The Philip DeFranco Show - PDS 6.13 Andrew Tate Crypto Scandal, Bad Bunny Race War Shooting Plan Exposed, MrBeast $700M Secret & More

Episode Date: June 13, 2024

PDS Debt is offering a free debt analysis. It only takes thirty seconds. Get yours at https://PDSDebt.com/defranco  Get an exclusive NordVPN deal here https://nordvpn.com/phil  It's risk-free with Nord's 30-day money-back guarantee!   New 3-Packs & Cyber Lime Collections NOW LIVE @ https://BeautifulBastard.com ==== ✩ TODAY’S STORIES ✩- – 0:00 - Man Threatens to Attack Bad Bunny Concert & Start Race War 03:18 - MrBeast’s New Businesses, Andrew Tate Crypto Scandal, & Bridgerton Streaming Drama 07:27 - CEO Sentenced to 5+ Years in Jail for Stealing $2.5 Million from Clients 11:18 - Sponsored by PDS Debt 12:17 - A Student in Turkey Could Go to Jail for His Elaborate AI Cheating Scheme 14:07 - Supreme Court Rejects Effort to Limit Access to Abortion Pill 17:19 - Protests Rock Argentina Over President’s Reforms 20:28 - Sponsored by Nord 21:42 - Humans Are Affecting Animals’ Evolution… And Our Own ——————————   Produced by: Cory Ray Edited by: James Girardier, Maxwell Enright, Julie Goldberg, Christian Meeks, Matthew Henry Art Department: William Crespo Writing/Research: Philip DeFranco, Brian Espinoza, Lili Stenn, Maddie Crichton, Chris Tolve, Jared Paolino Associate Producer on Evolution: Chris Tolve Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sup, you beautiful bastards. Welcome back to the Philip DeFranco Show, you daily dive into the news. I got an extra large show for you today. So how about you hit that like button. I'll hit you with the chimp and let's just jump into it. This is a news show. 58-year-old Mark Adams Prieto was planning a mass shooting at a Bad Bunny concert in the hopes of inciting a race war before the election. That's what the DOJ is alleging in its new indictment. Also, to get very specific, the DOJ technically specified that Prieto had plans to target a rap concert at Atlanta State Farm Arena taking place May 14th to May 15th. And the details of all this, I mean, it's wild and frankly just kind of

fucking terrifying. So this all started when a confidential source tipped off the FBI, telling the agency that they had spoken to Prieto more than 15 times over three years at various gun shows. Right, where Prieto would trade firearms from his personal collection using only cash deals or trades to evade the ATF. With that, over time, the source's conversations with Prieto became more political, let's say. The source telling the FBI that Prieto began making suspicious and alarming comments, including advocating for a mass shooting, specifically targeting blacks, Jews, or Muslims, as well as saying that Prieto believes that martial law will be implemented shortly after the 2024 election and that a mass shooting should occur prior. And with all that, finally, at the end of last year, Prieto asked the source if they

were ready to kill a bunch of people, which, you know, indicated to the authorities that he was looking for help in carrying out an attack. And so what happened was that an FBI agent went undercover as an associate of the source to corroborate the source's claims. And on January 1st, Prieto allegedly asked them both to help him carry out a mass shooting targeting African Americans at a rap concert in Atlanta. With him also explaining his thinking for why to attack Atlanta. Saying, why is Georgia such a fucked up state now? When I was a kid, that was one of the most conservative states in the country. Why is it not now? Because as the crime got worse in LA, St. Louis, and all these other cities, all the N-words moved out of those places and moved to Atlanta. That's why it isn't

so great anymore. And they've been there for a couple, several years. And to really just drive the point home here, that choice to target a rap concert was because he believed that there would be a high concentration of black people. With him also saying that he planned to leave Confederate flags after the shooting to send a message that, quote, we're going to fight back now, and every whitey will be the enemy across the whole country. And also saying things like KKK all the way, as well as stressing that the most important thing here was a high body count. So eventually, Prieto allegedly sold an AR-15 rifle to the undercover agent for $1,000 and instructed him to use it during the attack and to bring as many magazines as he could carry. And it

was around that time that he also told the agent that the targeted event would be a rap concert at State Farm Arena on May 14th and May 15th, with Bad Bunny's concerts being the only ones that were happening in the area at that time. The Walser saying it could be sometime in June or July, and at a later date, he actually suggested that the attack would need to be pushed back. But to be safe there, he ended up being arrested on May 14th before the concert. And so as it stands now, he has specifically been charged with firearms trafficking, transfer of a firearm for use in a hate crime, and possession of an unregistered firearm, which I mean, with maximum charges could hand him at least a few decades in prison. You know, so far, Prieto reportedly admitted to having those conversations

as well as selling the gun to the undercover agent. But also, he said he didn't actually intend to go through with the attack, which I guess is the terroristic equivalent of, it's just a prank, bro. I was just kidding. Why are you freaking out? But of course, all of this has raised a spotlight on the fear of domestic terrorism. You know, there, according to the National Institute of Justice, militant, nationalistic, white supremacist violent extremism has increased in the United States. But also now the number of far-right attacks continuing to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism. And then let's talk about some requested quickie news, starting with Mr. Beast.

Because we just got a wild peek behind the Mr. Beast curtain, thanks to a lawsuit. Because as you might remember, he has a lawsuit against the partner company to Mr. Beast Burger, which would be saying the food wasn't good, that it was undermining his brand. That company also then countersuing him. We just learned so much from this court filing, starting with the fact that he is expected to make $700 million this year, which is massive on its own, but it's also three times the $223 million he made last year. From this asset and monetization review, it appears to be from everything split across content, commerce, and real estate. So everything from sponsorships of video, licensing,

content syndication, merch sales, the candy bars, as well as his international dubbing studio, Creator Global, his analytics platform, Viewstaps that he just announced. And it also appears that this court filing exposed that he's planning to launch two more businesses next year, starting with a mobile game and a beverage brand. They're looking like they're planning to monetize the game through a hybrid model that includes in-app purchases and advertising. Of course, Mr. Beast not just breathing that rarefied air by himself, but there's also knowing the likes of Logan Paul and KSI sold over $1.2 billion worth of Prime last year. You know, all of this as we get more public information, just showing the strength of these creator built brands. Also on the topic of people turning fame into fortune,

we should talk about Andrew Tate being back in the news. And that because his crypto token just blew past the one launched by Iggy Azalea. Which by the way, what a fucking sentence that was. But yeah, his Daddy Tate meme coin, which he began promoting on Tuesday, hit a market cap of $300 million, spiking more than 200% in 24 hours. Meanwhile, Mother Iggy's market cap got cut nearly half to $150 million. Though this, as Daddy Tate, may rest on some shaky foundation, with crypto analytics firm Bubble Maps alleging that it is rife with insider trading, writing, Insiders bought 30% of the supply at launch before Andrew Tate started to promote it on X. Now with that, it couldn't confirm with certainty that the

suspicious wads which bought the coin were connected, but seemingly the fact that they were all funded with identical amounts at the same time strongly suggests they are. With also, then, Tate himself holding some 40% of the token supply, which is why you have people saying if he or any of the alleged insiders started selling it off, the newer investors would be fucked. Though also, to be fair here, bubble maps also accused Mother Iggy of insider trading back in May, with insiders allegedly purchasing 20% of the supply before Azalea promoted it. But then the final quickie news is, I mean, I feel like you could sum it up by just saying, people are tired of waiting. Right? And this, coming on the heels of the last half of season

three of Bridgerton dropping this morning. But some seemingly hesitant to binge it because showrunner Jess Brunel said yesterday that it's going to take two years for them to put out season four, explaining we are working to try and put the seasons out more quickly, but they do take eight months to film and they have to be edited and then they have to be dubbed into every language. And the writing takes a very long time as well. And while for a lot of fans, that wait is going to be very disappointing, you also have many saying this is increasingly how shows are made now. And with that, pointing to things like, you know, the fourth season of Stranger Things that aired in 2022 and the final season still isn't expected till next year, which is also basically the same for The Handmaid's Tale over on Hulu. Also, after a two year wait this morning, The Boys season four dropped.

Just the first three episodes. Also, I'll say something to stave off the waits there. I'm really happy with Gen V. I'm very interested to see what they do next season. So among other things, you got like Disney fans worried that they're gonna drop the ball and Percy Jackson kids are gonna be in their fucking 30s before they finish adapting everything and all of this is you have people noting that seasons have gotten shorter with people saying it used To be you'd get 20 episodes every year now You're getting 10 or 8 every two years some it's six and some saying if you let shows start filming while the writers finish the later

episodes as has been the way on network TV forever The wait is a lot shorter and non EP writers might actually get the chance to help out on set and produce and properly train. So this is you had others pushing back saying, if there's a show you really like, but the next season is still a bit off, there are thousands of other shows you can watch while waiting. It's better there are shorter seasons that take longer if it means the workers have better conditions and the final product is higher quality. Which I will say, I still feel like we are in a great place regarding the quality of television. Like yes, because a lot of streaming giants want to like have a lot of content. There's a lot of garbage series out there, kind of filler content.

There is a lot of really quality, what I would call prestige TV out there. I feel like there's so much out there. I find myself like accidentally stumbling into stuff I love. Like just last week, I binged through season one of Interview with a Vampire, the series, which I didn't even know was a thing. It was pretty solid. And it's just out there. Man, what are your thoughts on any of this? And then, sometimes I'm just flabbergasted at how brazen criminals are.

Like it borders on impressed, but it falls short because, you know, I'm not aspiring to crime. There's just this certain level of no fucks to give it to that I'm like, man, I wish I had a little bit of that in me. Because I get anxious walking through a detector at a store when I know I haven't stolen something. But all of that is to say, I would like you to meet Graham Hawk. He's the former CEO of Hawk and Associates or HNA, which is a management firm that was founded by Hawk's father in Bethesda, Maryland. That's been Graham's place of work since he was in college. And back in 2019, his firm was hired by a nonprofit trade association for an annual fee of over $148,000, which the client authorized H&A to take in monthly increments from one of its bank accounts.

But Hawk, he abused that trust and took way more than the agreed-upon amounts, stealing roughly $336,222 from the organization over the course of the year. Then, in 2021, FBI agents warned Hawk that they were investigating him for embezzlement. And then two years later, federal prosecutors told him, look, we have solid evidence that you took money from that trade association and we're offering you a deal to plead guilty to wire fraud. So Hawk, he seems to have this come to Jesus moment.

He realizes the jig's up, I've been caught. Notably, before pleading guilty, he takes his family on a vacation to Hawaii and posts about it on Instagram. You know how like when you get caught stealing a ton of money, so you spend a lot of money before being held accountable. But we're not even scratching the surface here, right?

So in May of 2023, Hawk pleads guilty to embezzling the roughly $330,000 from the trade association. At which point you might be like, hey, the Hawaii trip, that's a bad look. But look, he's taking responsibility. But no, because after taking the plea deal, more nonprofit clients come forward and say, oh my God, he's been stealing money from us the whole entire time. With entire time being the key words, right? Even after the FBI told Hawk that they were investigating him for stealing money from the trade association, he kept taking money from other clients. Also, even after the feds laid out all the evidence they had against him in the case, he stole yet again. And hell, even after he literally pleaded guilty to that crime, this man still somehow managed to steal even more money from at least one client. So actually, as a result,

Hawk had to plead guilty again because of the additional clients who came forward with allegations. With all in all, Hawk admitting to stealing $2.5 million from eight different clients over the years. And that by double billing clients and accessing their accounts to take more money while falsifying balance sheets and routing funds overseas to hide crimes. Which, by the way, I haven't even talked about the specifics of this scummy aspect. Some of the clients that he was scamming, you had things like a museum association, but also a cancer research non-profit. My man Graham was like, sucks about the cancer, but daddy gotta go on vacation. But all of that now brings us to the new news that a federal court in D.C. has sentenced Hawk to five and a half years in prison and ordered him to repay all his victims. But the judge overseeing the case right before delivering his sentence saying,

it takes a certain type of sociopath to be able to lie so continuously to so many people over a long time. Though this is on the other side, you had Hawk's brother writing a letter asking for a more lenient punishment and basically implying that he did this out of necessity. Noting that the firm lost clients when the two brothers took over for their dad and then took another hit during the pandemic. Claiming that Graham inherited lost clients when the two brothers took over for their dad and then took another hit during the pandemic. Claiming that Graham inherited a large tax debt and was responsible for taking care of his wife, his three children, and his mother. Which is a story that like...

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My heart, it almost hits it, except for the fact, no, fuck you. If you're strapped for cash, you're not doing big outlandish trips to Hawaii. You're not spending $75,000 in country club fees. This man was literally on vacation in Switzerland when he was first caught misappropriating his client's money, which once again included cancer research nonprofits. Though this is for his part, Hawk apologized to his clients, his employees, his loved ones while appearing in court and adding, although I saw the worst possible consequences failure, which meant closing the business and bankruptcy, I didn't foresee the far worse consequences of my actions.

Including divorce, hurting his family and reputation, and getting prison time. Though Graham, to give you a little cherry on top of all that, today you are our douchebag of the day. Enjoy prison, fuckhead. And then, you know, mounting debt and trying to get ahead each month is more prevalent than not. And a large number of people are falling further into debt with credit cards, personal loans, medical bills, and more. And nobody likes the stress of mounting debt, the pressure that comes with it.

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around the world, high school kids need to take college entrance exams to see what their chances are of getting into school. And in fact, in Turkey, these tests are so stressful that one student found a way to use AI to try and cheat on one. Although the reason we're talking about today is that they ultimately failed, they were caught, and now they face jail time. And the details here, it puts what you and I definitely did not do with our TI-83 calculators to shame. Because the way it worked was it actually disguised a hidden camera as a shirt button and it scanned test questions. At which point the AI would work the question, figure out the answer,

and send it to the student via a small earpiece. With the officers who arrested the student even showing off the tech in a video demonstration, it actually looked like it worked pretty well because it was quick to give an answer. However, as we learn in this world, 98% of everything is confidence. I mean, there are a lot of stupid, confident motherfuckers in this world that run things and are very, very successful.

And unfortunately for this would-be cheater, they got caught because they were acting suspicious. An extra unfortunate for this individual is that the cheating there, it's not just like an academic offense. Oh, you're going to get suspended or expelled. It's actually a serious criminal one, especially in Turkey, where these exams almost literally dictate the rest of your life. And so now you have this student sitting in jail, awaiting a hearing, and they may end up getting some jail time for it. Though I will say, I wonder if this is just a small glimpse into the future of cheating. Because I really wouldn't be surprised if a version of this is or becomes semi-common. All the tools are out there and they're becoming increasingly more accessible. Well, this one was impressive not only because of like the cameras,

the shirt button, also like to connect to the AI, he had a router in his shoe. I mean, here we're only talking about the realm of in-person cheating. I mean, just the perception that AI can be used to cheat has led to about one half of teachers surveyed distrusting their students' work now.

And in fact, many are often so cautious and paranoid about this that they end up dinging students who aren't using AI, but some other AI claims that they might be. And really, I just believe that things are gonna get messier from here. And then, in huge news, the Supreme Court just rejected an attempt

to restrict access to the abortion pill. We've talked about the lead up to this, but to give you the Cliff Notes version, this case was brought about by anti-abortion groups and doctors who argued that the FDA didn't properly evaluate safety concerns when they lifted restrictions on the first of two pills taken for a medical abortion.

And this, even though the drug was approved over two decades ago, and both the safety and the efficacy of the pill have repeatedly been proven by research in the FDA, with them notably being one of the strictest regulators in the world and widely viewed as a gold standard benchmark for other global regulators to base their decisions off of. But despite all that, the groups claim

that the FDA had jeopardized the safety of pregnant women by enacting a series of changes since 2016 that removed barriers that the agency deemed unnecessary. Like allowing the drug to be used up until 10 weeks of pregnancy as well as permitting providers to prescribe it virtually and send it through the mail. And those changes, you know, they massively increased access to abortion, especially after Roe was overturned and other options became way more limited. Now, medication abortions making up nearly two out of every three abortions, which is a meaningful jump from just 50% before Roe was reversed.

And so as a result, you had many arguing this case was just a clear attempt to limit one of the only remaining paths for abortion. But it also really went beyond that, right? Because by challenging the FDA's approval, the suit also threatened to upend the agency's entire regulatory process for all the products it oversees. Totally gutting the FDA's regulatory powers by second-guessing the decisions of scientific experts in the systems for drug approval that have been carefully established for decades. But all of

that has been averted, at least for now. And I say for now, because here's the key thing. The Supreme Court's unanimous decision wasn't actually based on the substance of the case or the regulations themselves. Instead, what we saw is that the court ruled on a procedural issue, right? Finding that the anti-abortion doctors, that they didn't have legal grounds to bring their case because they don't prescribe or use the abortion pill in their practice. And notably, there is nothing in federal law that requires them to do so. In fact, there are literally protections under federal law that explicitly exempt doctors from providing abortions or any other treatment that goes against their religious or moral beliefs. So essentially, they were challenging a regulation that impacts others, but doesn't affect them at all. But even

the likes of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who authored the decision, arguing that the plaintiffs have not been able to identify one single instance where they were forced to prescribe the abortion pill since it was approved over a decade ago. Writing rather, the plaintiffs want FDA to make mifepristone more difficult for other doctors to prescribe

and for pregnant women to obtain. But adding a plaintiff's desire to make a drug less available for others does not establish standing to sue. And also going on to explain, in the FDA drug approval context, virtually all drugs come with complications, risks, and side effects. And noting that doctors have never had standing to challenge FDA's drug approval simply on the theory that the use of the drugs by others may cause more visits to doctors. As well as adding that the courts are the wrong forum to be making these complaints. Instead,

they should be arguing to the president, the FDA, and Congress, or vocalized in the electoral process. But all that said, this is far from over. Because despite this unanimous decision, experts say this is not the last we're going to see of cases like this. And in fact, anti-abortion groups are already vowing to continue the fight on this front, as well as seeing a lawyer for the plaintiffs arguing that the Supreme Court decision was procedural and just ruled on the standing of the plaintiffs. But the merits of the case can still be challenged. And in fact, three states, Missouri, Kansas, and Idaho, are leading similar challenges that are likely to come up before the court and could revive the question. And also because they're states, they argue that they have a different standing. But for now, that's the news we got today. And

as far as what comes next, we'll have to wait and see. And then we need to talk about what's happening in Argentina, because what's happening now, it's already huge and wild. It's set to get even bigger now. And I mean, we've got demonstrators clashing with police and things getting increasingly violent. With footage from one of those scenes showing police beating people while at the same time fires were being set by the crowd and striking officers. With officials claiming that at least 20 officers had been injured and 15 people were arrested. While the total number of injured is probably far higher, we just don't have official numbers for how many protesters were hurt yet, right?

And really at the heart of all this are some people's discontent with President Javier Mele's drastic economic policy and a new economic bill that was just passed. And a particular concern for the protesters was a provision that would give the executive branch there way more power over the economy in the country. And in doing this,

by declaring a public emergency for one year, allowing Mele to pass legislation without really needing Congress during that time, which is obviously a very, very drastic move. But Malay and his supporters argue that it's necessary because key reforms have been held up in Congress due to political gridlock. Because while Malay's party did win big last year, it wasn't big enough to have a majority, which has often left them without the power to pass legislation as they see fit. And I mean, this bill itself was nearly a victim of the same gridlock after the Senate was split down the middle over whether to pass it or not, even taking a tie-breaking vote from the vice president to get it passed.

Although technically, this isn't exactly the end of the journey for the bill. And that, because after this is a formal process where the Senate goes line by line over it again before being sent back to the House. While the line by line thing's rarely a speed bump, the real question here is what's the House going to do? Because they technically already passed the bill, but the Senate, they made major changes that the House would need to approve. But if they approve it, it would effectively be law and give Malay the power that he wants to fundamentally change Argentina's economy. Or to put it better, I mean, change it even more. Because so far, his focus has been on cutting government jobs, agencies, and spending. To that end, I mean, he's cut the cabinet size in half. He's laid off tens of thousands with more expected. He's also

stopped new public works contracts and suspended fuel and transport subsidies. But the big ticket items that have been blocked consistently are the privatization of a ton of public companies, things like airlines and energy companies. Also with this, there's been a question of, you know, how successful has he really been so far? And that becomes a lot harder to gauge because on one side, you have him and his supporters pointing to the fact that for the first time in 16 years, there's a budget surplus. And actually, better than that, there's been a surplus for many months in a row now. Although this is you have people pointing out that it's come at the cost of a lot of jobs, which in its own way puts a downward pressure on the economy as people don't have money to spend. Though other successes include lowering the monthly inflation rate to about 5%.

Because in places like Argentina, inflation is often measured by monthly changes, not yearly, because of just how bad it is. And comparatively, that single number change is pretty impressive. Before, it was well into the two digits. Although notably, yearly inflation is still around 300%, and families are still struggling with savings and being able to buy necessities. Also, you have many pointing out that spending has gone down in the country, which is really good for a recovering economy. So much so that about one half of Argentinians are below the poverty line. Although there, an argument that his supporters make is that those numbers are just a continuation of trends that his predecessors caused over years of mismanagement.

And saying that for Millet's policies to really work, he needs these reforms and time. Like his things won't change overnight or even in six months. And so once again, we're stuck in the situation of having to wait to see what happens. And in this case, it has to do with one of the most extreme economic and government experiments in the world.

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sponsor of our show. And then I want to talk about something so interesting and it's like fun, but it's not fun because it's so concerning and it involves how we think of evolution. Because usually when we think about how evolution works, we think of two things. There's natural selection, the process by which organisms that are less fit for their environments get weeded out, the better adapted survive and reproduce. And then there's artificial selection where humans deliberately breed desirable traits and plants and animals. But now scientists are beginning to pay more attention to a third concept that straddles both, anthropogenic evolution. That's when humans fuck around with nature in ways that accidentally alter the evolutionary trajectories of other species.

So not exactly natural because it's caused by humans, but not exactly artificial because it's unintentional. But it's important to talk about because it's shaping up to be one of the most destructive and far-reaching yet understudied environmental challenges of the 21st century. And so to try to get a handle on this, to better understand this, we spoke with Lee Dugatkin, a biologist at the University of Louisville

who wrote about this in Scientific American. We tend to think of it really kicking into higher gear when the industrial revolution started and we started pumping out all of these new chemicals into the environment. So the classic example here is the peppered moth. It comes in two varieties, essentially, a lighter color and a darker color. They hung out on birch trees around Manchester, England, camouflaging themselves from predators against the bark.

For centuries before the Industrial Revolution, most of the moths were the light colored kind. And that's because the birch trees and the other trees in the forest tended to be light-colored. But in the 19th century, once factories began pumping out tons of soot, all of those trees turned to dirty black, making the lighter-colored moths stick out. And all of a sudden then you see in the record that the frequency of the darker colored black moths increases and increases and increases up to the point of making up 80 to 90% of the population after many decades. Now, if you hear that and you're thinking, okay, big deal, Phil, their wings got darker. Wow. So what? I'm with you. I don't care about that specifically that much. But the same process that transformed those moths is now evident in countless other species from insects

all the way up to whales. It it affects just about everything they do. And there we're talking about mating and breeding and migration and cooperation and aggression and all sorts of things. And if animals can't adapt, they suffer, they decline, or in worst cases, they go extinct. And given how all of this started with the industrial pollution, it shouldn't be surprising that greenhouse gases, they're one of the biggest anthropogenic factors. A lot of it is going to revolve around climate change.

Which, as he explains, creates a mismatch between these animals' evolutionary biology and the signals that they're getting from nature. Over thousands, sometimes millions of years, the reproductive cycles of animals have evolved to produce very, very fine-tuned responses. So for tons of animals, especially birds, when the ambient temperature climbs above a certain point every spring, it's like Mother Nature's fired a starter pistol. They start fucking, go nuts, raising families because it's breeding season. By increasing the average temperature, we're creating an environment in which now these animals

are going to kick into reproductive high gear, often weeks, sometimes even more, earlier in the season. Or in other words, Mother Nature pulls the trigger prematurely, which is bad because the animals are like, oh, it's spring, let's get food for our babies. But then all of a sudden you get a winter cold snap and the insects go back underground, leaving the newly hatched chicks to starve. It often will kill all of the nestlings in a nest. And even when those mass casualty events don't happen,

researchers have found that with tree swallows, for instance, on average, the birds actually have one less offspring per year. So maybe these birds adapt to the changing climate by selecting for the ones with a genetic proclivity to start breeding later. But maybe they don't, right? Maybe they just go extinct. You know, it wouldn't be as easy as it was for the peppered moth, which just had to adjust its wing color, because as Dugatkin

explains, recalibrating the links between temperature and the onset of mating is incredibly complex, involving hormonal, neurobiological, and behavioral changes. Sometimes they can adapt in real time to these problems, and other times they can't. It won't take long to tell you Neutral's ingredients. Vodka, soda, natural flavors. So, what should we talk about? No sugar added? Neutral. Refreshingly simple. But I'm giving an example of one species that seems not to have adapted yet to what he calls an ecological trap.

The hermit crab. In one experiment, scientists put six tires on the seabed off the coast of Japan, and they just waited. With algae inevitably building on them, which attracted snails, which then died, leaving their shells behind. Which then attracted the hermit crabs that climbed into the tires for the shells, but then they couldn't get back out. And over a year, the researchers counted 1,278 crabs that got stuck that way, meaning they probably would have just died had these scientists not helped them out. And that was just from six tires. Y'all, human beings toss roughly 30 million metric tons of tires every year, many of which, though not all, are illegally dumped into the ocean. But even when a species does adapt to

the selection pressures, that's not necessarily a good thing. I mean, two horrifying examples are antibiotic-resistant bacteria and pesticide-resistant insects. And other times, they don't really adapt. They're just kind of warped by human selection. We see this very notably with commercial fishing. Right? People target the biggest fish. So over time, the only ones left to reproduce are the smaller ones. I mean, the smallest gene is more likely to get passed down while the bigness gene doesn't. And so as one expert told the BBC nearly a decade ago, Atlantic cod used to be several meters long and now they're only a meter or so.

And adding there, we basically have an organism that was once top predator in the system and now serves as prey to other organisms. We see the same pattern with animals that are hunted on land, like bighorn sheep, for example. But we also can't talk about any of this without mentioning another huge driver, urbanization. Our big cities are radically strange environments for many reasons, not the least the

artificial light, loud noise, and intense heat. And you know, looking at light as the first example, cities and even suburbs, they're flooded with unnatural amounts of light from buildings, vehicles, street lamps, you name it. This dramatically screws up the reproductive behaviors of birds and lots of other animals, including insects and mammals. And Dugatkin describes an experiment where scientists put blackbirds in two different settings, one with light that mimicked a forest and one with light that mimicked a city. And on average, the city birds began reproducing three or four weeks earlier.

That was only for the first year, right? If you go to the second year, you see the real damage. The ones that the year before were exposed to city-like light regimes produced no offspring. You know, we can see similar effects from noise pollution, which drowns out animal communication, and all the heat that's collected in urban environments, which studies have shown makes lizards develop a tolerance for higher temperatures. But possibly the weirdest consequence of all this is that animals' personalities are changing too, namely by giving them a strong dose of courage. The tendency to be risk-taking,

to do things that are a little bit out on the edge, go into new environments, take chances. And Dugatkin guesses that the reason for all this is that cities, unlike their natural habitats, are extremely fragmented environments. Essentially chopping up the environment into very, very small bits that are separated from other bits, as opposed to having large stretches of open space where animals used to live. But I'm suggesting bolder, more exploratory animals are more likely to venture into urban areas in the first place. And then once they are only the boldest of the bold, they're going to move into other fragmented areas with better food or fewer predators, which assuming boldness is genetic would cause future generations to inherit that trait as well.

And actually, when scientists in Germany compared urban and rural striped field mice, they confirmed that the city dwellers are bolder and more exploratory. Also, coming back to the climate, Dugatkin says that may change animals' personality too. You tend to see animals being much more aggressive when they're looking for mates. Right, so if the warming climate's making them breed,

earlier, that makes the reproductive season longer, which favors animals that are more willing to fight. That's, again, an unintended consequence, but it changes the selection pressures on the animals. Now obviously, stopping climate change is a very, very big daunting task. But while we work on that, there are also a lot of little things that we can do to minimize our impact on evolution. Just take sea turtles, for example. They venture out into the ocean during breeding season, and then they return to the shore to lay their eggs.

But humans, we mess that cycle up without even meaning to. The kind of lights that we put around beaches, the colors of those lights, the spectrum really affects their ability, their tendency to even want to go out and come back in. So all we have to do is darken the nesting beaches or adjust the lights in a way that doesn't really matter to us, but makes a huge difference for the wildlife. And then there's also whales and dolphins, you know, who, who use their own equivalent of radar to swim around and find things. Sonar completely screws that up. Researchers are looking into alternatives to sonar like magnetic sensors and thermal imaging that don't interfere with the marine ecosystem as much.

Though notably, those methods can be less effective. So just regulating how much sonar is used in a certain high density area, that could be another simple fix. But also in talking about all this, you realize we've totally overlooked another potential victim of anthropogenic evolution, and that is ourselves. Just because we are the ones that are transforming the environment, doesn't mean that those changes

aren't in turn transforming us. Certainly other things that we've done in our own evolutionary history that changed the environment have rebounded back to us. The domestication of animals and plants, for example, changed us on a biological, genetic level. We know that our interaction with dogs changes our own hormonal chemistry. Or by increasing levels of oxytocin, also known as the love hormone.

They changed the sort of ways that we hunted, which changed the pressures on our body structure and the food that we took in. But a key thing, Dugatkin says that the impacts we've caused since the industrial revolution, you know, the stuff like urbanization, pollution, food, technology, fucking iPhones, whether or not these will have an impact on human evolution is still an open question. Because evolutionary changes tend to happen over relatively long stretches of time,

and we've hardly begun to study the anthropogenic effects on other animals, much less ourselves. But as the BBC pointed out, if we are not prudent in managing our unnatural selection pressures on the rest of the animal kingdom, we will be paying a Darwinian debt for generations to come. But that, my beautiful bastards,

is where today's show is gonna end. So I'm gonna have to start breaking down this room, but do not worry, I will see you soon because of course, my name's Philip DeFranco. You've just been filled in. I love your faces and I'll see you right back here on Monday.