What happens when we commodify nature? The natural world is not doing well, and is not put here to do with as we want. How can we learn to appreciate nature, and environment, without jumping to conclusions about what is happening, or picking sides in an ideological battle that has nothing to do with actual wild nature? Also: how are DOGE cuts affecting scientists? Four people profiled in Science magazine reveal that some good science is being hit with chaos and uncertainty—but also that a lot of “science” funding that has been cut was suspect, at best.
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Mentioned in this episode:
But They Are Wild - https://naturalselections.substack.com/p/antipode-chapter-22
U.S. scientists’ lives and careers are being upended. Here are five of their stories:https://www.science.org/content/article/u-s-scientists-lives-and-careers-are-being-upended-here-are-five-their-stories
Spread of Valley Fever: https://www.science.org/content/article/climate-change-may-be-driving-spread-deadly-fungus-u-s-southwest
Timestamps:
00:00:00 Holding Screen
00:05:03 Welcome
00:06:36 Bret on Diary of a CEO
00:08:25 Dave Smith Throws Down the Gauntlet
00:12:53 Sponsors: Manukora, Fresh Pressed Olive Oil, and Caraway
00:24:50 Commercializing Nature
00:34:05 What the Right Gets Wrong
00:46:03 Fox Behavior
00:56:07 Bret’s Concern
00:59:35 Bret & Heather’s Travel Rule
01:07:25 What We’re Losing
01:13:03 Nature Expectations vs. Reality
01:22:12 Stories of Defunding “Science”
01:36:39 Heather’s Valley Fever Deep Dive
01:50:28 Columbia’s NIH Funding on Hold
01:57:53 Bret’s Reaction to Defunding Science
02:03:32 Closing
We have "cartesian blinders being put on us so that we are trying to make sense out of scraps of information and hints." - @bretweinstein
WEINSTEIN: I mean, even if you have your villains who are engaged in the behavior that motivated this war in Iran, even if that's the story, presumably most of the people in the path of these ferocious bombings that he is describing are not deserving of going back to the Stone Age.
In fact, I distinctly remember him telling us that part of what we were up to was liberating the people of Iran from their tyrannical regime.
So if it's the tyrannical regime that justifies the ferocious bombing, then it's a tragedy that other people are going to be sent back to the Stone Ages with them. Right?
HEYING: It's it's not a narrative. It's an incoherent set of talking points.
WEINSTEIN: Yeah, it's a kind of cheerleading that is completely inappropriate from the perspective of the president.
Bret Weinstein discusses the Trump administrations "back to the stone age" recent remarks in the latest episode of The Evolutionary Lens, Episode 320 "Are we back in the stone age?" on DarkHorse.
Bret Weinstein explains, "If you stop businesses from starting here, and if you drive people so that they move elsewhere—even though it's difficult to do—then the point is the tax base dries up, which then forces you to become even more predatory for the people who stayed.
And that's really the thing, right? They're setting themselves up so that they have to go after more and more people, because the people who are starting new businesses are not going to do it here."
Bret speaks with John Cullen on the subject of the unanswered questions surrounding the assassination of Charlie Kirk and the 2017 Las Vegas shooting.
Youtube: https://youtu.be/7m31LcCTf10
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0LEGBkh2yXDTl3QqU38Qid?si=KtxnJF0IT3i4XGhE_Sm0cg
Locals: https://darkhorse.locals.com/post/8227721/the-drone-hypothesis-john-cullen-on-darkhorse
Rumble: https://rumble.com/v7g2ny2-the-drone-hypothesis-john-cullen-on-darkhorse.html
Bret and Heather discuss new cats, fat bears, and overwhelmed frogs. The tilcayo, a newly named species of cat from Bolivia, is part of a group of New World “tiger cats” that live on the outskirts of the Amazon basin. We discuss Carnivoran relationships, cats more specifically, and what is known about the history and ecology of the tilcayo in particular.
Then: it’s fat bear week at Katmai National Park in Alaska, where grizzlies are fattening themselves on salmon for the Winter ahead; we discuss hibernation, reproductive diapause, and general chonkiness in bears.
Finally: female Cope’s gray treefrogs have a harder time choosing good mates when there’s a lot of noise, and when there are too many suitors—kind of like how women often make bad choices when confronted with chaos and wingmen.
Rumble: ...
