Something You Should Know - The Myths and Science of Losing Weight & How Humans Have Redefined Nature

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Starting point is 00:00:31 Today on Something You Should Know, what's the best seat on an airplane? Apparently, it's in row 49. Then, the myths and science of weight loss and why it's so hard to keep weight off. Well, certainly one factor is everywhere we go these days there is food. Also we all recognize that portions are larger. Studies show that we tend to eat what's in front of us. So if we serve a giant portion at a restaurant we're more likely to eat it. Also how your cell phone could save your life if you set it up right. And how humans have changed and redefined nature. There is really a tendency to think of us as separate from nature.

Starting point is 00:01:16 Really, the only species that we've really messed with, for example, might be the things we domesticated, like corn and cats and dogs and stuff like that. But in fact, our fingerprint is on everything that's out there. All this today on Something You Should Know. Bumble knows it's hard to start conversations. Hey. No, too basic. Hi there. Still no.

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Starting point is 00:02:02 Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hi, welcome to Something You Should Know. It does seem that more and more people are flying again. I know some people still don't want to fly, but it does seem that more and more people are getting on airplanes. And with the holidays coming up, even more people will be flying. And maybe you've wondered, what's the best seat to choose on a commercial airliner?

Starting point is 00:02:35 Well, a flight attendant named Sandra Jeannie Kwan, who has 7 million social media followers, put out a video explaining her choice based on her experience as a flight attendant. And her favorite seats are not the ones you might think. They're not the ones in the emergency exit aisle with all the extra legroom. She says you want an aisle seat about halfway through the back section of the airplane. So on a standard flight with 52 rows, the best seats would be the aisle seats of row 49. One reason for getting a seat towards the back of the plane is because the plane tends to fill up from front to back, meaning you're more likely to get a row to yourself if you're towards the back of the plane. But you don't want to go much farther back than row 49,

Starting point is 00:03:25 because now you're getting a little too close to the bathrooms. And since meals are served from front to back on an airplane, if they serve meals, the farther back you go, the more likely they are to run out of your choice of meals. And that is something you should know. It seems just about everybody wishes they could lose 5 pounds or 10 pounds or more. Body weight is a preoccupation for a lot of people. I mean, have you ever passed your reflection in a mirror or a window

Starting point is 00:04:01 and maybe sucked in your stomach? Wish you wore a size or two smaller, or maybe you dream someday of going back to the weight you were several years ago. And despite all the diets and programs that supposedly make it so simple to lose weight, it is not so simple. It's hard for humans to lose weight, and in fact, it seems quite easy to gain it. A lot of us weigh more than we should, and I suspect most of us weigh more than we wish we did. But in order to lose weight, we have to understand what really works and what doesn't.

Starting point is 00:04:38 What science has proven will work, as opposed to the myths, fad diets, and old wives tales about how to lose weight. And here to bust some myths and explain the science is Robert Davis. He's an award-winning health journalist who's written three books on health and now has a fourth book out called Supersized Lies, How Myths About Weight Loss Are Keeping Us Fat. Hey, Robert, welcome. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Thank you, Mike. Nice to talk to you. Supposedly, we know a lot about health and diet and metabolism and calories and exercise. We know all that we know that you would think this problem of weight loss would be better or would be getting better. But in fact, it's getting worse. People are getting heavier and

Starting point is 00:05:25 heavier. So what's going on? Weight loss generates a lot of profits for a lot of people. By one estimate, the weight loss industry is worth more than $60 billion annually in the US. And there are lots of players in this industry who stand to profit from misleading information, people who push particular diets, people who say, oh, this is the only diet, this is the best diet. People who, food companies that sell us foods that they're supposedly weight-friendly, gyms that tell us join and lose 30 pounds in 30 days. So the list goes on of people who are trying to push ideas that are not only misleading us, but in some cases

Starting point is 00:06:06 making the problem worse. Well, what do you think is the reason? And there may be several, but 50, 60 years ago, we didn't have the problem we have now with obesity. People can't have just lost their willpower. So what's happened? Well, certainly one factor is the ubiquity of food. I like to say whether we go to Office Depot or Home Depot, there's food there. Whether we go to our offices or whether we go to the airport, there's food. So I think that's certainly something that's changed over the years is there's more food at more places waiting there, beckoning us, tempting us. Also, we all recognize that portions are larger. So we dine out more and we get larger portions at restaurants.

Starting point is 00:06:50 And studies show that we tend to eat what's in front of us. So if we serve a giant portion at a restaurant, we're more likely to eat it. And then there's the food industry. The food industry continues to pump out more and more highly processed foods, foods that are highly palatable. And these are foods that research is associated with weight gain. So I think all those things certainly play a role. And then as I mentioned earlier, just the proliferation of bad advice. I think these diets and other approaches that we're told to follow that

Starting point is 00:07:21 don't work, I think those have made the problem worse as well. So let's start with breakfast, because a lot of people have heard the saying, you know, breakfast is the most important meal of the day. But a lot of people don't eat breakfast, and many people who do eat breakfast eat a very sweet, donut-y, waffle-y breakfast. So what about breakfast? Yeah, well, that's been something that's been debated a long time. And many people do say breakfast is the most important meal of the day, including for weight loss. And there are studies that actually show that people who eat breakfast are less likely to put on weight, less likely to be obese. The problem with those studies is they just show associations, not cause and effect.

Starting point is 00:08:09 And if you look at studies that actually can show cause and effect, so-called clinical trials, what they suggest is there is not necessarily a relationship between eating breakfast and weight. So people who eat breakfast are not necessarily more or less likely to gain weight or to be overweight. So the bottom line there is you should do what's right for you. So if you're not hungry in the morning and you don't want breakfast, don't eat. Wait until you're hungry. If on the other hand, like me, I'm a breakfast eater and I have to eat first thing in the morning, eat, but eat something sensible. Eat a breakfast that is going to be not full of donuts and pastries, but that's going to have healthful foods and that are going to fill you up and sustain you. Generally, I think when people decide that they need to lose weight, they start by looking

Starting point is 00:08:49 at calories. They count calories and they look at how many they take in and how many they burn. And maybe they'll walk more after dinner because that'll burn more calories. What about that theory? Yeah, that's often the sort of the basis of the advice we get, right? You should eat less and move more, eat fewer calories and move more. And sometimes that's abbreviated as ELMM. And I like to say for many people, Elm Street is a dead end.

Starting point is 00:09:14 They do that and they find it doesn't work. Now, one reason when it comes to calorie counting is that it's very hard to count calories precisely. You know, we see those big, bold numbers on the food packages, that the food has 273 calories. The problem is those numbers are not exact. They can be off under law by as much as 20%, and often what we see is an undercount. So, number one, we often don't know how many calories we're eating

Starting point is 00:09:39 with any precision. Number two, it's hard to know how many calories you're actually burning. You know, there are apps, you could, there are online calculators, but it's very hard to know how many calories you're actually burning because it varies from person to person. And it depends on a number of factors. So if you're not sure how many calories with any precision you're taking in, you're not really sure how many you're burning or need to burn to be in calorie deficit, it's a very hard thing to do precisely. And so on top of that, when you look only at calories, which many of us are told to do, you may end up choosing foods that are not

Starting point is 00:10:11 necessarily optimal for long-term weight control because you may end up eating candy or fudge bars or other foods that are maybe lower in calories, but are not necessarily going to fill you up and curb hunger. So that's something else. So what matters is not only the number of calories, but also the quality of those foods and the effect they have on fullness. And what you said about, you know, people really are different, that you and I could do the same things all day long, and one of us could burn a lot more calories or end up with a calorie deficit or surplus much different than the other. Exactly. And we all know those people. We don't like who can eat whatever they want and they never gain an ounce. And there are studies, studies of twins that show that genetics can play a large role in how our bodies respond to the calories we eat.

Starting point is 00:11:04 Just as you say, some people can eat a certain number of calories and gain a lot of weight. Other people, the study suggests, won't gain as much weight, and conversely with weight loss. So that certainly plays a role. Something else that is interesting to me is there's emerging evidence about the microbes in our guts, the so-called microbiome. And this is new research that's just emerging, but it's very interesting. And what this research suggests is that people have different mixes of microbes in their guts, and that mix of microbes can help determine how many of the calories that we consume are actually absorbed. And that makes a difference because

Starting point is 00:11:43 if you don't absorb as many of the calories that you consume, you're going to gain less weight. And so that's a factor, too, that may help explain why different people gain different amounts of weight or lose different amounts of weight depending on how much they eat. Of all the myths about weight loss, what's the one that you find most interesting or you think people don't really understand? What's the one that you find most interesting or you think people don't really understand? What's the one that stands out to you? You know, I wouldn't have said this before writing this book, but after writing this book and talking to lots of people who struggle for decades, maybe their entire lives with their weight, I would say it's that weight is entirely

Starting point is 00:12:19 within your control. And if you are unable to lose weight and keep it off, it's your fault that you're not diligent enough, that you're lazy, that there's something wrong with you. And that to me is the biggest myth of all, because it's so harmful. Not only does it destroy people's self-esteem and result in all kinds of negative emotions and negative, poor mental health, but I think it can also make it harder for people to live a healthy life and to control their weight over time because often they just give up. And so to me, that's perhaps the biggest myth of all. Well, that takes us into my next question,

Starting point is 00:12:58 which is there is this theory that you have a set weight. Your weight is your weight, and you can try to lower it, but eventually your body will come back to your weight. You have a weight. Yes, the so-called set point theory. And that's the idea, as you say, that there's a range, perhaps, or a weight or a range within where your body wants to be. And certainly research does show that when people cut calories, for example, or they exercise vigorously and lose weight, the body fights back because we have this built-in mechanism. Evolution has given us this gift to help protect us against starvation. And so when we start losing weight, the body thinks, uh-oh, something's wrong here. We need to start pushing the weight back up.

Starting point is 00:13:48 So unfortunately or fortunately, we don't live in a society, at least in the U.S., where we have to worry about starvation for the most part and scarcity. But this mechanism that evolution has given us, we have, it's going to fight our efforts. If somebody was, based on what you know about all this research, if somebody was to ask you, okay, so I want to lose weight, but it would be nice to kickstart this. Is there one or two things that really help people get on track, see some results fairly quickly that encourage them to keep going? Well, I would say that just about any diet will help you lose weight in the short term, whether you want to do a keto diet, a low fat diet, intermittent fasting. I think any of those approaches has been shown to help in the short term. We're talking over several months. So I think to find what you can tolerate for a

Starting point is 00:14:42 certain period of time, and that can help kickstart your efforts. The real challenge, though, as we all know, is not losing weight in the short term. It's the long term, because these statistics are very depressing about the amount of weight, the number of people, the percentage of people who regain some or, in many cases, all or more of what they lost. So I think what's key here is whatever diet you choose in the short term, whatever works for you, to also have a plan in place that after several months, you're going to transition to a long-term eating plan that you can sustain. That's what's key. And I think it's fine if you use one of these diets in the short term to get started and to encourage you, but I think it's unrealistic to count on any of these diets, these short-term diets, these fad diets as a long-term solution to weight control.

Starting point is 00:15:28 We are talking about the myths and science of losing weight. And my guest is Robert Davis. He's author of the book, Supersize Lies, How Myths About Weight Loss Are Keeping Us Fat. Hi, I'm Jennifer, a founder of the Go Kid Go Network. At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at the heart of every show that we produce. That's why we're so excited to introduce a brand new show to our network called The Search for the Silver Lining, a fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot. Look for The Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get

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Starting point is 00:16:55 about the important conversations going on today. Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. So, Robert, often it seems that discussions around food, particularly around weight loss, is what not to do, what foods are bad for you, what you need to avoid, rather than what's good for you, that what we have to do is

Starting point is 00:17:27 cut out the villains in our diet and that will help. So we had in the 1970s and 80s and into the 90s, the idea that fat is the enemy, that if you eat less fat, you'll lose weight. And so we saw a flood of low fat and no fat products in the market. And what happened? Not only did people not lose weight, they gained weight, and there was an epidemic of diabetes, which is in many cases attributed to this low-fat craze. And so after that, we saw low-carb. And then since then, we've seen people naming gluten as the enemy or sugar as the enemy, or beans is the enemy, or other foods, the list goes on. But the point is that weight loss is far more complex than a particular food or category

Starting point is 00:18:16 of foods. And when this approach is taken, what it does is to divert attention away from the larger issue which is the overall quality of our diets. It's not about one food or one category of foods. It's the overall composition of your diet that matters. And also it can interfere with optimal health because if certain diets, for example, a keto diet, if you do it over the longterm and don't eat whole grains, for example, there can be nutrient deficiencies. And so that can be an issue. That can be a very serious side effect of some of these approaches. So that's a myth that we need to be aware of when diet pushers tell us it's all about cutting out some category of food.

Starting point is 00:18:56 Certainly in any discussion about weight loss, you have to talk about exercise. But as we've talked on this podcast before, exercise is not a great way to lose weight. And if you think that you can, you know, eat anything you want and just exercise, it won't work if weight loss is your goal. Yeah, that's correct. And I say that as somebody who's an avid exerciser. I am a big proponent of exercise. That said, for all the things exercise can do, everything from lowering our risk of cancer and heart disease to improving our mood, even improving our sex lives, the one thing it can't do, ironically, is the thing that many, many, if not most people look for it to do, which is to help us lose weight. And that's a shame because what happens is that too often people go into an

Starting point is 00:19:46 exercise program, mainly because they expect it to help them lose weight. It doesn't help them lose weight and then they stop exercising. And so the reasons are several. First of all, as you say, it doesn't burn a lot of calories. The kind of exercise that most of us do, which is great for our health, going for a brisk walk, taking a yoga class, going for a bike ride, that's not going to burn a lot of calories. And so it's not going to make a big, big dent in our weight. And even when we do exercise vigorously, if you're one of those few people who can go to the gym every day, burn five or 600, 700 calories five days a week, which is hard to do. But if you can do that, it will result in some weight loss in the short term. But over time, your body responds, your metabolism slows down, and it becomes harder and harder to lose weight, and you have to ratchet up the exercise

Starting point is 00:20:29 more and more. So long term, it's not a great way to lose weight. So there are other benefits to exercise when it comes to weight. So I want to make sure that's clear. While exercise may not help you lose weight, it actually is important when it comes to maintaining weight loss or preventing weight gain from starting at all. So I think that exercise is important with regard to keeping weight off. It's just not a great way to take off weight in the first place. One of the concerns I think people have, and I've had it too, is that when you talk to someone like you who points out that, you know, this doesn't work, this is a myth, these things have proven not to be true, it doesn't help people to what to do. It's telling them what not to do, what doesn't work. But so now what do you do? So, okay, all

Starting point is 00:21:21 these things are myths. Now what? Yeah, that's a great point. And I definitely don't want people to be left with that message that it's hopeless and nothing works. Because what we do know, and there's good research showing that the kind of eating pattern that is optimal for good health is also optimal for maintaining a healthy weight. And so what does that mean? It means the things we often hear about, a diet that's high in fruits and vegetables and whole grains and nuts and beans and seeds, fish, lean, poultry, dairy if you eat dairy, and that you minimize foods that are highly processed, things like chips, candy, sweets, fries, fried foods, things like that. Now notice I didn't say you never eat those foods. So it's not,

Starting point is 00:22:13 these foods are not villains. It's not as, it's not the same as diets that say certain foods are off limits. You should never eat them. But it is to say that you should focus on eating more of the foods that are good for us, that are good for our weight, and to try to eat less of the foods that are not good for our weight. And it's a process. I think it's important for people to recognize that food, eating habits build up over time. I know when I was growing up, I ate all these processed foods. I drank soda. I ate donuts. I ate Pop-Tarts. I ate candy a lot, potato chips. And so it was only over a period of years that I was able to change my eating habits. So I was able to focus more on a whole foods diet. And I think

Starting point is 00:22:51 that's a very important point for people to see this as a marathon, not a sprint, to change their diets over time gradually so that, and they can still enjoy foods, highly processed food, a piece of cake, ice cream, chips, but to make them occasional treats in moderation rather than everyday staples. Let's talk about diet soda, because I think people believe that diet soda is a good choice. It's a better choice than sugared sodas because it doesn't have any calories, and so therefore it must be helpful in losing weight. But what the research tells us is that's not necessarily the case. It's far more complex. There's research suggesting, some research suggests that a diet soda or diet beverages can result in weight loss, but there's plenty of other research

Starting point is 00:23:36 that suggests that it has no effect and even some that it contributes to weight gain. There are different theories. One is that diet drinks mess with our brains so that they cause us to expect when we drink a diet drink, our brains are expecting calories and then we don't get them. Our brains say, where are the calories? And we get hungry and it causes us to seek out calories so that we end up eating more. That's just a theory, but it is one explanation as to why. There are also theories that some of certain artificial sweeteners may affect the balance of microbes in our guts. And so changing that balance, again, can affect how we absorb calories that we consume. So that

Starting point is 00:24:18 may be a factor. And it may also just be what I like to call, I'll have a large fry, a Big Mac, and a Diet Coke. The idea that somehow, well, we're being good when it comes to diet drinks so that we can overindulge in other ways. We have license to do so because we're being virtuous. So that may play a role as well. But whatever the reason, what we do know is that diet drinks, by and large, do not live up to their promise of promoting weight loss. And in some cases, they may even promote weight gain. What does the science say about these, supposedly these superfoods like avocados and certain other berries that supposedly promote weight loss? What does the science say? Yeah, this is a very alluring idea, right? Because the idea is that if we eat some avocado

Starting point is 00:25:06 or chili peppers or coconut oil, whatever the case may be, it'll help melt away pounds, get rid of fat. That's often what we're promised. And we see news stories trumpeting some study that tell us that some food is going to help us lose weight. The problem with these studies in many cases is that they are sponsored by the industry that makes that particular food. And in many cases, they don't even measure weight loss. They measure some marker that's short of that, say, for example, appetite. And yet we see in these headlines that the food is some kind of miracle food. So again, this is an example of a misleading idea that's often peddled to us that it's all about specific foods. I think it's the mirror image of the villain myth that if you cut out certain foods, that'll help you lose weight.

Starting point is 00:25:51 The mirror image of that is that if you eat certain magical foods, it'll help you lose weight. And so, again, what's important is not whether you include a particular food, acai berries or avocado or whatever. It's the overall composition of your diet. Now that said, these foods can be part of a weight-friendly diet. Grapefruit, which again is one of these classic superfoods for weight loss, grapefruit can be part of a weight-friendly diet. So can avocado, so can chili pepper. So there's nothing wrong with eating these foods. It's just that they don't have magical powers to melt away pounds and we shouldn't expect them to. I remember hearing someone say something that I thought was interesting that as more and more people gain weight, it makes it harder to lose weight because weight gain is kind of contagious.

Starting point is 00:26:38 That people in a house or people in a community tend, if they hang out together, will tend to mirror each other's weight. Yeah, and there are actually studies that suggest that in some ways weight gain can act like a virus in the sense that it can spread through communities. And that if people have friends or spouses or coworkers or they live in communities where people are gaining weight, they're more likely to gain weight. And that stands to reason because we tend to mirror the behaviors of those around us. And conversely, if we're surrounded by people who are concerned about their health, concerned about their weight, we're more likely to do that as well.

Starting point is 00:27:15 So yes, there's good research showing that this sort of contagion, as it's called, can take hold when it comes to weight. It does seem, too, that one really, really powerful technique to losing weight, especially if you're a snacker, is to not bring them in the house. If you don't have them, you can't eat them. But if you have them, you're just creating this temptation that makes it so hard. Absolutely. I think that's a very important point. And I talk about this, what I call strategic planning. And that is things that you can do like keeping tempting food out of your house to help as you anticipate potential challenges.

Starting point is 00:28:05 So for me, and I know for lots of other people, if I have cookies, if I have chips, if I have junk food in my house, I'm going to eat it. I cannot resist it. So what do I do? I don't keep it in the house. So I think it's important as we think about the various challenges we have, whether it's, you know, I'm in a hurry after work and I don't have time to cook. And so I end up going through the drive through or I tend to engage in emotional eating when I'm bored or lonely or sad. I eat certain foods. I think being aware of our tendencies and preparing for those and having plans in place to deal with those things is very, very important. That's a key factor when it comes to long-term weight management.

Starting point is 00:28:38 Well, I find it so interesting that it seems almost universal. You ask anybody and people say, you know, I wish I could lose five pounds. Wish I could lose ten pounds. And it's hard. It's really hard to do that. And it's good to get the truth about what works and what doesn't, what are the myths and what are the techniques that actually give people a chance to lose that weight. Robert Davis has been my guest. He is a health journalist who has written several books, and his latest is called Supersize Lies, How Myths About Weight Loss Are Keeping Us Fat.

Starting point is 00:29:11 And you'll find a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes. Thank you, Robert. Thank you, Mike, very much. Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast. And I tell people, if you like something you should know, you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show. Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest. Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most.

Starting point is 00:29:39 Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS and went to prison for three years. She now works to raise awareness on this issue. It's a great conversation. And he spoke with Dr. Sarah Hill about how taking birth control not only prevents pregnancy, it can influence a woman's partner preferences, career choices, and overall behavior due to the hormonal changes

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Starting point is 00:30:54 check out Disney Countdown wherever you get your podcasts. Being the dominant species we are, we have affected nature, and continue to. Not just as an outside force on nature, but as part of nature. Just as things in nature affect us, we affect nature. We have for as long as we've been here. But with our human intelligence and what we can do with science, we can affect nature in a lot of ways, both good and bad.

Starting point is 00:31:29 But should we? Are we messing things up by changing nature? Or can we impact nature in a positive way? Beth Shapiro is a biologist who has looked at how humans impact nature, and she's author of a book called Life As We Made It, How 50,000 Years of Human Innovation Refined and Redefined Nature. Hi, Beth. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Hi. Thanks for having me. So explain what you mean and maybe give some examples of how it is we impact nature.

Starting point is 00:32:03 There is really a tendency to think of us as separate from nature and to really think of really the only species that we've really messed with, for example, might be the things we domesticated, like corn and cats and dogs and stuff like that. But in fact, our fingerprint is on everything that's out there. Every decision that we've made has impacted the way things evolve. And if you think about what the environment, what the landscape is for species to be alive today, we see that what things survive are the things that are best adapted, most fit in a human-dominated world. And we have changed things both for the good and for the worse, yes?

Starting point is 00:32:45 Good and worse is all in the eyes of the beholder, right? I mean, what would you consider to be something that we've changed for the worse? Species, lineages, or really the habitat? I mean, we spit out a lot of pollution, we do a lot of things like that. So clearly, we've changed some habitats for the worse. But the species that we've been manipulating and messing with, either directly, intentionally or unintentionally, are no better or worse than anything else. They're just the things that are alive today that are best adapted to living in today's habitats. Yeah, well, I guess what I meant was things like pollution that we have caused, and it would be hard to look at pollution and say, well, that's a good thing we've done. Right, yes. We've changed the landscape in which everything lives. caused and it would be hard to look at pollution and say, well, that's a good thing we've done. Right. Yes. We've changed the landscape in which everything lives. That's one of the reasons that I argue that there's really nothing that isn't impacted by us in some way. I mean,

Starting point is 00:33:34 everything has to live today and today's environments are weird, right? They're different than the environments that existed 10,000 years ago. Although by then we were already starting to exert our powers on the species around us to change them into things that did more efficiently what we wanted them to do. So talk about some of the ways specifically that we have changed. Well, so I think the first evidence that humans are manipulating nature comes from the fossil record. We see that as people expand out of Africa and start going around the world, species, in particular big species, start to go extinct. Now, we didn't intentionally drive these species to extinction, but our presence was impactful.

Starting point is 00:34:18 Maybe we weren't hunting all of them, but we were certainly changing the landscape. Maybe we introduced fire or took down trees. We redistributed resources that became more available to some species and less available to others. And our impact was pretty strong. Driving something extinct really changes the community of organisms and pushes everything in a different direction. The intention really strengthened then over time. We see by between 10 and 15,000 years ago that we've started to do things like domesticate cattle and pigs and goats and transform plant species. And certainly agriculture and domestication are ways that we're really transforming species. I mean,

Starting point is 00:34:57 wolves, taking wolves and making domestic dogs, turning them eventually into things like chihuahuas and Great Danes. This is a very human-directed kind of change. And today, then, we shifted again, starting, I'd say, about 100 to 150 years ago. The successes of our ability to manipulate species to make things that fed more people allowed us to make more people and use up all of these natural spaces for things like cattle farming and agriculture. And we realized then that we had to change once again. And so we shifted from being herders and hunters and gatherers and farmers to being protectors. It's interesting when people think about conservation, they often think this is leaving things alone. We're just going to step back and let nature recover. But we're also doing things like fencing off protected lands and vaccinating

Starting point is 00:35:46 species so that they don't get sick and protecting them from predators. So what you just said, though, that there's this idea that if we were good conservators of the land and the species and the planet, we would leave it alone. And yet we can't leave it alone. And I'm not sure we want to leave it alone. But there is this kind of negative view of, you know, if only humans would go away, then the planet would be so much better off. But I don't think that's true. I think if humans were to go away, the selective landscape in which things are alive would change, right? No longer would people have to adapt to our presence. They would still be adapting to the stuff that we did to the planet

Starting point is 00:36:31 while we were around, right? I mean, there's still a lot more carbon in the atmosphere and we've got polluted oceans and waters, and there's a lot of human land use changes that have happened that have destroyed a lot of natural habitat. And the planet will change. I mean, ecosystems are never in stasis. It's one of the things that people always think about restoration, habitat restoration. And the question I often ask is, to what? I mean, at what point are we trying to restore things? To 500 years ago? To 1,000 years ago? To 10,000 years ago? I mean, everything is constantly shifting. And if we were to suddenly disappear, everything would shift again. And the adaptive landscape in which things have to live would change. But, you know, things are adapting to us now and we'll continue to adapt and change.

Starting point is 00:37:14 And, you know, I think you said earlier that there's this idea that we need to leave the planet alone in order for things to recover. I think this is, in conservation, there's really two mindsets. And one of them is that, that if we can just wall off half of the planet, for example, and just left that to nature, then that would be okay. And the other side, on which I squarely fall, says that it's too late for that. We can't do that. There's no part of this planet that is outside of our reach. And if we really want things to have a fighting chance at survival, we have to get our hands even dirtier. We have to get in there and actually do more manipulation. Everything is in our control. As Stuart Brand said, we are as gods, so we may as well get good at it. I hear things like, you know, so many

Starting point is 00:38:00 thousands of species on the planet disappear every year. And there's always this kind of like, and it's our fault. Is it our fault? Yeah. I mean, a lot of it is our fault. We know that the extinction rate today is thousands of times higher than it is an average over the fossil record. So we are losing species at a rapid rate. You know, we've really taken over most of the planet's habitats. And one of the biggest challenges to species, which obviously evolution allows species to adapt, but if the rate of change is faster than those species can keep up, and that is what's going on right now, then we have this extinction crisis, this biodiversity loss crisis.

Starting point is 00:38:42 And this is one of the reasons that the new technologies, which I argue in the book, we're at the precipice of transforming yet again, and now adopting these newer technologies that we have at our disposal, including gene editing kind of technologies. These technologies allow us to help species to adapt at a pace that keeps up with the pace that we are changing habitats. And so this is really interesting, but other than to observe it and say, this is really interesting, why is this important? We are facing a time where we're really going to have to make a decision about what we want to do. The IUCN working group met a few weeks ago to discuss whether or not we

Starting point is 00:39:26 should consider, as a global community, using tools like gene editing and gene drives to try to protect species as a tool for conservation. The discussion isn't about whether we should immediately implement what we can do right now, because it's clear that we're not there yet. There's a lot of work that still needs to be done. But we could, as a global community, decide that we're too scared of this technology to even allow ourselves to evaluate its potential, including the risks and how to mitigate risks. And I think that we cannot make that decision. We cannot sit here right now and say, you know what, this technology is too powerful and too scary. We're not even going to think about it because we're too scared about

Starting point is 00:40:08 what could happen. If we don't give ourselves the freedom and flexibility to think about this from a global community's perspective, then we are going to deny ourselves what could be our only tool to help protect and preserve biodiversity into the future. If we want a world that is both biodiverse and full of humans, these are the technologies that are going to help us get there. We're not ready yet. It's too risky. We shouldn't jump into it right now, but we shouldn't deny ourselves the ability to evaluate what can be done. How do you, when you look at the debate about conservation and, you know, the environment and people wanting to cut this back or cut that back or, you know, make humans go away from this

Starting point is 00:40:51 area or that, do you think that those kind of artificial and rather sometimes extreme things are a good thing or a bad thing or why are are we talking about it? Or how do you view it? Well, you know, we do have some really successful technologies for protecting biodiversity. We know, for example, that, you know, going in and manually removing invasive species sometimes works, or we could introduce biological or chemical control agents, and that sometimes works. And obviously, protecting habitats works to some extent. But I really think that the technologies that we have right now, while good and successful in some ways, are clearly not enough. We've been doing this, we've been doing our best and getting our

Starting point is 00:41:36 hands dirty in some cases and trying to leave things alone in other cases. But we haven't really slowed the rate of biodiversity loss. And that's why I think it's really important that we are willing to consider these new technologies that just increase the tools that are at our disposal to help to stop the crisis of biodiversity loss. opposing views here where you're saying what we need to do is move into the future with this new technology. But there's a lot of talk about, let's go back to the way things were, that all this new technology in the world is screwing things up and that we need to go backwards, not forwards. It's not possible to go backward. I mean, if we were to rewind 20,000 years or 30,000 years before there were so many people in the world, we would be in the Ice Age, and we're not in the Ice Age anymore. The climate has changed. The planet's habitats have changed.

Starting point is 00:42:33 It's silly to imagine that we're just going to reverse time and go back to when there's only a couple tens of thousands of people alive on the planet. There's billions of us, and there's going to be billions more. And we have to decide how we can create a world that is both biodiverse and filled with humans that are happy and healthy and have enough to eat. And if we're going to get there in an equitable way, we have to be willing to think about using and coming to rely on some of our new technologies. Going backward isn't an option. Well, I mean, backward in the sense that we don't allow cars here anymore or that, you know, only pedestrians or we, you know what I mean, that this idea that we can't just keep moving ahead, that we have to rethink our progress. Oh, I agree. And that we should certainly have

Starting point is 00:43:22 pedestrianized areas and we should change the cars that they're not spitting out pollution and we should change regulations that we slow the rate at which we're degrading habitats. But it's too late to think that that is going to be sufficient for all these species to be able to adapt to what we've already done. Is there any sense, and I don't know if there's any way to figure it out, like if we weren't here, like how many species would have disappeared? Like it can't all be our fault or is it? I think there's a real tendency to want to not blame ourselves, but it's clear and it's increasingly clear that the changes that are happening are because of us. And there is a way to know how many species might have gone extinct had it not been for us. We can look throughout the fossil record and ask what the average rate of species loss was. And when we do that, we see that today we're losing thousands of times more species at a rate that is thousands of times higher than the average in the fossil record. Now there were these few massive extinction events that were caused by things like asteroids hitting the planet or massive volcanic eruptions. And now we're in an extinction event that's caused by us.

Starting point is 00:44:26 You know, this is the anthropogenic extinction event. We've changed everything at such a pace that things are going extinct. It always interests me that, you know, we destroy things we shouldn't, but we can't seem to get rid of the mosquito and, you know, things that really, I mean, mosquitoes kill more people, I think, than pretty much anything. And yet we can't seem to do anything about that. But this is actually one of the places where these technologies, where research into these

Starting point is 00:44:57 technologies is most active, is how we can manipulate mosquitoes so that they don't transmit disease. And there's been tons of work by lots of different groups, including a group called Target Malaria that's working mostly in Africa, where malaria is very common, to try to work with local stakeholders and scientists and community members to come up with ways that we can use new technologies to stop mosquitoes from spreading disease. So this is exactly an area where these technologies are being employed, or hopefully being employed, or at least thinking about what the risks are

Starting point is 00:45:29 and what the rewards are and how we can implement things in an equitable way that will help us, help us to be able to deal with these problems. When you look at this topic, when you've done all this research, is there something either on the horizon or that's starting or that we're doing that just floors you? That's like, this is so cool. I find all of it pretty fabulous and amazing. I mean, the idea that we can, the gene drive technologies, which basically spread a particular trait through a population faster than normal mating would allow this to spread, I think is really tremendous. I mean, you've talked about malaria or mosquitoes now, and so this is where my brain immediately went. If we can make mosquitoes that can't transmit

Starting point is 00:46:16 disease, and that also can't, the idea is that to make mosquitoes that can't reproduce, and if they can't reproduce, then the populations collapse and then you can't transmit disease. And these mosquitoes are actually passing on this non-reproducing trait to other mosquitoes using CRISPR, using gene editing tools that are designed to become part of their genomes. And these traits are being designed in such a way that they last for maybe a dozen or so generations and then disappear. So they're designed in a way that they don't have super long lasting influence, but hopefully influence that's sufficient for that population to disappears from the population after a number of generations so that we go back to whatever the first state was, is to me really amazing.

Starting point is 00:47:12 Well, when you stop and think about the changes that we've made to food and agriculture and food is such, you know, I mean, I was telling my son today, I said, enjoy your strawberry because, you know, when I was your age, we didn't have strawberries in October much because they weren't in season. You can have them all year round now. You don't understand how good you have it. Yeah, and it's not even that with strawberries. There's been a lot of genetic analysis and manipulation of strawberries to make them sweeter and bigger and taste better. And it's really fabulous stuff we've been able to do with technology for our foods. Yes.

Starting point is 00:47:50 I wish they could do something about tomatoes when it comes to tastier because supermarket tomatoes taste like cardboard. So I don't know why they can't figure that out. Well, you know, this was one of the very first attempts for genetic modifying food. Have you heard of the Flavor Saver tomato? No. distances and then they're, they're, they're exposed to ethylene gas, which causes them to ripen. They, they look red, but they don't get any of the flavor that they would if they had been able to ripen on the vine. Right. So it's just for shipping for ease of shipping and getting them out somewhere. So this company decided that what they wanted to do was create a tomato that

Starting point is 00:48:38 would, um, would ripen on the vine, but then stay hard that, that wouldn't, that wouldn't get all soft and squishy. So and squishy and start to rot right away. They figured out what gene was responsible for that, and they figured out a way to stop that gene from being expressed. And so they made these tomatoes that would ripen on the vine and then stay not rotten for long enough to get out onto the grocer's shelves. It didn't work because it turned out that the trait did stop tomatoes from softening. You know how you get a ripe tomato and you only have a little bit of time before it starts getting all yucky, right? Because it gets very soft. So that stopped, except they still were not hard enough to ship over long

Starting point is 00:49:16 distances. So they were still soft, just as when you pick them up at the grocery store. And they did a fantastic job with this. All of their project was open and the public could learn about it. They could read about it. They went through the FDA approval process in the US, even though they didn't have to at the time. So they went through this and they made all of their records open. When they released their Flavor Saver tomato, they proudly declared that it was a genetically modified food that was there and people were excited about it. But the company ended up going out of business because it took so long to get through this approval process that they didn't have to do. And because they didn't really know anything about

Starting point is 00:49:54 manufacturing and shipping tomatoes, and they had that trouble with shipping soft tomatoes and then turning into juice rather than tomatoes, but they ended up going out of business and that all the patents associated with that were sold to Monsanto at the time. Monsanto eventually bought the company. This was in the 80s. Yeah. The first genetically modified product was a tomato, the Flavor Savor tomato. It didn't make it. Yeah. I wish they'd try again because, man, I like tomatoes. genetic modification of tomato plants to make new things. And they've made a little tomato that can grow in rooftop gardens where the tomatoes grow like bunches of grapes rather than single big

Starting point is 00:50:50 fruits. And so they're manipulating them so that they can be grown in weirder places. And so this is kind of cool. I don't know about the flavor. I haven't tasted one, but I'm happy to. I want to send one to me. But it's all about the flavor. I mean, to grow tomatoes that don't taste very good, but they ship well, seems to miss the point to me. But that's the way they are. Yeah. Well, for now, maybe we can change it. Probably. Because as you've pointed out, we've changed so many things about nature. And you don't think about it until you think about it and listen to you and realize how much we have changed nature, whether it's domesticating animals or changing tomatoes or protecting species and habitats.

Starting point is 00:51:37 Beth Shapiro has been my guest. She is a biologist and author of the book, Life As We Made It, How 50,000 Years of Human Innovation Refined and Redefined Nature. And there's a link to her book in the show notes. Thank you, Beth. Appreciate it. Thanks for your time. Your cell phone is very handy, which is probably why you have it with you all the time. And there's something people should do with their cell phones

Starting point is 00:52:06 that a lot of people don't do with their cell phones that is very important. And that is to set up an ICE contact. ICE stands for In Case of Emergency. And rescue and medical workers do look for it. They can open your phone to see your emergency contact information, even if your phone is locked and you cannot speak. Now, iPhone and Android phones have different ways of doing it, but it's really worth the effort to figure it out. You can put in who to call in an emergency.

Starting point is 00:52:39 You can put in information about medications you take, medicines you're allergic to, and other health conditions you have. If something happens to you and you can't speak, having emergency information available on your phone for medical workers could save your life. There's an article from the Huffington Post which explains step-by-step how to do this on iPhones and Android phones, and I'll have a link to that article in the show notes for this episode.

Starting point is 00:53:08 And that is something you should know. We rely on you to help us spread the word about this podcast. It's how we grow our audience. It is the best way, word-of-mouth advertising, and so I hope you'll help us out and tell someone you know, or two people you know, to listen to this podcast. I'm Micah Ruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

Starting point is 00:53:31 Hey, hey, are you ready for some real talk and some fantastic laughs? Join me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa Demonts, for Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong? We're serving up for hilarious shows every week designed to entertain and engage and, you know, possibly enrage you. And don't blame me, we dive deep into listeners' questions, offering advice that's funny, relatable, and real. Whether you're dealing with relationship drama or you just need a friend's perspective, we've got you. Then switch gears with But Am I Wrong, which is for listeners who didn't take our advice and want to know if they are the villains in the

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Starting point is 00:54:36 New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. Contained herein are the heresies of red off punt wine erstwhile monk turned traveling medical investigator join me as i study the secrets of the divine plagues and uncover the blasphemous truth that ours is not a loving god and we are not its favored children children. The Heresies of Redolf Bantwine, wherever podcasts are available.

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