This is a headgum podcast. I don't know what to think I don't know what to say

and that's all right that's okay

I don't know anything.

Hello and welcome to Factually, I'm Adam Conover.

Thank you so much for joining me on the show again.

You know, it's hard to be a human out there. We keep getting

less special. We used to think we lived in the center of the universe, but then some guy named

Copernicus came along and showed it was the sun that was the center of things and not our home.

In fact, we've figured out that our solar system is just one among billions and that all of those solar systems in fact spin around in one galaxy, which is among billions or trillions of those.

Astronomically speaking, we are devastatingly insignificant.

But you know, even as this cosmic demotion got underway, we could still feel secure as the most important and special creature on Earth, right?

Humans, after all, have always thought of ourselves as creation's favorite little guys.

But then Darwin came along and totally boned us.

Apparently, we're just one weird and very successful monkey.

We weren't created from nothing to rule over nature by a god or gods.

We're simply natural, a product of the same evolution and natural selection

that made every other living thing. Great. But you know at the very least,

we have always comforted ourselves with a thought that humans have these super special abilities,

consciousness, reason, morality, language that no other thing could possibly have.

Well, the more we learn about the living world, the less we realize that that's the case.

For instance, we've always thought that language was something that made us totally different from other creatures,

but as our guest today will explain,

...