Know Thyself

The ones who got left behind. Making us the victors (?). This is the last essay episode in the Origins series, and covers the time frame from our last common ancestor with chimps up until the extinction of the Denisovans.  What's the foolproof way to identify a secret ape? Who was the singing-est biped of all? How much do large brains cost, and are they worth it? And why aren't those Neanderthals smiling?

NASA philosophical advisor Kelly Smith, PhD and I discuss: Does the universe move inexorably towards complexity? If so, what ethical implications does that have? If AI becomes more rational than humans, will AIs have ANY ethical obligations towards us? What is the state of public discourse today? What moral obligations will we have when we encounter alien life? What if they are hostile to us? And, speaking of that, is it a good idea in the first place to beam information about our pale blue home out into the universe? NOTE: technical difficulties, for the most part, are resolved in this iteration (!) Keep Up With Dr. Smith: SOCIA: academic group dedicated to issues surrounding the search for life. Dr. Smith's email: kcs@clemson.edu Dr. Smith's paper on Manifest Complexity: Manifest Complexity: A Foundational Ethic for Astrobiology? On confessions of ignorance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=iojQC3UjmGc       ARTWORK: Oz by Ian Armstrong

How did our skulking, digging, night sneak ancestors come to rule the world? With upgrades to their brains, fancy glands that drip liquid nutrition, and three bones in their middle ears. This episode is brought to you by the KT extinction event, without which none of this would have been possible.

How much force would it take to pull the horned head right off the neck of a triceratops? Crocodiles have the highest bite force ever measured in nature, how do they compare to T. rex. Today we speak with a recognized expert on Tyrannosaurs and all things dinosaur, Dr. Thomas Carr. We dig deep into why he won't be seeing Jurassic World and where the movie went wrong, what we do and don't know about dinosaurs, the dreaded Chickensaurus, the processes of evolution, why there aren't more big brains around, and what it all means for who WE are. After this episode you will be the smartest person in almost any room about everyone's favorite dead monsters as we continue our series on origins. Dr. Carr's twitter page:https://twitter.com/TyrannosaurCarr?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor     and handle: @TyrannosaurCarr and blog: tyrannosauroideacentral.blogspot.com Join a real expedition!: https://www.carthage.edu/biology/paleontology/     Graphic: "Oz" by Ian Armstrong

A biggest-picture history tour, from the Big Bang to the KT extinction event that starved, suffocated, froze, and basically snuffed every four-legged animal heavier than 25 kilos (55 pounds) out of existence. Oh, except for two or three. Life, never easy, got a lot harder 5 different times in our planet's inhospitable past. So hard that it almost ceased to exist entirely once or twice. Graphic: "Oz" by Ian Armstrong 

Paul M. Sutter offers a mind-blowing rundown of our current understanding of the Big Bang, dark matter and energy, cosmic voids, singularities, etc. Paul is a brilliant astrophysicist with a gift for communicating with the unwashed masses (like me) with wit, humor, and enthusiasm (not the annoying kind, either).  Dr. Sutter will help you truly understand events and concepts that you kinda had a nebulous sorta grasp on somewhat.  You know physical cosmology will come up at your next dinner party, so listen in and confound the poseur across the table.  Listen to Paul's awesome podcast: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/ask-a-spaceman/id958825741?mt=2 http://www.pmsutter.com/shows/askaspaceman Visit his website: http://www.pmsutter.com/ And, most importantly, preorder his soon-to-be bestseller: http://www.pmsutter.com/book Graphic: "Oz" by Ian Armstrong

Where did the earth, sky, and stars come from? Where did WE come from? In this series on origins, you will see that a lack of real information never stops us from being certain we know the answers to these most inscrutible mysteries.

  In this interview we speak with Rachel Herz, PhD., neuroscientist and author of "That's Disgusting: Unraveling the Mysteries of Repulsion" and "Why You Eat What You Eat: The Science Behind Our Relationship With Food." Topics Include:  -Can eating certain foods affect, or even effect, your personality? -Why exactly do we like some foods and find others repulsive? -How your mind can change your hormonal response to food, and even alter the way you metabolize it! -Why artificial sweeteners are minions of the devil -The German cannibal who did unspeakable things with the full permission of his victim -What is the purpose of disgust, and what does it have to do with morality? -Hacking the best research to decrease (or increase) your food consumption -Much more! Catch up with Rachel via her WEBSITE. Read Her Books and Learn More: Why You Eat What You Eat: The Science Behind Our Relationship with Food and That's Disgusting: Unraveling the Mysteries of Repulsion and The Scent of Desire: Discovering Our Enigma

It is the ultimate act of aggression and dehumanization. Cannibals from New Zealand to Syria, from Fiji to Japan show their contempt for vanquished enemies, inspire terror, and bond with their comrades through extreme, transgressive acts. We also delve into the emotion of disgust -- something that arguably evolved as a "behavioral immune system" and has been re-purposed into ethical domains.

Cutting off a city from supplies, food and water and waiting for its inhabitants to succumb and surrender is a brutally effective form of ancient warfare.  But the deadliest siege in history occurred in the modern era, when Operation Barbarossa brought thousands of Nazi tanks to the walls of Leningrad. They surrounded the city for 872 days, killing hundreds of thousands and forcing the inhabitants to survive any way they could. And in this case, there were thousands of literate inhabitants who kept journals, documenting first hand the horrors that ensued. A heart wrenching account of misery on the grand scale. Then we go back to 1098 at Ma'arra, when Christian Crusaders overran the Syrian city, only to realize there was not enough food to keep an army marching... Finally, there are times when Mother Nature lays siege on all of us. We summarize a few of the deadliest famines in history.

A special interview with multiple award winning author, historian of the American West, and frontier storyteller Will Bagley.  Will sets the scene for the Donner disaster by breaking down the national and international events surrounding westward migration to California and the Oregon territories. He describes the schemers and get-rich-quick promoters that populated the overland trails. He mentions: -the worst disasters in overland migration history (hint: the Donner Party was not one of them) -why we find the Donner Party so “sexy,” -what factors predict who will eat whom, -the contributions and motivations of American Indians, -why powerful people do despicable things -what would have happened if the Donner party stayed on the Nevada side of the Sierras for the winter, and too many other insights to list.   Opinionated, iconoclastic, well-informed, Will Bagley is a reliable guide to the Donner party tragedy (even more trustworthy than Lansford Hastings) and a historian in the grand tradition of the old west

This episode is about STRANDED CANNIBALS -- specifically the Donner Party and the Dudley Stevens case. Strange coincidences, ethical questions, never bringing a whip to a knife fight, mutinies and shipwrecks, deserts and mountains, starvation, death, and feats of strength and heroism. And cannibals. Episode Guide (for those who want to avoid philosophy. Or history.) 00:00 to 06:49 Considerations 06:49 to 20:20 The Dudley and Stevens case and “The Law of the Sea” 20:20 to 30:30 Screed: Consequentialism, Rules, and Stranded Cannibals 30:30 to END  The Donner Party    

We look into the evidence from primatology and archaeology to find the roots of human cannibalism in nature or nurture. Along the way we find shadows our own dual nature between sexy hippy bonobos and hawkish war chimps; learn how homo sapiens slept with their food, visit a stone age cave of nightmares in Britain; and join the debate over what seems to have been a short-lived fad for eating humans among the Ancestral Pueblo.