In this 205th in a series of live discussions with Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying (both PhDs in Biology), we discuss the state of the world through an evolutionary lens.

In this episode, we briefly discuss solar storms, Carrington events, and the possible failure of the electrical grid. Then: what does the absence of organisms where they once were mean? In the Exumas, Bahamas, this month, there were no laughing gulls. Eight months ago they were abundant in the same place. Could they be migrating? Might it be a pathogen? Local patchiness? Major decline for other reasons, like competition, or toxicity from plastics or pesticides? We discuss conservation success stories, like sea otters and bald eagles and California condors; and failures, like sea stars on the West coast of North America; and show some videos from the Bahamas. We object to the conflation of “environmental decline” with “climate change.” And we discuss curly haired “woolly dogs” of the Pacific Northwest, who were bred and cared for by the Coast Salish people, but are now extinct.

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Q&A Link: https://rumble.com/v43tubf-your-questions-answered-bret-and-heather-205th-darkhorse-podcast-livestream.html

Mentioned in this episode:

How the sun could wipe us out: A burst of plasma would set in motion a devastating cascade of failures (Weinstein 2021): https://unherd.com/2021/07/how-the-sun-could-wipe-us-out/

In want of a geologist: When "parrotfish" isn't a complete answer to where the land came from (Heying 2022): https://naturalselections.substack.com/p/in-want-of-a-geologist

Curly haired ‘woolly dogs’ of the Pacific Northwest were no myth: https://www.science.org/content/article/curly-haired-woolly-dogs-pacific-northwest-were-no-myth

Lin et al 2023. The history of Coast Salish “woolly dogs” revealed by ancient genomics and Indigenous Knowledge. Science, 382(6676): 1303-1308: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adi6549