On this, our 326th Evolutionary Lens livestream, we discuss government and tyranny, environmental toxins and the media, eminent domain, and memories of childhood. Former Washington state governor Christine Gregoire says the state doesn’t have an income problem, it’s got a spending problem—and that unpredictability from legislators is making it impossible for the business community to plan. Stochasticity is impossible to adapt to—for humans, and for other species too. In the most expensive Congressional primary race in U.S. history, incumbent Thomas Massie lost in Kentucky; his opponent was substantively funded by AIPAC. Young people supported Massie; old people did not. The Department of Fish & Wildlife has declared the widely used herbicide atrazine no big deal—but it very much is, beginning with the well-established fact that it turns the frogs…not gay, but aggressive and dysfunctionally hermaphroditic. In Georgia, eminent domain is being invoked to “liberate” people from their houses. And we end with memories of idyllic childhoods in the forests of the Pacific Northwest.
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Mentioned in this episode:
Christine Gregoire: https://x.com/BrandiKruse/status/2054995043006681440
AIPAC on Kentucky race: https://x.com/AIPAC/status/2056893663511257316
NYT on atrazine, 2023: https://www.nytimes.com/article/rfk-conspiracy-theories-fact-check.html
NYT on atrazine, 2026: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/19/climate/epa-atrazine-endangered-species-maha.html
Hayes et al 2003. Atrazine-induced hermaphroditism at 0.1 ppb in American leopard frogs (Rana pipiens): laboratory and field evidence. Environmental health perspectives, 111(4): 568: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1241446/pdf/ehp0111-000568.pdf
Gender Surrender – DarkHorse #182 on atrazine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USF0A_fRlvk
Eminent domain – Ansley Brown in Georgia: https://x.com/Ansleysgarden/status/2054036145328075104
Shadow Thoughts: https://naturalselections.substack.com/p/shadow-thoughts
Timestamps:
00:00:00 Holding Screen
00:06:08 Mic Issue is Fixed Quickly!
00:09:01 Sponsor: Mud/Wtr
00:11:53 Humor, the woke & AI
00:14:02 Sponsor: SaunaSpace
00:16:47 Get Your Mollusks Running?
00:18:14 Sponsor: Helix (and flying/fishing dreams)
00:24:05 Wa. State Dems Gleeful to Tax More
00:44:16 Massie Defeat: MOST Expensive Primary
00:57:15 Dept. of Fish and Wildlife's "Gay" Frogs
01:12:13 Losing Homes to Data Centers
01:31:46 Shadow Thoughts
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
Read the full piece on Substack: https://naturalselections.substack.com/p/raw
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: ...
