Stuff You Should Know - Will we soon be extinct?

Episode Date: October 14, 2008

Is Earth due for a mass extinction? Population ecologists think so. Check out this HowStuffWorks podcast to learn more mass extinctions. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Flooring contractors agree. When looking for the best to care for hardwood floors, use Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner, the residue-free, fast-drying solution especially designed for hardwood floors, delivering the safe and effective clean you trust. Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner is available at most retailers where floor cleaning products are sold and on Amazon. Also available for your other hard surface floors like stone, tile, laminate, vinyl, and LVT. For cleaning tips and exclusive offers, visit Bona.com slash Bona Clean. In 1968, five Black girls were picked up by police after running away from a reform school in Mt. Megs, Alabama. I'm writer and reporter Josie Duffy-Rice, and in a new podcast, I investigate

the abuse that thousands of Black children suffered at the Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children and how those five girls changed everything. Listen to unreformed on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. You've got Josh, you've got Chuck here. We're a couple of writers from HowStuffWorks.com, right, Chuck? That's right. So, Chuck. Yes. Are you familiar with any Turkish authors? I've heard this one. What's the punchline? There's no punchline. Oh, that's a real question. Yeah. No, I don't know. Turkish authors. I didn't either until I was reading an article today about a Turkish author who writes in the name Harun Yahya. Yeah. I believe that's

how it's pronounced. I may be butchering it. My Turkish is a little rusty. Yeah. But Mr. Yahya recently offered 10 trillion Turkish lira, which is about $8 trillion. It's not one of those upside down things. Right. It's about.8 Turkish lira to the dollars last time I checked. To anyone who can provide definitive fossil evidence of evolution. Wow. Yes. That's a lot of money. What's his motive? His motive is he's an outspoken creationist. He's an outspoken creationismist. Wow. That's a new word now. And he is so vehemently opposed to it. Have you heard of Richard Dawkins? Yeah. Okay. Dawkins has a website and he's a zoologist who's a huge evolutionary theorist. He actually believes that we're nothing more than a vehicle for our genes. Right. That's all we are. Just big

bags of flesh and our genes are really in control. So he's a huge, huge evolutionist. And Mr. Yahya got Dawkins' website banned in Turkey. So really, if you go to Turkey, you can't get under RichardDawkins.com or.co.uk or whatever. So he thinks evolutionary theory is false and it's not correct. So he's sort of ingest, throwing out this huge sum of money because he claimed he doesn't think anyone can actually prove this. Right. Yeah. I didn't get the impression that he is a trillionaire. Right. I don't know how many trillionaires there are. He sounds like a smart alec to me. Kind of a smart alec. Sure. But he was pretty specific. He said that he wanted an intermediate form fossil. And this is like an animal that is clearly

a species that is the, the connecting species between one and another. Sure. Like some fossil that, that links us humans to frogs. Right. Because on the tree of life, we all, if you go back far enough, are related. Everything, every species on earth came from some little strand of RNA in the primordial soup here on earth. Right. Billions of years ago. Right. That's what I believe. That's, that's what a lot of people believe. But the fossil record, which is this, this, this record of all the fossils, all the sedimentary layers, all this stuff over the last 550 million years. Right. Is admittedly spotty. Right. The history of our planet. It is. It is. It's a, it's a, it is. So you go and take an ice sample, you know,

and you go down far enough and you reach a point where no one is sampled yet that gets added to the fossil record. Right. It paints this whole picture of, of the evolution of life on earth, depending on what you believe. Sure. Everything may have been placed there. That's another theory. Right. Okay. So we're still trying to figure out if evolution occurs like consistently over a long period of time, which is called phyletic gradualism. Right. Or it could be in short bursts as the competing theory, which is punctuated equilibrium. So it's still, like I said, it's spotty, but it does have its uses. There is no need for the outside world because we are removed from it and apart from it and in our own universe. On the new podcast, The Turning Room of Mirrors,

we look beneath the delicate veneer of American ballet and the culture formed by its most influential figure, George Balanchine. There are not very many of us that actually grew up with Balanchine. It was like I grew up with Mozart. He could do no wrong. Like he was a God. But what was the cost for the dancers who brought these ballets to life where the lines between the professional and the personal were hazy and often crossed? He used to say, what are you looking at, dear? You can't see you. Only I can see you. Most people in the ballet world are more interested in their experience of watching it than in a dancer's experience of executing it. Listen to The Turning Room of Mirrors on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute a 2,200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs, of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Step out of piss y'all. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call

like what we would call a jackmove or being robbed. They call civil acid for it. Be sure to listen to The War on Drugs on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. What use is Josh? I'll give you a use there, Chuck. Last year, October of 2007, some British researchers came up or they published a study that where they used the fossil record and compared it to global climates over a 520 million year period. Because we have climate information in the fossil record as well. And what they found was that in times of warm global temperatures, like we have now, I think the mean global temperature, which is land and ocean average temperatures put together, it's about 54 degrees, 56 degrees

Fahrenheit, which is about 13 Celsius. Which is warm historically. It's a greenhouse period, which is what we're in now. Traditionally, when the Earth has seen greenhouse periods, mass extinction has taken place. Right. So the question we're forced to explore is, will we soon be extinct? Right. Which if you look at the history of our planet, there's a case for that. And if we're not extinct, certain organisms on our planet might become extinct, which could lead to the domino effect. And eventually we might be extinct after all. It is very true. There's a one case in point, a mass extinction. The worst one apparently on the fossil record happened at the end of the Permian period, I believe. 251 million years ago, 95% of all the

species on Earth died out. Like all at once. When I read that, I was just blown away. I mean, can you imagine if all of a sudden it was like, you know, humans, dogs, cats, goldfish, and yeah, mosquitoes, maybe a cockroach, right? Something like that. All the rest is gone. You know, you didn't see anything when you went outside. Right. Well, humans wouldn't last long, if that were the case. No, because we require biodiversity. Exactly. You want to tell them about biodiversity? Yeah, I can speak a little bit about that. Please do. You know, the Earth, basically, Josh, is like just a big machine. And if you were compared to like a car engine, each little part has its own function. And if one, you know, nut on the car engine goes off, that leads

to something else to break and something else to break. And the Earth is kind of like that as well. There are no unnecessary parts. Everything is important. Even if looking at a car engine, you don't really understand, you know, what this does or what that does. It's still essential. It was put there for a reason, if you'll, you know, excuse the comparison. Right. Excuse. Thanks. There is no need for the outside world because we are removed from it and apart from it and in our own universe. On the new podcast, The Turning, Room of Mirrors, we look beneath the delicate veneer of American ballet and the culture formed by its most influential figure, George Balanchine. There are not very many of us that actually grew up with Balanchine. It was like I grew up with Mozart.

He could do no wrong. Like, he was a god. But what was the cost for the dancers who brought these ballets to life? Were the lines between the professional and the personal were hazy and often crossed? He used to say, what are you looking at, dear? You can't see you, only I can see you. Most people in the ballet world are more interested in their experience of watching it than in a dancer's experience of executing it. Listen to The Turning, Room of Mirrors on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy, number one, is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I

would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs, of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil answer for that. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So I know one one example used was

a nitrogen in your article. If you wanted to enlighten some folks, what I love enlightening folks, you ready folks? Let's do this. So nitrogen basically is present in the soil. It's an essential food for crops or crops, right? We've learned to harness wild crops to to be produced under conditions we like, like a corn, right? And you know, we can control how many grow and how well it grows and that kind of thing. But really, ultimately, none of this would work if it wasn't for the nitrogen present in the soil. And we can add nitrogen, but it occurs naturally in the soil through like worms, digesting, you know, all sorts of different microbes, that kind of thing. And the microbes themselves are involved in digesting things. And they what they put out as

a waste product in many cases is nitrogen, right, which feeds the crops, which feed us, right? It's a circle of life. Yeah. So I mean, the lowly worm or the even lowly or micro bacteria, things that just seem so unimportant or even threatening to us, we are essential life on earth. That's that that kind of goes with that machine. You were talking about the interrelated parts that each one's very important, right? If it doesn't seem like it. So it with a loss of biodiversity, say we lose the worms, we lose a lot of the nitrogen in the soil, right? All of a sudden, our crops fail. So we will be effective one way or another, one way or another, despite our technology, right? It's pretty amazing. When you think about that, the smallest thing can

have the trickle effect. And we may actually be able to survive some sort of mass extinction. I mean, we're we're pretty smart species. Like technically, we're subtropical, you know, right? Right. And we've mastered the colder climbs by technology like clothes or, you know, tankless hot water heaters, that kind of thing. So we're supposed to be living kind of near the equator. So we could conceivably survive a mass extinction we had before, actually, right? Supposedly about 70,000 years ago, human humanity faced a an evolutionary bottleneck, which is where there's some species is brought to the brink of extinction. So imagine it like a bottle, and then the bottleneck comes and you lose all that all that life and all those

genes. And basically, the population squeezed down. And they estimate that there is about 15,000 people worldwide on planet on planet Earth at that time, really, because of that bottleneck. From what number, do you know, I don't know the number, but I think a lot more than 15,000. So on the other end, you come out. So really, the evolutionary bottleneck, if the species survives, goes from a bottleneck to an evolutionary hourglass, where it becomes robust again, right, and populated. But at that, if you go back to that bottleneck, it took a lot of inbreeding to get past that point, which under a theory that I have, explains why a lot of people today mouth breathe. Wow. Yeah. Let's hear it. That was it. I think I think there's mouth

breathers on planet Earth today, because 70,000 years ago, it took a lot of inbreeding to get past our evolutionary bottleneck. And previously, we breathe, I probably throw our nose, right, gills. There's no, no, no, no. No, I mean, you know, you know, like, you ever watched 24? I watched the first day. So, okay. Well, keep for Sutherland. He's a good example of a mouth breather. He breathes through his mouth, breathes with his mouth open. It's a little slack jaw. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Okay. Mr. Sutherland, no offense. He doesn't listen. So, Chuck, that's pretty much the long and short of whether or not we will face a mass extinction. I think it's entirely possible. I know I've been storing water

ever since I wrote this. Really? In your basement? Do you have a bomb shelter? I don't know if I call it a bomb shelter. It's more like an emergency bachelor pad. Right. So, you've got your Nintendo and your liquor and... Yeah, exactly. And the water. Oh, I got plenty of that. Sleeping bags. Yeah. I'll invite you over. You can learn whether or not you're going to die in the next couple of years by reading Will We Soon Be Extinct on HowStuffWorks.com? For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. Let us know what you think. Send an email to podcast at HowStuffWorks.com.

In 1968, five black girls were picked up by police after running away from a reform school in Mt. Megs, Alabama. I'm writer and reporter Josie Deffie Rice. And in a new podcast, I investigate the abuse that thousands of black children suffered at the Alabama Industrial School for Negro children and how those five girls changed everything. Listen to unreformed on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 1980, cocaine was captivating and corrupting Miami. The cartels, they just killed everybody that was home. Setting an aspiring private investigator on a collision course with corruption and multiple murders. The detective agency would turn out

to be a front for our drug pilot. Would claim he did it all for this CIA. I'm Lauren Bright-Pacheco. Join me for Murder in Miami. Talk about walking into the devil's den. Listen to Murder in Miami on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.