Join Bret and Heather for their next Q&A on Wednesday, August 12th https://www.darkhorsepodcast.org/calendar

00:00:00 Holding Screen

00:06:12 "We are in a place where incoherence is the rule." A conversation on blue states vs. red and whether or not Heather has always held more conservative beliefs or not.

00:24:08 Q: In a world with so many hyper-novel and deleterious stimuli (chemicals, blue light, noise pollution, etc.) how do you two discern what to avoid and regulate? How would you suggest laypeople systematize hyper-novelty management? Are there some things simply too ubiquitous to avoid?

00:36:54 Q: Re: immigrant assimilation, I’d like your thoughts on the call to prayer in Minneapolis. We’re a constitutional republic practicing democracy that’s supposed to reflect citizens’ desires, so I assume the leaders allowing it have majority consent. The U.S. itself is based on Christianity, though it’s not a national religion. Is it inherent in our Western culture of openness, working together over tribal relations & striving for something better—along with representative democracy—that our country can come to look like different cultures of the world, slowly erasing our own? Is that acceptable because the system is working as it should in representing the will of the people, or dangerous because it’s overwriting what’s made the West great?

00:44:58 You had a whole segment on insect repellent. And I don't think you ever mentioned van man's no bugs bomb?

00:45:48 smog from the Canadian fires & glyphosate

00:47:24 Is there any saving the beautiful places that seem doomed to be lost to the woke such as the PNW, or is the deranging power of the cities that rule them, as suggested in The Human Zoo by Desmond Morris, too strong? Beyond common sense measures like election security that may have been at play in LA, what do you think it would take?

01:01:37 Much love and respect to you guys, i’ve been listening to you since the beginning. Question about population decline and evolutionary fitness.

Derek Thompson recently discussed declining birthrates with Fernández Villaverde (US, UK, Europe live births currently average 1.5-1.6 per woman; 0.5-0.6 below replacement rate). Pandas seem to find reproduction challenging due to a variety of factors (research indicates bamboo diet, fertility window in females and more).

Human beings may be in decline for similar wide ranging environmental factors, but I’d love to hear you guys discuss this from a lens of evolutionary fitness to our environment. Merely environmental factors or perhaps is there something deeper going on?

01:29:15 Here in Florida, my primary care physician is no longer accepting self-pay. This means that crowd health is not a valid option for me with my primary care position. To me it looks like the insurance companies are forcing doctors to only accept patients with traditional medical insurance. So doctors in their networks are
fundamentally blocking crowd health.

01:32:38 Here in Florida, my primary care physician is no longer accepting self-pay. This means that crowd health is not a valid option for me with my primary care position. To me it looks like the insurance companies are forcing doctors to only accept patients with traditional medical insurance. So doctors in their networks are
fundamentally blocking crowd health.

01:32:28 Hi Heather, you have mentioned in passing that there might be more to homeopathy than you first thought. My mother always treated us with homeopathy growing up so I’m well familiar with it, although as an adult I never believed it had any scientific grounding nor any effect beyond placebo, so I never kept using it. Interested in what is making you possibly reconsider your opinion on this branch of alternative medicine!

01:36:22 What do you think of dental sealants for kids (for their molars)?

01:40:17 Hi Heather and Bret. I’ve been wondering for a while now how parents and carers in our hunter-gather past and in extant hunter-gatherer populations, especially groups that had or have very minimal fabric use, contended with their babies defecating and urinating. Without nappies/diapers it seems like a messy and unhygienic affair.

01:45:26 Bret and Heather, please look through the evolutionary lens to explain sidedness. I am guessing it will be something like investing in one sided expertise is a worthwhile tradeoff historically over ambidextous mediocrity because those who were better and more powerful throwers, slingers or archers had a distinct advantage. Predictions then might be something like, less sidedness in other mammals. More ambidextrous tendencies in human females, since historically, they might not have been as involved in hunting or warfare.

01:54:20 What is the evolutionary purpose of eye brows!?

01:58:06 If generations are informed and imprinted by the events of their youth, what are some of the characteristics likely to be developed in the youths who were particularly impressionable during the covid era?

02:02:47 Observation: conversations like the one you had with Sonia Elijah are necessary periodically, lest we forget and become lax about the crimes commited in the COVID years. Question: In india we primarily used the Astra zeneca jab and another homegrown adenovirus vector jab during 2021-23. Both didn't have mRNA. But both have resulted in similar cases of excess deaths like the mRNA jabs. Sudden cardiac arrests in men (majority) between ages 25-50 and rapid onset cancers in women (majority) between ages 30-60 are leading causes and it isn't slowing down. Common ingredient between mRNA and non mRNA jabs is the spike protein. Could there be something else in common here that we are missing?