Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Episode 93—The Hidden Life of Life with Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
129 Plays7 years ago
"What I wanted to do was show the commonality of all life on earth...it seemed important to me that we're related," says Elizabeth Marshall Thomas. You'll excuse that there's not traditional intro and outro to this show. You might even prefer it. I've had what I can only hope is a MINOR complication with recent oral surgery and don't want to talk and thus compound the problem at hand. I won't bore you. EMT returns to the show to talk about her new book "The Hidden Life of Life: A Walk Through the Reaches of Time (Penn State University Press, 2018). Carl Safina, author of "Beyond Words," writes, "We are lucky to have shared some time on Earth with Elizabeth Marshall Thomas...Reading her is like looking through a telescope and realizing that the brightness you see actually happened long, long ago and has taken all this time to reach your own eyes." Dig the show? Consider leaving an honest review on iTunes and I will coach up a piece of your writing up to 2,000 words. Reviews are the currency that drives the podcast economy and I'd be thrilled if you added your two cents. Maybe I'll be able to talk next week. In the meantime, enjoy Episode 93.
Recommended
Transcript
From Columnists to Authors
00:00:09
Speaker
This will be fun. It's nice to get to talk to you again about your work. You just keep turning out books way too fast. Yes, the book that I wrote with Sally Montgomery, we had written already as Collins for the Boston Globe. And so what we did was put them together, and that didn't take much time. We'd already written it. But meanwhile, I was working on this other book, The Hidden Life of Life.
00:00:36
Speaker
It came out shortly after, but that wasn't because I wrote it quickly, because I've been working on it all along.
Exploring Life's Commonality
00:00:44
Speaker
So with the Hidden Life of Life, what inspired you to want to take on the breadth of evolution, so to speak, and really what is a slim, tight, very readable and enjoyable volume? But yeah, what made you want to take it on?
00:01:04
Speaker
That's a good question. I kind of didn't quite know what I was taking on when I started it. What I wanted to do was to show the commonality of life on Earth. When you think about it, there are perhaps a billion other planets in the universe that are at the minimum, the barest minimum would be a billion, who are the right distance from the Sun and have the right conditions to have life on them.
00:01:35
Speaker
along the lines that we know it. And on each one is no doubt, or perhaps, all the life forms started from one thing, something like a bacterium, probably. That's what happened to us, at least, and we're all descended from the same
00:02:02
Speaker
from the same ancestor, you know, billions of years ago, and with each group of life forms taking different directions to solve their problems, and that's why we have quite a large array of life forms now. But it just seemed to be very important that we're related, and we don't see ourselves that way, and I think maybe we should.
00:02:28
Speaker
We wouldn't destroy the others quite so fast if we did. Yeah, no kidding.
Evolutionary Success and Human Biology
00:02:34
Speaker
What was so maybe illuminating about this experience tracing from our sort of going from microbes to the multi-celled organisms that we all are? Yeah, what was the most illuminating for you?
00:02:53
Speaker
Well, what was illuminating for me, and I'm not sure I got enough of it in the book, so I'll have to write another book, was every single thing about us from our fingernails to our hair or teeth or insides, everything, had a passage. It came from something else, and it came from, it came because it worked.
00:03:23
Speaker
I mean, just to think of our own bodies is kind of amazing. I mean, I think I wrote about coughing and the cough itself seemed amazing and caused by a virus which seemed amazing. And if you look at your surroundings that way, it's kind of eye opening and you begin to think of what you really are and how you fit into all of this.
Surprising Mammalian Evolution
00:03:53
Speaker
And not only that, it seemed like it would be almost overwhelming, too, to try to process all of that. Did you run into that as you were writing the book about which organisms to pick to help illustrate the path of the tree of life? Well, it wasn't very difficult because things pop into your mind. I mean, for instance,
00:04:25
Speaker
The ancestors of mammals were here before the dinosaurs. Well, that kind of thing is surprising. That I didn't, I hadn't known. I mean, I could think in those lines. But they were called synapsids and they looked sort of like dinosaurs. And they were here for thousands and thousands of years before there were any dinosaurs. And then a big extinction came and wiped them out, or most of them, not all of them.
00:04:51
Speaker
And then the dinosaurs ruled the Earth for thousands and thousands of years. And now we're still here as birds. And we are the synapsis of springs or ers, here as mammals. And that sort of thing is, to me, quite fascinating and well worth thinking about.
Animal Intelligence: Myths and Realities
00:05:16
Speaker
It was a wonderful image of your standing beside your mother holding her hand and she's holding her mother's hand, who's holding her mother's hand on and on back through time until the hand that's being held is, who knows what it was, it's an incident. And everything that's alive now had an ancestor that goes, had, can trace, could every single creature, tree,
00:05:45
Speaker
and whatever, can trace its answer if he goes back to the first life form. You also write a lot about, or you kind of start the book with this whole anthropodenial. Anthropodenial and anthropomorphism, yes, yes. So what's the distinction between the two and what can be problematic for each, if anything?
00:06:13
Speaker
Well, Franz de Waal invented the word anthropodenial, I believe, to counter the idea of anthropomorphism, because we use, we, anthropomorphism, of course, means regarding, discussing something as if it had human characteristics. Anthropodenial means discussing it as if it did not have human characteristics, which I think is more than fair.
00:06:41
Speaker
And we look down upon anthropomorphism for the longest time. It was scientific folly or scientific silly talk. And although before, in the 1400s, for instance, in the Middle Ages, people believed that animals had human characteristics and treated them that way, not necessarily treated them well, but treated them as if they could take blame like humans can.
00:07:10
Speaker
And a pig was executed. This is in the book in the early part. A pig and her piglets were put on trial for murdering a child. And the pig was found guilty and executed. The piglets were acquitted. And people even had lawyers for their animals back then. So that was what we would call anthropomorphism. And today, we just shoot a pig that did something.
00:07:38
Speaker
even if we thought it did something, or even if we just felt like it, we'd shoot it, but we wouldn't believe it had a guilt. Many people now are treating these issues as if they were important, and a lot of work is being done. Some scientists had parameetians, which they taught to remember things,
00:08:07
Speaker
caterpillars have been taught to remember things so we're proving that memory is a human characteristic and we're proving that this goes all the way through the plant and animal kingdom even plants remember things so the idea that we're the unique special top of the evolutionary ladder creatures that we took ourselves to be is just
00:08:35
Speaker
turning out to be not true. We won't change our opinion. We'll always think we're the best animal. But I suspect that every species feels that it is the best animal and the others are
00:08:49
Speaker
Fox thinks foxes are important and everything else is just not a fox. I think what you mentioned in the book too is just us as primates just happen to be on the end of one particular branch of ongoing evolution, but we're just so myopic in a sense that we want a picture as a pyramid.
00:09:16
Speaker
Yeah, like a pyramid. Yeah. And what was your research like? What were you reading to help inform how you developed this book? Some influential text and maybe something that really just was a good germ that gave you a lot of leash to run with. Let me see. I read tons of stuff. I don't remember everything I read.
00:09:47
Speaker
One that was very important was, well, but the thing is, I knew about it already, it was about Catherine Payne, Katie Payne, and it was Silent Thunder, I believe it's called, and it was about her, she discovered infrasounding elephants. That was her discovery, and I was fortunate enough to go along with her when she made it, or when she documented it, and her book is
00:10:16
Speaker
I think very important. Also I got an awful lot of things, some things that people told me because I hung around with people who do this kind of thing and I do this kind of thing myself. And it was sort of a gathering or putting together of lots of stuff I'd heard and learned and more than just reading one book after another as a research object. I would think of something that I wanted to talk about and then I'd look up
00:10:46
Speaker
more information about that. Maybe it's better to do a literary study, but that kind of wasn't the way I approached this.
00:10:56
Speaker
And you already mentioned that in your research that discovering how far back mammals go and how they kind of predated and coexisted with dinosaurs was a bit of a surprise. Yes. What else surprised you in the course of your research that you might have known, that might have bucked a preconceived notion you had about a certain group of the animal kingdom?
00:11:27
Speaker
Well, one thing that surprised me, and I'm not sure it should have, was that a platypus. Ah, yeah. A platypus, they don't have breasts. They have the old synapsid thing, which was glands under their skin. This came from synapsids. Clans under their skin, and the milk leaks out when they have two babies at a time. I didn't know this, but once a year they give birth to two babies, and the babies
00:11:57
Speaker
they hold the babies against themselves and the babies, the milk leaks into wrinkles on the moon's belly and the little ones lick it out from there. And that was completely new to me, that idea. But it's fascinating, I think I saw a platypus one time. I didn't even see it, I just saw something waste by underwater and it must have been a platypus, that kind of thing. So that isn't what you call a
00:12:27
Speaker
meaningful experience with the planet. But this, I mean, then Bess came from that line and the other mammals, it's a mammal, other mammals have Bess. And then I began to learn about eggs and the egg in a human and the egg in a chicken.
00:12:55
Speaker
why they're different, and the marsupials have a different kind of placenta. And the babies are born earlier because they use up what's in the placenta. They use that up earlier than mammals do. Mammals can stay in their placenta longer. And, I mean, there's more nourishment from them because it comes from the mother. Things like that. I mean, that is, to me, surprising and fascinating.
00:13:24
Speaker
And that was great to write about life. Yeah. It's like alluding to the size and scope of the universe, which the more you think about, the more it makes me stutter, just because I can't even think about it. Yes. Yes, I don't think we're equipped to. I don't think the human brain is equipped to cope with something like that. I think we just can't. Yeah, exactly. It's like dogs can't read and we can't do that.
00:13:54
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. And it's fine. I was listening to or watching a program with Neil deGrasse Tyson and he was talking about, it was a biology-centric episode and it was something he posed this thing about if we're ever going to run into intelligent life or see it out there.
00:14:12
Speaker
And he said, okay, there's say a 1% genetic difference between our smartest human and the smartest gorilla or chimpanzee. And we look at that chimpanzee as smart as it is, it's not, quote unquote, intelligent life.
00:14:33
Speaker
Oh, no, exactly. Yeah. And then he was posing. I mean, yeah. I mean, anyone who gives animals like you or Si and countless others their credit can realize that how intelligent animals are. Oh, yeah. Yeah. But what he was saying, and this is what was kind of sobering, was, all right, say there is another life form out in outer space that is 1% more, quote unquote, advanced than we are.
00:14:59
Speaker
What if they already came here and saw that there was no intelligent life and left? Yeah, that's entirely possible. Isn't that kind of a mindset? That's how I'm sure that happened. Oh, this is a mess. It's undoing. Yeah. I wonder if when you've been studying this kind of stuff, you just kind of like toy around with those kind of thoughts, especially as you look outside of Earth.
Learning from Ancient Lifestyles
00:15:30
Speaker
Well, I'd say two things about that. First, I see no way that there are more than a billion other planets that could host life that some of them aren't hosting life as we know. I mean, life of some kind along the lines that we know. I mean, maybe they started from a whole different kind of formula, but I'm sure they're out there, and many of them have been there a long time, time to develop into whatever.
00:16:00
Speaker
I wonder if they're ruining their planet like we're ruining ours. The thing is, we didn't start doing that until the Neolithic. The Neolithic was the birth of that. The people I lived with in Namibia, what is now Namibia, southwest Africa then, in the 1950s, these were pre-contact people who lived a life of hunting and gathering the way
00:16:28
Speaker
They are our ancestors and the way our ancestors lived for 100,000 years without wrecking everything. That was a good time. Many, many species lived with varying degrees of cooperation or not cooperation, but they all understood each other. I've written this one. I'm sure I put it in that book. I hope I did.
00:16:55
Speaker
The lions and the people had a truce. The lions didn't hunt the people. Yeah, that was fascinating. Yeah, because they both needed to drink from, they had one source of water and they needed to drink from it. And if one group had disturbed the other, somebody would have to move. And the people had, the people had friends and relatives at other campsites, at other encampments were waterholes where they could go. The lions would have to go and take the
00:17:25
Speaker
take the waterhole from the lands who lived there. And that wouldn't be good for anybody, and both species knew it. And that went on for 100,000 years. Warning Camp was dug up that had been constantly occupied, continuously occupied, for 85,000 years. Another one for 35,000 years. We haven't done anything for 100,000 years.
00:17:55
Speaker
I mean, the neolithic was more recent than that. So, and in that short time, we've managed to just spoil, you know, what the most, very soon, most African animals will be extinct. I mean, certainly the big ones and the little ones. And, you know, what's happening all over the world. And trees, various species of trees are disappearing and so forth and so on.
00:18:20
Speaker
and then big plastic island and all that shit. You know, I mean, we've done it. Maybe we can stop and hold back a little. It would be good. And, you know, any little bit of information like the book about it might help a little tiny bit.
00:18:38
Speaker
Yeah, it's amazing the speed with which humans are destroying the planet. It's only in the last, really, maybe two to 300 years where things really started to get serious about planets. Yeah, that's very true. And more increases as time goes by. We're doing it more all the time.
00:19:00
Speaker
Yeah, it's really like in the terms of the scale of the life of the Earth, it's really like at the speed of, like we're destroying the planet at the speed of light, almost, compared to everyone. Yeah, that's right. Seconds.
00:19:15
Speaker
of thousands of years and in a few seconds we've done it. It's amazing what the planet has been able, and life on the whole, has been able to withstand over the years too. You mentioned a few of the, there are these periods of extinctions and so forth in ice ages and then hot
00:19:40
Speaker
It's kind of amazing and I wonder like how much thought you gave to just the resiliency of life but also just the way the planet has evolved itself over the years and how it can just stay for millions of years in a particular state but then it starts to change again and it's kind of weird and wacky and I wonder like what kind of thought you've given that in your research.
Surviving Extinction Events
00:20:03
Speaker
It was the events that changed it. I mean, we today are an event that's changing it, but there were several other different kinds of events, and it's very interesting to see who made it and who didn't. Big dinosaurs, big land, big non-flying dinosaurs did not make it. Wonderful creatures called pterosaurs. That's the word. Okay, they were gone, and they didn't leave hands. I mean, there's nothing that came from them.
00:20:32
Speaker
fabulous animals, they were. And they weren't dinosaurs, they weren't mammals, they were just dinosaurs, different. And the only avian dinosaurs, smaller ones became birds, and some of the synapses became, survived, the smaller ones actually, probably,
00:20:59
Speaker
not the big ones, but the small ones, and they became levels. This kind of thing to me is in terms of what we're talking about fairly short times, not, I mean, you know, thousands of years, but that's not much in the terms of the universe.
00:21:20
Speaker
And one of my favorite parts of the book was towards the end actually when you were recounting those experiences you had in what is now Namibia and kind of learning about the pre-contact culture there.
00:21:38
Speaker
What did, you know, taking us back to that time, what did you learn and take away from those people and how they were living and how maybe if we followed some of their principles, maybe we can regain the earth in a way that's more sustainable? We certainly could if we followed, but they did, yeah. But what I learned was everything. I mean, they knew everything.
00:22:08
Speaker
about their environment. They knew everything. I think I put in the book that a boy saw a hyena tracks with little tiny pinpricks on them, and he saw it from a distance, and he knew that the tracks were the tracks of a beetle, a certain kind of beetle. Okay, I mean, a kid, just for the heck of it, happened to mention that. But I mean, that's the kind of thing they knew. They knew the properties of every plant,
00:22:38
Speaker
the habits of every animal and including insects, including beetles. They discovered arrow poison which is in the larva of a beetle. The larva go underground. They go a few feet down and make their pupa casing and in their casing their portions. Deadly poison is one of the most deadly portions in the world. How did they find it? How did they find it?
00:23:02
Speaker
If you're a person with it, it destroys your hemoglobin, so it takes a long time for you to die. And I'm not sure you feel terribly uncomfortable. I mean, I don't know how you feel when that's happening. But how, if you died three days after you got some poison in you, how would people know that it was the poison, that it was the grub, the poison grub, and not everything else that you've been touching? You know what I mean?
00:23:30
Speaker
This is observation at a science level, but they did it. That's what they did, and that's how they lived. If we could do that, we'd be in much better shape. If we knew as much about what our planet as they knew, we would be in much better shape. Note that they were conservation minded, but the conservation wasn't a problem. They were survival minded, and this was their key to survival.
00:24:00
Speaker
What do you think eventually gave way to agrarian societies? Was it merely population growth? I wonder what trigger in modern human evolution went from the hunter-gatherers who were on these camps for 35,000 years
00:24:25
Speaker
and to eventually settle into what's quote-unquote civilization, which kind of put us onto this destructive track.
The Neolithic Shift: Possessions and Individualism
00:24:32
Speaker
I wonder, do you know what the inflection point was in that development? Well, it has to have been the Neolithic when people
00:24:43
Speaker
They had possessions, personal possessions, that wouldn't help. The same had personal possessions, but they gave things to each other. They gave possessions to each other. Nobody had more of anything than anybody else. Nobody was better or stronger or supposed to be smarter or anything than anybody else. People were supposed to be equal. Women were equal to men.
00:25:08
Speaker
There were no head men or important people. Nobody was more important than anybody else. I think that ended with the Neolithic, when people lived more as individuals with personal possessions. I think that steered us in the direction that we're heading now, also with more permanent residences.
00:25:28
Speaker
Nobody could say that the sand didn't exist because they did, but it was in a different, owned in a different way. It wasn't by individuals, it was by groups. And who were related to other groups who had the right to come to that encampment and so forth. I mean, had the right, they were invited to that encampment, you know, that kind of thing.
00:25:50
Speaker
Right. It's an interesting topic to explore.
Interconnectedness of Life Forms
00:25:56
Speaker
It is. Yeah. Even when you look at any individual life form, just looking out your window, you're reminded that you're part of
00:26:07
Speaker
You know a part of a bigger thing and maybe yeah And is that maybe like one of the the the takeaways you're hoping people get from this book in a sense that we are Yeah, a part of a larger connection that would be that would be nice if people could see it would be nice if I could communicate the idea that what you're seeing is not a beautiful view and
00:26:33
Speaker
It's a collection of life forms who are going, doing what they need to do, especially if they're on the animal side of things. Even, well, no plants too and from that. But, I mean, right now I'm in my house in New Hampshire and I'm looking out the window and there are two deer in the field. And they have had, I mean, it's been, their window was
00:26:56
Speaker
not too bad because we didn't have too much snow at first, but now we've got to have a lot of snow and a very heavy snow cover. For the last few weeks, they have had trouble finding food. There's a patch of, there's a place which traditionally loses the snow first, and it's because of, I'm not perfectly sure why, I've never been able to figure it out, but the deer know it, and they come, that's where they come in to eat. And I mean, to be
00:27:24
Speaker
to know what they're doing and why they're doing it and who they are. I mean, who they are is that kind of thing is very important and it gives you a whole different look at the view, so to speak.
Wrap-Up and Future Projects
00:27:38
Speaker
Very nice. Well, you know, Elizabeth, this is kind of a quick hit conversation here. I'm going to steer a lot of people towards our previous one where we digged a lot into your origin and your writing routine and everything else. And I got to say, of all the nearly 100 episodes that I've recorded, you've got my favorite quote of all time that 11 a.m. is an optimistic time.
00:28:04
Speaker
Yes. I love that so much. Every time 11am rolls around, I'm like, this is a good time right now and this is a good time to get work done. Yes, yes, yes. Fantastic.
00:28:20
Speaker
Yeah. Well, Elizabeth, thank you so much for carving out a little time to talk about your latest book of your really storied career. But I wish you big success with this one, and I can't wait for what comes after. Thank you. Thank you very much. I love doing this. I mean, with you. That's very nice. Thank you. Well, thank you, Elizabeth. And we'll be in touch. Take care. Thanks. Good. Good. Bye.