Radiolab - Why Fish Don't Exist

Episode Date: May 13, 2020

Our old friend Lulu Miller — former Radiolab producer, co-creator of Invisibilia — has been obsessed by the chaos that rules the universe since long before it showed up as a global pandemic, and a few weeks ago, she published a book about it. It’s called Why Fish Don’t Exist. It’s part scientific adventure story, part philosophical manifesto, part chest-ripped-open memoir. Jad called her up to talk about how an obscure 19th century ichthyologist with a checkered past helped her find meaning in the world, and what she means when she says fish aren’t real. You can buy Lulu's book Why Fish Don’t Exist here. This episode was produced by Pat Walters.  Special thanks to Pan•American. Support Radiolab today at Radiolab.org/donate.  

Wait, you're listening. Okay. All right. You're listening to Radio Lab. Radio Lab. From W-N-Y-S. See? Picture the person you love the most.

Picture them sitting on the couch, eating cereal, ranting about something totally charming. Like how it bothers them when people sign their emails with a single initial, instead of just taking those four extra keystrokes to finish the job. chaos will get them. Chaos will crack them from the outside with a falling branch, a speeding car, a bullet, or unravel them from the inside with the mutiny of their very own cells.

Chaos will rot your plants and kill your dog and rust your bike. It will decay your most precious memories, topple your favorite cities, wreck any sanctuary you can ever build. It's not if, it's when. Chaos is the only sure thing in this world, the master that rules us all.

My scientist father taught me early that there is no escaping the second law of thermodynamics. Entropy is only growing. It can never be diminished, no matter what we do. A smart human accepts this truth. A smart human does not try to fight it. But one spring day in 1906, a tall American man with a walrus mustache,

dared to challenge our master. Hey, I'm Jed, I'm Umerad. This is Radio Lab, And that was Lulu Miller, former Radio Labber, co-founder of the podcast Invisibilia, and now author, reading from her brand new book, Why Fish Don't Exist. All right. Should we talk about your book? Let's do it. Okay.

Lulu, I love this book. A few weeks ago, I called her up to talk about it. It's funny and it's poignant and it's personal and it's historical and it's philosophical. And it's also like kind of weirdly relevant. with this moment we're in right now in a way that is, man, maybe I want to ask you about. So yeah, it is. I mean, it is about like the book is, I feel like self-conscious being like, it is, it is timely for our times because that's, but. No, but it's right there.

But it really is like deeply about how to move forward when everything just gets so messed up, impossibly by the world. And so the superstructure of the whole book is that you're telling the story. So all of these kind of questions get filtered through this one guy. So you tell the story of a guy named David Starr Jordan. So who is he? So he is a kind of obscure naturalist and ichthyologist. So he specialized in fish.

And he was from the 1800s. And then his life crossed a little bit into the 20th century. And he's an American. Grew up in New York and was in Indiana for a while and then ended up as actually the first. president of Stanford, he counts himself as having discovered, he and his team having discovered a full fifth of fish known to humans in his day. So over 2,000 fish, like, tons. I mean, it's in most people's life to discover, most scientists' life, to discover one species is huge. How did you get interested in him? He was basically this offhand anecdote on a tour that I was

getting of the California Academy of Sciences, so a science music. And there was just this detail about after the 1906 earthquake, thousands of the fish, the jars broke and the fish were separated. And the person in charge of that collection, instead of just giving up, he invented this technique of tying a label to a fish. So tying the name to the flesh. And in that moment, I thought, oh, what a foolish human. Like this is his day job. He's a taxonomist. His job is to order the unknown.

And so here he goes for 30 years, do do do to do catching fish, naming them, putting them in jars, stacking, sacking, sacking, sacking, sacking, and then boom, an earthquake comes and destroys it and separates the names from the fish. And to me there's something, there's a message in that. Like the message I read in that is in a world ruled by chaos, any pursuit of order is inherently doomed.

And then like years later, when I had gone and messed up a lot of things in my life and was just in a place where I felt really lonely and unsure of the path ahead. Like literally that guy resurfaced in me. Like I was like, oh my gosh, I'm like that guy with the needle. Am I being cook? I mean, specifically I was thinking about, you know, I was, I had left radio lab, you know, and I was trying to write fiction. And that wasn't going to say. hot. And like I was, I had screwed up this relationship that I loved and I was trying to get him back by pining and by reaching out to him and by being patient. And years and years were going by.

And I just, I wondered, like, am I just leading myself into real humiliation and danger? And I think I am. But then every now and then I'd wonder about that guy and be like, well, but maybe this is the path. Maybe you just have to go through doubt to accomplish something. And maybe that guy wasn't a fool. maybe actually things ended up okay for him, what happened to him. And that's what started what I thought was an essay and then kind of spiraled into this whole book because then it just went somewhere way beyond my need for moral instruction. Wow. Okay. Yeah.

That makes perfect sense. Yeah. It's like your tour was a seed planted that only bloomed when you found yourself in that same darkness. Totally. I just wanted to read him like a parable. Gotcha. And so in the book, you track his life through all of these ups and downs. And I wonder if you can give a sketch of that parable of his life without giving too much away. Yeah. David Star Jordan was born at the darkest time of the year, which is perhaps why he became so preoccupied with the stars.

While husking corn on autumn evenings, he writes, I became curious as to the names and significance of the celestial bodies. He could not just enjoy their twinkling. He found them a mess he needed ordered, known. When he was about eight years old, he got his hands on an atlas of astronomical charts and began comparing what he saw on the page to what he saw above his head. Night by night he went creeping out of the house, attempting to learn the name of every star. And according to him, it took him only five years to ring order to the entire night sky.

As a reward, he chose star, as his middle name and wore it proudly for the rest of his life. Having mastered the celestial, David Star Jordan turned to the terrestrial. On his way home from school, he began to ever so occasionally pluck a velvety blue pom-pum or silken orange star from the grass. Some he'd sniff and let fall to the ground, but occasionally one would linger in his fingers and make it back to his bedroom where it would lie on his bed and taunt him with its mysterious arrangement of petals. He's this sweet, nerdy boy who loves stars and then he loves flowers and then he loves flowers

eventually he loves fish and no one cares that his mom throws away his early maps and like he can't get a girl and he can't get a job and he's just like but I love nature and how can you like I just loved him and he devoted himself to what he called the hidden and insignificant and he had learned that from a guy in his town who loved nature and told him like the good naturalist notices the hidden and insignificant like that the dandelions and buttercups will show you more about you know nature's in order than the big showy roses and hibiscus or whatever. And so that's kind of what he devoted himself to looking at and studying. And I love that idea. And then on that quest, he eventually started getting some traction and some success. And he started to really rise and rise quickly.

He gets promoted. He gets a wife. He gets kids. He gets awards. He becomes the first president of Stanford, and that is when the earthquake hits. Imagine seeing 30 years of your life undone in one instant. Imagine whatever it is you do all day, whatever it is you care about, whatever you foolishly pick and prod at each day, hoping against all signs that suggest otherwise that it matters. Imagine finding all the progress that you have made on that endeavor smashed at your feet. Those words go here. Fish were everywhere.

Glass was strewn all over the floor. Flounders bashed further flat by fallen stone. Eels severed by shelves, blowfish popped by shards of glass. There was a pungent smell of ethanol and corpse. But far worse than any of the kernel damage was the existential. For many of those specimens left intact, hundreds of them, nearly a thousand. their wholly named eggs had scattered all over the lab floor. In just a few seconds, Genesis had been reversed.

His meticulously named fish had become a mass of the unknown again. And it wasn't just the earthquake. Like shortly before that, his beloved daughter Barbara had died. And a little bit before that, his wife had died. His first collection of fish actually got struck by lightning and burnt to the ground. Oh, man. Yeah, so this guy's life was just uncannily plagued by chaos.

And he never seemed phase. Like, he just always kept going. And that was what really drew me in about him because when I think about the chaos that rules us, that's always been really hard for me. And you were sort of introduced to this idea when you were a little kid. This comes from your dad, right? Yeah. What was it that he would tell you when you were young?

about chaos and nothing in our place and the order of things. I mean, he just jumped really quickly to everything is meaningless. Like, the minute we could understand words, just like, oh, nothing means nothing, and you'll soon be dead. Like, everything was a lecture on our place in the world and how small it was and how insignificant we were and how there's no plan and there's no God and there's no magic and there's no destiny and there's not even cosmic justice, really. like try to be a decent human for sure that matters because because nothing matters actually how we treat each other is all that matters. And I think he's a very joyful and he's a scientist and he's a very joyful, funny, life-loving person. And so I think as a little kid, I made the

calculation like, okay, if you believe these things, you turn joyful like dad. Like, okay, he got that way. And so then I would believe all the things, but then slowly I'd be like, Oh, why am I so sad? You know, like, or, you know, and I think it was this weird. Yeah, so it was this weird, you know, there's the Carpe Diem. There's, like, there is such a bright side to that stuff, you know, like, if nothing matters, go taste life and go be courageous and, like, do the thing that might fail because it doesn't matter. But what do you do when that thought turns dark or when you're having a hard day? Yeah.

And then that thought really makes it worse. I think it's, I don't know. I found myself, I thought about the people in my life. I mean, you know, Radio Lab with the history that it has had, you know, we've talked to, oh, God, millions of scientists. And there is a particular cast of mind that is exactly as you describe your dad, and also David Starr, Jordan, this kind of relentless optimist, almost like somebody who embraces the meaninglessness of the world, like an exuberant atheist in a way?

Like there's no meaning. Yes, totally. And isn't it marvelous? And let's party. Yes. And let's just party. He's an exuberant. Yes.

And I hear you asking the question, okay, I agree with you. But I can't quite get to the phrase and isn't it marvelous? I can't quite get there. And how do I get there? So I feel you inquiring that about David Starr Jordan through the book. Like how are you the way you are in the face of all of this chaos? Totally. That is so well put.

Yeah. Like I hear you. I hear you. And then how do I get there? And maybe I don't, you know, poor David St. Jordan sort of who I just like threw my just, you know, existential angst onto. But I think I thought he might be, he might have an answer to like, how do you manufacture that? that ability to go on on a dark day

if you don't believe in anything. And Lulu does, sort of, find an answer for what propelled David Starr Jordan. But it turns out that thing, that belief, also led him down a really dark path. And we'll go down that path with Lulu after the break. Hi, this is Florian calling from Linz in Austria. Radio Lab is supported in part by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation,

enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about Sloan at www.sloan.org. Hey, I'm Jad. This is Radio Lab. We have been talking to Lulu Miller about her new book, Why Fish Don't Exist, which is about the chaos and meaninglessness of the universe, and particularly about a guy, a scientist named David Starr, Jordan, who was plagued by that chaos, but somehow found a way to push through it all. Yeah. And I think the way that he figured out, you know, the way that he kept going, a key part was that he found purpose in ordering things.

He thought that he was solving the divine plan, this hierarchy in nature laid out by God. And he would eventually come to believe in Darwinism and let go of that idea. But he still thought he was uncovering a sacred hierarchy. He just believed that this ordering of the natural world had purpose. And that alone buoyed him through really hard times. But like that very belief in an order is also what started to make things really turned for him. And we actually touched on this part of David Starr Jordan's story in an episode that we did over the summer called Unfit. So here we go.

So this, I guess, so this whole thing begins. with a guy, and his name is Mark Bold. It is the story of the Supreme Court case Buck v. Bell, which made it legal to sterilize people based on eugenics. That is the idea that some categories of humans should not exist. The story goes into the history of that idea and also the very troubling ways it is still with us today. And David Starr Jordan, at a certain point.

Quick spoiler alert, if you haven't read the book yet, he makes an appearance. So my dude was like one of the earliest, loudest, most powerful proponents of eugenics. Got it. You can see like in the late 1800s, which is decades before most American eugenicists got the fever, he's slipping it into his courses at Stanford. So he's like telling smart people these ideas that poverty is linked to the blood and can be exterminated. He would trot these ideas out in front of like hundreds of.

of politicians and he says, you know, this is a matter of life and death for the nation. And he said the Republic will endure only as long as the human harvest is good. Oh, that's a horrible thing. And he wrote this is a book. He wrote a book called The Human Harvest. I'm holding it right here. And it's horrible title. And it's horrible inside.

He tells to scare people, he tells people about this town in Italy called Aosta, which for about 1,300 years was this sort of refuge for people, you know, with disabilities or deformities. People would send them there and the church would take care of them. And then they could often get married and they work the fields and have families and they're helped by the church. And some people see that as this beautiful tale of like helping society's most vulnerable. And he went there and he wrote about it as a veritable chamber of horrors. Basically he says he describes the people living there and say they have less decency than the pig. and he like says that it's a different,

it's a subspecies of human. And he says this is where, you know, America's going to be going if we don't take action. Wow. So your guy who sort of seemed to be like a guide for you at a meaninglessness, all of a sudden you discover he's a eugenicist,

how did you, how did that sit with you? Oh, I mean, it was just utter revulsion. Like I wanted to just throw my arms off him. And then I felt a little lost, but I think I started to try to really understand, like, what went so wrong here. And after looking at tons of his stuff, I actually think the sin wasn't so much the desire to find order in nature. I think it was his certainty. Like, things really began to turn for the worse when he just white-knuckled his beliefs, that the cat's between people are fixed and real and immutable. And so like at the end of the book, the thing I

really come away with is a real wariness of the categories around us. I think, you know, that's why I titled the book the way I did, why fish don't exist. I know it's kind of an obnoxious or maybe seemingly like the, what's the word? It's like irritating. But, no, it's, I find it intriguing. I was like, what? It's just, it's a, it's a bold title. I don't know. But, yeah.

Well, I mean, I don't think it'll spoil anything if I asked this question, but let's explain the title. Why don't fish exist? Like, what does that even mean? Yeah. Yeah. I think the best way to do it is just to say, okay, so like, picture a salmon and a lung fish, which looks like a very fishy fish. kind of big. A chest, right?

Yeah. And then picture a cow. And then just ask which of those two are most closely related. And I think you kind of intuitively, a biology student would say, oh, the lungfish and the salmon are, they're most closely related. They're both fish. They're both in the water. They're both fish. Yep.

They go swim. Yeah. Flop their tails. But then these taxonomists will show you slowly why actually a cow and a lungfish are much more closely related. Because if you peel them and look inside, the lungfish have what are almost lungs. They have a thing called an epiglottis. They have a more similar structured heart. Basically, you can see that a lungfish is more closely related to a cow.

And when you start to accept that, that all the things that are kind of swimming in the water, that some of them are more closely related to us than one another, then you have to start to realize that fish is like this sloppy gerrymandered category of creatures, some of which are very close to us, some of which are very far, that we smushed together. So it's like this. That's completely fascinating. Well, why couldn't you, like gerrymandered is a good word. So let's, if I head in that direction, why couldn't I just redraw the boundaries in a way that makes more sense?

I could say, okay, we say the word fish, but we probably mean five or six different things. And there's this category of fish, which have a whole lot to do with cows. And then maybe us too. and then there's this other kind that's more fishy in some way. Like, I mean, couldn't you sort of just redraw the boundaries as opposed to say there are none? Oh, you totally could. And scientists have. I mean, the boundaries as you're talking about them would be the, so the cowie-like fish are the,

oh, this name is horrible, but it's, I don't think I can even do it, but it's sarco-tectory. and then there's the fishy fishy kind of salmon and bass fish, which are the actinoptery. But then there's also the chondyctrides, the mccini, and then there's tunicits, which – and so you can do that and you could make about five different groups. And that's fine. I'm great with that. Like, I think it's just admitting that this term fish, which feels so basic and inarguable, is. actually a term that we use to hide nuance and to keep ourselves more separate. And that's what, that's what matters to me because then it's like, oh, well, what else do I have wrong? Like,

you know, even, even the other day, like these, these little just ways that we value one life over the other in terms of who we're going to give a ventilator, you know, and these little judgments of like, well, if they're disabled, maybe they don't deserve it. And, you know, people, there are some people crying out and saying, hey, look at what are you saying right now? Like because I fit into this category, which is to me analogous to fish, like because you think I am that far away from you, I don't get to live. And so I think that's how I see it alive is just like mistrust the big technical terms and mistrust the tiny basic terms because actually our understanding of our world. is so just cartoonishly limited. There's just so much wildness.

Like, there's just so much waiting out there. Yeah. I wonder if we could talk a little bit about it. I mean, so... Can I tell you something cool? Of course, always. So, okay, I'm like, okay, so two nights ago. Okay.

Um... I'm all, I'm, like, hammering this, like, fish is so basic and it matters. It matters. It matters that, like, you have to believe that it's not a thing. Like, this is, like, my, this has been my, like, schstick. My, I don't not schick because I'm just starting to say it finally. This has been my, like, driving weird obsession for 10 freaking years. Like, I cannot tell you how many eyes I've made dull over when they hear I'm writing a book. And then I try to tell them what it's about.

And then they, like, go off to the cheese table because they don't, they feel so worried and bad for me. Like, they're just, okay, so, like, I've been in this whole thinking about the danger of this word fish. And so two nights ago, I was in the bath of my kid, dude, who's a year and a half years old. And there's a little cardboard, like a little drawing of a fish by the door of our bathroom. And my wife came in to say hi. Like, we were splitting up days and she's working in the morning, you know, like, anyway. So she says hi and he looks up. He smiles at her.

She gets the smile I never get. And then he looks to the left and he just goes, yeesh. And she was like, fish? And he was like, he. And he said fish for the first time. So he doesn't have that many words. Like this, I was trying to count it out. I think it's his 11th word.

Oh, wow. And that should be the fall from innocent. Like, that should be, like, and with and there. Yeah, Vereth, he ejected from the Garden of Eden. I literally just spent 10 years trying to show people the path back into. Like, let go of fish. You get the goodies. And then he says it.

And that should be, like, I watched my son shoot his innocence dead. Like, with this work. Like, that should be the fall from grace in real time. But instead, I was to. is so proud. It was so cool. Like, it was so sweet. And he's got it. Like, then I, you know, I don't know. I don't know what, I don't know. But I just know that the feeling didn't line up with the meaning I was supposed to make. Lulu Miller. Her book is Why Fish Don't Exist. It is a great book. I don't say that lightly. Thanks to Pat Walters for producing this segment. I'm Chad Epping. We're on Radio Lab. We'll be back with you. Next week.

Okay, we've got a new word. Dude, what's that? Fish. What is it? She's a fish? What is that? Zoops. She.

It's a fish? A fish. This is Colleen, calling from South City, St. Louis, Missouri. Radio Lab is created by Jed Abimrod with Robert Coler, and produced by Soren Wheeler. Dylan Keith is our director of sound design, and Susie Lechenberg is our executive producer. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Becca Bressler, Rachel Cusick, David Gebel, Bethel Hapty, Tracy Hunt, Matt Kielty, Annie McEwan, Lots of Nasser, Sarah Corey, Aryan Wack, Pat Walters, and Molly Webster. with help from Shima Oliai, W. Harry Fortuna, Sarah Sandbach, Melissa O'Donnell, Tad Davis, and Russell Gregg, and our fact checker is Michelle Harris.