0:00

From UFOs to psychic powers

0:02

and government conspiracies. History

0:04

is riddled with unexplained events. You

0:07

can turn back now or learn

0:09

the stuff they don't want you to know. A

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production of iHeartRadio.

0:24

Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,

0:26

my.

0:27

Name is Nol.

0:27

They call me Ben. We're joined as always

0:30

with our super producer Paul Mission Control

0:32

DECA. Most importantly, you are you.

0:35

You are here. That makes this the

0:37

stuff they don't want you to know,

0:40

coming to you live from a universe of our

0:42

own, straight to yours. What if

0:45

we could build a perfect society? Guys?

0:47

What if we figure it out? Today?

0:49

Are utopia?

0:50

Yeah, like where scientists have

0:52

full unregulated control.

0:55

A technocracy. I'm so in Yeah,

0:58

Like it's weird, right, because that's something

1:01

pretty much all civilizations have

1:03

aspired to. Nobody seems to get

1:05

the concept of utopia right so far.

1:08

And we'll also along the way tonight figure out

1:10

why utopia is kind.

1:11

Of a mean joke, right, Like, isn't

1:13

you?

1:14

I almost think utopia and dystopia

1:16

are synonymous in a weird way,

1:18

you know.

1:18

You know, It's like a lot of things

1:21

that are in theory utopian do end

1:23

up being dystoping in practice, and that's

1:25

so much film and fiction, right,

1:28

They're essentially terribles

1:30

about how trying to make a perfect society

1:33

goes terribly wrong. Shout out soiling,

1:35

green, clockwork, orange.

1:37

Communism, mean,

1:40

come on, you know, communism

1:42

sounds great in theory, but it's just never quite

1:45

worked out the way it seemed like it should on

1:47

paper.

1:47

Capitalism as well, you know, everybody's

1:50

getting a little bit today.

1:52

We've got to also shout out this

1:54

chilling line, Matt, I

1:56

always always defer to you a matrix knowledge.

1:59

At the very end of

2:01

the matrix. We're talking about this off air, the

2:03

architect and Paul

2:05

pointed out, there's a good way to do the voice, but the

2:08

architect is speaking with Neo

2:11

and says, you know, you're not in

2:13

the first version of the Matrix.

2:15

The first one I made was

2:18

Paradise, and it was a monumental

2:20

failure. I mean. And then of course the

2:22

Fallout series, right, you got

2:24

played the game to like that.

2:26

Show, well, even

2:29

like the whole idea of the Vault

2:32

situation is in and of itself

2:34

a utopia that is going to lead to

2:36

a greater utopia on Earth,

2:38

but only after complete

2:40

and total annihilation. That's almost

2:43

like a prerequisite sometimes

2:45

for a proper utopia.

2:47

Right.

2:47

Well, in like today's episode,

2:49

each one of those vaults is designed

2:52

with some kind of experiment, like

2:55

for utopia. Could this be a

2:57

utopia if these parameters

2:59

are set.

3:00

If we tweak X, we change

3:02

Y, we futsa Z, we

3:05

will build a more perfect world.

3:06

Yeah.

3:07

In tonight's episode, we're exploring the

3:09

story of one man who, depending

3:11

on whom you ask, who sought

3:13

to apply the scientific method,

3:15

just like you were saying, Matt to the construction of

3:17

civilization is a reasonable dude,

3:20

he said, instead of trying out rules

3:22

on humans, instead of cooking live

3:24

with empires, what if we start

3:26

with rodents?

3:34

Here are the facts. Let's

3:36

start with a Tennessee boy named

3:39

John Bumpah

3:42

or Bumpus Calhoun.

3:45

That is his middle name. And

3:47

we had a discussion about

3:50

being adults.

3:51

What if we spell it ben?

3:53

All right, Matt b U mp A

3:56

s S. Let's go to Nola because Noel

3:58

wasn't here where we talked about how would you pronounce

4:00

this name?

4:01

It's what you do at the club, y'all?

4:03

You bump ass oh.

4:06

Another legacy of his work, Perhaps.

4:09

One can only imagine.

4:11

So this guy is a behavioral

4:14

researcher. The fancy name

4:16

for his specific field is ethologist,

4:20

not an ethnologist, not

4:22

an ethicist, but instead

4:25

someone who studies the behavior

4:28

of non human animals.

4:29

Oh yes, and this person is highly

4:33

influential. Let's say we

4:36

I think many, several of us, maybe all of

4:38

us, learned about him when stuff he should know kind

4:40

of like mentioned him way back

4:42

in the day, almost ten years ago, on an episode

4:45

called how zero Population Growth Works.

4:48

Yeah, shout out, shout out to our

4:50

pals Josh, Chuck and Jerry

4:53

zero population growth. It's still

4:56

it's really interesting, isn't it to go back

4:58

and hear that episode.

4:59

Yeah?

5:00

Yeah, well

5:02

I don't know, it just can't. Every

5:04

once in a while, I listened to s YSK again and

5:06

I'm like, oh man, I love this show.

5:08

They're lovely dudes. I think that was before my time.

5:11

But I'm assuming the zero population growth

5:13

is some concept

5:16

involving eugenics or

5:18

something, is it, or is it something a little

5:20

bit more less evil

5:22

than that.

5:23

Goes into things like enthusiasm

5:27

or enthusian thoughts.

5:28

The Georgia guidestones y type stuff,

5:30

right, Yeah, yeah, to

5:33

this number Yeah, shout

5:35

out to the Population Bomb.

5:37

That's a book that also changed the game.

5:40

Yeah, because it goes back to an

5:42

early observation by

5:45

this the Malthusian

5:48

originator Lord. Yeah,

5:51

but the guy who said, hey, uh, population

5:54

of humans, it kind of grows

5:56

exponentially, but the amount of food

5:58

that we're able to produce does say, grow exponentially.

6:01

It's just got kind of this nice little line

6:04

that does increase over time, but not

6:06

at the same rate.

6:07

Yeah, he looked at he looked at that the

6:10

dreaded X Y axis right,

6:12

and said, there's an inflection point

6:15

upon which the S hits the F. And

6:17

he wasn't talking about San Francisco, but.

6:19

He but he thought he thought the

6:21

S was going to hit the F around the year

6:24

like I don't know, like before

6:26

the year two thousand.

6:27

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

6:29

Josh Josh in that episode mentions that he

6:31

thought, what year two thousand

6:33

is when London, like Britain for

6:36

the most part, would no longer exist because

6:38

he will have torn itself apart.

6:40

So this guy's essentially like an academic

6:42

doom profit that guy, Thomas

6:44

Malthus, Yeah, yeah, and he's he's

6:47

kind of more in the realm of economics.

6:49

Yeah, yeah, but there is a underlying

6:53

academic bent to his predictions.

6:55

He's not just like, fully, you

6:57

know, I've had a vision and.

6:59

This is what Yeah, he didn't think

7:01

God told him, gotcha. Yeah, he

7:04

thought it was based on quantitative research

7:07

and trends as he saw him at the time, tatas

7:09

mouthus Uh, you know him, you

7:12

know him.

7:13

Enthusiastic about it too.

7:15

Yeah, if you're having a good day and

7:17

the day's too good, check out

7:19

some of his work.

7:20

But back to use that as a term, right, if you're mouth

7:23

Susian, then you're sort of like a naysayer

7:25

kind of right or.

7:26

Yes, yeah, well they

7:29

wouldn't call themselves naysayers. They will

7:31

call themselves realist, which

7:33

is what most pessimistic people do. There

7:35

you go, I'm shrugging everybody

7:38

an audio podcast. Uh so this

7:40

back to our guy dot Calhoun. The

7:43

first thing we have to understand about his studies

7:45

is they're often mischaracterized

7:49

with the idea like you'll read about

7:51

it in pop science or whatever, and

7:53

the idea is presented as

7:55

though Calhoun attempted

7:58

to construct a perfect society for

8:00

various rodents and

8:02

from there figure out how to

8:04

create a better society for humans.

8:07

This isn't really the case. What he actually

8:10

did is remove a lot

8:12

of the usual population constraint

8:15

variables or the mortality

8:17

creators, because it

8:20

wasn't because he wanted a

8:23

paradise really for rodents.

8:25

He was interested instead in the effects

8:27

of proximity and population

8:30

overpopulation in particular sout out

8:32

in malthews. Maybe we learn a

8:34

little bit about him because I didn't know

8:36

this. He taught at Emory University,

8:39

just up the road from US.

8:40

Indeed, a graduate

8:42

of Northwestern, he did teach at

8:45

Emory as well as Ohio State, and

8:47

then he moved with his wife to Maryland,

8:50

where he settled down at Johns

8:52

Hopkins in March of nineteen

8:54

forty seven, where he began a twenty

8:57

eight month study of a colony

8:59

of Norwegian rats

9:02

in a ten thousand square foot

9:05

enclosure kind of sounds like a bit of

9:07

a barn, you know, an out outbuilding

9:10

kind of situation. There were five

9:12

females in this cohort that,

9:15

over the time span, were theoretically able

9:17

to produce five thousand healthy offspring

9:20

for this particular size enclosure, and

9:23

Calhoun found that the population never exceeded

9:26

two hundred individuals and

9:28

eventually stabilized at one fifty.

9:31

Just really quick brown Norway

9:34

rats. If you want to buy them, a

9:37

male at three weeks old

9:39

costs one hundred and nine dollars and twenty nine cents.

9:41

A female costs one one hundred and

9:43

eleven dollars and three cents.

9:45

Just a pricey rat.

9:47

Shout out secret of nim isn't it?

9:49

Wouldn't you say?

9:49

That's I would think I would all have

9:52

thought that rats would be typically less expensive

9:54

than that.

9:54

I mean, you can catch them for free, that's

9:57

true.

9:57

Well, and that's twenty four numbers.

10:00

We're talking nineteen forty seven.

10:01

So yeah, it was given rats away at

10:04

that point.

10:04

Right, Well, well it should be

10:06

noted when we're thinking about these rats.

10:09

These are like control rats, right.

10:11

They are designed to be almost

10:13

identical, so that when you test one

10:16

like a variable with one and another as

10:18

a control, you're actually going to

10:20

be able to test that variable without any other

10:22

intervening variables.

10:23

Yeah, because they're bread

10:26

to Like you said, they're bred to be relatively

10:29

homogeneous, right, not

10:32

to the point where they will become

10:34

quickly incestuous. But they're also more

10:37

importantly bred to not have prominent

10:39

genetic defects or susceptibility

10:42

to certain diseases, and

10:45

they're kind of same, samey. I

10:48

also want to shout out rat intelligence.

10:50

There's a book that are pal Robert Lamb

10:53

and I really love called

10:56

Rats Observations on the History

10:58

and Habitat of the City These most

11:00

Unwanted Inhabitants, and it focuses

11:03

on rats in New York and it's amazing.

11:05

It's a really weird read. They

11:07

have huge balls, by the way, rats

11:09

huge balls literally

11:11

and figured yeah.

11:14

Speaking of and also not speaking of, just one

11:16

one more statistic here with brown Norway

11:18

rats from this specific catalog that

11:20

I'm looking at, you can get a lactating

11:23

rat with litter for six

11:25

hundred and ninety three ten

11:28

cents. That is it again, litter is

11:30

that I don't know, but it's a Brown Norway

11:33

rat.

11:33

It's you try rat milk. Just

11:36

wondering.

11:36

Well, I guess what I'm saying is for these

11:39

types of tests you can get very

11:41

specific with the kind of

11:43

rat, be like what state that

11:45

rat is in, how many weeks all that rat

11:48

is, if it's already no longer breeding,

11:50

it's it's just crazy.

11:52

So it's speaking weird

11:55

stuff right. The technology

11:58

is not here yet for Calhoun to

12:00

scope in to this

12:02

level, to twenty twenty four level of

12:05

rat eugenics, for lack of a better term, But

12:08

he finds something mysterious

12:10

and it haunts the world today. Like

12:13

you were saying, no, this enclosure

12:15

could theoretically house safely

12:18

five thousand rats in this population,

12:21

but it stabilizes at

12:23

one point fifty, just one hundred and fifty rats,

12:26

So we ask what gives. He also notices

12:28

these rats are not forming

12:31

a little rat nation state. Instead,

12:34

they're splitting up into colonies

12:36

the size into colonies of about a

12:38

dozen, which is the size that would

12:41

naturally occur in the wild before

12:43

these different mortality variables

12:46

kicked in predators, disease, lack

12:49

of food, et cetera. And

12:51

he's thinking, well, why

12:54

I took away all the stresses. You know,

12:56

literally they are living the

12:58

best life. They're just in a cage despite

13:01

all their rage, and later he

13:04

stopped. Later

13:06

he moves to Maine and he continues

13:08

to study these Norway

13:10

rats until about nineteen

13:13

fifty one. Eventually the family goes back to Maryland.

13:15

His studies continue. He moves

13:17

into other rodents. We're

13:19

going to mention an outfit called the National

13:22

Institute of Mental Health. Pretty

13:24

often it is indeed the secret

13:27

of NIM. And indeed,

13:29

what film It's true. I didn't get

13:31

it when I just.

13:32

Saw the film. Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, it's

13:34

exact.

13:36

So he did. NIM

13:39

gets some land

13:41

outside of a town called Poolsville,

13:44

Maryland, and he

13:47

headed a couple of projects.

13:48

There.

13:49

He began his most famous series

13:51

of experiments, not on the rats,

13:53

but on mice. And he built

13:56

these different fallout vaults

13:58

for mice, and he

14:01

called them, in a burst of humility

14:03

universes, and it's

14:05

a high fluted name, but besides is

14:07

astonishing. He they wanted

14:10

to see what happened when rodents

14:12

lived without the stresses of life

14:14

in the wild. Limitless

14:17

food, limitless water, I

14:20

kid you not little rat condos, little

14:22

mouse condos.

14:23

Well, imagine this

14:25

is this enclosure. And remember

14:28

the first one that when he was testing earlier,

14:31

he had this huge ten thousand square foot

14:33

area where he's watching all the different mice

14:35

kind of grouping off like that. He wanted

14:37

to see them in these much smaller

14:40

little spaces, right, as you said, with limitless

14:42

resources. But if you imagine

14:44

the starter mice right,

14:47

that began in that quote universe that

14:49

he created. All of the

14:51

preceding mice that are born from those

14:53

original mice only

14:55

know that thing, that

14:58

enclosure that has the walls up that

15:00

they can't climb over, right, So it really

15:02

is the entirety of

15:04

their universe.

15:06

They've never been outside of Plato's

15:08

cavern, you know what I mean. They're still plugged

15:10

into the matrix from the cradle to the grave.

15:13

That's the excellent observation. And these

15:15

were all This was all again not

15:17

because the guy loves happy rats

15:19

and happy mice. He wants to learn

15:22

about population density and how

15:24

it affects behavior. So he says,

15:26

I will build for the utopia.

15:29

What could go wrong? Pretty much

15:31

everything. This is the story of Universe

15:33

twenty five. We'll get into it

15:35

after a word from our sponsors.

15:43

Here's where it gets crazy. Let's

15:46

go back to this really interesting

15:48

thing that you said at the top,

15:51

Noll, the concept of utopia.

15:53

You said, well, it always feels

15:56

like it becomes a dystopia. It's

15:59

so weird because back

16:01

in fifteen sixteen, the word

16:03

was coined as a kind of like snarky,

16:06

mean.

16:06

Joke, like a thing that's not attainable

16:10

almost right, like it's it's

16:12

impossible. It was

16:14

coined by Sir Thomas Moore in

16:16

fifteen sixty. He created

16:18

the word from the Greek words for

16:21

not and place, u

16:24

for not and topos for place,

16:27

so it meant nowhere. It's

16:30

a liminal space. It's a non existent

16:32

thing. So before the dawn of monern science,

16:35

the guy who coined the word that we

16:37

use to describe a perfect society

16:39

was literally thumbing his nose at the concept

16:42

in its entirety. But

16:45

pretty funny, guys, You

16:47

guys, what if he's.

16:48

Really talking about that infinite nothingness

16:50

that we all experience upon the moment of

16:52

death, before the light of everything comes

16:55

to gather us.

16:55

You know what I'm saying. It all ends into infinity.

16:59

When you write an email into the void here

17:01

and sometimes the void writes back.

17:02

Yeah, I mean sometimes you get a subsystem

17:05

undeliverable.

17:06

Message back as well. Maybe he

17:08

really is a good thing, as what I'm saying.

17:10

Guys, welcome

17:13

to the emptiness. Charlco's experiments

17:15

seemed in a weird way to bear

17:17

out Moore's joke, and we don't know what

17:20

he thought about the work of Sir

17:22

Thomas Moore. But from

17:24

these rats he moved

17:27

on. He couldn't always call him Universes,

17:29

so that was very fun, and we'll see he loves fun

17:31

language. He originally called

17:33

the The Mice Experiments

17:37

Mortality Inhibiting Environment

17:39

for mice. And

17:42

like you were saying, it's July

17:44

of nineteen sixty eight when

17:46

he introduces a

17:50

breeding group such that it

17:52

could avoid inbreeding into

17:55

a new habitat called Universe

17:58

twenty five. And you know, again we're

18:00

saying Universe is a little bit ambitious

18:02

for this one because it's not super big.

18:05

Yeah, and I'm sure I Fallt was inspired by

18:07

a lot of things, Like there's there's so many

18:09

examples of these types of isolated communities

18:12

and experiments, whether they be with animals

18:14

or you know, prison experiments or whatever.

18:18

But I can't help but think Universe twenty

18:20

five vault one to eleven, you

18:22

know what I mean, Like it really does have a

18:25

nice connective tissue.

18:27

Yeah.

18:27

Well, again, as we said before, he went from

18:30

ten thousand square feet in nineteen forty

18:32

seven to nine square

18:34

feet of metal.

18:37

Makes yeah,

18:40

it is much smaller. But again, as

18:42

you pointed out, so astuteley,

18:45

the mice evolved don't know this. Their

18:47

kids, their progenies certainly will

18:49

never know this nine

18:51

foot square it's a metal

18:54

pan. The sides are about

18:56

four point five feet high,

18:59

which is not really a huge problem

19:01

for rats depending on the surface, but

19:03

it's pretty difficult for mice yes,

19:06

to summit that well.

19:08

And I think it's the top seventeen

19:10

inches if you've imagined from the height top of this

19:12

thing down seventeen inches is like just

19:15

bare wall that is very

19:17

difficult to scale.

19:18

So you can climb up a little bit right

19:20

to get to your mouse condo.

19:22

Yeah, it's designed that way right to go up

19:24

to the condos, which

19:27

is weird.

19:28

Yeah, nesting boxes, food hoppers,

19:30

water dispensers. It is

19:33

like it is

19:35

like a mouse episode of Cribs.

19:37

To date ourselves with MTV

19:39

references, and

19:43

there were no predators obviously. There's

19:45

just this benevolent

19:48

yet distant human thing that functions

19:51

as God for these guys. Every four

19:53

to eight weeks they get hit with

19:55

their equivalent of you

19:57

know, a natural disaster, a climate

20:00

this event, because that's when the

20:02

enclosure is cleaned, you know what I mean.

20:05

So maybe and we don't know, if we

20:07

don't know enough about their

20:09

cognition to know whether this became

20:11

a story they told each other about.

20:14

Right.

20:14

We also don't know whether they could predict

20:17

the coming of the cleaning.

20:19

Oh, plow

20:23

the.

20:23

Plow because

20:25

it did have to be cleaned out on a regular basis,

20:27

right, I mean that was one of the things.

20:30

Yeah, there's still I mean they're like

20:32

the top tier lap mice, but

20:34

they still poop. We haven't figured out how to make

20:36

mice not poop.

20:37

Do you think that like mice in

20:40

this kind of situation have a sense

20:42

of what's

20:44

going on outside, you know, or

20:46

like do they do they look at I know, I know we

20:48

couldn't possibly you know, get

20:51

inside the head or try to simulate

20:53

the cognition of rats, but like

20:55

these these forces that come in

20:57

and remove them and clean them and then put them back,

21:00

you think they look at them as like godlike forces,

21:02

you know, I don't know, alien abductions.

21:05

It'd be, yeah, some kind of weird part

21:07

of just aspect of the

21:10

universe that happens. But there's no human.

21:13

You're not actually interacting with the human at

21:15

any time whose arms are coming down and cleaning

21:17

things, right, Yeah, it's

21:20

just these disembodied limbs

21:22

that descend into your world

21:25

and then you know, wipe

21:27

off the surfaces or whatever.

21:29

They probably recognize smells, I'm thinking,

21:32

but to your point, it's probably just a thing

21:34

in their environment. I do imagine

21:36

they are intelligent enough to envision

21:39

something past the wall, right,

21:41

because they are naturally exploring

21:44

creatures, right, so they

21:46

without knowing what is out there. They

21:49

many of them attempted

21:52

to escape at some point, especially

21:54

if stuff did not work out as

21:56

mouse society collapsed, which

21:59

is exactly what happened. The only obstacle

22:02

in Universe twenty five and the

22:04

preceding experiments was space.

22:06

So you got these eight mice in this enclosure.

22:08

At first, their vault is huge.

22:12

It's designed to hold as many as people

22:15

round up to four thousand. But I think of the original

22:17

research it was something like three and

22:20

forty mice, which is a lot

22:22

of mice.

22:23

Well, and it took them a long time to get acclimated

22:25

to that space too, right, those original

22:28

eight mice, the four breeding

22:30

pairs, they like, didn't breed

22:33

for a long time. They were just kind of like, what the

22:35

heck is this place? I don't understand this,

22:37

this is wrong, why are we here? And

22:39

then eventually they just gave in and

22:42

or you know whatever, they whatever change

22:44

occurred cognitively that they went, okay,

22:46

we will begin nesting, we will begin breeding.

22:49

It was better than the breeding pens from

22:51

which they originated. I can only imagine

22:53

it's definitely a lot more room because

22:55

they weren't caught in the wild.

22:57

Right exactly, But it did take one hundred

22:59

and four days before they actually

23:01

settled down to reproduce.

23:04

And when the population began

23:06

reproducing, they were doubling

23:09

every fifty five days. So

23:11

this j curve growth for a while. And

23:14

by day three fifteen,

23:17

so we're not quite a year in the

23:19

population has reached six hundred

23:22

and twenty mice, gangbusters,

23:24

tickety boo. Everything's going well.

23:27

Until around day three fifteen.

23:29

It was like some invisible switch just clicked

23:32

and the population growth, the

23:34

rate of growth, not the actual population.

23:37

Yet the rate of growth declined

23:40

and now it was only doubling every one hundred

23:42

and forty five days instead of every

23:44

fifty five days. And with

23:46

that, in step, the social

23:49

structure broke down. There's

23:51

a great article by writer

23:54

Esther inglis Arcu for

23:56

Io nine or Gizmoto now that

23:58

sums it up and it's pretty crazy.

24:01

Yeah, to read from that piece. At

24:03

the peak population, most

24:06

mice spent every living second in the company

24:08

of hundreds of other mice. They gathered in

24:10

the main squares, waiting to be fed and

24:12

occasionally attacking each other. Few

24:14

females carried pregnancies to term,

24:17

and the ones that did seem to simply forget

24:19

about their babies. They'd move half

24:21

their litter away from danger and forget

24:24

the rest.

24:25

Huh.

24:26

Sometimes they'd drop and abandon

24:28

a baby while they were carrying

24:30

it. Guy, guys,

24:32

are you familiar with the concept of nesting

24:34

behavior? Yes, this

24:37

is this kind of figure into that in

24:39

a way like I mean, I don't know, like this

24:41

is maybe anomalous nesting behavior,

24:44

or I guess it's a situation that once

24:46

it kind of balloons beyond a certain point

24:48

like that that I guess,

24:51

uh, motherly drive kind of

24:54

gets weaker.

24:55

Or something like what is this? What's

24:57

what's going on here?

24:59

I would point people to Population

25:02

Density and Social Pathology,

25:04

which was written by mister John Calhoun, and

25:06

he actually has in this you

25:09

can find it online, by the way, as in PDA form.

25:12

He's got illustrations

25:14

basically of what you're

25:17

talking about nol like the typical

25:19

nesting behavior of mice in a

25:21

population like this, how they build

25:23

their nest, what they do, you know, when they're

25:25

in an enclosed space and they've got the family in

25:27

there, and they you know, get all of the

25:29

materials and arrange it

25:32

in such a way that the mice can kind of gather.

25:35

But then what was happening then where

25:37

it was completely different.

25:39

Well, and a lot of nesting behavior too, involves

25:42

protecting the offspring from predators.

25:45

So when you're in a situation where you

25:47

don't have any natural enemies, you

25:49

know, I wonder if that kind

25:51

of freaks it out a little better and it causes

25:54

a little bit of the change in the

25:56

way these processes happen.

25:58

It gets even creepier and

26:01

at a precipitous rate. And we'll get to we'll

26:03

get to the paper that kind of changed popular

26:06

science. Really we

26:09

should also mention just an example of

26:11

what I think is a little bit creepy. Calhoun

26:14

was also particularly interested

26:16

in a subgroup of rodents

26:19

that appeared inevitably in these

26:22

universes. He called

26:24

them, tell me if you think this is creepy,

26:27

folks. He called them the beautiful

26:29

ones. They're like the

26:32

eloy in H. G. Wells

26:34

is the time machine, remember the time

26:36

machine? Like the surface dwelling

26:39

vegetarians. It's not a perfect

26:41

comparison because the eloi obviously

26:44

reproduce, but the beautiful

26:46

ones do not. They got

26:48

like they post one male, one

26:52

male rodent outside and

26:54

then the rest retreat

26:56

into a secluded nesting

26:59

spot in the habitat, usually

27:01

elevated, I think, and they

27:04

just eat, groom

27:06

themselves and sleep. They

27:09

don't fight, they don't care for they're young.

27:11

They don't reproduce their

27:14

immune in a way to the social

27:16

collapse that occurs, which

27:18

is so weird.

27:20

So way they would do that.

27:22

Yeah, they just checked out. It reminds me a little

27:24

bit of was it in Japan,

27:26

Hikiko Mori or

27:29

there's some other country. I think it's China, where

27:32

there's a group of people who have done what

27:34

they call the lay down movement. They

27:37

just check out a society. I think it's

27:39

too stressful. I'll do the bare

27:41

minimum. But is

27:43

that better than what's happening to

27:45

the rest of the road in population wherein

27:48

there's cannibalism, there's

27:50

hyper non consensual pan

27:52

sexualism, and there's random

27:55

violence.

27:55

Yeah, in a roughly

27:58

ninety six percent mortality rate or

28:00

newly born mice.

28:02

Yes, yeah, The last surviving

28:04

mouse in Universe twenty five

28:06

is born on A six hundred right,

28:09

and the population then

28:13

has reached two two d

28:15

and twenty mice. The experiment again set

28:17

up for four thousand, but

28:19

they just as a society,

28:22

they stopped. They stopped mousing.

28:24

And how do we explain this strange,

28:27

deeply disturbing trend? What

28:29

made this perfect world so

28:31

intolerably terrible that the

28:33

test group failed to reach full

28:35

capacity even once? Not even

28:38

once? We could dive

28:40

into it after a word from our sponsor.

28:46

Danan another line, they're surge

28:49

pricing in the shoe store.

28:50

Now, sorry, Bud. You know out is there

28:52

are more and more people in the one shoe store,

28:54

and most of them also have two feet.

28:56

I just can't take this. I've had it.

28:58

It's enough to make you go. Of

29:01

course, Going Bonkers is available

29:03

on the premium app version. Also, I

29:05

know what you mean. Every day I wake up

29:08

and I.

29:08

Think is today? The day?

29:10

Is today? The day I bring the bomb

29:12

to work? And in this pointless sissaphy

29:15

and charade.

29:16

Something troubling you friends. Shoes

29:18

are just hats for feet. You know, you could

29:20

also go to a haberdashery.

29:22

It's not even the shoes, it's just look around.

29:25

It's all gotten out of hand. Wherever I

29:27

go, there's a crowd, a line, an app.

29:29

I can't remember the last time I was able to just be

29:32

alone.

29:33

Well, if this civilization is

29:35

too crowded, which we all understand,

29:38

then why not try a universe?

29:40

All your Oh is that another

29:43

app? Oh?

29:44

Much more than that, gentlemen, what if I

29:46

told you right now you could have

29:48

a universe to yourself, the

29:51

universe? Why oh

29:53

you neverse?

29:56

Why?

29:56

Oh?

29:56

Universe?

29:58

Yes, the universe. Think of it as

30:00

a planned community, the most exclusive

30:02

sort, with a population of one. You

30:05

gone are the days of competing for resources,

30:07

ideology, or the ability to feel

30:10

seen in society. The universe

30:12

provides you with an all encompassing, self

30:14

contained reality. You simply agree

30:16

to a small bit of blood harvesting and DNA

30:19

sampling, undergo a small procedure

30:21

for the helmet, and voila gay blood

30:23

helmet procedure, I said, and

30:25

voila. Imagine a world in which

30:27

you never feel rushed, in which other

30:29

people only exist. Should you allow

30:31

them to do so a world, a universe

30:34

with no dissenting opinions, no uncomfortable

30:37

truths. Every social media comment

30:39

agrees with you, Every email is

30:41

a yes and right on. Everything

30:43

you want is provided, sustaining your

30:45

base needs.

30:47

Every sam in.

30:50

You don't want to hear the rest.

30:51

Not really, it sounds great.

30:53

Can I have a shoe store in my yo universe?

30:56

You can imagine anything you want here?

30:58

Don't you mean there?

31:00

No?

31:01

Don't you see friends? You're here

31:04

right now. The universe

31:06

is in practice responsible for, but legally intimified, and that's not liable

31:08

for the following possib side effects isolation, madness, the

31:10

condition Mega two portpoise complaint, social media fatigue,

31:12

echo chambers, bio spheres of mind, grandamact of violence, loss

31:14

of sexual apetite loss and general appetite loss, perpective, lost memory,

31:17

loss of precognitive ability, inability to pare for others, sociopathy,

31:19

psychopathy, hyperflaglens self for a be self healthy

31:21

is great of bleed necktang due to alleged coment effect. Currently not

31:23

approved in the following states Georgia, Hawaii, Idahos, state

31:25

of happiness, and peaceful state of mind.

31:27

The universe is a subsidiary of Illumination

31:29

Global Unlimited.

31:37

So let's return to something you mentioned

31:40

just a bit earlier, map, which is the revolutionary

31:43

nineteen sixty two paper

31:46

issued in Scientific American

31:51

wherein wherein he this

31:53

is still pre Universe twenty five,

31:56

this is still Norway rat era. He

32:00

introduces the lay public to

32:02

the idea of what are called behavioral

32:05

sinks.

32:06

So here's an excerpt.

32:08

Many female rats are unable to carry

32:10

the pregnancy to full term or to

32:12

survive delivery of their litters if they

32:14

did. An even greater number after

32:16

successfully giving birth fell short in their

32:19

maternal functions. So yeah,

32:21

I mean again, we're seeing this weird

32:24

erosion of what are typically

32:27

the strongest of biological

32:29

drives. You know what,

32:32

I just I'm sorry I keep saying about what

32:34

what gives this is wild.

32:36

Let's actually jump through the article really quickly, because

32:38

this is kind of what I wanted to mention when we were talking

32:40

about nesting behavior. If

32:43

you go down, I think it's page

32:45

one forty six in the original like Scientific

32:47

American, you can find it with those

32:49

illustrations of the nesting behavior. I

32:51

just want to read the normal one. And then one of you guys

32:53

read the read the what

32:56

was happening what we're describing here, So

32:59

normal maternal behavior among these

33:01

rat populations would include building a

33:03

fluffy, well shaped nest for the

33:05

young in an enclosed space, in one of those

33:07

little condos that we were describing earlier,

33:10

and it would be

33:12

flattened by the weight of the animal's bodies,

33:14

but it still offers ample protection and

33:16

warmth for their tiny young, you

33:18

know, little rat bodies. And

33:20

when they've got this kind of environment, the

33:22

offspring are generally what's

33:25

termed here weaned, right, and

33:28

they are able to leave the nest after a certain

33:30

amount of time. But what was happening right,

33:32

Yeah, about two weeks? So what was happening during

33:34

these experiments with these behavioral sinks.

33:37

Yeah, this is where Calhoun introduces

33:40

abnormal behavior, which

33:42

is look, he anthropomorphizes

33:45

a lot. And when you see this,

33:48

especially if you have kids,

33:50

it's kind of heartbreaking because the

33:52

abnormal behavior quote shown

33:55

by females exposed to the pressures of population

33:57

density, includes failure

34:00

to build adequate nest. And you can see

34:02

the drawing on the left of the diagram

34:05

of a quote unquote disturbed female

34:08

not like a bad mouse or

34:10

not a bad rat, but instead, pressured

34:14

by this increasingly surreal

34:16

environment, she start quote she

34:19

started to make a nest, but never finished

34:21

it. The drawing on the right shows

34:23

her young About two weeks later,

34:27

they're leaving the nest,

34:29

as we use the old cliche appropriately,

34:32

but they are not old enough to

34:34

survive alone. And this

34:37

is where the ninety six percent infant

34:39

mortality rate statistic comes

34:41

from. You can also see when says

34:43

starting to make a nest, the

34:45

bedding they're provided with, it's like these

34:47

rectangular strips, and

34:50

in the normal nesting behavior, it's

34:52

a hoarder's house. You know.

34:54

It literally becomes what you would imagine

34:56

a nest would look like if you've ever seen a bird's

34:59

nest or something, but with these strips of fabric.

35:02

And in the abnormal behavior we're

35:04

looking at like it's terrible. It makes

35:06

me think of neglected children because that's

35:08

what happened. Yeah, i'manthropomorphizing

35:12

anyway. Yeah, it's terrible. And

35:15

the world that these young

35:18

mice who can't survive on their own are entering

35:20

is a very violent, chaotic places

35:24

is hit in the f in Universe twenty

35:26

five, a lot of the largely

35:29

male population has disturbing

35:32

behavior at a rate that far exceeds

35:34

what would happen in the wild. Rats

35:36

can practice cannibalism if they

35:38

have to. These rats don't

35:41

have to practice cannibalism, but

35:43

they're doing it. They're super into

35:45

it. They're also banging

35:48

literally everything, sexually, sang everything,

35:52

without regard to the

35:54

normal constraints of reproduction

35:57

or the normal goals.

35:58

I think maybe that's a big thing. It seems like the

36:00

goal is gone now, right, so

36:03

now it's just Oh, I was going to

36:05

say, do what thou wilst? But that's not But that's not

36:07

even it. It's like it's frenetic behavior.

36:10

It's like it's agitated.

36:13

Ain't always right, And it's

36:15

not like there's some sort of hedonistic

36:17

drive. You know, mice don't

36:19

understand, you know, Satanism

36:22

or the idea of do what thou wilst per se.

36:25

It's a

36:27

a biological imperative that's kind

36:29

of been flipped in a weird

36:31

and disturbing way. It's not

36:33

like they're, hey, let's just just go ham

36:35

and like living like a weird cannibalistic

36:38

hippie commune to get you know whatever.

36:40

I think, Ben, you put it really well, like the goal the

36:43

original I don't know,

36:48

I was gonna, I was gonna. I think you said it right, Like just the

36:50

goals, the things that you have as

36:52

as mouse, those are no longer

36:54

applicable because of the pressures you're

36:56

existing in.

36:57

Yeah, and we're using rat and mouse here

37:00

interchangeably, because because

37:04

the trends are consistent

37:06

across the universes. That's the

37:09

scary thing. They're rat in the mouse. They're close enough

37:12

that the stories are beat for beat,

37:14

very similar. And this like what do

37:16

you call it? This impetus

37:19

that we're talking about when when

37:21

you're an environment where that impetus

37:23

is somehow curtailed or interfered

37:26

with, we see the over and over again.

37:28

We see the population generally

37:31

goes into behavioral directions.

37:34

A lot of people, like we're saying, see

37:36

now I'm competing it, they

37:39

go, they go ham you know, they're

37:41

almost like the Reavers in Serenity

37:44

and yeah, and the other folks are the ones

37:47

where the packs virus works spoilers.

37:50

Yeah, it's so easy to anthropomorphize

37:53

this and like say something like they became

37:55

evil, right, but

37:57

that's that's not right, you

37:59

know. There there's just something in their

38:01

coating that no longer applied,

38:04

and they just kind of went berserk because

38:07

like the normal like society, sociological

38:10

and biological things that kind of kept

38:12

them acting like what they are rats

38:14

and mice no longer applied, and

38:17

therefore they're they're programming,

38:19

for lack of a better term, didn't know how to operate

38:21

anymore. So it just kind of like it's like they

38:23

short circuited almost right, well, man.

38:26

And you're it's

38:28

so it's so confusing to me because you're not

38:30

necessarily competing for the food when

38:32

the food comes out, right, there's ample food. They're

38:34

always been dead.

38:35

Though, right there, it's cannibalizing

38:37

the dead. It's not like they're are

38:40

they killing each other and then eating too?

38:42

Oh yeah, sorry, Matt, I just had to please

38:45

continue. That's wild.

38:47

But what I'm saying is like they could have just

38:49

eaten the food, but there's so many of them

38:51

it is almost I don't know. I think

38:54

maybe that's why it's so confusing to me. You could

38:56

always go and get water, but you got to now

38:58

like either wait in line or fight to go get

39:00

the water. But is this there? It'll

39:02

always be there, you just got to get to it now.

39:05

Is this the kind of study that would probably be looked

39:07

at a bit of scance today, like

39:09

this is a little on the

39:12

immoral sides or on the

39:15

on ethical side.

39:16

You can still do stuff like this. It's

39:19

because they're rodents. You can still do stuff

39:21

like this depending on the country. But also

39:24

this research, as we'll see, gets weaponized

39:27

and used as a

39:30

metaphor for all kinds of things, perhaps incorrectly.

39:33

We do know there's

39:35

scholarship suggesting maybe this is not

39:37

a problem of population density so

39:40

much as a problem of distribution of

39:42

that population.

39:43

Right.

39:44

So, and we see things like this happening

39:46

in the world. There are parts of the world that

39:48

are struggling to maintain a population.

39:51

At the same time, there are parts of the world

39:54

where the population is exploding in

39:56

a way that that civilization is not prepared

39:59

for.

39:59

Right.

40:00

So there's I mean, it gets into this really

40:02

weird, controversial, possibly

40:06

evil math. But we know that

40:09

we know that what would happen is

40:11

think of it like a gen pop. Right, You're

40:14

in a jail. You can choose

40:16

to go into your own cell,

40:19

right, you can be by yourself in that cell,

40:22

or you can go down to gen pop. Right,

40:25

where everything is where's party time,

40:28

but not excellent and the

40:30

rats, Calhoun

40:33

hypothesizes, they began to

40:35

associate feeding with

40:37

being around a big crowd of rats.

40:40

They didn't understand that they could eat on their

40:42

own, which is fascinating

40:45

from a very ethics aside,

40:47

that is fascinating and chilling.

40:51

So these and then it becomes a learned

40:53

behavior because let's imagine you

40:55

are a successful rat

40:58

or mouse that made it into the

41:00

general population after me madgusting,

41:03

you watch all of the rats gathered

41:06

together in this huge mass when it's time to

41:08

eat. So you go, well, I guess that's that's what happens

41:10

when it's time for me to eat now, and then that

41:13

behavioral pattern then passes

41:15

down as like, well, that's what this is

41:17

what society does, so this is what

41:20

I do. So yeah, this is this

41:22

is what I'm supposed to do.

41:23

Listen here, mouse, son, you'll

41:25

eat like I ate and your father and

41:28

my father before you in

41:30

a crowd, ready to fight

41:32

and maybe eat another animal.

41:35

Yeah, I'm surprised there wasn't a group of older

41:37

mice hanging on the corner. So I

41:39

remember when we used to eat.

41:43

I remember that just eight of us

41:45

in the beginning.

41:46

Uphill both ways, uphill

41:49

both ways, dead all the way.

41:52

So he also we should

41:54

note, as he said, he had a lot of anthropomorphizing,

41:58

and you can see it in the language he uses,

42:00

which is purposely chosen to

42:02

communicate with the public because

42:05

it occurs in a larger context. He

42:07

calls the dwelling places tower

42:10

blocks basically apartments. He calls

42:12

them walk up apartments.

42:14

He was sort of a British parlance, right, tower

42:16

blocks like flat blocks. Yeah, we're

42:18

referring to what we might

42:21

over here call projects or like you

42:23

know, government.

42:26

Yeah.

42:26

Yeah, that's kind of how he's talking you. And

42:29

he's doing that to draw draw

42:31

out this comparison to human society

42:33

in the time of which he's writing and conducting

42:36

science. He also calls some groups

42:38

juvenile, delinquents and dropouts.

42:41

He's actively inviting

42:44

us to think in this manner. So

42:46

it should be no surprise that human

42:48

civilization, not just scientists

42:50

and academics and ethologists, human

42:53

civilization in general, learns about

42:55

this stuff, primarily through the Scientific

42:58

American article, and they immediately

43:00

say, well, what does this tell us about

43:02

ourselves? And what does this

43:04

tell us about Thomas Malthus.

43:07

While this is occurring, there

43:10

has been a bevy of academics

43:13

who might as well be wearing sandwich

43:16

boards that say the end is nigh, you

43:18

know, ecologist,

43:21

economists, philosophers,

43:25

tycoons. Tycoons love Malthusian

43:27

thought, and we.

43:28

Do have some good examples.

43:30

First off, William Vote

43:33

and Fairfield Osborne

43:36

were two ecologists

43:39

who warned against the growing

43:41

population putting pressure

43:44

on natural resources, on food,

43:47

and that was as early as nineteen forty

43:49

eight. So people have been like sounding the alarms

43:51

for the stuff for a long time and

43:53

it ain't getting.

43:54

A whole heck of a lot better.

43:56

We're being completely honest, and it does feel

43:58

like, you know, if we're being

44:01

dire about our situation that we

44:03

find ourselves in or think about what's going to be the

44:05

tipping point in like a

44:07

big, you know, high water mark moment

44:10

in humanity, it's kind of.

44:11

Be a war over resources.

44:13

I mean, it's pretty clear that's

44:16

that's the one thing that we can't really make

44:19

more of, and people who have control

44:21

and have power is going to start hoarding them, leaving

44:24

you know, the lesser of us

44:26

out in the cold.

44:28

Well, yeah, fear filled Osborne.

44:30

This dude, this is a eugenesis is born

44:32

in the eighteen hundreds, like died

44:35

in nineteen thirty five, and he was talking about

44:37

it back then, and as eugenicist he had

44:39

some ideas. I bet he did, had

44:41

it takes takes, So

44:44

you know, it's weird. It's a weird thing because it is a cautionary

44:46

subject where if you start looking at this

44:48

too much and you're applying whatever, I

44:52

don't know what, we would even call them, your

44:54

own biases that you've got from growing

44:56

up wherever you grew up, and with people you're around,

45:00

it is dangerous.

45:02

Yeah, And again

45:05

we have this oh

45:08

gosh, you know what, I'm just realizing, I'm thinking

45:11

through Osborne was alive when

45:13

the Great Depression hit, so he

45:15

probably died thinking called it. Yeah.

45:19

And then in

45:21

nineteen sixty eight, in the same sort

45:23

of social milieu or context,

45:26

Paul Erlick publishes the population

45:28

Bomb. It is polemical, it

45:31

is an alarmist work. It is meant

45:33

to shake you when you read it. And

45:35

he says it's common famine,

45:38

resource wars, the end of days.

45:41

So the public is primed

45:45

to think in these terms. You know, they

45:47

witnessed horrific wars, they've

45:49

seen what happens when

45:52

the economic regimes

45:55

collapse. So when Calhoun comes

45:57

out in Scientific American, which

45:59

is legit publication,

46:03

they are totally vibing with it. He says,

46:05

look overpopulation means social

46:07

collapse followed by extinction. The

46:09

rodents are not so different from the

46:11

primates. And the more I repeat

46:14

this experiment, the more predictable

46:16

and inevitable the outcome seems.

46:19

By the time he got to Universe twenty

46:21

five, the most popular or most

46:23

well known one, he had a

46:26

formula, a death squared

46:29

formula, which we have to go into.

46:31

But basically he

46:33

was thinking of the concept of second death.

46:36

So first death being the physical death of an

46:38

individual, second death being the

46:40

larger death of a society. Very

46:43

fun at parties, I imagine, But

46:46

I don't know. That's

46:49

the question. Let's a pickle we're still working with. Can

46:51

we apply this to humans? Calhoun

46:54

was certain this could also be

46:56

a warning call for human society,

46:58

no matter how smart we think we are, he

47:01

reasoned, because

47:03

he did count himself as human. You know, he's

47:05

like, I'm in this universe too, he

47:08

said, No matter what happens, once

47:11

the number of individuals capable

47:13

of fulfilling certain roles.

47:16

Once that exceeds the number of roles

47:19

available, basically, once there are

47:21

too many cars for the parking lot

47:23

of a civilization, chaos

47:25

reigns.

47:26

Oh yeah, I.

47:27

Mean, like students graduating

47:29

from elite colleges don't have

47:32

jobs to fill, students graduating

47:34

from non elite colleges don't

47:36

have jobs to fill anymore, and something like

47:38

AI comes along and fills all those

47:40

roles.

47:42

Yeah, Or like the fact that Star

47:44

Trek sort of glosses over the

47:47

fact how they went from a post

47:49

work economy after

47:52

living through a post worker economy.

47:55

Yeah, they don't put.

47:56

A lot of that on the air.

47:57

But it's just worked,

48:00

doubt, you know.

48:01

Just worked out. Let's go to the

48:03

Holo deck, he writes.

48:07

He writes beautifully about this, and

48:10

I don't think he's trying to be a jerk.

48:13

I think he is trying to present

48:15

what he sees as the science,

48:17

like we've got again. You can read

48:19

the full paper or the full article online

48:22

today and it is worth your time. But

48:25

he concludes that when

48:27

you get to that too many cars

48:29

for the parking spot situation, the

48:32

only result is violence

48:34

and disruption of social

48:36

organization. And he's not arguing

48:41

ideology here very important

48:43

to note because it does get weaponized by

48:45

people with different ideologies. He's

48:48

just saying when

48:50

he says social organization,

48:52

he's talking about the way rodents usually work,

48:55

the way they usually self organize,

48:58

And now they're doing stuff that is not

49:01

normal. Social

49:04

pessimist, Malfusians, whatever we

49:06

want to call them, they loved this

49:08

stuff. This was to them

49:10

an inarguable rule

49:13

of the world of reality. This

49:16

was like the law of gravity for

49:18

living things. Trippy

49:20

stuff.

49:21

So I got lost in this article from Cabinet

49:23

Magazine.

49:24

They've got the great illustrations too.

49:26

It's pictures of the actual structure that

49:28

does resemble some kind of prison to me when

49:31

you just look at this tiny, little nine foot

49:34

squired thing, I

49:38

don't know, a great picture of John Calhoun, and

49:40

he looks troubled too. In his face. He's just like,

49:42

oh God, just

49:46

drop outnice Haggard.

49:48

Also, do you guys remember a

49:50

while back when I was living I

49:53

was living in that place right next to our old

49:55

office, and the courtyard

49:58

of that looked very universe twenty five to

50:00

me.

50:00

Oh yeah, with the weird like aatrium, the

50:02

plants and stuff. It kind of felt like

50:04

like pretend outside.

50:07

Yeah, yeah, we have outside at home. That's

50:10

what it was. So look,

50:13

he is he is perhaps

50:16

mischaracterized pretty often because he

50:18

argued that there were good guys, and

50:20

that part of his research I think gets

50:22

glossed over. He was very interested

50:25

in something he called the high social

50:27

velocity mice. These

50:30

were individual mice who

50:32

responded to these new overpopulation

50:34

pressures by switching things

50:37

up by doing interesting, very

50:41

varied behaviors, like they would alter,

50:43

you know, if there's a big gen pop crowd at

50:45

feeding time, they would move. In the night,

50:48

they would move when the other mice were less active

50:51

or whatever their version of night was. They

50:53

would team up and create alliances

50:55

that ordinarily would not exist. So

50:59

he found great hope in

51:01

that, and he says, look, humanity is a

51:03

positive animal, creative,

51:05

capable of design. Maybe

51:07

we can out teck this

51:11

damning doomsday prediction

51:13

for society.

51:15

I don't know, but it's weird.

51:18

There's another article from Oh gosh,

51:22

that's not the Vox article I was looking at.

51:24

I'm sorry, guys, The Smithsonian.

51:26

The appendix. The appendix

51:29

has an interesting article on this, specifically on

51:31

John Calhoun, and they discuss

51:35

or this article, at least in cite it so you

51:37

can look it up. It's titled Space Cadets

51:39

and rat Utopias by

51:42

Laura Jane Martin. So this

51:44

concept of space cadets is something that John

51:46

Calhoun was really into because, at least

51:49

according to the article, according to other writings about

51:51

him, he wanted this to be a positive

51:53

thing. He wanted humans to look at it

51:55

and go, hey, we can fix these major problems

51:58

we've got going on. Even if population seems

52:00

to be this doomsday you know,

52:02

on the horizon somewhere, if

52:04

we're aware of it, we can fix all

52:06

the things that lead to it. And why

52:09

not as one of those fixes, let's

52:11

focus on getting the heck off Earth.

52:14

Yeah.

52:15

Shout out to his partner in that letter, Dull

52:17

Duhl, I

52:20

love you mentioning that because he

52:22

has the analogy that, as

52:25

far as we know, the analogy he did not make

52:27

but would be apparent to those of us in

52:29

the cage today is that

52:33

he's like a climate change person.

52:35

Right, He's like a climatologist but

52:37

for society, and he say, look,

52:40

we're reaching this behavioral sink point,

52:43

but we're not at the past. We're not past the point

52:45

of no return, right, we can still mitigate

52:48

and perhaps even repair the tendencies

52:50

we don't like. And Space

52:53

Cadets is really interesting. It's

52:56

one of those technocratic,

52:59

very optimistic think tanks, you

53:02

know, like, if we want to get to space, it's

53:04

going to take all of the experts

53:07

we can possibly think of. You

53:09

know, let's get the architects, but let's

53:11

also make sure we have the psychiatrist, you

53:13

know what I mean. I think

53:16

it's fascinating. I don't know too much about the

53:18

Space Cadets to be candid,

53:21

but I do know that I

53:24

do know that he had

53:27

great faith in humanity. And

53:30

he said, you know, maybe the

53:32

rats are breaking down because

53:34

they don't know what to do. The mice are breaking down because

53:36

they don't know what to do. But the history

53:39

of humanity is a history of innovation,

53:41

of deviation from tradition.

53:43

And norm Yeah, man, so

53:46

far, he paused

53:48

and said, so far, guys.

53:53

We should point out the what

53:56

do they call them? Some of those guys. They refer to them

53:58

as neo Malthusian, like

54:00

the new generation, you know. And

54:04

I didn't know until I listen to that stuff.

54:06

You should know episode that there

54:08

there are things I want to shout out. They did

54:11

in their episode. They shouted out a thing

54:13

called Population Connection that I

54:15

had never heard of before, which

54:17

is a website you can go to right now

54:20

that is basically a spin

54:22

off from well

54:25

it was. It was formerly known as ZPG or

54:28

Zero Population Growth, and

54:30

it's this fairly large

54:33

organization that focuses specifically

54:35

on eliminating all

54:38

non planned births because

54:42

theoretically you could bring the numbers

54:45

of like human replacement, you

54:47

know that, like what two point one berths

54:50

per couple or whatever that

54:52

you know, old thing is that was based

54:54

on, like how to replace human

54:56

beings.

54:57

Well, that's downright on American The accidental

55:00

pregnancy is a foundation of our

55:02

society.

55:03

Holder. Well, well

55:05

it's one am you

55:07

go home? I'm in love with her?

55:09

Yeah. Well again, I don't mean to

55:11

speak for Population Connection because I don't know that much

55:13

about them. Sure, going off of what their website

55:15

says, yeah, population connection

55:17

dot org and what was spoken about on that

55:19

episode, But it does seem like they

55:22

were focused heavily on empowering

55:24

people to know about pregnancy,

55:26

how it occurs, how to prevent it, and

55:29

like providing resources

55:31

basically to people across the planet.

55:34

We're not talking about one place. We're talking like make

55:36

sure everybody knows exactly what to do

55:38

and how to prevent pregnancy until

55:40

they are ready for it.

55:41

Because isn't it interesting how sex said is still

55:43

in a lot of ways controversial, Like

55:45

you know, it doesn't feel like it's uniformly

55:48

applied where it seems like, you know, at

55:50

that age, it's probably the perfect

55:52

time to empower young people

55:55

with that kind of information. But it's like it's

55:57

cringe for some reason, or like parents

56:00

freaks them out, But it really is probably

56:02

smartling, just like we don't teach kids about how

56:04

to manage their money, and you

56:06

know, it's weird.

56:07

Also, yet numerous

56:09

studies prove a political,

56:12

non ideological objective. Studies

56:14

prove that when you empower, when

56:17

you empower women or people who are able

56:19

to carry a child with UH with

56:22

sexual education, objective

56:24

sexual education and that fire and brimstone

56:27

stuff, then you will you

56:29

will see positive,

56:32

substantial benefits to the society

56:34

in which those people exist and their

56:36

quality of life, access to education,

56:39

all of it improves. It's better for everyone.

56:42

I do want to and I'm saying that to

56:44

make up for my crass last

56:47

call at the bar joke and you

56:49

find love where you find it.

56:50

I would like to walk back now, walk back, but

56:52

I said it's down right on an American to

56:56

cut down on unplanned pregnancies. I say

56:58

that as a dig on myself. I

57:00

was in a committed relationship, but

57:03

our pregnancy was absolutely not planned, and

57:06

I wouldn't have it any other way. I couldn't

57:09

be happier being the father of my

57:11

amazing kid of fifteen

57:13

now. But it certainly wasn't at the time something

57:15

that we, you know, intended. But also

57:18

I very much knew about all the things,

57:20

and I was just still kind of a dumb dumb

57:23

or we just weren't being careful because maybe it

57:25

wasn't like the worst thing that could happen, but we

57:27

definitely didn't do it on purpose.

57:29

I have a distinct

57:31

memory now going to personally

57:34

or I have a distinct memory. I'm going to shout out Coach

57:37

C where I was

57:39

at the time. Our sex ad

57:41

program in a relatively conservative

57:44

part of the world was

57:47

the extra side work assigned

57:49

to the football coach, and

57:51

it had a football voice, and so he

57:54

knew he took us all in

57:56

his history segregated

57:58

by sex I'm sure he had to do social studies

58:00

at some point, but he's said they segregated

58:03

the cohort by the biological sex

58:06

or whatever. And so he came out and he had

58:08

like one of those old pull down posters.

58:11

It was a diagram and he

58:13

had like a little, you know, a pointer

58:16

thingy, and he goes, we

58:18

all adults, and someone's like,

58:20

we're in seventh grade, and he goes, shut

58:23

up, this is a penis. But

58:27

he dropped trou No,

58:30

no, he was only playing to the diagram guy.

58:33

But but we're saying, you know, again to your

58:35

original point, Matt, education

58:38

and powers, you know what I mean?

58:40

Uh?

58:41

And that's why knowledge his

58:43

power is a cliche and Calhoun

58:45

is onto something when he

58:47

is just trying to inform people, and he's

58:49

been mischaracterized as a pessimist. A

58:52

lot of people on very extreme

58:55

spectrums of social thinking

58:57

have weaponized his research

59:00

in a way that he probably would

59:02

not agree with were he alive today.

59:05

But also on the way, man, if

59:08

the afterlife is real, and if you're listening,

59:10

doctor Calhoun, thank you so much

59:12

for all the fiction you created too, and

59:14

step with you know, the crazy

59:17

real world plans and

59:19

with that Thank you so much for tuning in.

59:21

Folks.

59:22

We think there's a lot here, a lot more to dig

59:24

into, and we touched on a lot

59:26

of things that mayrove you may

59:28

have personal experience with in your

59:31

own life, in your own neck of these global woods.

59:33

So let us know. Would be very interested

59:35

to hear your favorite pieces of fiction inspired

59:38

by Universe twenty five, and we also

59:41

love to hear, love

59:43

to read your take

59:45

on what this does or does not apply about

59:48

human civilization. We try to be easy

59:50

to find.

59:50

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59:53

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59:56

Twitter, and on YouTube.

59:58

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