You're listening to the reversing climate change, podcast by the team at Nori. The carbon removal Marketplace. This is a show about the innovators and entrepreneurs developing solutions to climate change. Hello and welcome to the reversing climate change podcast. I'm Ross Kenyan I'm the creative editor at Nori's carbon removal Marketplace. Today I have with me Melanie Challenger writer of environmental history podcaster at the new show.
Enter the psycho sphere and Author of her latest book, how to be animal, a new history of what it means to be human. Welcome to the show. Melanie, thank you for inviting me. Yeah, I'm happy to have you. I'm going to start with maybe the biggest question of all, which is what does it mean to be human, in your opinion? And if this takes the entire hour that's okay, yeah you should probably takes a bit longer than an hour in the book.
What I'm answering there is actually a critique of the idea that being human is Thing separate or even separable from being animal. So the reason it has that subtitle is really because not in all. Absolutely, all societies. And obviously this this just does change culturally and it does change historically as well. That said there's remarkable commonality in certain ways in which you in which humans have thought about what it is to be human.
And one of those is that we have tended to live by a sort of substance dualism. So we've Ross all societies whether hunter-gatherer Societies or sort of large kind of monotheistic societies. We've had this idea that there's this animal better versus fleshies Mortal part of us and then there's this spiritual part of us.
Now, it could be the sole. It could be the kind of living Essence. That let's say, if you were a Navajo, Indian you might think was the living Essence that did all creatures have, and that it's connected together as the kind of advice. Source that is in all living
things, whatever your culture. We've tended, to have this idea of this animal mortal part of us in this spiritual part of us now, in modern civilizations and particularly in monotheistic civilizations, we've taken those that sort of duelist idea that there's this sort of immortal, spiritual part of us in this fleshy, bit that dies. And we've started, not only to play sort, Value judgments on it. So we've said, it's this actually assist spiritual bit.
That makes us humans this spiritual bit that matters that has value. And increasingly we said, well, we're the only beings with its two. It's become a sort of human exceptionalist narrative as well, and that takes us right the way through. Now originally, that was a theological idea and partly a natural history idea. Was partly a question of what is, what is the substance of us? What are we made of and what matters about us but it was always knitted in Theology.
So, it was always the idea that this is how we've been created, that this is the human soul versus in the animal part of life. Then you arrive at the Enlightenment and you get a slight as sort of twist on this, which is the idea that actually, what really makes humans stick out within the biotic Community as our kind of cognition. Our ability to reason to rationalized have free will and this is the mind as this kind of this Soul like part of us.
And really that's carried right through to the present day. So when I'm talking about what it is to be human, I'm really trying to push up against that a little bit and say well we have no evidence for that kind of substance dualism and where it should be true. The older idea that it's probably in all living things would certainly be more likely parsimonious wise to be the true to be true.
So the human exceptionalist narrative looks very problematic at this point in time in our learning and in Tree. But I argue that this idea that we've had for a long time now that the animal bit of us doesn't matter or it could be separated out and that there's this human, either cognitive or spiritual part that somehow separate is likely to be true, doesn't serve as well. And that, actually, to answer your question, being human is being animal.
So that's my point. That would be, that would be my answer. That would be what I would say. Surprisingly graceful given, how enormous that question is. Well done. Okay, I'm catching definite Echoes of the episode we did with Paul Kings North. In fact, I found out about your book because Paul Kings North blurbed it and then posted about it on social media and we hardly exhausted. This topic.
We spent most of the time talking about mind-body dualism and what he sees as the problems that have led to us feeling disconnected and in some cases, trying to transcend the body or physical reality entirely and becoming pure idea or spirit. Being uploaded into machines, Souls into the cloud, perhaps you could phrase it, but one of the things I noticed that was interesting about your approach that was quite different.
Is that what did you know, that Paul converted to Eastern Orthodoxy and we followed that whole Saga now. So pull I've known for a long time. He so I was born in Oxford and went to Oxford University and poor went to Oxford and is innocent in a small room is kind of pulls older than me but we're in a kindness. A group of people who sort of loosely a floated around the Oxford area, George Formby. Oh, Casper Henderson who writing these sorts of areas and, and kind of or know one another and
value. One another but have very different approaches. Put us at a pool in. I've corresponded for a long time and we've sort of collaborated on one or two things. I'm really fond of Paul that we don't necessarily agree on everything, but we but, you know, that doesn't matter to, you know, you shouldn't have to intellectually it Delight day.
I haven't followed this part since he's Be wary of telling me about this, but he did tell me that he was really when he went to Ireland, because I knew, you know, I've seen him when he was in Cumbria as well and he shifted over to Ireland, with his family, his young family, and in his correspondence, since he's been engaging more and more initially with a sort of ancient vestiges of Christianity that we're in.
And this particular Chapel, I think that he'd found and I ate they've been these little tidbits that means been dropping into two Two messages to me but virtually no, and I haven't teased it out, possibly out of fear, I don't know what, he might tell me where he's got up to, so you tell me what's Paul's. Awesome, Paul's head. Now, what he converted to no, no, that's that's fine. I'm going to make this episode about Paul either. If you're listening, Paul, sorry, we're talking about
Melanie today. We love you pool anyway. I thought this Divergence was really interesting because he's open. Now he talked about it on the show, becoming orthodox. He's been writing and thinking about this lately in public, so I don't think it's a surprise to anyone who follows his work, but he's really seized upon this idea. And the Apostles Creed of the resurrection of the body and sort of Catholicism and
Orthodoxy of being away. That Christianity doesn't have to have this mind-body dualism, that involves a disembodied, Soul floating up to heaven. It could actually be a kingdom of God on Earth kind of thing. It could actually be located within the body. There doesn't have to be the
split. Within Christian thought, but it sounds like, maybe you see it differently and you think because you single out, Thomas Aquinas and angelology, kind of what a horrible word that is the sounds of that don't even fit in my mouth. I know, sweetie, but do you think that's there's something to that or do you think that's been a wrong turn? Perhaps, Do I think, do I think it's possible or what are you asking me?
I mean, I look, it's really difficult when we cherry pick from history and this is because I do big history stuff. That's something. I'm acutely aware of because I also work, you know, within philosophy and within
philosophy. There's a great resistance to to those kind of big panoramic, sort of because she views and that you have to be careful and and indeed historians are always, you know, because they specialize in a particular area always and In Christian thought, broadly, it's so unbelievably diverse and once you start going into the detail of different ways in which so the theological arguments, if we were to look even and aquinas's time that were happening about what might
be possible, how to interpret text, how to interpret, you know, theologically either, what they're finding in scripture or kind of ideas, theological ideas that are going to matter to Christians. It's so complicated. That that There's lots and lots of diversity of ideas, but I would say, if I was going to be generalizing about it, you could pick out a couple of things from that sort of time. Period. First is the Angel ologist
thing. So this is the idea that you know, that was debated a lot, you know, how if the Angels aren't sort of beings in a physical sense. How are they even recognizing, say, married to be able to come and give a met deliver a message? So these are the sorts of conundrums that feel that, you know, feel Your fingers were having to think about, like, what substance can also recognize a living person know that that is different to another big number.
You know, biologically. That's a really reasonable question to ask, isn't it? Like recognizing who's kin who's knocking? Who's pray? Whose Predator is. Crucial to all biological systems but it led on to ideas about whether we really even needed bodies to recognize things, whether you could have a kind Kind of cognition that was ethereal in that sort of way.
And those Echoes from those only debates and possible solutions to these debates weave their way into into philosophy and into intellectual history and you know we see them returning another one in terms of Resurrection that is that is interesting with the idea that you could take the troubling idea that you don't Saints, who might have been cut up into different parts or you know Someone might have a saint, so active artifact in one church and might be another one.
How were these parts of the body? Going to Rico here at the resurrection? And this was a real concern, but that led on. When we look at the early, scientific Endeavors to understand the workings of movement and body and anatomy and so forth. To the experiments, only kind of 150 years ago to work out if a soul could extend.
Into another room and so they would sort of cut off a frogs head and, and you know, apply some, you know, some fun with stimulation and see if it still moved and see if it if you took the head into a whole other room but it's still moving. How far could you keep going? How far would the soul extend? You see this weird interplay of theological and scientific and philosophical ideas that kind of bubble along through the centuries? We have a very incomplete to
answer your question. No, very incomplete idea. Out what we are but I'm very cautious when looking at intellectual history about extrapolating from theological. Dial a into you know scientific ideas or assumptions. I'm certainly. You know we they can really mislead us. I think sometimes it's not an area that I tend to go down. It must have met enough mean, Paul locates your question at all Ross? Sorry. Yes it does.
And we're going to follow it up and I think what I I want to do is close the door to some of the way that Paul sees it because you approach it from a different angle. I just want to address those and then we'll close it off and then we'll take it for given that Christianity is by necessity a dualistic philosophy that has separated mind and body or soul and body. Because he locates it with in gnosticism not Harris that heresy? Or is it the heresy depending on who you are really, but of
everything matter is bad. Everything spirit is good. The material world was created by a demon essentially and God is as pure spirit. And this is an early Trend in Christian thought that was, you know, sort of stamped out and then revived with people like Dan Brown and The DaVinci Code and stuff like that. So let's ignore fights like
that. And just say that, yeah, Christianity. And most religions have an idea of a soul and a body and their distinct and your work, Blends philosophical insights, but also science science has tried to locate whether there actually. Is a soul. And you have this example, you just gave of the Frog, which it
sounds silly, right? But there's not a lot of work on this and I know I have friends who work in philosophy of mind, and I don't know that most of them by the idea that there is a soul separate from the body, which is that, is that probably true, you know, it's really serve as a great neuroscientist called Alan. Yes, enough. Who's at Harvard and he's done a huge amount to try and Miss bust on this sort of really for him near.
Essentialism, which is the idea that we only need to look to the brain if you like to answer questions, if mind and Consciousness, he says, well, no, it's very wet, it's very messy. You know Consciousness? Yes. It's brain-based it draws on the whole of the body and you can't ignore the body when we think about mind and Consciousness. And and we preferred kind of these simple algorithmic. Kind of electrical national. He says, merits kind of fits more messily biological than
we've liked. To admit but I think that if you ask most scientists even you know deeply religious scientists who deal in cognition, they would say that they're not drawing on any idea of the Soul or any that they're not Duelists, you know, that they're very much looking for material explanations for Consciousness and mind and so forth.
But if you were to talk to them about how they feel about, let's say, A doing Consciousness experiments on macaques, why that might be doing a distressing experiment, you know, even with the best care in the world, you know, it is it is a distressing situation that an animal might be in is permissible, but it's not permissible with humans.
They would say well because you know, we have a kind of cognition, they don't have and it morally matters more and you know, if you were to talk to them about what matters about us, they would probably talk in A sort of human cognitive exception of this terms because that's kind of how our world is
structured now. So the funny thing is, is that you can accidentally have quite sort of duelist ideas that are that if you get really questioned about them, actually very difficult to fully justify or even in entirely explain. Why you think that that creep in and often creeping to Scientific
papers and scientific ideas? These little sort of value assumptions are actually suspicious, To an assist even in neuroscientist of cognitive scientist, who might be really DieHard, materialists about mental phenomena. So, and I think some of that is really just bias on our part and it completely understandable by us, you know, we have a cognitive Niche is a species, there's no question about that.
And consequently, we put a huge premium on it and it deeply deeply matters to us. But the kind of neat sort of ideas about being human and and what our mental experiences that often sort of admit a certain dualism, you know, allow it through the door. Go unexamined. So I think that's where we can still see it in the present day. For instance, it's coded into English, right? I have a body versus I am a body. Yes, if you said, I am a body. Someone be like cool.
Your like a new age freak, huh? Yeah, it's so true. It's so true. Yeah, I've always found it. Incredible. That the Vanity is the way in which our subjective Consciousness works, is that it
does? I mean, it genuinely does feel people like Sam Harris. If really tried to take this on and show people that it's, it's a sort of Illusion, this idea that we are some sort of floating thing, kind of trapped inside, you know, in Christian terms or Earthen vessel, you know, that that we are somehow being carried around by our
body. It does kind of feel like that and all Also, if you ask people to think about what a life would feel like, you know, the affective states of experience without subjectivity, it's really difficult for people. It's much easier to imagine as John Locke.
Did, you know, the kind of it? I have a thought experiment in, which you can imagine thinking in a different body, then you can imagine being feeling in a body without subjectivity and so, that's so Wrong that such a strong sensation for human
beings. Even if it's, you know, to a certain extent illusory not to say that subjectivity is still is in illusion but just that idea that there is this kind of Duality is an illusion rather than a reality of our of our condition and of How It's actually biologically, you know, and hormonal and chemically emerging in us, you know, I think that, you know, you can understand why for millennia Here we have have tended to think in that kind of way
because that is what our experience feels like. That's what I've experienced presents us. You know, it's really really difficult to think in it differently about it. I think you keep using this term human exceptionalism or things that can do that. What does that mean? Yeah, you know is that it's it's funny isn't it these little kind of phrases that we have I guess probably the phrase that people would be more familiar with nowadays is anthropocentrism, you know, which is akin to human
exceptional. Exceptional ISM. But put simply is the idea that there are unique parts of human beings that have unique Ali-A and from which are valued arrives. So it is a philosophical idea. If you like, because it is a value assumption about often biological traits, but it hasn't historically always had to be biological trait. So, the soul, you know, the idea of the unique Immortal, human soul would be an example of human exception, a list thinking.
But equally well, the idea that human beings the modern-day idea they'd only human cognition has can have A full moral status legally or philosophically as also a human exceptionalist idea, but have obviously a very different character, you know, it's related to anthropocentrism because I suppose
anthropocentrism. So the idea that you know human beings not just at the center of the world but are ultimately what matters and where meaning resides, you know, and therefore we are justified in doing what we want or be taking priority in certain dilemmas or situations or where that what As you know, follows from a human exceptionalist idea. So I guess you know that that's a relationship between the two.
Okay, that makes sense. I'm going to pose an objection that you both address in the book /. I'm sure it's the most common thing that someone says to you which is that appealing to our natural rather than exceptional, qualities is a risk reading. Your book actually reminded me of. Did you ever read Timothy Snyder's? Black Earth? Have you read? W, I haven't done. I yeah, it's on the list to read. I haven't read it. So you'll have to fill me in.
I thought it was really fascinating but he describes Hitler as a Zoological Anarchist and and the basic sense that it's the strong should rule the weak should submit. Almost imagine it. As kind of like old-school. The pejorative version of how we view pre-christian or Pagan society as being a dominated by Harem culture alpha males that Rising Above This sort of, I don't know our Base level nature, which doesn't always seem so good. It seems almost a moral and self-interested.
How do we become an animal without reverting to some of those behaviors that we think are are actually really bad and we should rise above. So this is so key. And to be honest, I mean this is the stuff that I think very very deeply about and you know, I see you're right writing for a mainstream audience and it frustrates. To me that, you know, you're not allowed to to really go deeply
into that. You mean, this is not just the lifetime of one person's thought, but this is, this is the sort of thing that whole societies of thinkers, well, for thousands of years, you know, these are really, really deep, really, really complicated and gnarly questions about the meaning of life. And how good emerges in a seemingly amoral biological system. Let's sew on Privia like I can't even sew anything.
I'm about to say is going to be ridiculously you know, baguette version of this and not in my thinking is incomplete on this, but I eat keeps me up, I think about it all the time but to answer where I'm at now with that. So one of the things in the book that is is not my idea of philosophically. It's an old idea is that this is the kind of naturalistic fallacy. So the idea that what we ought to do, you know, morally
speaking. So this is more our philosophy cannot follow from how we find things in nature, and that's primarily, you know, that, as a highfalutin way of pointing out the obvious, which Darwin was very acutely aware of, you know, he understood that biological continuity was not just a threat to the idea of a creative intelligent designed universe that he grew up in but it A threat to our moral ideas that if we have real gradual continuity with everything
around us then our moral systems must have emerged from the same world in which lots of very horrible things happen like parasites, like Predators like aggressive attacks. You know, to get your own way of one individual over another rape. All of these sorts of things that take place in. Nature that are the business of how individual organisms, try to retain energy and survive. It looks pretty, you know, its nature red in tooth and Claw.
And you can understand that why we wanted to separate out our idea of, of, of how our lives matter. And our moral systems from that chaos, and the fear is that, if you start to tread back into our to associate or align ourselves too much with that, The emerald nature of the world from which we came is that it threatens or undermines?
I suppose what we might call not at not just Society not just you know the ties that hold us together but the whole moral project of human life, my response to that is you have to well I suppose my inclination as an individual and as I think is that you cannot build on a false Ian. So it's no good Alta mately will come of drawing a Line in the Sand where no line exists. You have to fit. Look at your business. You have to face the reality.
And then if you want good to emerge from that, you have to understand the conditions in which good emerges. So, for me, there's a, there's an example from the Holocaust that and I've done a lot of work, historically with conflict, in my earlier, life and works a lot with people. She who are survivors of and indeed soldiers in various different conflicts around the world and through time.
And so I'm kind of across that sort of literature and also just, you know, the experiences and there's an anecdote of a woman who is in one of the camps and is Staffing. And there is a man beside her who is dying and is, you know, hours from death and she could take his food. At this stage, but she chooses not to.
And she chooses not to because she understands that it's the choice that makes, you know, you're going back to your first question that that makes her human even though I think in anybody's book, we would in. We were morally judge her, but she's been so dehumanized by her situation.
And by, what's been done touched had all power taken away from her, but she still has the power of that kind of impulse control and, and that choice and also to make that Choice according to her beliefs about who she's going to be. So in terms of building her sense of self and who she is and that to me is a reminder of several things, it's a reminder that it's not, it wasn't her spirituality that pushed her into that conclusion. It was her recognition that
fundamentally. What is remarkable about human beings is the behavioral choice that we have that derives from Our moral sensibility. Now, I think that we have to understand that is having emerged naturally, that is in, is not just some abstract, it's actually about Behavior. She acts in a different way than she might have acted, just
purely, you know, to survive. She acts because of how she wants to remember herself because of who, how she wants to build her identity and who Wants to be that is a very now we don't know because we have nowhere fish surviving humans or you know, members of the homo lineage. It's possible that neanderthals and other human species might have shown this if they were still around, but we're an outlier. But that will have emerged naturally that's a natural part. So we can.
And it's that if we understand morality naturally, if we allow it to be something that, that is Embodied and natural and animal that specific, you know, to us, that's our part of our adaptive Niche. It's how we come to be better people with one another and a lot of that is very cognitive. If we accept that, then it allows us to for me, it allows us to align ourselves with our animal reality. We don't need to abstract it. We don't need to separate it out. We don't need to tell ourselves.
Stories, even though it is exceptional. We don't have to put the value on it in that kind of way. We just recognize that that is how we flourish our moral capacity. And how we remember and understand ourselves as good beings is is are niches. It's our behavioral Niche, it's how we flourish. And so that allows is never going to be a neat fit because biology is not going to allow that but it's a pretty good fit. It's a pretty if you pay attention.
To it. I think it allows you to be a good animal if you like and prefer us to somehow marry those two things together. That's a comprehensive answer to a difficult question. And the Very way in which I asked it, I think smuggled in some Concepts that needed unpacking to. I, it's funny that upon reflection. I had smuggled in the idea that the natural biological state of human life. Is one of endless war against all Melville has a line of Moby. About the universal cannibalism of the sea.
And that's the world that I had imagined, but actually, there's examples from nature of mutuality and commensalism that you've single out in your book. But there's also just countless idea that I smuggled in is a liberal anthropology or an anthropology of liberalism of a rational independent individual. But in a more natural, or are quoted primitive State, there really wasn't an individual. That's a sort of modern creation of the last couple hundred years right before that.
That we saw ourselves primarily as members of packs of groups of people that were working together in a sort of mutual mutualism being the operative. Maybe philosophy here that was happening. Is that it's an appropriate reaction. Yeah, I don't know. Again, I've mold this one. I don't we, you know, we can't be sure of what the mental experience of people.
Hundreds, tens of thousands of years ago was like, my suspicion is that once you have the Kind of cognition that we have that will have emerged, which is not to say we all have the same
cognition. I mean, I get a bit weary of that, you know, I assume I baked variation into all of my thinking so I'm assuming that, you know, when you're talking about we or that we have this and we have that that, you know, there is obviously variation within that assumed but you know, nonetheless human beings are species. Certainly has and likely other members of Other hominids have had a particular kind of cognitive capacities and behavioral capacities. That are very general, very
adaptable and involved. Subjectivity my suspicion is it. As soon as you have that regardless of what cultural, you know, whether you've got a collectivist culture at work, or whether you've got a more individualistic culture at work, you're still always going to have individual thought. Chain and Rebellion at work, you are still going to have moments when we're not a super organism. And to me, we really don't look like a superorganism not cognitively.
We might behave like that because we are capable of extraordinary acts of collaboration and cooperation, you know, into the millions of us, which is amazing. And does almost looks super organism it, but I don't think so. I think edit cognitive level. We're off. An individually rebelling all the time against, you know, and it's slightly stressful to be in social groups. It's slightly stressful to have to suppress, emotions, and feelings, and needs, and
desires, and impulses. It's not some happy clappy togetherness, no matter what group you're in. And so, yeah. And, you know, people in small hunter-gatherer, communities have affairs, there are sexual tensions and flare-ups, and all sorts of stuff that goes on. So, And I suspect that we'll have been there always from the moment that you have any kind of really strong subjectivity at work. So yeah.
I don't know about that. I know I think it's a little bit Messier through history and now I would be my instinct. Wow, I respect that answer so much because it's certainly way easier to sell a book if you probably just have a straightforward opinion on. Yes the laps Aryan moment was mind-body dualism and a liberal. Anthropology of the says, you know, is self-actualize independent individual, you're saying? Yeah, I don't know.
Actually the old ways of doing things we're not really that simple either in there were tensions. Yeah. You know what to eat in some ways? I see ice to only talking to my mom about this today because I make my work through, you know, through writing and, you know, obviously there's a pressure on you to produce content that will sell in. Which numbers and simplified messages, of course, sell more
easily. As do, you know subjects that allow people to sort of, either get feel that they've got kind of handle on something very quickly or that are kind of just is, you know, appealing to a large numbers and wish I could, you know, financially, I guess so wish and probably in terms of status and reputation. I wish I could be that kind of person, but I'm afraid. I am absolutely.
And Hunter of the truth. Seeker treasure seeker of what is actually going on. I mean, and I, right to engage with other people, other thinking, people of any kind of any, you know, just any inquiring mind and because I write also, because it's happy is where, I think.
I remember the poet Ted Hughes talked about his poems, as subsidiary brains, they were these little external brain Extinction. He would do his thinking it's very much that way for me and I see them as you know then connecting so that we could become a kind of Super Brain with readers and we're all thinking through these things together for me you haven't thought hard enough.
If you are offering some your great story that's like absolutely straightforward or that, you know, it and it's seen as a it seen as a failing. That's such a sorrow to me that we think that someone not providing all the answers Azure. Not providing the one Theory or whatever is seen as a failing for me. That's that's the beginnings of thought, you know, you should be asking questions and then you should be working out how you can ask better questions and
leave behind the questions. You know, were too simple were too kind of, you know. But that is sadly, it's not it's not the way commercial publishing works but you know, it is the beginnings of thought, I think. You can't see me right now but I'm grinning like a fool. I I love that and that's what we try to do on the podcast to.
I don't know that I have a set of finite answers that I could discreetly present to someone to solve all the world's problems your book absolutely reads like this to one of the blurbs on described it as lyrical. And I absolutely think that's the case. It has this beautiful flowing kind of expansive question, presenting and engagement but it doesn't strike. A strictly linear in its presentation. Either, it almost feels like there is a strong poetic kind of quality to it.
And it did make me. Think am I reading too much into that? Or is that how you see your work as well? Well, I'm not, I'm never doing anything by Design in that kind of way in the end.
So, my first book that I wrote called on extinction, which was really a exploration of the young person, General Zhang when I wrote it and it was A Young Person's sort of squaring up to really how we derived at this point where we have such a. And when I say we, I just mean, you know, broadly human civilization, you know, is endangering. The other systems, is how we've ended up with climate change, biodiversity crisis? What were their stages that took
us there? And I looked very much from a biocultural and Industrial Extinction. So so I used Extinction Ring poetically. You know, this wasn't some sort of category ever. I was actually just using trying to use that idea that concept of Extinction. Very broadly to look at the cultural industrial and intellectual and historical forces that had thought of that were in the background to this point that we'd arrived at and really is in many ways.
It's a story of the Industrial Revolution, what led up to that and the consequence This is that flowed from it in some ways, but it's also the kind of dominant industrial societies came to think about what it is to be human, and what was, what was right and wrong and what was justified, and what we should be pursuing and investing in in our societies, which, you know, obviously still resonates now. But I did it in this way, where that was actually much more poetic than in this.
I trained in literature and language, English, literature, and language and I regionally That I would just work in the creative arts. I actually still work in the creative arts. Now more In classical music as a librettist. And I started you know publishing poetry when I was young and I still have a big part of me that works with artists and in the creative arts
and I totally get that world. But right from the get-go I was always asking I guess historical and natural history and philosophical questions that I couldn't simply answer artistically. That I actually needed to shift into nonfiction Ian and research to be able to answer satisfactorily for me. Maybe that's my weakness because as an artist a bit that was where I needed to go.
So I've had those two things running in tandem, but because they touched more closely at the time when I wrote that book, there's a lot of deliberate. If people pay attention, there's a lot of recurring imagery which is you know very metaphorical and kind of echoing things that I tried to create really is a way in the way that a poem does to I need to provide stocking points for people to think because I want my book to provide little their lighting, little churches.
If you like little chapels that I want people to come in to, not to be told but to think and to question the world around them. And so I was trying to do that quite deliberately in that first book but I don't know how successful that was truth. Be told in the second book in, how to be animal, I probably just have that kind of Ethically in me to a certain extent that, you know, my use of language comes from that.
So it does have probably automatically have a little bit of a poetical and kind of a for a stick aspects to it. That that is just my style. Now that I probably just you know do without thinking but it's much more straightforward in a lot of ways. And the reason it's not linear is ultimately because I'm trying to float above these very big
topics and very big. Time spans to give people a sense of how all of these things are coming together to affect us. So it's a bit birds like, I guess in that way and that's how you getting this these spans of time and Topic in any given chapter.
So but I think the style is probably maybe slightly more, you know I guess authorial in some ways than my first book was and certainly there's much less sort of personal essay and narrative in it partly because I I feel that the ideas are a bit, you know, I'm genuinely concerned. So, so I felt like I had to be pretty straight with people as
much as possible. Well, I think it's a necessary approach for writing a big history in the capitalized, like, will Durant kind of of way where if you are going to write something about thousands of years or more of human history, there's a real risk that you just find the one angle, the one acts you want, Ryan throughout I just read a history of food like
that. You actually have a number of moments where you say, you'll present a case that someone has made and say you don't have to buy that or you don't have to you may or may not accept that or something like that. Yeah that is not cause I love it. So I don't mean to harp on it too much but I wish more people could think and write like that because I connect with that strong, like is what I try to do here. Not that Pat myself on the back too much, but nobody is really
important for. It is something that greatly concerns me about. The messaging around sustainability around, climate change around, invite all environmental issues, you know, I'm obviously quite immersed because I do work in ethics as well. So, I do have a practical end to my working life. Very engaged in deliberative democracy in bioethics, you know, and I'm active in those areas and increasingly at the
moment. Active in representation of non-human animals, for instance, procedural, Justice, Those sorts of things. So there is a practical element to my life as well beyond just writing and so I hear you know consequently I'm kind of really embedded in the environmentalist movement and I have a lots of colleagues who who are engaged in all of this and always my worry and it's the same with
with working in bioethics. So for any listeners who don't necessarily know what bioethics is bioethics is basically he's not he's basically working out the ethics that have emerged from the life. Sciences. So it's keyed, for instance, to a pandemic, you know, it's a lot about what happens, you know, what, should happen in medical context. For instance, how we should do a genome editing crispr, all of those sorts of things are all in, you know, in the kind of purview of bioethics.
But even in that sort of field, you're very rarely allowed to go back to First principles and to work your arguments out again or to have hesitation because it directly relates to policy. Setting policy makers or decision maker Is one a simple
clean answer? They want to be told what to do, and why and then they'll, you know, Churn it through their political, kind of, you know, all their stakeholders, or whatever that, you know, their real world scenario, and it will come out in some slightly mangled version. But but ultimately, that's what's going on in the decision-making process. But my inclination of course is to stop and to think if we are trying to save a gorilla, we need to understand why a gorilla matters.
We need to understand how we need to understand what they might be communicating to us. We need to think about our history of ideas. We need to think about first principles and reasoning again. These are slow processes of thought and deliberation that are often very messy and often very difficult to read them out. And people are kind of allergic to that. But for me, you know, when it comes to climate change, let's say you need to understand why Things matter in any given situation.
And then you need to understand how to think critically about it that sort of which is very much within the humanities, broadly that sort of thinking has been pushed to the sidelines. And I don't think it can stay in the sidelines for much longer because ultimately we can't just rely on the science. The science tells us the best version available at the time with the best data you have available at the time of what is
happening. Being out and what might happen in the future but to understand what we should do and how we should evaluate that data, that is the work of philosophy and we can't continue to think it's just the whims of opinion or it is just the political kind of, or cultural point of view of any moment in time or any particular, you know, party that happens to be in power. These are, you know, difficult areas of reasoning that require time and deliberation, and I
feel weak. Absolutely need to do those and that requires accepting uncertainty and admitting doubt. And that's what, you know, a lot of people just do not want to do, but, you know, yeah, I'm all about that. I think that's the important work we need to do but it is, you know, it's, it's difficult. I have a question for you Melanie. And it's a strange one to ask without it sounding like an implied threat, right? Oh God. Yeah, amazing preface. I know. Do you want to die?
How do I say in a tone? That doesn't communicate it like a threat. Do you wish do you wish to die? That's an interesting question. Nobody's lost me that? Well dumb for asking that. Yeah, I mean we were just talking about climate change and you know, why does it matter to us? Why does Extinction matter to us? Why do we not want to be animals? All of these things that I'm
talking about? You know, death is in the Ground to all of them and the value of Life, what a good life is in, what, how long a life should be, how, you know, how valuable an individual or, you know, a set of lives are all of these sorts of things. Again, these are things people push from you and don't want to talk about. And think about, I had to really square up to the to mortality a
lot in this book. One of the reasons for that is because of course, the appeal of the idea that We're not really animals or that we are somehow this have this exceptional sort of separate part of us. It is buffers us from our fear of death. One of the reasons we don't like to look at death very much in with all sorts of ways, that human beings hide death. We hide the death that we create through predation because we continue. We've always been predators and we continue to be Predators.
We just do that in organized way. Now in farms and factory farms and so forth. But that's, you know, we're still obviously, that's what it is in essence biologically, you know, not absolutely conceptually but that is what it is. And we hide all of that away from ourselves and we hide our own deaths away from ourselves and we, you know, we really got to a stage that's different across different cultures. Of course, but all human beings do battle with the idea that we
are mortal. And the idea that human Deities will eventually die. The idea that the human Journey will eventually end in extinction is one of the main reasons that we are trying to avoid the climate disruption.
We're trying to stay alive for as long as possible, but it's also, one of the reasons that we find it, very frightening to accept that human civilizations will at some point in time, eventually end that life on Earth will at some point in time, eventually end, which it will we I'm not really an absolute assault to what it is to mean.
Something that to me, is something that we must all as individuals at some point in time, if we can come to terms with, I think morally, we need to have better conversations about it. I personally don't find the fact that human civilization will end threatening to the moral
business of life in the here. And now, you know, I've said this in other discussions that I've had since this book came out so morality, you know, I don't think morality is threatened by, you know, it reality happens that the individual scale it, that's where we should pay our attention. And I don't think that the meaning of Our Lives has to be threatened by the fact that eventually the human species will likely die out.
So I think we still have to do the busy, you know, even if that would, we understand that about where we're going and it is some Time in the future that doesn't smell get-out-of-jail-free card. You know, it doesn't, it doesn't mean you can, you can just tumble into nihilism and ignore the moral, you know, realities of the here and now in your lives. And so that's one aspect of death that I respond to. And so if you ask me that question, do I mind the human
that I will die? And that our species will die out? No, no I don't. I understand that life is finite and at every scale, Gail that the universe is finite that the likely, you know, we don't quite know, of course, but likely finite, it's certainly. The Earth is. We do know that certainly, the sun is finite and our lives are finite and I think it's really frightening. It's really deeply frightening.
I have small children. They when the idea of death drops into their minds, you know as a parent you want to protect them from its you know, I I kind of kicker of anxiety when I can see it Dawning on them and I know they're going to ask me and I know they're going to ask me if I'm going to die. And if nannies going to die and of Grant is going to die.
And if you know and if they are going to die and you can see the fear, you know, they are growing up in a household where we don't have a religion, so, you know, they don't have that buffering them at all. Either my kids are deeply immersed in Natural History. My husband's an ecologist and biologists. And you know, I work on that true history so that they're totally in nature all the time and they don't they see the Stope grabbing the baby rabbit, they know what's going to happen.
You know, they understand all of this and it is frightening. And so I have really had to square up to that myself and accept that. My life is finite and to do my very, very best in the time that I'm here. And I've tried to encourage my children, not to be frightened of death, not to seek it, but not to be frightened of it. I was very frightened of death as a child. But now I do, I'm not frightened to death in the way that I was, it's simply because I accept that it is how it has to be.
That, that is the nature of the way, life emerges. And the, I don't think it's the right path to fight that if we were, maybe you think this is a difference of degree and maybe you think it's a difference of kind, but if we were able to live, you know, Old Testament Patriarchs tile and live hundreds of years or or maybe just Be functionally dancing. Lots of children. Yeah, if you still want to start by getting how do you stop, should we not be pursuing
something like that? What's the difference between eliminating polio or something like that? And then having life extension, I think there's a difference between that and uploading your Consciousness into a machine. I'm not really sure where it is. Yeah, it's very difficult. And this is another example, of the fact that lazy easy thinking, About moral dilemmas is, you know, we should be wary of them because that's a really good example of the fact that
where is the line? Is there a line anywhere? Where we move from the moral imperative, that many people would see to eliminate the diseases that cause suffering to cure cancer to, you know, extend life. It's very very recent that we've arrived at the point where we think our life expectancy, See we even imagine me. Just think about the words. Life expectancy we now come into the world and we expect a certain amount of time, you
know. It isn't that extraordinary Korean title, this is very recent, I mean, he's just it's very much this moment because, you know, most people came into the world and death was really everywhere and there was a huge amount and that's not like they just thought that was fine. You know, as usual amount of suffering, Darwin is an example of that who really suffered when his child Was Annie died. You know, his that he sort of admitted was his favorite and
really struggled with that. So even even people born, you know, in Generations, where there was a lot of death that, you know, mothers died, in childbirth and all sorts of things are in. We didn't have anywhere near the kind of sophistication. We have now, people never accepted death or just sort of didn't care when they buried their babies, of course, they didn't. And there is a moral imperative, you know, if you can, as the dentist eliminate some awful genetic disease.
We have crispr now. And that's, you know, the big kind of hope is that these sorts of new genetic Technologies. Might, you know, really get at some of these very difficult to cure or treat rare sort of genetic disorders. For instance, why would you not be trying to do that? And obviously, people are weird looking for Universal. Flu vaccines. We're looking for, we're
constant. And this is strong moral imperative to do that because we don't want to And because we want to maximize our opportunity to flourish and it feels morally bankrupt to not want to continue doing that.
But at what point in time does that become unsustainable who has to pay the price for that because the realities of the cake, you know, chaotic nature of how life emerges including human life is that you can't just have lots and lots of organisms living Forever Without there being a cost.
So that Cost could be other species that cost could be you know, resources that cost could then start to be future Generations. Who haven't been born yet but who are not going to you know, that, you know that bit of extra 10 years of extra life. For a few Generations back is going to then be paid for in the flourishing of some generations. If you know, it's very messy, it's very difficult to be sure.
So I think the easy response to that really To think about the kind of the clearer situations where we should be cautious. So for instance, if you're developing a drug that might extend life, let's say well how does that drug have to get developed? You know, does it mean that we have to do huge amounts of animal testing? For instance, is that justified? Does it mean that we have to mine? You know, a certain kind of chemical or something? Is that adjust?
Defied. Does it mean that we you know it's so to look at the discrete ethical level can sometimes just help in it. But I think also, are you doing it? Because you want us to live forever and is that a reasonable end goal? Again, you can put apply some scrutiny better so you can stop and think what is that? End goal a good goal to have. My own feeling is it's not a realistic goal to have and
therefore it's dangerous too. Steer it and we will be better, applying our technology and intelligence to more realistic, you know, and positive goals in the here and now. But, you know, there's been a lot of people hell-bent on getting rid of death. That's for sure if they can. I think those are all fine. Nuances to explore one perhaps more elliptical response. I've heard came from an Alan Watts lecture. I've heard, I think it's something called like on becoming I'm nothing.
I don't know. He has so many thing called things like that. So, yeah, it's something within that genre of his butt about how important Youth and birth is to curiosity. And how we sort of lose the natural sense of wonder, it's hard for me to even say this without kind of choking up a little bit but that's just listen to Alan Watson General. He pushes my buttons in this kind of way maybe for you too. Yeah, yeah. But I think if we lost that, would we not had just have
thousand-year-old? People have been like, I've seen everything I've done everything. I'm still going because I'm scared of dying and I've not made peace with my having a body that was that was God, I guess, I guess that's what I mean by an unrealistic goal that it derives from a fundamental misunderstanding about where we're actually deriving pleasure and meaning from and it's deriving from fear, fear is really not a good motivator for human beings.
As a general rule, it tends to lead us astray. I know, we focus on Greed. We focus on all of these sorts of things would be better if we We pay more attention to how fear drives us and trying to sort of ameliorate that at the point of Their Fear. There's so much in the immortalization kind of obsession that is it derives from misunderstanding. So one of them would be how do human beings become well-rounded. Well mostly a really crucial phase is not 23 years.
So the environment in the womb, Nurturing of the of the mother and then after the in, that's not too. I'm very aware of not being by a conservative in a way that is that you know, deniers people who can't have children in the conventional way. I understand all of that but this is her. Most children are born and biologically. We have to focus on what is maximum sort of flourishing for us that it comes to what we are
adapted for. Which is not to say that the natural path is best in any kind of simplistic way that it means you can't ignore it. So most people will come to life in their mother's room and therefore that environment is really important and we know this. Now we have so much evidence and data for this. Now we know it's really crucial that we try to make sure that mothers are well supported that, that environment is healthy right from the get-go. We then have to try it, so
stress. I wasn't too bad, all of that, sort of thing. Health is good food is good etc etc. That they're being looked after and then that the notch of three years, the amount of touched children receive the amount of, you know, closeness and proximity to primary caregivers most often mother's again. But you know, just making sure that whole environment. And that whole network of caregivers is supported and that the child is touched and valued right from the get-go.
We know this has an effect on the whole bodies of, you know, Respond to this, our bodies respond and therefore, our building of identity and our resilience, our ability to cope with stress our ability to cope with fear our responses, to aggression are very affected by this year's. There's a lot of plasticity, of course, you can undo some damage
if it's done in those times. And it's not all absolutely biologically deterministic, because if biology doesn't work like that, it's not neat and deterministic but it's still again, it matters and getting that right matters.
And we have to remember, That a lot of people who are trying to push this sort of live forever thing often, man, they're often men of a certain status and they totally ignore what it would mean for how we bring children into the world for the fact that how, you know, even learning mathematics is affected by our body movements by gesture. It's not just a matter of staring at numbers on a page. It actually matters what we do
with our bodies. It matters who's talking to us and have a showing us, you know, we live, deeply embodied, lives our bodies man. Citrus profoundly, but to try and simply live forever. You would really have to industrialize all of that process, right from the beginning, right from conception. And that I do not think is that they're in Madness lies? I do think. Yeah, I think that's a fine place where we can start wrapping it up Melanie.
I think we covered all of human history, the fear of death. I think we've exhausted all these topics. Now, there's a lot more to cover and if you like this conversation to do, Haven't we roast? It's all sorted? Yeah, I don't know if I can take credit. I think of much of its driving from the simulation of your book, but I imagine someone's listening and they dug this, how to be animal, a new history of what it means to be human, they would clearly enjoy that as well, right. I hope so.
Yeah, yep. So that's the athlean 10. Was you can buy wherever you buy books? Is there anything else you want to tell people about Melanie now that you have them here? No, not really. Just I supposed to do. Do you like hearing from people? So it have I have my podcast that I Just recently started, which is all about diverse intelligence actually, which is my sort of next project. So how did agency and intelligence emerge and how does it all interact?
All of the different diverse intelligences on the planet. So we kind of cover everything from me account intelligence, which I was actually doing earlier today, was just completely fascinating tip, teaching, in meerkats, through to Neanderthal, Moines, through to philosophy of Mind, AI everything as so, I guess if people are interested in that sort of thing, then then hot To enter the psychos Ferran and
listening on that. But but I do like getting less, you know, people reaching out and engaging for me readers often, see things that I didn't see or have their own knowledge to bring to bear and I really love that aspect of the writing life. So I guess that's what I would say. A great links to all of those things are in the show notes and thanks so much for being here. Melanie, it's been my pleasure has been mine too, and if it has been Yours as well. Listener, please rate and review
us on iTunes or apple podcast. Give us great rating and review. It helps us get content like this out to more people. And thank you so much for listening. Thank you so much for listening. If you like the show, please rate and review it in apple podcast and or Stitcher. It really helps us a lot to get this content to a wider audience. If you think what we're doing is useful, interesting fun. Hopefully, all three. We certainly appreciate your rating and review.
You can keep up with Nuria and Nor e.com where there is a newsletter that's Nori.com, subscribe, there's podcast, there's a whole bunch else or you can send us an email at podcast at nor e.com. We are also now on patreon at patreon.com Nori podcasts, if you'd like more content engagement and community, and thank you so much for your support