 think how you are connected to nature. How do you get your food? What are you eating? Are you eating beef? Are you eating meat? What kind, how often? Because that is all related to rainforest. We all know about that. It's related to how we grow food. And I think it is not waiting for politicians to change the rules. It is about us being aware that we should help to change the rules. And that is part of how often we use planes in the future, what we eat, where we go, how we treat nature in our gardens, how we eliminate nature for another area where we want to build housing or a adoban or whatever is built. And we should be much more conscious. And I'm not saying we should and we will be able to avoid everything. I'm not saying here in an eschetic mission and that we should go back to nature. No way. It is about being more conscious about that. Professor Dr. Matthias Glaubrecht is my guest on this episode of Inside Ideas, brought to you by 1.5 Media and Innovators Magazine. The end of evolution, man and the destruction of species. The evolutionary biologist Matthias Glaubrecht sees the greatest loss of species since dinosaurs became extinct as a worldwide biological tragedy. The greatest threat to the existence of all living beings is definitely humans, whose own future is at stake. This is his wonderful book in German, Das Ende der Evolution. And it is a wonderful, beautiful read by the Bertelsmann, C. Bertelsmann Publishing and Verlach. It was the short list of 2021 for the medicine biology category for the best science book of the year. Only 20 books made it into this campaign and to this category by the Federal Ministry for Education, Science and Research together with the magazine Book Culture and the Austrian Book Industry. Matthias has a long career in history and in October, 2014, he was the Director of the Center for Natural History at the University of Humberg, April, 2006 to March, 2009, Head of Research Department at the Museum of Natural History, Berlin. In 2002, Academic Superior Council, he has numerous experiences with museums, science and zoology. He was a guest scientist for the Zoological Institute and Zoological Museum, University of Humber. He's working on all sorts of new fabulous museum projects currently. And I'm hoping to get into that during our podcast. I really could go on just an hour on all his accreditations, his career, his studies, his books, his publications. But I want to touch on a few important ones like the Zoological Institute and Zoological Museum where he received the University of Humberg Journalism Awards in 2006, a media prize from Humboldt University Society. Also in 1996, the Werner and Inge Grüter Prize for Science of Journalism for a Foundation of German Science, in particular for the non-fiction book, der Lange Atem der Schöpfung, so the long breath of evolution, what Darwin would have liked to know. As I mentioned, I hope we can really get into a lot of these other accreditations and accolades that he's received over the years. He's studied all around the world and been involved in many, many things. Professor Dr. Matthias Klaubrich, welcome to the show. It's so good to have you. I hope I can call you Matthias if that's okay. That's absolutely fine. Hi, Mark. It's so good to have you here. And we want to let my listeners know that we've had a podcast before or a different presentation before where it was mainly in Germany where you gave us a slide introduction of your book and kind of went into some particulars. And at the end of that presentation, I basically chewed your ear off. I think I was the only one left for about an hour long worth of questions that I have because I've read your book and it is such a wonderful work. There's no doubt in my mind why it was nominated for out of the top 20 scientific books for this category and this prize because it is a fabulous read. Now, I think when I first was telling you about the book and that I might have scared you and even my listeners, I kind of say, boy, this is such a big read and just the sheer size of it can be overwhelming. But I want to dispel that myth right off the bat because it is a fabulous, wonderful read. It's comparable to Yuval Nola Harare's. It's comparable to Steven Pinker, Jared Diamond to some really wonderful fiction books that are giving big history, giving out science and data. That's an academic type of a book but it doesn't read like an academic type of book. So you're definitely not gonna fall asleep if you can make it past the overwhelming size and breadth of it. But I want our listeners to know that it's that way for a purpose because we've really been here on this planet compared to the other species in our world and the birth of our planet for a short period of time but there is a big history. There's a big story to be told. And so I really thank you for that and I want to jump right into it with the first question for you going into the book because you've been doing this for so many years and in academics you've learned, you've studied this, you've written about it, you've worked with the museums, you're an evolutionary biologist and really have all that knowledge as this crazy time of our pandemic. Has any of that experienced, those things helped you to weather this time better to say, oh, I could see it coming, we've talked about it kind of coming or how have you been? How have you been during this crazy time? Yeah, well, it still is a crazy time and it's not a time to raise your finger and say, see, I've told you but of course, this is a pandemic with announcement. I mean, scientists have warned for at least the last two decades that something like that might happen and that a epidemic and a pandemic will actually develop out of the tropical or subtropical areas in Asia or in Africa. So it's not a surprise, but it came as a surprise to of course, most of us but we could have known because the pandemic that we see now has predecessors. There were ZARS in 2002 and 2004 in Asia but of course in Europe and North America, people thought, okay, well, that is related only to Asia that had nothing to do with us and we have been warned by Ebola and HIV but people in Europe felt safe and I think we all felt safe for a long time because we thought for the last 100 years that we have virtually eradicated most diseases and things that other generations have suffered from so we felt fairly sure and this of course is a misguided assumption and what we see now is directly related to our treatment of nature, how we have developed over the last, let's say, 50 years into a major evolutionary factor. This is, of course, it is mirrored in terms like the Anthropocene officially announced or scheduled to start by 1950 over the second half of the 20th century. So the pandemic is only another sign of what we are doing since half a century to this planet and of course, human beings have a influence that goes back even further but we have this phenomenon of a great acceleration of all these signatures from carbon dioxide to deforestation and of course, and that is my major subject, people have overlooked what we do in terms of deforestation. It's not only that we get rid of forest by half of the earth cover, originally covered by forests along gone and we're also destroying not only plants but we are destroying the biological richness and the treasure trove of this planet which is our biological heritage and of course, all that is related to what we see now diseases jumping from animals to man because we are moving around the earth, we're destroying their natural habitats, we're getting in closer contact and we are of course not out of this scenario. We are part of nature and we forget about that all the time, we make this distinction about culture and nature and human beings and the other 99% and this is all not really existent and we should be aware that we are part of nature and so, yeah, as I said, it's related and nevertheless, of course, we're suffering all here, economy is suffering but the light at the end of the tunnel is maybe that the year before the pandemic, we're especially here in Germany, we had a discussion on how we can change and is it possible that society will change and we need more time for slowly changes and suddenly we have all these abrupt adaptions to a new situation. I think this is a very hopeful sign that if danger is big enough and the awareness of the danger, then human beings on a global scale are able to react, if you like it or not. Yeah, I have a few questions that kind of delve more into that so I understand the precipice of the entire thing that you just described but I almost want to get in a little bit more and I want to get a little bit personal because you've been in this area because you've written this because this exhaustive work that you've written, is that more or less to raise awareness in politics and governments and humanity to emphasize the change and also kind of to a pinnacle of all your compilation of a pinnacle of all your works over the years? But does that also give you a little bit for your family? I know you have, I believe, a young daughter and a beautiful family that's two boys, okay? And that you create some form of saying, oh, I've been studying, I've been researching, I've been writing about this, I've worked in the museums, I can see some patterns. Am I waiting for others to kind of prepare? Is there any kind of resilience or things with that knowledge that you can apply to your own lives that in times like this that we weather better or is it, is nobody immune? Is it something that doesn't exist? Well, it is, this book is dedicated to, as we say in Germany as a joke, I'll call them the two Edlinger, you know, the two Earthlings. The two Earthlings, yeah. And of course it is a personal sign that the book was triggered not only by the, you know, all these accumulation of facts and scientific data that you can accumulate and that is accumulated in this book. And it is by far not comprehensive, even if it is, you know, a total of about 1,000 pages, but we have seen last year the report by the World Biodiversity Panel, you know, the IBES, this Intergovernmental Panel for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services and in their report published, first published in May 2019, they have reported on the analysis of about 15,000 studies, you know. So there's a lot of evidence out there. And of course, as only one person, it was only possible to make a selection of papers and facts and data to develop a story. But it was definitely triggered although I was accumulating those studies. It was triggered by the simple thought when my eldest son was born a couple of years ago and that I thought how would the Earth and nature look like when he is as old as I was when he was born. And so a couple of months and years later, I was reading, you know, these children books to them, you know, and just, you know, take whatever you like and you hear about all these fantastic animals, they first get to know from those books, you know, elephants like Hati and leopards and whatever you take, you know, and if you, at the same time during the day, study those papers saying that we're losing the larger animals about to up to the size of 10 kilograms over the next couple of years or decades, then you've suddenly recognized that you're reading about animals to them that will not exist when they do this to their children, you know? And by that time, there were more tigers, for example, in zoos and in circus than in nature, you know? We have, we're down to about 4,000 tigers in total in Asia isolated in fragments of their original distribution range and we know that there were about as their estimates that around the beginning of the 20th century there were about 100,000 tigers and now we are down to 4,000 and if you look at taxidermy firms in India and look into their accounts and books you see that you know they have there's one in Missol in India that processed 50,000 skins and heads just to nail them to the wall you know or put them in front of your bed so we have a you know very destructive effect and this is only one of so many a plethora of of examples how we treat nature and we're you know day by year by year we are taking about 80 million tons of fish out of the oceans you know and we have done this over the last couple of years and decades and of course this is not an endless planet and I think we have recognized and we have to accept that there is not a endless development of that and what I became interested in is not so much of just stating the obvious and accumulating the fact of course that is part of the book and I was definitely sure that at the end of the book I wanted to give a scenario you know what is more likely and when writing this part I recognize that I can't decide what's more likely you know that we make it through this crisis or that we actually will suffer on our own from this crisis but in the first part of the book I wanted to develop the idea why we are so successful as human beings as homo sapiens and so I sketched out a bit what we know about where we came from it's a long journey that hominids look back to they came a long way but homo sapiens is only 300 000 years old this is the most recent evidence we have from Morocco from northwest Africa and that's where it started you know and then it's interesting to look how fast we have colonized this planet and wherever we occur during the colonization and the exodus from Africa which was the second you know two million years ago homo erectus made it into other parts except Africa but he hasn't destroyed the entire environment you know he was not harmless of course he was also hunting you might have had fire he was definitely changing the environment but it was nothing compared to what happened when homo sapiens colonized the earth and we can recognize first in Australia then in North America in South America that was in thousands of years you know we really talk about thousands of years here that the um the entire earth was colonized and whenever homo sapiens appeared the megafauna the first big human the first big fauna elements were disappearing and people don't believe that or they haven't believed for a long time that that is related you know they had all these arguments about is it really Blitzkrieg and something like that and more and more evidence is is actually pointing to us as the decisive factor being responsible for the overkill and the destruction of this formal elements and so human beings have this pioneering um frontier mentality it's not only that you can see this and during the colonization of Europeans in North America you can not only see that um in the colonial times when Europeans entered in other parts during the globalization you can not only see that um after 1492 uh after the so-called time of the first globalization by the era of discoveries you know it's a very typical behavior that we move on that we move into um virgin areas you know and deployed the resources and then try to move uh out and and move further so this migrational um impetus we have is is related to our pioneering mentality so we are not born as you know treating our nature um sustainable and so this is our biological heritage but what is actually um what about our cultural heritage and I think that's all we see in the pandemic time you know we we see that we are able to react in very short time we are able to communicate to the rest of the world what's going on uh we learn that we have to adapt it is still a process that is awfully um um slow to my taste of course we need to convince so many people that they have to change their behavior we have to start with ourselves to um change our own behavior and we have to get rid of of you know very um much liked habits that we are used to but it's possible so we are able to overcome parts of our biological heritage using one of these instruments that homo sapiens have our brains and I think there's hope that something that I call the um the cumulative cultural evolution that that is something that will eventually help us um once we have realized that we are part a biological um you know animal and part of a cultural animal and that we have to reconcile these two um developments or these two sides of our souls and of our nature so is this uh I want to touch on a couple things so this cultivated evolution uh cultural evolution that that you mentioned um because I speak a lot about as well as a kind of a cognitive intelligence or a collective intelligence that we have that distinguishes us from a lot of other species where we can leave behind books and recordings and videos and pass on to our prosperity in a much shorter amount of time than natural evolutionary processes explain a little bit more what you mean by uh the cognitive culture cultural evolution and then I want to actually jump a little bit back to what you mentioned before about uh our impact on species and what we're kind of seeing today and maybe see a pulse more out but I'll let you answer that first you know well um yeah I think this is an important aspect um many people are not used and not educated and they're not doing research as evolutionary biologists and I think this is the majority um that um there is a difficulty of really thinking in in evolutionary time frame and of course most people remember their parents and their grandparents but that goes back um like two generations maybe three generations and that is covering um if it if you're lucky it's covering a century you know and most of the people working in humanities and in other areas not related to evolutionary biology think in terms of a hundred years a thousand years in historical times when we have historical evidence maybe going back two thousand years okay this is of course nothing and it um it needs to have you need to put that into perspective and realize um where evolution works what are the time frame for evolutionary change and um see all of the things that I um always hear when I give lectures about the um deformation and the destruction of nature and the that um we kill species and they you know will go extinct and and some people say well tough they're not adapted you know and there will be new species coming and I'm working on speciation effects you know I try to learn how new species arise what are the processes and I can tell you we're talking about um not centuries and not thousand years we're not talking about only you know tens of thousand years and not hundreds of thousand years we we talk about millions of years and if you look at a species like Homo erectus you know it might be that Homo erectus has you know a very long history going back not only more than two thousand years a two million years but maybe he existed about 1.5 million years before he went extinct or or vanished um and and maybe Homo sapiens is not innocent in this context you know so we talk about long history in evolutionary terms now the specialty of Homo sapiens is that of course we do have a cultural evolution too and maybe the most uh important cultural transition or behavioral transition for Homo sapiens um has been domestication uh you know and and the invention of uh agriculture everything that has been uh you know um put or summarized in this maybe not really very proper term of a neolithic um revolution like 12 000 years ago we have learned to live together we have learned to um you know um to we have domesticated animals for our purposes we have you know um first sign of agriculture and um that has changed our also our relationship to within human beings you know with with others we're living closer we are more we're getting more and more since then um so but but it was not only a new paradise you know we have also at that time the start of a much more aggressive behavior in human beings a much more destructive behavior but we have learned over hundreds and thousands of years um to live together to adapt uh we have also you know invited a lot of viruses and everything all these children or child diseases that we have you know are related to viruses that came from bovids you know from from the cows that we're living with and others so that has also had a destructive influence but we have in a in an evolutionary way adapted to that and also in a cultural way we have adapted and one of the cultural signs is for example the bible the old testament when you read about all these destructive forces and all these you know murder murder and and everything and and then you have these how do you call that the the 10 um commandments they can 10 commandments yeah and and this is something where where we think and it that is actually from a very important book written by a dutch anthropologist carol van schijk and and uh right there i'm holding it up so that's a it's a great carol van schijk as someone you referred to me and hopefully we'll have him on the podcast but it's a this is one of his books is a fabulous yeah well i i was impressed when i when i read this the first time you know i i thought because it has a very um a strange title in german it's it's called the diary of creation you know and i thought okay well this is another creational book and as a new evolutionary biologist i'm i'm not really tempted to read something like that but you know don't don't um um mistake or or you you should not um you should be very clear about this book he's explaining or the two authors and another is a a historian um uh kai michel and and they're explaining how important this behavioral transition um after domestication and invention of agricultural was and that the bible um is telling about that process and they're you know developing this term of the accumulative cultural evolution and i think we have seen something like that over the last decades and centuries too you know um see how much we have changed our behavior towards um other parts of of humankind you know today um we think um colonialism and slavery is something that is not a very proper behavior in human beings okay we're sanctioning that and and and we have a very clear opinion about the destructive and and non-human behavior of that but for centuries that was basically a very typical behavior you know you can see that since there's war there are slaves and and that has continued over at least a couple of of centuries you know the thousands of years so those are the cultures so you're talking about that are emerging over time yeah and i mean if you look at countries in europe like like switzerland you know i mean you won't believe but it's only a couple of decades ago that they allow women to vote okay so things like that um of course are overdue to to be changed but we are able to to change into a more democratic um attitude and behavior and things like that so there is a cultural signature here and we are able to change our behavior on a global scale um within uh let's say decades or centuries it's it's slow it's definitely too slow we can't wait for decades or even centuries to adapt to the situation we have now but during the pandemic you can see how fast we are able to react so this is actually giving me a lot of hope that um there is something like cumulative cultural evolution in human beings acting so homo sapiens has a chance and the chance is by all the media um that you can think of you know this includes um talking this includes book and of course all the new technology that we have which we are just right now using um to actually educate and to talk to other people to convince them that we need to change our behavior so it's not only long-term evolution it's short-term cultural evolution that we are able to follow and to adapt and that is my hope and one of the important things is that we need to transport messages and there need to be more than you know a little tweet you know that might not be enough that might be enough for former American presidents but that is a good instrument to really transport more complicated and complex things i'm not sure i'm not convinced that this thousand page book is is another good instrument but it is you know it is a sign of um we are trying to um to distribute um these um evidence as facts and and data to to a wider audience and you of course are helping a lot you know i definitely think that that it is it is a good way if you can you know you have to pick everybody up where they're at and some people um are just not readers and so so just by the sheer vision of that then they would be scared off um and you had asked me 20 years ago i probably would have fainted if i saw a book that big you know and and and wouldn't wouldn't have gone near but having read it and know how wonderfully it's written and and it takes you on this nice journey it's more and in a different way it's not not true for an academic in the way that it reads which i really like and so i definitely think that there's different ways that we pick up and get this information to everyone there's a couple of things that you're you're telling me that's coming out of this one it's definitely not an exhaustive the complete picture of evolution but what it is it's this very complex complexity science systems of systems that you've taken a good many facets of a of a system and put them together in this book and you present this not just a big history but a big picture of kind of that gives us many different components of this this pick once we've read the book that we can see a much bigger picture of understanding in that if we go by and what you just mentioned if we go by this natural evolution that we're we could talk millions of years hundreds of thousands of years whereas if we cultural evolution our collective cultivated cultural evolution would be something that'd be a little bit faster than millions of years but it's also a longer process and but i'm also hearing out there could be some possibilities in that as well where a culture can shift and change a little bit faster where if we we unify in a critical mass that maybe we could shift our culture to the better wisdoms the better ways of doing things that would do that there was something before that i really wanted to touch upon you were talking about the species and how the the big big uh not just big game but the bigger animals were you know being used as carpets and hung on the walls and and that and and during this time uh of the pandemic as well there was a lot of things on tv series about in florida these big tiger and and and things where there's more of these animals and zoos and captivity and and different type of side shows that you know some crazy things going on but also um pick talk became a real big phenomenon during this time and i'm not into that at all but there there's some data that's all already emerging out of that that seven out of ten pick talk videos showing animals are exotic species you know monkeys and snakes and wizards and lemurs and whatever else you know some pretty exotic uh uh uh animals and and i guarantee you not everybody has the right license the handlers the i don't know what they call it i guess like a restorative type of you know rehabilitation type of a permit to to help an animal that's been injured or that that that we've encroached upon their area now we've got to help them to get back on their feet um and we've just kind of had this disconnect not only with our earth but with the species around us to kind of figure out how you know maybe we could do a cultural shift to deliver there and so i wanted to kind of mention that that you know it's not just what you're writing about it's not just the these reports that are come out we're we're actually seeing it on television and social media and everywhere it's it's it's craziness it's not it's not a different type of evolution but your book is very it gives us big history this big this you and it really starts out and also ends with something that i use as well as a climate speaker and some of my presentations and talks is the earth fries and the pale blue dot and you know there's one book it's called the overview effect from frank white is i think frank white and it's basically you know same thing that you discussed in your book how we got those pictures what what poses you to start out like that with the earth fries and with the pale blue dot is that part of this bigger history and this connection or why why did you choose to begin and end that way well um earth fries you know this is this picture that was taken by the u.s. um william enders during the apollo eight mission uh it is actually showing uh in i think it was taken 780 kilometers above the surface of the moon and suddenly there is this blue um planet you know rising over the horizon of the moon and um it was not only a fascinating photo but it became iconic in not only for the um you know this movement of of um nature conservation in the in the early 1970s and i think it shows the isolation of earth in in um you know the universe and uh there's one thing that you know irritates me a lot and i'm a big fan of you know space shuttle and and all these endeavors of human beings which it is part of this pioneering frontier mentality that we have inherited from our biological ancestors you know we are moving out of our normal space but there is nothing out there again you know it's not heritable it's nothing um where we can it's nowhere where we can go there nevertheless we try this and that what irritates me a lot is that we are spending billions of dollars like ill musk is doing you know to go to um moon and and mars and um no there's nothing when we can find you know we will not be able to live there it's not a solution to our problems that we have as human beings as humankind on earth and so there is this illusion you know first um destruction of the natural habitats is not that bad you know it will recover and new species will arise you know and they were you know tough they were like dinosaurs bad adapted you know this is all wrong this is a this is a completely um wrong perspective on nature and i think earth rise you know puts earth into perspective in a way of not only looking from outside which always helps a lot it's it's showing earth in this isolated cosmos which is really not heritable to human beings so we have this you know covered by this tiny um atmosphere we have this planet which is and this is another paradox um it is not this it has not been discovered you know we only know a fraction you have to realize that it took us 250 years of botanical and zoological system systematics to describe about two million species on earth you know but we have to expect that there are maybe eight or nine million species so the vast majority is still not described in scientific terms it's not known but we are just we are destroying you know more than three-quarter of the earth's surface by our you know developmentals and developing cities of our ways of transport you know and for our agriculture so we are dominating earth but we haven't really you know found each and every species on earth and we can't and we should not spend billions to go somewhere else we should spend them to make this a much more um habitable um uh planet and so it fascinated me because this picture earth rise became a a conic and at the same time of course we need this development of conservation in the 1970s but if you see how much at the same time we have destroyed nature and it was not to that we have this movement and it has it has brought us into this position that we have protected nature um the contrary is is actually the case you know um although we have all these people trying to save species and rescue the last of them and you know health nature um we have developed much more destructive forces than ever before so this is quite a paradox on that that while we have the awareness or while the awareness was rising um that um we couldn't help destroying more and more nature and um so in the first part of the book I'm trying to develop on this you know time scale this evolutionary perspective and this cultural perspective and I was and I'm trying to develop that starting with this um remote vision or this remote perspective from outside and earth and and um if you look if you today um look at satellite images or this satellite videos while satellites you know um move over the surface of the earth you see especially at night how much our surface is illuminated artificially illuminated by all our lights by the traffic lights by the lights of our cities mega cities all over the world and you see how um how huge the influence everywhere on the surface of earth of human beings are there's there's harsh there is virtually no way to go for um big animals for other animals so um I think this outside perspective helps a lot and in the second part of the book I'm I'm talking about our miss um perception of um our own um population you know we had all these awful discussions which are which were destructive of course starting this not only Robert Maltus in the 19th century you know a contemporary of Charles Darwin and telling us that we should not help the poor and and those people starving because you know they will reproduce and it won't make things better of course this is an awful and non-human attitude but um we should talk about our exponential development of our world population and you know that from climate perspectives there's a perspective and prognosis of the of humankind and the human population and we are we're right now we are talking about nearly eight billion people living on earth and in the next two or three decades we will raise this this figure will rise to about 10 or 11 billion people and we all we have to feed them you know they all want to live we all want to live and we all want to have a you know water and enough food and everything so this of course will cause problems and pointing in to all these Cassandra voices in the past calling in vain it's not really helpful because we have to face the fact that although the rate per female you know per mother is is decreasing of course you know there are less children born per female not only in Europe but also in in Asia in Africa we are still on a big super tanker and if you try to move a big super tanker the first three or four sea miles you will you will not recognize any movement you know and this is the same although population and although the rate per female will drop the entire population of homo sapiens will increase incredibly you know exponentially but still and it doesn't help us that this curve you know may flatten by the end of this century we have to come to the end of the century without destroying more nature so the first part of my book is about human biological and cultural nature the second part is on the development of world population and then of course the third part is that this will influence the defonational process that we are in the middle of another mass extinction and people haven't recognized and you know we are we're we're turning our faces from these effects we still do we think climate change is our big problem of the 21st century and definitely it is but it is a bit like you know this multiple um um organ disease if you go to a doctor you know who is a heart specialist he will only look for your heart but if you go to someone you know interested in your kidney he might say you do have a kidney or a liver problem or whatever and earth had both you know climate and loss of animals defonation the destruction and the shrinking of populations biodiversity loss is a big you know the big last wave so to say yeah and it and you can't help it you know even if you do everything right in terms of you know getting a control over the overwhelming increase of surface temperature and the ocean and the atmospheric temperature even if you if we we learn within the next years and decades to handle this problem in a proper way so that we avoid more than 1.5 or 2 degree zero and temperature rise even if we we we are successful in climate in terms of climate change we will still have this biodiversity loss because it's not related you know biodiversity loss is essentially and overwhelmingly related to our use of nature to loss of the fragmentation of habitats destruction of forests and and all that and the increase of agricultural it's not related primarily to climate change so we do have multiple organ problems here so to say and we have to address all of them but right now we're addressing only only climate change in terms of these we tend to get in this siloed or linear approach at solving our global grand challenges we kind of have the blinders on we can only see one thing but it's not only it's a complexity science but it's really the system's thinking out that we can see the world as you know one again as Carl Stegen said it you know there's this emerging consciousness this emerging view of the world as one organism and an organism divided amongst the cell is doomed and that that you know brings me back to you know the the what I asked about you know how you start with the earth rising you and as I read it I just want to tell you what my I I I take it I not only do I have this sustainability lens on it when I read things but I have this bigger history I try to put it and how how can I apply it to human beings homo sapiens to myself how how what what are you trying to tell me and I want to tell you what I read out and you you mentioned it you explained it but I want to kind of go a little bit almost a little bit deeper so when when I show or when you showed or when you discussed the the earth prize I show it quite a bit as well as I mentioned what I see is not the the nation's borders and the divisions or the the fragility of our planet that it's our only home we're all on spaceship earth I see it for two things one I see it that I want others to understand that we are connected about this we weren't dropped off from some other planet that this is our home we're we're integrated connected to that and that goes back to what Carl Sagan said as well we we are all made of star stuff basically you know the elements of our earth are the elements of the human body and just like our body and this is what you were saying about the kidneys and the heart our body has 11 systems all of them operate independently but they operate or they they operate as a system together but not one of those systems your nervous system your digestive system your skeletal system controls the other 10 systems they all work gooey or in harmony with each other but if you break a bone the other 10 systems try to compensate to bring you back from that disability and that's the system this collective way of looking not only at our planet at ourselves and these systems and so the first thing when I see that image and there's so much story around that and hear hear that I want to connect myself and humanity to our planet earth that we are crawled out of the primordial soup of this planet and we as homo sapiens and we're so lucky to be here but secondly and you touched upon this with Elon Musk and you know the others who are going to Mars and space is that the only reason we have that image is through sheer innovation and you talked about afterwards the satellites that are part of you know of the data we collect because we went to space we discovered earth and we are if we're going to be out there which I don't think does us very much good there is some data that can give us some some accurate information about what's going on here on this big planet because we don't understand complexity science we tend to get hung up in our one little space and if we can use that information and that technology for good because there's always that yin and that yang or that balance that there's there's the bad that can come out of it or is there's the real positive and the real positive is is through that it created an environmental movement it created awareness for us to treat and integrate ourselves more in the biodiversity and change that cultural thing based on some some tools that we have that's sheer innovation and so I like that journey but but the the other one is this connection from the birth of our earth from whether it was the big bang to today that we all started out as star stuff or microorganisms and we have more in common with other species and oak tree than we do with with each other we have more microorganisms more microbial cells and more microbial genes in our body than we do human cells and human genes that make up our body and so we we truly I'm not just saying it Carl Sagan's not saying it you're not saying we have more in common with the Florida fauna with other species with our earth and we truly know and so that that through that whole read as I read as you take us on this beautiful journey you know I'm thinking of that and I'm viewing it in this different light of what it is and then and so I see it in this different thing like I said you start out with the earth rise and then at the end you I think around seven page 700 or so you you know kind of ended up with the pale blue dot which is also Carl Sagan there's some connections for me I I see things in complexities Carl Sagan um had a wife of his first wife he's and durian is his wife when he passed away and she's uh runs the show cosmos and is a wonderful producer and his first wife was Lynn Margolis and she's one of the most famous uh scientists made a movement around the world about a symbiotic earth and so I think that's unique that that came from Carl Sagan who also was the pinnacle to get us the blue dot image from that satellite that went out but I I want to talk about now that in in this journey you talk Lynn Lynn Margolis only has a reference in your book just once but Alfred Russell Wallace was one of the first British naturalists and explorer geographer anthropologist biologist and illustrator he was best known for independently conceiving the theory of evolution through natural selection and has numerous papers and some of them were published alongside or jointly with Charles Darwin's writings in 1958 but the other one is that you mentioned quite a bit through throughout the book is Charles Robert Darwin Charles Darwin as we know the Darwin theory was an English naturalist biologist geologist so you you belong to these wonderful evolutionary biologists who for his science of evolution and the proposition that species of life have descended over time for common interests ancestors and so now having just said all that big mouthful I'm trying to connect people to the earth say that we're part of stardust we're part of these microorganisms that made up the beginnings of life here on our planet and then we're talking about this evolutionary biologist that you mentioned in the book and there's this journey that for me just continues to connect that that we have more in common with our planet and these other species and I I'm moving to a question I promised and the question is is is more of an explanation Alfred Russell Wallace really you know this this evolution through natural selection and I'm not sure how to understand it or how to properly accept it I have some some of my own thoughts and opinions on that I would like you because eventually by the time Lynn Margolis comes there's this natural selection survival of the submit us fit us only to strong survive whereas Lynn Margolis says we're more of a symbiotic earth we have this symbiosis and we work in cooperation and collaboration instead of the strife and so maybe you can tell us a little bit more about the book but also in this journey of these these great people yeah well if you if you mentioned that little god Margolis is only getting one citation and the fact that I mentioned Alfred Russell Wallace a lot is that I wrote a biography on Alfred Russell Wallace and there's half a meter of biographies out there in in in US and in Great Britain but there was hardly there's actually none there was none in Germany so Alfred Russell Wallace was not known and this very exciting figure in 19th century natural history was not known and everything was just related to Charles Darwin and I'm a big fan of of Charles Darwin but there was a race a silent race going on and many of the things that are written in about Darwin and about Wallace is definitely wrong it's not covered by the historical fact so he's an interesting figure and he was actually one of the first not only to not completely independent but quite an isolation and Southeast Asia developed 14 years younger and 14 years after Charles Darwin but publishing that in parallel to his to Darwin's development of his ideas um Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace they're both um trying to develop this idea about natural selection and Charles Darwin later also on sexual selection as the driving forces or the mechanisms of evolutionary change and they were sticking to to theory to observable facts and we still don't have anything better than their theory after 150 years which is good for a theory you know um and um I think what the Gaia hypothesis of Thomas Lovejoy and and you know this love luck yeah love love love yeah sorry and and you know this idea of planet earth being a super organism that's that's all fine but it's not really put into a theory in natural um you know in in strong um terms of developing a natural sciences theory I think it is a it's a nice narrative it's very good to transport a lot of things but we don't have scientific evidence of something that really is like an organisms you know E. O. Wilson another hero of my um you know um perspective yeah nature E. O. Wilson also considered and you know as and the largest and super organisms and things like that so we all have our ideas about how nature is is organized but we don't have really a clear picture of um that the planet earth and a nature on earth is developed as a organisms um it's it's um it's it's a picture you know it's a metaphor all fine but it's not really um like a verifiable theory but it it brings me to the point that we do have specific perspectives and they are very long enduring and one of the most enduring theories or perspective is the um well the the attitude of of homo sapiens of human beings to be outside nature and I think um putting a earth perspective uh into the picture or trying to have this outside view on earth as a super organisms or whatever helps to realize our position our role in in nature and I prefer to view homo sapiens as one species on earth one of the many species a very um a very special species but still nothing um different from the animal kingdom you know it's not us and them it's not nature and culture you know our culture is our nature you know um our most interesting natural feature as homo sapiens maybe is our ability for cultural evolution so what I'm trying to say is that we have these let's say 2000 year long perception going back to the greek and roman um um ancient times and the thinking you know um that there are gods and half gods and human beings and things like that you know and then there is nature our totalism was one of the first to to make you know scientific observation uh on on animals but still his perception of human beings was that it's something completely different you know it's not um of course as you said and and I think it's a very good way of realizing that them to call us being built of star dust is a very good picture to say we are not outside universe you know we are part of it our very um basic elements that build us are related to uh the big bang you know all these things help to put us in a better perspective and I think one of those things this is not a philosophical question it is something that we have to realize in our day-to-day life you know people have lost the connection to nature you know in in the future and and within a couple of years or decades we will have a we have we will have 70 to 80 percent of our world population living in big cities you know we have a degree of urbanization that detaches people from nature and and we have lost contact you know some of the people today the born and raised in cities they feel lost when it's getting dark without light when they don't have their smartphones with them you know and when there is some strange sound from an animal you know um so we have completely detached from nature and no wonder that it is so difficult to educate and teach people about their connected net the connectedness to to nature and one of the other problems I would like to mention is what you the point you raise when you mention complexity you know of course biodiversity issues are very complex it's it's like mythology and climate you know it's these are complex systems they all they both have a long far-reaching history they have a development you know they have many different facades and you need a lot of you need an entire academy to to to study you know so it is complex and it is outside our normal human being awareness of complexity we are still adapted to what I call the the mesocosmos you know there is these macroscale and the microscale you know we we don't understand if there are viruses and bacteria and light you know and and all these physical things and we only understand if physicists tell us about you know this is the microscale and the astrophysics tell us about the macroscale we are not adapted to that you know we don't have a natural appreciation of space and time you know it's irritating when we learn what Albert Einstein tried to to teach us you know and if you're not a mathematician it's very difficult to really get the core of it so we are adapted to the mesocosmos we're we're natural beings you know we are down to earth in a way we'll build we have a primate evolutionary origin and and history so we are adapted to this fragment of possibilities on on earth you know like I mean I love how you say this I don't want me to interrupt you but I want before you go on so we're we're almost caught in between so there's the cosmos of our universe there's a metacosmos or we're kind of in and but but then there's also the the microcosmos which also Lin-Margulis rises up and but we're actually connected to all of those cosmos but we're really can only deal or see without one and we kind of need to make a work and that's when I get out of your book I see how how we're connected and how we can pull some of those things out I love them well there is one other one other aspect and and that is a I thought is a you know an awareness that psychologists developed but it's not it's going back to to a fishery scientist and he developed something that is the shifting baseline phenomenon you know and and it's basically saying that when your grandfather is a fisherman you know he has he might have taken a thousand fishes with one hole you know and your and his son might have taken just a hundred you know and now his son is is only taking ten so with each generation the the threshold is is lower and we get adapted to a lower threshold you know it's not a thousand it's a hundred it's ten so we are losing because shifting baseline is moving over longer timeframes you know it's not a abrupt change it is a gradual change and we're adapting to that and we only grow up you know when when nature has changed and and the next generation is adapting and and you know is is used to the the the new surrounding and then there is one good thing in homo sapiens that you always adapt to the new environment you know but at the same time you lose perspective of where populations for example come from you know how destructive earlier generations have been to to nature because of that shifting baseline phenomenon of course we're losing we're losing contact to nature we have this natural phenomenon of shifting baselines it is complex we are not adapted to all that abstract complexity we're adapted to the mesocosmos you know so um and we still behave much like homo sapiens in the east african savannah you know we don't we might not like that you might not accept it but most of our human behavior is still triggered in a very original way by that it helps us to survive but it's also destructive in a way so all these phenomena are related to what we see right now when it comes to deforestation and biodiversity loss you know and that that is the reason why i thought it was so important not to start by accumulating one case study after the other why we lose nature and why we are losing tigers and all that you know and it's one of the problems in the with with nature conservation is that for decades you know all the big company all the big NGOs have focused on the flagship species it might be the the panda or the tiger or elephants or whatever and and especially the big cats and the mammals are only a fraction of biodiversity you know and neither have these environmental and conservation efforts avoided that we lose the tigers um nor did we prevent big parts of nature to go um downhill you know so i think focusing on tigers and helping tigers as good as it is and as important as it is to rescue and to help to rescue each and every individual species this is not the problem the problem is that we are not having a proper perspective on nature due to our um evolutionary heritage due to our cultural education going back 2000 years to ancient times of of the greek and and how we today live you know in big cities um raising without nature and and people think if it is a green park this is nature you know um most people won't believe that there is hardly any natural um environment left in in entire um uh europe it might be different in australia it might be different in north america but it's definitely hardly anything that you call nature uh true nature that is left in in um in europe so we have to focus on those areas in africa in asia especially in in south america where nature is is still there where there is the majority of of biodiversity and people don't believe but actually we all depend very much on each and every single um species you know and these are fragments of of the the natural um inheritance uh and and the richness and you know losing the species and letting them go extinct is a bit like you know um fiddling around with your computer and deleting files you know you can do this file after file you may only lose a picture from your last vacation you know but and maybe you pick a very important uh file that runs your computer yeah and we don't know we don't know which species might be important for us and just to give you one example we are depending on two species of flies for um pollination of um the beans and the the plants of of um cacao you know uh so um we we we depend on all these pollinators we have learned that there are millions and billions of us dollar worth of um ecosystem services just by pollin pollinators you know and it's not only it's not only the domesticated honeybee of course not you know these are will um um other species of bees and wild bees yeah all bees and and and even beetles and and flies and ladybugs butterflies mosquitoes flies they're so hopeful so we depend on them just for these very uh obvious pollinator um um services and of course we depend on them for our water for our nutrition for in a proper environment and all that you know and and that is we are not living in a space rocket you know we in a space rocket you have to bring everything from earth you know and try to survive when your shopping mall is closed you know and everything that you buy in your shopping mall actually comes from nature so we have to get a broader awareness of all these factors that I try um to to uh enumerate here you know our attitude towards nature our perception of nature our um perspective on our own and that's what I try to explain in in the first chapters of the book before we we come to tigers and all elephants and all these animals that are that are going and and of course there is a mess message at the end what we can do and how we can hope to rescue tigers and elephants and all the other animals on earth but but and we can only do if we learn much faster and be more you know aware of all these phenomena I totally agree and I it's so it's so true that we not not only is it a complexity thing that's hard for us to to see that because of where we're at in our evolutionary state but also where we're at in life it's just hard to see this bigger picture because you we get focused in on the orangutans and the elephants and and those species but there's a lot smaller and other species that and and even further it wasn't until two two thousand and fifteen that we discovered a whole another branch of the the bacteria tree of life which is all bacteria that lives in our bodies and our gut you know gut health the micro uh uh organisms of uh that provide us with gut health good uh good digestive health and and uh they're saying that's to be the second brain but how closely that uh biome is tied to the earth biome our soil health there's a whole another and every aspect on this entire planet where we could reach into the dirt and have indigenous microorganisms in our soil that are unseen to the naked eye that that we don't even know are there that are also uh going extinct because we just we don't we don't have this microscopic lens that we're carrying around so it's much more complex but I believe that the the thing that I get through your entire book is that if we can connect ourselves with this knowledge that we're part of this uh symbiotic earth that we're part of of this destruction and what what is actually happening then we can also be the ones to avert it to do something about it and to take that action and once we hit a critical mass and that uh cultivated cultural evolution if uh I think we can hit that exponential curve we can get enough mass get enough people to to yeah it's still slow but we can have a cultural evolution that's uh probably going to be right in in the line of where we need to go it's about education it's about disseminating it's about giving people the bigger history the bigger picture and that's really so much why why I love your book and why I wanted to to dissect it a little bit more and to speak about it and how you know have your wonderful words tell us more about it I don't know if you want to um we're running a little short on time so I don't want to take it too long but I would like to maybe have you give us a little bit more wrap up on what you would like us to know about the book and then I want to go in uh to some final questions for my guests and I also want to talk about a little bit about the museums and the fabulous things that you're doing with the museums yeah well um there's one there's one important aspect of of course many of those problems we were talking about are that not you know inventions of our time you know we have problems of destruction of nature and loss of species and like since many years you know we have lost about 500 species of vertebrates over the last 500 years it doesn't look very much our effect is not very large but actually this is a this is a misguiding perspective but you can at the same time for our generation you can develop some hope and and that is of course we are the generation um or you know I'm born in the early 60s 1960s you know and um it is since uh half a century that we have this destructive this most destructive um development influence on on earth but at the same time it is that no generation before us had all this accumulated knowledge about um our evolution if you think what we know what we knew um 50 years ago on evolution um about human evolution about all these fancy uh fossils that have been found since then you know lucy and the undertales and and and all these fascinating discoveries the the discoveries of not only the technology that we have developed but also the awareness of DNA and and how what you can do with DNA and and the Nobel Prize this years went to to women who developed a instrument how you can manipulate DNA discovered only 50 years ago so what I'm saying is we are most destructive generation uh ever um but at the same time we are the the generation that is also um most influential in terms of having the knowledge and having the instruments in terms of everyone has a smartphone and and and all that so it there is hope that using this technology using the awareness and the knowledge that we have about our nature about our relation to nature and and I hope this is something that the book transports that um we we came a long way we have learned a lot we know a lot and it's very frustrating to uh learn about all these facts but at the same time you have to take that as there is a good news behind it and that is there is a way of um taking steps um what what we can do and and and one thing that we can do is uh looking at what is the most destructive effect of of human beings and that is certainly our way of how we produce our food it is agriculture it is that we are destroying rainforests and and um the natural vegetation and then we are not allowing animals to move around that we don't have enough um um conservation uh areas that we don't have enough natural parks and and and all that um on a on a world scale over the last couple of years we have um increased the amount of protected areas um and and partly of course admittedly those are paper parks um but on a in average that is only covering 15 percent of earth in on in the terrestrial uh realm and then it's only 7 percent in the ocean this is much too less it's not enough to protect nature and to um save biodiversity so the awareness of scientists over the last couple of years is that we should focus not only on individuals easiest to try to prevent the tigers go extinct of course we will but we have to focus um political action and you can measure those actions and the effect of those um measures by um looking how much area actually is left for nature and we have to increase that by um we have to double that and there is this um suggestion of E.O. Wilson half earth that by um half or by by the middle of this um uh century in 2050 we should try at least we should try hard to protect 50 percent of earth we should re um um develop and natural areas you know we have we need to have a barrel better um treatment of those areas where we want to grow our crops and everything so we have to rise the 15 percent that are protected now to another 35 and add another 35 percent and there is um there are websites on this global safety net activities you can you know download that you can uh on site you can actually look into your neighborhood very protected areas we try we need to build corridors to connect them so the message behind all that is there is hope there is some activity um that we can actually do 2030 after the next decade there is a chance that we have substantially improved situation of nature we have allocated those areas where nature should have a better protection and we should avoid to you know to to destroy more nature for non sustainable processes you know we should not allow to destroy more nature we should be more aware of the last remnants and fragments of natural environments that we have and and that is the message we need to do something and if you don't um it is not only about some species going extinct tough um it is about us it is a danger that will be um will become more and more influential in our day-to-day activities not only for our generation it'll be influential and and very destructive for the next generation my children and their children so um we need to do something this is what I'm convinced of we need to do something we need to learn about that and we need to take action in the next years in the next decade there's not a century that is left and we should better hurry so that is basically hopefully um I totally agree we absolutely need to start acting and and the science is there the the research the papers the the guidance the the plans that they're there we just really need to start acting and I I love your wisdoms I I have faith in humanity that we will make the curve and uh cultivate a new culture cultural evolution that gets us there uh quicker you uh speak volumes to my heart my my next book is coming out the end of this year's called menu be people on planet food saving solutions so I also speak a lot about how food pays and how we grow food and how we produce food and how we package food and transport has the biggest effect to not only biodiversity but to to draw down to get us and what and really what the gist is of what you're saying it's we need to learn to live within the safe operating spaces of our planetary boundaries yeah professor yohan rock strong stock home resilience center institute and really figure out how we can do it we just need to we need to understand how to do it and and apply some of the things you said I really really appreciate you giving us the it's hard to make it concise in a short amount of time about of the book I want my listeners to know this is now in the fourth print run this end of the evolution now this is in German so if you don't read German you're a little bit out of luck but that brings my my last question about the book do you think we'll ever see something in English or it's just not the right market there's other books available in English or well it is it is a bit of a one-way traffic here we we do see a lot of translations from the US market from Great Britain from Australia all the Anglo-American or Anglophone communities so we are basically rich because we got all your books translated sooner or later if you can't read it in English and there's a lot of books of course in in German it's not the same vice versa it's it's not that many of the German books are translated because of course people think first of all this is a big volume and second people think okay there's a lot of books out there although I'm I'm sure it's it's not only written for a European or German audience but as I said it's it's it's a bit of a difficult I hope one of my listeners contacts you and says I want to help translate it get it get it into English or a new publisher contacts you to say that because I would appreciate it would make a great read in English and that's definitely a needed book and I read a lot of books like that and there's very few in English that I feel that are such a nice compendium or compilation of what you've presented so I really thank you about that thank you we've touched enough on the book but now now I want to really get into some some other amazing things if you can give us a little insight on the wonderful things you're doing with the museums and it's not just one it's a couple and also we both live in Humbert we're both in Humbert so if you could tell me a little bit what what you are doing there and give us some insight on that because it's highly interesting okay well thanks for for giving the a typical museum man the opportunity to explain that natural history museums are far away from being the most boring dusty places and that is the image that many natural history museums or these historical collections had for a long time and I was of course raised and educated and studied in in Humbert but then I served as curator as and as director for research in the reorganized Berlin Natural History Museum for 20 years so that's basically where I learned the business that there is this research department and of course you have these huge collections you know in Berlin it's we talk about 30 million specimen you know just to put that into perspective the world's largest natural history museum is in London we talk about nearly 70 million specimens so Berlin is only half of that and Humbert has a collection that is about 10 million specimens but the problem in Humbert was it was at that time the second largest second only to Berlin when it was destroyed in late July 1943 by the so-called Operation Gomorrah that destroyed parts of large part of the inner city of Humbert and the museum was destroyed but fortunate enough the some clever curators you know although it was not very seen at that time with some clever curators organized to transport the collection into outside depots and that way the historical collection was rescued it's a large 10 million specimen collection historical collection and then it was it had an odyssey through Humbert you know and over the last 70 years after the second world war people in Humbert completely forgot about this collection you know it was put it was given to the university and university at that time in the 60s and 70s were growing to mass universities in Germany and many of the scientists were then used or misused as university teachers and neglecting their curatorial duties in the collection so and that that went downhill in Humbert and people forgot about it and there was no activities although it was one of the largest natural history collections in Germany in Europe and by the way which is typical for a city like Humbert close to the sea we do have in Humbert at the Zoological Museum the largest in Germany the largest collection for fishes larger than Berlin or or Frankfurt you know and and we do have a couple of other groups like polykeets these are worms from from the sea from the oceans and some other groups that are you know world-renown and larger because of curators having collected and and worked here and did their scientific work so we do have a rich but long neglected zoological collection and when I started here I was you know I was offered a position as professor for biodiversity of animals in 2014 and when I started I developed a concept in Germany it is called evolutionium it's basically translates maybe not very nicely into English like evolutionum which is the combination of evolution and museum and what we want to do is you want to rebuild the natural history museum in Hamburg and that is only possible if you get if you raise funding and it's not only about raising funding for like 120 130 million euro for the building for the new museum it's basically that we need to prove that we are a reasonable research institution much more than reasonable we need to be excellent and then what we have proven there was an evaluation by some councils in Germany and now we are developing this collection into a research institute we call that the Lebnitz Institute for the analysis of biodiversity dynamics so related to what we just talked about in the book and it's a research subject where we don't want to concentrate on the discovery of biodiversity which is important too but you want to focus on the change of biodiversity not only in evolutionary times but also in anthropogenic times which is basically in the last 100 years or maybe the last 200 years or maybe the last 10 or 20 years so and this is our research agenda and it is financed now by a combination of federal state money and local money and so we hope to pay the bills for our scientists and at the same time now we have gotten the interest of the politicians here in Hamburg and we are right now looking for a central location for building this evolution as a new innovative museum and what we want to do is we want to make human beings focus of the naturalist museum we don't want to just you know display you know taxidermy of polar bears you know of course we can do that we don't want to show just dinosaurs which we also can do and we will but we want to focus on the role of human beings as a evolutionary factor not only transforming the geosphere but also influencing largely influencing the biosphere so all the subjects we were just talking about and in connection with my book should become focus on the exhibit of this research museum and in Germany we call those an integrative research museum which has two sorry which have three pillars it's basically research it's collection and it's exhibition so everything that today is the transfer of knowledge so we are thinking or we are developing a concept extending from just exhibitions to raise interest in a wider audience for these subjects that we just talked about. I love it boy that is so beautiful thank you for sharing that insight and I hope some of our listeners and somebody just comes out and you get the funding you find the place and then we support it and once it's there definitely excited I need to get in touch with you once we get out of this next lockdown to come and get my book signed anyway I wanted to do that a couple times now and and haven't been able to I have three last takeaways for my listeners before we say goodbye I want to give them a sustainable takeaway something that they can use or apply in their life and it's kind of a selfish thing because you've given us a lot of wisdom already but I want them to you know you to depart something to them as well and so if there was one message that you could depart to my listeners that is a sustainable takeaway that has the power to change their life what would it be basically your message? Well I think independent of what you're doing where you're living my message would be to think more consciously about your connection to nature like if you live in the city think about what kind of nature you have in your surrounding that you use and some people might feel that this is a poor life in terms of connection to nature and maybe their only connection is that for three weeks in the summer they go somewhere where there's a you know beach around them but you can start maybe in your garden so if you're lucky enough to have a green spot around where you live think about how you treat this maybe there's more stone than trees and things like that so my message is think how you are connected to nature how do you get your food? What are you eating? Are you eating beef? Are you eating meat? What kind? How often? Because that is all related to rainforest we all know about that it's related to how we grow food and I think it is not waiting for politicians to change the rules it is about us being aware that we should help to change the rules and that is part of how often we use planes in the future what we eat where we go how we treat nature in our gardens how we eliminate nature for another area where we want to build housing or a araban or whatever is built and we should be much more conscious and I'm not saying we should and we will be able to avoid everything I'm not saying here in in a skeptic mission and that we should go back to nature no way it is about being more conscious about that thank you very much what should young biologists or evolutionary biologists or innovators looking to get in the museum industry in your field or what your career has done over all these years even an author be thinking about if they are looking for ways to make a real impact I would try to convince them that the reductionistic approach to nature and to sequence everything to squeeze it into an eppendorf tube and to look through a by it through a microscope and to use fancy new techniques will not teach us anything about organisms and the function of organisms and they should not make the mistake that those areas that are most successful by nature and science and impacts and getting most funding right now is the best of all perspective on nature so we are very single-minded and education even in biology departments these days is very single-minded very narrow-minded and we should try and teach them to say free yourself from this restrictive perspective on your own discipline it's misguiding and it's not really helping us in any way no matter how successful you are thank you and then what have you experienced or learned in your professional journey so far that you would have loved to know from the start um I was I was very much neglecting the humanities I was very much neglecting history of science theory of uh of science I was very much focused on the particulars of my own discipline I'm I was focused on the specific group I'm doing research on I was focused on evolution as a scientific discipline and I was missing the overall picture the theory behind it the history behind it so I I think it would have been much easier to get to know all these relation between the disciplines and the history and the theory much earlier in my career and and that should have accompanied me way earlier and not I learned it very late in my career and I would hope that it will be better for the next generation to have this much more advanced picture earlier in their career not to be educated and just focusing narrow-mindedly so yeah tough if you learn if you if it takes so long to learn about all that well I'm going to definitely put all your links into the show notes and descriptions so people can go out there look at the book look at your slides look at things that you've posted online things about the museum so that they can follow you um I I believe you've given us the best words of wisdom ever so I really appreciate your time and um for talking to us giving us the in-depth about the book I really thank you for your time so much Mattias and I wish you and your family a wonderful rest of the evening and I hope we see each other very very soon thank you thank you very much it was a pleasure and and thanks for being able to to talk to you and your to listeners and audience thank you thank you