffrey boycott was convicted of assaulting his then girlfriend margaret moore in a french revere hotel he was fined given suspended prisons he was found guilty of punching her at least 20 times right i think you've probably been quite kind to geoffrey boycott with uh yeah but how many how many opportunities did he

have his strike rate was famously low he is the archetype he is the archetype of a boring test opener. Yeah. So I reckon he could have hit her a hundred times. But he only hit her 20 because that's, you know, he wanted to be absolutely sure he wasn't going to get knicked outside off. Okay. In the end, a French guy caught him a slip. Should be called Jeffrey Gileslap.

Right. Come on. Come on. So he goes to Mauritius. He then goes round the Cape of Good Hope, the bottom of Africa. Then goes back to Brazil. Fucking hell. He loves it.

Long old... And one of the nosiest cunces ever lived. Yeah, yeah. Stop poking around down there. But interestingly, it's only... I say interesting, it's incredibly boring. It's... Of the five years that they're at sea,

only a year and a half is spent actually traveling, and the rest is all wagging each other off. Right, right, right, right. So, and all the time, he's collecting... He's shooting birds and shit and sending it back to Cambridge. Because at this point, you are... You can be like a collector,

and people would have private collections and there's actually a massive backlog of British naturalists because there's so much stuff just so many dead animals just being stuffed and sent to them be like what's this? What's this?

When you go to like a charity shop with all your old clothes and you just chuck a bin bag down there and so you sort through this fucking my shitty underwear like a bin basically Dan Cook's got a great bit about going to a charity shop and saying

we're not taking more donations he's like, what do you mean? I'm not here to buy an automobile on DVD. This is a bin. Yeah, so basically there are people with like hog bags and bags hordes of stuffed birds

that are just waiting in a corridor while these people will be like, I don't know what the fuck this is, what's that? So he eventually goes back home and lands back in Formath, October 8 and 36. He goes straight to Shrewsbury to see his dad.

I don't know why. and then he goes to Cambridge and immediately it's like look all this shit I've found and then he, because his family's wealthy enough he becomes a sort of gentleman scientist where you can be like a paid hobbyist essentially to just write about

about birds or no because in a way I think it was called like an amateur right but back then an amateur was signed a class liking cricket a gentleman scientist gentleman cricketer it's all amateur isn't it yeah you're an amateur cricketer means that you're a gentleman

because you don't have to do it full time I don't know what he's doing in the 1840s analysing the data. I can guess. I can take a while to stab in the glass. He spent the next several years carefully analysing his notes, his specimens and his observations.

His glasses were rarely off the tip of his nose. No. They're rarely not down here, Dyer. Oh, wow. Wow. If only there was a Go Pro.

A Francis Borgia. Of Darwin. Oh, wow. As he gets a puffing out of his bag. It's got a purple beak Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha that would be awesome Yeah, because now it would be a YouTuber He'd be like a travel YouTube

He would be flying drones Yeah yeah He'd be like um you know Daniel Evans You ever see that The best of Norfolk No Oh this is early YouTube Is it a guy who basically

I wanted to be a TV broadcaster Okay And it's so partridge It's absolutely incredible unselfaware. Yeah, but like, he's also, and he's like 19, and yet he is an incredible middle-aged man broadcasting.

Oh, right. It's just so... He's got it. Yeah, because he says... He's born in the wrong time, basically. He's so born in the wrong time. Like, he takes a bite out of a strawberry, and he goes, mm, guilt was sweet eating strawberries.

It's so... It's a fucking shout-out. You got to watch it. Right, Darwin's a YouTuber. What's the Mr. Beast's thumbnail? What, if Darwin with a puff in? Yeah. Oh!

The finches are, dude, what on this island? The 10 species of the same finch. So, anyway, we need to get to his big work, 8 and 59, the origin on the origin of the species. No, no, that's not the full name. What's the full name of the... Well, this is very important, I was going to get to the full. The full name is very important for what happens later.

Right. But so he basically, he's thinking for 20 years, right, after the Beagle. Yeah. He's thinking, his glasses down, he's not distracted by YouTube. No. Yeah, this is before... Yeah, before you had anything to distract you in that way and you could really get a lot of stuff done.

Yeah, because content is just writing a book. Yeah. And so he spends ages writing a book. Right. And what he, his idea is, and bear in mind people at this point, they think that God has created Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve are white.

Yeah. And then now some quite funny French theories think that there was a catastrophe on earth 5,000 years ago and people escaped from that went different directions. and then they adapted to they became like black people and Chinese people. Right, right, right.

Some people think that Chinese people hatch from an egg. I mean, we'll get into a next episode, but there is fucking crazy theories about why people are different colours. There's a lot of doing your own research. There's just a lot of just fucking Avego Henry's going, I reckon some of them matched out of eggs actually. Why Chinese people look like that? I reckon

they came out of eggs probably. They got dragons near there, don't they? I reckon they came out. I reckon dragons Game birthday. Anyway, what else do you want to solve? Yeah, what else we do today? On the origin, what's the full title on the origin of species and the... And editors should have trimmed this down.

We trimmed this down to the origin of species, but the official title is ridiculous. But this is 1859, and basically his theory is, is that species vary... Sorry, the full title, on the origins of species by the means of natural selection or preservation of favoured races

in the struggle for life. Now, that subtitle is incredibly important because what people take this to mean after Darwin's life is that races is in human races as in black, white, Chinese, whatever.

Of favoured races in the struggle for life. Now what Darwin means is different races of cabbage. He means, look, this cabbage has got five leaves,

that's because it grows in a wetter area. This is a better race of cabbage. Yeah, this race of cabbage should be exterminated. We should, We should put them all in the oven

and the Germans are going, ah, I see, I see what you're saying. What people, what people eat a lot of cabbage, Eastern Europeans, they got a lot of Jews. I get it. I get it. I understand what you're saying.

I don't need to read between the lines. It's a subtext. Do you know, it's so frustrating when someone's telling you something and you already know the answer. Yeah, is that? Yes, yes, I get it. Shut up.

Shut up. Yeah, that's basically what happens. But, um, so Darwin basically finds out or a posits that... A lot of positing in this time. This is the peak of the era. This is positing.

People are just fucking guessing at shit. That's why I like it. It's because now we sort of, the science has calcified into, you know, objective facts. Yeah, this is when it's, uh, it's avant-garde. It's fucking, uh, this. It's for informed jazz.

It's jazz. It's Mars Davis on the trumpet. It's jazz science. You can't do that. I just did. Fuck it. Black people came out of eggs. Who cares?

Can you preformed. that black people didn't come from eggs? No, exactly. It's a theory. There are no bad ideas at this point. If you're a gentleman in a suit. Although I would say that actually some very bad ideas come out of this. But basically, there's no wrong answers in science in the 19th century.

His big theory is that the species have evolved and they adapt to survive the conditions they find themselves in. And that humans, you know, he doesn't really talk about different. races of human at this point he does mention it in his next book yeah his next book the Jews what done it Darwin publishes the book

and people are like your fucking crackpot what you're on about God created the world God created man Noah's Ark rule he's Chinese because one of the Chinese was on the Ark

yeah we got the sorted lad we're sorted we've moved on but sooner or later it becomes people start to get obsessed by it in like science scientific circles

and Darwin's cousin Francis Galton right he is particularly obsessed with this he's like I get it I see what you mean mate

origin of the species he's doing a lot of this preservation of races in the struggle yeah yeah yeah now Francis Galton we're going to get into properly in our next episode

which is already on the Patreon but I do just want to say this he is a polymath which is dangerous in this era if you're English and a polymath It's incredibly funny. It's incredibly funny as to the things that he invents, right? This guy, right?

Think of all the things he's, this guy. Before you judge him, before you judge this guy, this is all the things that he invents, right? Forensics, right? Forensics, right? First guy to do fingerprints, yeah? Weather map. He's the first guy to draw a weather map. Amazing.

Eugenics. Now, listen. Roddy, L. Francis. You're getting a lot of stuff right. You're going to get the old one wrong. Look, what do you mean? Try and error? Why should we judge to our mistakes?

The census? Statistics. Brilliant. Census. Why are you doing that? Eugenics. Right. I get it.

So nature versus nurture, he coined that phrase. This is all this cunt. This is all Darwin's cousin, Francis Galton. You know, an incredible man in many regards. But he takes Darwin's work and he fucking, he puts it into fifth gear. And we're going to deal with what happens to Darwin's ideas in our next episode. Yeah. We're going to deal with eugenics.

We're going to get into the scientific racism of the 1880s. We're going to get into it. Which is possibly one of my favorite things. so your hair went down. My hair, I did it, I did it a little bit of a head. Yeah, I'm becoming my final form. Now that episode's already on our Patreon where for three pounds a month

you can become a truther and you get access to every, all the week's episodes first thing on a Monday. You get a bonus episode on a Friday. What are some of the bonus episodes we've done recently? Where we've got, where we've got defenestration,

which is the-throwing people out of windows. We've had a two-part series on Prince Andrew, which has gone down very well. That's probably our best episode apart two. That's an absolute filth in that series. If you want to hear us talk about

our sexual fantasy of Emily Maitness, shitting ourselves on news night and Emily Maitness grilling us. If you're wondering who Charlie is and what he's into, that all comes out on the Patreon. Either way, though, thank you so much for watching, listening, and we'll see you on Thursday.

Goodbye. Goodbye. Thank you.