Okay, I'm very excited for this episode of Sauce on the side. You know why why I'm talking to Andrew and Diamond. By the way, they're both.
Here producers today.
Hey, building a team. Guys, we're building a team.
I love it. It's great.
So today's guest is a guy named Milo Rossi, who is an archaeologist. You know what archaeologists do, Diamond.
Yeah, they look at rocks.
They do that a little.
Thought.
They like inspect rocks and like dig up old dark rocks. Shut up they Oh, okay, they dig up old rocks and inspect them.
No, I'm sure that's part of the Andrew, would you like to chime in on what archaeologists do?
You know?
They uncover hidden history and they're well versed in history, and they do dig up rocks and artifacts and all these other things.
Like dinosaur but yes, oh, here we go.
Yeah, because Diamond has no belief that dinosaurs actually existed, right.
I just I have questions, and I don't really know what my questions are, but I have questions.
Something doesn't work.
I would like you to think of what your questions would be, because I really want you to ask him.
I will remain set for this interview, specifically for that part, so well.
Where your questions are, like both of you, if you guys have questions, because I have a billion, but I feel like I'm coming from a place where I accept a lot of the information that they present and Diamond doesn't. So I just want you to ask your questions so that you can have clarity in one direction or the other.
Yeah, sure, I think it's I think this is a setup, but you know what, I'm just gonna roll with it. And I can't wait.
Have you setting you up for I don't.
Know, to make me look dumb? What happened the last time the dinosaurs.
Are actually real?
Were you there?
Was I?
There were you the billions of years ago? No? I wasn't.
I was, and nobody alive right now was.
So let's just I don't know if I believe in reincarnation, and I think I have raptor like tendencies. I think I might have been there, all right.
I think maybe mention that to him. I love the way he tears down all the history. I'm so excited for this one. Oh.
By the way, Hi, I'm Gandhi. This this is my podcast on the side with my friends Diamond and Andrew Aka also my producers. I think, have you ever seen the skeleton of a bunny?
No, who's seen a skeleton of a bunny?
Pull it up here. I'm gonna tell you something. The skeleton of a bunny. It looks terrifying. And I think that we have these ideas of what dinosaurs look like. Look at that. Look at that. That's terrifying.
You would not that is terrifying.
That's a dinosaur. No, that's a bunny.
Okay.
So I just want to know how we know that these things looked so lizardy when we clearly say that their closest living relative is a bird. How would they not be giant, massive like big birds running around?
We don't know, that's my point.
But they were still dinosaurs.
What if they weren't really dinosaurs? What if they were just birds? But I don't I'd still be done.
When there were sixty five million year old birds that were dinosaurs, like a pterodactyl.
We don't know because we weren't there.
The new Jurassic Park actually changed the raptor design to be more like what you're saying, more bird like, because it has become I think they would be giant birdy, weird things like talent.
Yeah, and you know, hair, feathers, fur, A lot of that stuff doesn't necessarily get preserved the way a bone does, so all you have to go on is a skeleton. So these things could have looked completely different. And I just want to know how we know that they look so terrifying. That's all Diamond is rolling her eyes. You can't hear that. Sorry the microphone.
I'm so into this.
Yeah, okay, let me ask you this.
Who would you like to have on as a guest that would interest you?
Bethany Frankel.
I knew she was gonna say, a freaking housewife. Do you think we can get Bethany Frankle?
I could try, Okay, Carol rads A, Well, now you think I would? I think you'd love her? Oh my god, maybe Carol. She's done podcasts before, but I think she's friends with them. But you're a smart woman. She loves smart women.
Come on, Carol.
All right, so we're gonna go from an archaeologist to Carol Ratswell maybe at some point, perfect, But before we do anything else, I think we should have our friend Mila Rossi come in so we can just get right to it.
Okay, Hi, great to meet you, to meet me.
Oh well, let's hope that we feel the same way about each other when you're leaving.
Absolutely absolutely, we're discussing, you know, opinions and things. That's nothing personal.
Okay, So here we go. He's here, Milo Rossi. By the way, thank you so much for joining me. I know you're really busy and you've had like twenty stops and we were trying to go back and forth about when we could get you in here, and you're here.
It's wonderful to be here. Thank you very much for having me. It really is an honor to be in the big Apple.
Oh that's nice.
Yeah, stay here for like five for minutes, and you'll be wanting to get the hell out.
I gotta say, the twenty minute walk it took me to get here was a test. I bet, I know, I bet.
I have you here for so many reasons. So first of all, Milo Rossi has a very popular short series, and I watched a bunch of them called The Minute, Mini Minute Man. Yes, yes, okay.
By the way.
His background, he is an environmental scientist, an archaeologist, and now a science educator from Boston.
Got it where I used to live.
Love Boston represent I always say, like, the smartest people I think come from Boston also the mainest.
It's a double edged sword.
Smart and mean. So I have you here because I have a billion questions to ask you about a lot of different things, but also because I our lovely producer here, Diamond, who you were.
Just saying hi to.
Diamond has some things that she does not believe in, and it has to do specifically with your field.
I just don't know if dinosaurs were actually real. Okay, okay, because I'll go through my list please. So number one, fossils literally just look like rocks, and so it's like, okay, well we could have been told that these are dinosaur bones,
but they're not really, you know what I mean. Also number two, I think that people over exaggerate what they could have actually looked like, which makes me feel like, could somebody step in and tell us what they actually looked like rather, I mean repti and stuff like that, and like, were they actually that big? We go to museums and we see these huge things.
And then also.
Lastly, I know you're gonna rip me apart. It's fine here to you know, we don't know, like none of us were alive. There's not one photo or something like that.
Oh no, no, sixty five million years ago.
It's just like, we don't know.
I'm just gonna throw this out here for a second. She will go back and forth about all of this dinosaurs. You know, we don't know that they existed, there's no proof, blah blah blah. But she wholeheartedly believes in God, and I say, oh, prove that, and she's like, just show I can't.
But then also it's like I don't fault people for believe in dinosaurs. Are just not the same way the atheists don't believe in God.
Okay, you know, I think that's another important thing is that, like I've had people on my channel ask me, you know, stuff.
Like, ok, can you get closer to yeah?
Sorry, no, no, no, no worries answer over podcast etiquette. You know. That's actually, you know, an interesting point. And I've had a lot of people on my channel ask me, you know, throughout the years of like, oh, do something
like talking about God or the existence of God. And I'm like, no, like that has nothing to do like it's not a matter of you know, weighing the evidence or not weighing the evidence is like, if you believe in it, you believe in it, and I'm never going to try and take that away from you, Like that has nothing to do with you know, we're not trying to weigh these things. And the moment you do try and take that in, I think it kind of bastardizes what we're all here to talk about and the faith
system that it sort of guides for you. As for dinosaurs, so to your first point kind of talking about how they look like rocks, the reason they look like rocks is because they are rocks. So there's no dinosaur bones
left over. When a bone is buried, Normally these bones are found in sedimentary rock deposits, so something that was you know, flowing water at one point or something like that, and the bone gets buried and over time it mineralizes, so the bone structure, if it is replaced with rocks, this can lead to most of the time the bone bearing a very similar resemblance to the rock around it. You know, I want to kind of follow a question back to you. I hear what you're saying about, you know,
they look like rocks. How do we really know? You know, how big they are. What would your explanation be if you were in you know, the fossil beds like the Hell Creek formation out west and you were looking at a Tyrannosaurus rex. What would your explanation be for how a rock would end up looking like that?
I don't know, man, maybe like, uh, that's ancient.
To be like, okay, the skull was smaller at one point and because now it's you just gave an explanation of the rocks. Now uh you said mineralizing, Yes, what if that caused it to like look bigger than it is? I don't know, listen, don't even I don't know.
No, these are good questions. Do you want to ask if I'm just saying yeah.
I think no. I think that's the other important thing is, you know a lot of what I do is, you know, it's a bit one sided because the people that I'm talking about can't talk back, and so you know, I have to do my stick and I have to you know, keep the engagement and all that. But really, I do think conversations like this are important and there are no you know, stupid questions, but you know, the because it's a replacement process where there is a existing bone that
is deposited and then buried. Over time, it's replaced with something, so it doesn't actually really change the mass of it. It's sort of just you know, changing the existing structure into something else. And you know, honestly, questions like this are important to ask because those things are huge. It
looks like something that is very alien to us. It's something that's kind of hard to wrap your head around, and so it's important to kind of understand the processes by which something like this happens, because without that, it almos seems a little bit unbelievable, you know, especially because there's no pictures exactly.
So to Diamond's point, though, I mean, I know she was talking about things maybe getting bigger, but over time, if something is buried, even just a human body, doesn't it get a little bit smaller. Don't things eat at it and it actually shrinks. So maybe some of the stuff we're finding is actually smaller than what these things were.
It could be, so a lot of what you see is over time, geologic forces will warp more than shrink. So you know, if you were to like deposit just a body on the ground, it would be like eaten and scavenged and things like that. But a lot of the remains that we find are you know, they've been buried over time and so there's not as much decomposition happening to the bones. So a lot of the specimens that we find are examples that have been you know,
rapidly buried. When something just dies on the ground, it's eaten, it's scavenge and the bones are scattered. So a lot of bones that we find are of individuals that have fallen and sunk into a place where they're not going to be disturbed that much. That's why we find so many fossils of like marine deposits and things like that, because all these shells settle to the bottom and there's nothing to move them, and so makes a lot of sense. Yeah, exactly, exactly.
So there's a really famous dinosaur fossil. I don't remember exactly what it's called, but it's of an Anklosaurus, which is one of the ones with an armored back and like a big heavy club on the tail that it would it would swing around, and it's beautiful. It almost looks like it's mummified because it's it's preserved the texture of the skin and so it was buried very rapidly and covered and over time because the earth moves and it's become stone. It's sort of like a little bit warped.
It's the same size that it was. But it's one of the best dinosaur fossils we have, and it's one of the you know, first instances we have of you know, understanding what a dinosaur's actual skin texture was instead of just their bones.
Okay, so that brings us to Diamond's other points and mine as well. I have a lot of questions as far as how we and by we, I mean you guys, the smart people who are doing this have reconstructed what a dinosaur actually looked like because as everything that we've learned more recently, their closest living ancestor would be a bird, right, not alligators and crocodiles, which everybody likes to call dinosaurs. Yes, birds, but hair feathers for that kind of stuff doesn't necessarily
stand the test of time. Yeah, right, So how do we know? And when you look at this is my example, when you look at the skeleton of a rabbit or even maybe a little baby, it's terrifying. A skeleton is a terrifying looking thing. How do we know that these giant creatures that you guys are unearthing weren't actually like massive bunnies or a massive big bird looking thing. It was this terrifying lizard looking thing. How do we know that? Where did that come from?
Well, that's a really good question. And I don't want to preface all of this by saying just in the field that I'm in, I'm not a paleontologist, so this is not coming from want. Okay, Yeah, I would give my most informed guests that I can. I'm sure maybe there'll be a few paleontologists who will disagree with me, but I'm going I'm going to represent as much as
I can. Okay, So that question of what do dinosaurs actually look like is still a very hotly debated question, and we were all kind of right in saying we're not entirely sure. We have some pretty good guesses. Take, for example, the Ancleosaurus that we looked at. We know what the texture of its skin was like, and so there's a pretty good way of being able to figure out,
you know, what its body would have looked like. But for a lot of other dinosaurs, we're kind of just working with educated guesswork of you know, trying to you know, put muscle back onto bone in a way that we think it would have been to your point. You know, an example that I kind of saw was somebody did a dinosaur reconstruction on a modern swan skeleton, and it is one of the scariest things I've ever seen. It looks nothing like a swan, you know, like you look
at like a penguin or something like that. Penguins when you look at them, it's a little guy and it's got a little fee at the bottom, but they have little knees, they have like little like legs that are bent up inside their body. If you look at a whale, they have vestigial limbs from when they ancestors that lived
on land. And so if you went and you know, into the future sixty million years and you looked at any of these animals, you would be trying to reconstruct it based off of the things that you understand in the world, and you know, it's a little bit hard
to tell. The issue that I experience with archaeology and all archaeologists experience, is you are trying to put together a puzzle where you've lost pretty much all of the pieces, and so you have very fragmentary evidence and you have to kind of fill in the gaps as best you can, and that can be very challenging to do. Paleontology is a whole nother ballgame because you're going so far back in time. With archaeology, you can kind of infer because you're also human, you can kind of think in the
same way that they did. But if you're going all the way back to the time of dinosaurs, you're not dealing with the human animal anymore. You have like fragmentary geologic evidence of what the environment was like that they were in. So there's so many factors that you have to work into it that it can be really challenging to figure out exactly what dinosaurs look like.
So there is a chance that they were massive bunnies.
You know, other than you know, the mammal the mammal side of things. Our ancestors at the time were massive bunnies or I guess tiny bunnies, but yeah, cool.
I just want to have some hope that that's in fact what it looked like like. Jurassic bar would have been a completely different ballgame because they were just like big bird it was a bunch of big bird running around and that tyrannosaurs chasing the car.
Well, you know that's what you want to believe. Don't let anybody take that away from you, because that is such a much more beautiful idea.
I just like to save space because all I know is that I don't know anything, and I have a lot of questions. So I will I will hold space for that diamond. How you doing over there?
I'm into it?
Okay, that is a good ask my questions.
I don't my wheels are turning please, as they should be.
You know, never let your wheels stop turning.
I'm just at this point we can't go back to see what they actually look like. So I'm always gonna have these questions.
But you're enlightening me.
So absolutely, and ask away, ask away. A lot of people, especially when kind of talking about science, will be like, ah, you guys don't know how this happened, and therefore none of it makes sense.
Oh that's so annoying.
The most important part there, Yeah, the most important part of science is that scientists are able to admit that we don't know everything, so we are will speak with confidence on the things that we do know, but there is as you're kind of you're asking the right questions because those are all scientists that your questions of scientists are asking. You're doing the scientific process right now, and so it's important to keep asking those and also knowing when to say, man, we have no idea.
You know.
I think one of my favorite things about scientists and one of my least favorite things about society as a whole, is that scientists spend so much of their time trying to prove themselves and their peers wrong.
Yeah.
I love that because.
That's how you get better, and that's how you get to the theories and the facts ultimately a fact because you can't prove it wrong. Every time you do it, you get the same answer. Changing your opinion based on evidence is not flip flopping. That is learning, yes, yeah, and changing your mind based on learning. And so many people, because we have so much technology now at our fingertips,
you can google everything. It seems like a lot of the masses think, Okay, we know everything, and if we find something new and we don't know about it, something's wrong. Someone's lying to us, someone's not telling us the truth, as opposed to, hey, maybe this is a new thing that is going to take some learning before we figure it out, and let's give it some time. It seems like people are not interesting and giving things time anymore, and I find it fascinating and quite irritating.
Yes, but I digress.
I can't help but notice you're kind of dressed like Indiana Jones right now?
Well, you know, is he your hero because that he was an archaeologist? Right?
Yes, you know, I think that it would be hard to find someone in the last thirty years who's in archaeology who didn't have Indiana Jones. And you know, Harrison Ford be some sort of inspiration, you know, it was. At the disappointing part of going to school Ford is learning that archaeology is absolutely nothing like Indiana Jones, which, yeah,
a damn shame. I know, That's what I said. You know, I was waiting for them to give me a whip and a pistol, but no, you know, so, so I definitely do I feel a big, you know, sort of connection with that. But I've been interested in archaeology for my entire life. I sort of attributed as being my
oldest interest. I first became interested in when I was about four or five years old with the discovery of Otzi the Iceman, which is a five thousand year old mummy that was found in the Outzel Alps in northern Italy, and he is the oldest tattoos ever discovered. Actually, as a bit of an homage to him for where he kind of got me today, I actually have all of his tattoos. They're down my back and on my legs and stuff. He is I think like sixty something individual lines.
Wow.
Yeah, And so it was a fascinating discovery. And I heard about him for the first time in like National geographic when I was, you know, four or five years old. Now I'm here, so you know, clearly was something that I was I was pretty interested in, and you know, it's really been something that's kind of driven me through my whole life.
So to that point, they find a five thousand year old mummified man and they basically start thawing him out. Yeah, And as that happens, Decay beggins. Well, now we're reading all of these stories about how the polar ice caps are melting and in these ice cabs, viruses that are tens of thousands of years old are coming out. How scary is that how real is that and what is the concern with that?
To you?
That's a good question. I've seen a lot of sort of anecdotal like articles about that, most of them just kind of like sources sort of speculating on it. So yeah, yeah, so I have to admit I haven't seen a lot of you know, actual scientific research on it. That doesn't mean that there isn't any, but I'm just unfamiliar with it.
And the thing that I've always kind of been skeptical about, which is more of an opinion than anything else, is viruses are not like universal, Like a virus can't just apply to anything like That was the big thing, you know, when COVID start is it made the jump from like bats to people, Like that's really big for it to make that jump between two different very in two very
different biological biological forms. And so the thing I always kind of wondered about the you know, the ice caps melting is would whatever is coming out of the ice actually be able to jump to humans like was the last time it was prevalent, And were the you know, host organisms that it was working with close enough to humans that it would not only be able to survive that long, but be able to make contact with humans, infect a human, be strong enough to infect other humans,
and go on to you know, end the world.
So you know, I'm not saying yes, the answer is yes, yes, one hundred percent. Yeah, and they're all, yeah, exactly. So I have no idea, but it's definitely some cause for thought.
You know, I read these things, I'm like, oh, that's gonna get us. Huh, this is gonna get us.
And it's fun reads. You know, it keeps me thinking, you know, absolutely.
I mean it's just it's stuff that I would have never thought of until you know, the environment really came under attack. And now when you don't treat Mother Nature right, you don't treat the Earth's right, She's gonna come for you.
She's pissed.
Seen a lot of movies, Yes, she is pissed. So as an archaeologist, you well, in an environmental scientist, what are some of the things that you like, the coolest things that you have done? Because I know you did a motorcycle ride out yeah, and you just spent time investigating things out there. Tell us some of the stuff that you have found.
Absolutely, Well, that's a great question. I guess to kind of you know, I got a two answers here. So the motorcycle ride, Yeah, that was my most recent I did that this past summer, and that was for a documentary series that I did called Dark Roots. It was my first sort of solo endeavor. But do you find that on YouTube at many minute? Man? So, So anyway, when I did Dark Roots, my goal was to kind
of tell the story of the land itself. I think so much of our history that we learn here is you know, like, you know, the settlers showed up and like maybe you get a little bit of indigenous history, but like, you know, it's then they founded this city and they did this, and they found gold in the hills, and then you know, like and now we have America, and like that's kind of it. But the story goes way farther back.
You can't found a place a bunch of people already live.
Exactly exactly we did not find this place. Yeah, so so you know, they they My goal with that documentary series is not only to take it back to the indigenous people who here you know, before us, but also to take it back to all the geologic forces that you know, created this country. It's not enough to know why you know that there was gold mining in these mountains? Why is their gold in these mountains? Why can't I just go dig on the street here and find gold?
You know? Like why is you know when you think of you know, any Western movie and you get some beautiful mason, there's you know, cowboy riding on it. Why are there maces there and not here? So there's so many you know, the earth is a giant book, and we are a very you know, lucky species to be able to decipher it. Where some of the first you know that we know can really look at the world
own us and ask why. And so I think that, you know, it's really interesting to be able to find a way to interpret those stories and really tell it a deep history is kind of the way that I refer to it. Anyway, I digress. Your original question was, you know, what is some of the places I've been that I think are the most interesting.
Like if you were to recommend to other people, Hey, there's this place, yeah, not a lot of people know about and you should go check it out, what would it be? Because let me tell you, Andrew Diamond and I we are trying to go off the grid and do a trip we've done it before and we had a blast. But tell us some places to go.
That's an excellent question. Well, I cannot recommend the US enough. I think that, yeah, you know, the US is something and everyone's like, we've done the classic American road trip, but like there's so much history in this country that like is just so easy to drive by on the interstate, you know.
And is there something that's like, not to bring it back to Indiana Jones, but like a holy grail of things that are out there, something that all archaeologists think if I can just find this one thing that would be amazing.
Well, I think that it might be a little bit different for every archaeologist because you know, many of them are our marriage for all of them, yeah, you know, they're very specific in the things they like. But I could speak to mine personally. When I was young, I always had a fascination with the Seven Wonders of the ancient world. And we know about we know a lot about every single one of them, except for one, which is the Hanging Gardens. We have no idea anything about
the Hanging Gardens. We don't know if it actually existed, we don't know exactly where it would have been. We don't know if it's sort of like anecdotal, you know, sort of evidence of what Babylon looked like, and they think some people think that it was Alexander the Great, like describing it on his deathbed or something like that, and so we don't actually know if it exists. But my personal thing, just loving the Seven Wonders is to find the seventh one.
You know, that would be amazing. Okay, so where would you even start with.
That, Well, Babylon, But unfortunately, you know, it's a part of the world that right now is really challenging to do work in. So yeah, I was recently, well last year around this time, I was working with doctor Brad Hafford at the Penn Museum. He is a Near East archaeologist who's been working there for years, and he was telling me a lot about his work in you know, like modern day Iraq and Syria and stuff like that, and it's just a very challenge part of the world to do work in which you're.
Saying, they're not welcoming a bunch of white people with shovels to discup their land.
Right now, that's a little hard weird, I know, I know, kind of shocking. I can't imagine why, you know, but he was telling me about all the kind of checks and balances and just how difficult it is to do work there, which you know is a large problem that I think a lot of scientific communities face. Is just you know, geopolitics often gets in the way of scientific development.
So a lot of what you do too, and how our lovely producer Andrew found you was through your YouTube videos at many minute man maybe seven seven seven, We're not sure, but one of the things you do is you find people presenting ideas what are some of the craziest things that you have seen, and thought, oh no, not on my watch, We're not going to do.
That, man. Well, well, a lot of what we see, I think recently is a sort of modern interpretation of a very early nineteenth century archaeological concept called hyper diffusion. And hyper diffusion was a idea that all of the major civilizations on Earth are descended from one lost master civilization.
You can see why this was very popular at the beginning of nineteen hundreds and so this, you know, can go to things like you know, lost continents like Lemuria or Tartaria, but more commonly Atlantis, and so Atlantis is a very old story, but it's used a lot recently to sort of back up the idea that there was this lost civilization, and more recently it's sort of, you know, been used to back up the idea that it was at the end of the Ice Age and that there
was some major cataclysm at the Ice Age that you know, destroyed this civilization and left the rest of the world to rise up from the ashes. And there's a litany of evidence against that. What is irrefutable is that the end of the Ice Age, the Earth was home to people that are exactly like you and I. What is undeniable is that the end of the last Ice Age and the rising of the seas about four hundred feet
had a massive impact on humanity. What it did not do was break down a you know, global civilization that spanned the entire world. Pseudoscientists will never bring up is the genetic evidence to support their idea that the entire world was once connected only twelve thousand years ago, because there is no genetic evidence for it. If you look, you're.
Talking about pseudoscientists on TikTok.
Yeah, that's fair, that's the foretic evidence. Well, the other thing is access to it. Yeah, yeah, well that's fair. But that's that I mean that that raises another really important point is that, like I almost can't blame people for falling for pseudoscience because the actual science feels so inaccessible. And that's why I, you know, predominantly put myself as a science communicator.
The words aig, the words are really big.
Yeah, And so it leaves them open to you know, if they want to go, you know, smoke a joint on the couch with their friends. They are going to watch Graham Hancock like there's nothing else out there that's going to connect with them. So I almost can't blame them for listening to him. But you know, to give kind of the end of my genetic example there, we can look at archaeological discoveries throughout the entire world. We can look at their genomes, and we can look at
how humanity traveled across the planet. Like we know, you can literally make a map of how humanity spread across the world looking at our genes, which on its own is the one piece of evidence that fully refutes any hyper diffusion theory, because if that did exist, we would find the same genes all over the world. Because that's what people do. We reproduce, that's why we're all here, and so you would find evidence that in all of our blood, which you don't find.
So you do not believe that everybody came from one place.
Well, if you trace it, if you trace it all the way back, you could say that the hyperd diffusion came out of Africa, you know, like two million years ago or something like that. But as far as like a civilization that suddenly just mastered everything and sailed across the seas and populated distant lands and.
Wat know where that came from, didn't happen.
Ye, yeah, that did not happen. You said something interesting a minute ago, though, You said the rising seas really had an impact on society, on what was around and on the landscape of things, and the sea levels are rising again. Correct, Yes, So where does that go? As an environmental scientist? What is it that you're seeing?
A scientist? I am absolutely horrified. I the the the single greatest existential threat that humanity faces is climate change.
It is not aliens.
I know, it's hard to believe. I wish it was aliens. That would at least be fun, you know.
Like that narrative right now.
Yeah, yeah, and it's really frustrating. Something I haven't talked a lot about in my channel, but I mean, climate denihilism is that is at an all time high, and you know, the unfortunate reality of it is the inability of people to understand the data does not make the data any less true. Climate change is happening. Humans are causing it, and it is the greatest existential threat we've
ever faced. If you look at just a graph of the temperature on the planet, which we can go farther back since before we had thermometers, because we have ice cores, we have a lot of scientific ways of actually figuring these things out. It's not just us, you know, blown it out our ass. The trend is mortifying. The thing that I kind of think is it is kind of interesting to look back in time when our ancestors were
heavily influenced by climate change. That time natural the end of you know, the ice age, But this time we're facing something that is much worse because we're actually doing it and humans have a nasty habit of being pretty much indestructible. We are descended from little rats that survived the metior hitting the Earth when all the dinosaurs died, killed every single non avian dinosaur, and we somehow came out on top, which is pretty amazing. We're gonna be okay,
We're going to make our way out of this. But the toll that it will take on the planet, unless we reverse what we're doing or alter what we're doing, is going to be unbelievable. And I don't know if it's going to be a future that many people are going to want to live in. And you know, not to get too doom around this, I'll try and keep it light. I'll end there it.
Stare people out.
Yeah, well, what do you think you can do to change that? Do you think it's even changeable? Or do you think we've gone too far down the road now of destroying the planet that it might not be fixable.
I think that maybe this is me kind of viewing it from the lens where I work, right I do science communication. I think that the biggest challenge is going to be actually getting the public on board with it, because right now there is so much lobbying from oil companies that are intentionally spreading disinformation that is responsible for all of the climate denihalism. People who name them.
What are the companies?
Oh, I don't want to get shot. They'll find me. They'll find me right outside.
I'm going to Google and I will name this later.
I mean literally, just like you know, this is another I think, really important thing. When we talk about conspiracy theories. There's so many of these accounts that talk about how they're like, we know the truth, and this is what the governments hiding from us. This is this is the other thing.
I love it because there's always someone in their mom's basement being crazy.
It's a big goalp And I'm like, you really think that the thing the government is hiding from us is you know, like that the giants used to walk the earth and the Smithsonian destroyed skeletons in this, that and the other thing. Well they like we have plastic in our blood. Like look around you. The conspiracies are right in front of your faces. Like major news organizations being owned and supported by oil lobbyists, Like politics and business are so heavily tied that like we are being like
force fed misinformation. So I almost can't blame people for being climate denialists. A because it's absolutely terrifying and B because you have major news organizations that are being paid by companies that are incentivized to not allow climate change policy to be passed, you know, feeding them what they
should believe. It's less of a matter of can we alter course now, it's more of a matter of are we all going to band together for the first time ever as a human race and save the fucking world? Because we can't do that. Like, this is the very first thing that all of humanity has to worry about. Even look back in time of like plagues and things
like that, they were localized. Yeah, they spread and it's dangerous, but like every single human on the planet is going to be affected by this, and if we don't put on our big boy pants, were fucked.
But there's also an argument that the plagues and all of these things come from environmental changes they do.
That's a very good point. I mean, we just saw that we just lived through a pandemic, and normally they say it's you know, once every hundred years or something like that. I wouldn't be surprised if all of us in this room will live through another one in our lifetime. We have, like your tongue, Yeah, I know, horrifying. I wish like I almost don't want to jinx it likeno on something I'm going, you know, and it's it's it's
really I don't know, it's just frightening. I don't want to live through another one anymore than anyone else does. But we don't seem to ever really learn our lesson. We sort of just keep plowing ahead. We're like, wow, that was bad anyway, and then we just keep doing it.
You know, it doesn't happen again.
There's nothing I can do about it exactly, looking around and seeing what's happening as far as rising sea levels. Which area of the world is in most danger right now because the king tides in Miami are wild those things are coming in hot. But I don't have access to the rest of the information around the world, but you might, yeah, yeah, what's in danger?
Well, you know, I think that even without having access to the specific information, all of you would be correct in guessing that, you know, it's the lowest lying places. I'm glad you brought up Florida. Actually, a kind of fun fact I learned the other day is the highest point in Florida is three hundred feet above sea level, and it's like the very top left corner of the state where it's like it's practically in like I don't know, it's not like Georgia. I can't remember, but either way,
it's like way up there the sea level. I'm pretty sure that if all the ice oh I'm not even gonna speak on I don't remember exactly what the level is, that the seas will rise of all the ice melts. But Florida's gone gone, Like Atlantis, they're going, okay, you know, can you imagine.
What those fossils will look like Florida?
Man, oh my.
God, oh horrifying, you know, but a lot of low lying areas, I mean my home city of Boston. I now live in Vermont, but I was looking at some stuff on you know, Instagram. My dad sent me a thing in like the seaport district. There was just a really big tide and like by the EU there's just like the benches are in the water and like there's like a sea wall there and it's like up in
the It's crazy. Our airport was built on reclaimed land, which I think is a hilarious idea, Like you never owned the ocean in the first place, you just fill that in greatest. Yeah, yeah, I get out of here, and so that that's you know, pretty much at sea level. Like what are you gonna do when the airport goes underwater? Like that's kind of a problem, you know.
I So when I was living in Boston, there was a giant snowstorm and ice storm, and it actually brought flowing ice into the seaport district And it was crazy. Was this This was two thousand and seventeen in December.
Oh, I think I have vague memories.
It was wild.
Yeah, it was crazy, and I just thought, oh my god, we are going to be washed away.
Yeah.
New York's on the water, Boston's on the water. DC's on the water.
Yeah.
Would it not make sense to move some of the big, big cities and the big important things inside well into the.
That's really that's a really good question. When you think about states that are going to be impacted the most by climate change, you think of the coastal ones. And I even just said that, but I I want to take this a little bit farther and move out of sort of the sea level rise narrative, because a lot of people will view climate change like the ice is melting, the sea is rising, which, yes, that's a very big part of it. But both tornadoes and hurricane exactly just
like you said, the weather. The weather is a really big part of it. So take for example, Vermont. Vermont is a landlocked state, but they are actually thinking about moving their capital of Montpillier because in this most recent summer, as many of you probably heard on the news, they were hit with colossal floods. They were hit with like
massive rainstorms. It's a very mountainous area, it to the Green Mountains, and so all that water just runs down these mountain sides into these channels and creates like the most roaring water I've ever seen in New England. And because of that, the whole capital city of Montpellier was really badly flooded, like the whole downtown district along the river.
So there's actually been a proposition, I'm not sure where it's at right now, but I was reading about it a few months ago of trying to move all the administration of Montpillier uphill to sort of a different area and get that out of the danger zone of that river, even though they're not living on the coast. So that's really the big part is like this is gonna affect everyone you don't have to live on the coast like it's coming for you.
It's already affecting us here. Yeah, you know what happens when these streets flood.
It's I know. I was like, I was living in Boston at the time. But my friend that I'm in town with here, he's lived in New Jersey forever, and he was just telling me about the effect that Hurricane Sandy had on New York. That was insane, and like it's gonna keep happening, Like we are gonna keep getting stronger and stronger storms, and like we're gonna just sit here and just get wet.
I guess you know, nature always wins, right.
I know it is. It's it's the one the one truth. You know, every ancient civilization that you find the ruins of they're in ruins, you know. But nature she's she's doing fine.
You know, she's doing just whine. She's always gonna win. We love that. Diamond. Hold on, let me turn this microphone.
Uh oh, you're back on the spot.
Diamond and Andrew, the two of you, after listening through all of this and sitting through all this, do you guys have any questions for him?
I think you answered all of mine earlier.
I'm so glad.
Do you believe in dinosaurs anymore now than you did before?
Maybe a little bit?
You don't have to say that, You're not to say that.
No, no, no, I'm not wine. I encourage you to get more information than just this to change your mind on something like that.
No, it's the fact that we're having a conversation about it exactly whereas before I was just called stupid and I'm like, well, how do you expect me but to believe it if you're not.
Giving me in me, I'm glad you actually brought that up. I know we're ending here, but I want to interduct single second here. You know, in a lot of my content, like my shtick that I do, especially in short form, is just like I'm just a fucking hater. Like I'll just be like, oh this thing, and.
Like, yeah, you're calling people stupid exactly.
Yeah, And like, I'm glad you brought that up because this is something that I really am trying to kind of talk about in longer form content where you know, I have to do that because that is unfortunately what gets like views. People love a good like cat fight, So people are like okay, like you know, see this guy be a bastard, But like I don't find that like fulfilling. I'm like taking the piss doing it. I'm like, okay, I can do this all day. Like these are so easy,
just give it to me. And that's why I've tried to branch out and do stuff on like YouTube and like you know, science communication on a broader level than just being like an influencer. Like I really do abhorror that term because I like to think that I'm doing something a little bit broader than that. And so like I think it's really important to have these conversations where it's like nobody is stupid. We all just have like differing information, and it's our job to you know, inform
one another. It's our job to ask those questions when you know, push comes to shove and it's like we sit down in a room and talk together. Nobody's stupid. So you know, I.
Have met stupid people. I have been in a room with them and had conversations. I think it's very big of you to say there are no stupid questions. I do think it's really important to ask questions totally. Yeah, but there are definitely stupid people. Diamond is not one of.
Them, exactly, exactly for the sake of this conversation.
There are some idiots out there, and I'm sure they're going to leave comments talking about how all of this is politicized and I am pushing an agenda because I'm trying to save the earth like a bighead.
You can't talk about climate change without someone and that's what I mean about the You know, I'm not even going to get into it again. Okay to ask a question. Oh we got another question.
We have a question from Andrew.
No if you talked religion at all.
Brief at the beginning.
Okay, Tommy, what do you got?
I was just gonna ask religious artifacts when people are convinced that like this is this is holy, but then they also say it existed at the same time as like dinosaurs and stuff. I'm just confused, like timeline wise, like where that's coming from you and me both? But I guess my question is like, say the flood, right, yes, Noah's arc that flood, Where in your opinion, timeline wise,
did that happen? And also when they have like people in the Bible that lived hundreds of years, how does it history kind of write itself different biblically than actual reality.
Well that's wow, that is a broad question. Yeah, I really like that. I mean, there's people archaeologists in the field of biblical archaeology, and they are amazing. They are very knowledgeable and exactly those questions. So I will do
my best to sort of answer that. I've covered a lot of kind of what you're touching on is Young Earth creationism, which is, you know, the idea that the Earth is around six thousand years old and that you know, maybe we co existed with dinosaurs and stuff like that. And I'm gonna be totally honest, I've covered a lot of Young Earth creationist content and I have absolutely no idea what the narrative is, Like I really don't. I don't know, like where did dinosaurs come from? When did
they die out? What is it?
Like?
Where does the flood fit into it? Like there is such a like disconnect between how their timeline works that I genuinely do not understand it. So that is an awesome question that I don't think I can actually answer.
It's like when a.
Little kid draws a picture and somehow like they're the same size as the tree and the house. Yeah, yeah, we just accept it.
Okay, cool, if you say it, I guess I believe it.
You know, No, that's a good question, Andrew, because I wonder that stuff all the time. I mean, you actually had a video that I watched talking about what was
called the enigmatic handbag. Was it something like that? Yeah, yeah, where people were noticing what looked like a little purse or even maybe a lock in some respect, and a lot of ancient what like like hieroglyphics, right, and a lot of carvings, and everybody was convinced that it was this purse that people carried around that was, in your opinion.
Not the case.
Yes, And you know, I had someone ask me on that question. They're like, Milo, like, why didn't you actually debunk it? I'm like, what is there to debunk? Like the idea is these carvings sort of look the same and therefore aliens, there's no through line, Like it doesn't even make sense, and so, like, you know, things like.
That, were going to start presenting arguments like.
That, like you can't just say a thing and then another thing and be like, yes, I need a little more than that.
Okay, Okay, maybe this is my last question I could keep going, I swear so on the topic of aliens, when you have been looking around and traveling the world and checking out these different like digs and excavation sites, have you found anything that people just cannot figure out where it came from and just maybe it is not of this world?
Ooh ooh, I do have one, okay, so oh yeah. Recently I was in Peru doing some work in the Sacred Valley, and while I was there, we visited this like remote mountain village and the elder of the village has a couple like you know, things that are his like personal you know, accoutrements. He has like a staff, and then he also has a conch shell, one of those big ones that you know you see people blow into. And the conch shell comes from way down in the
valley by Lima. So it's from one of the other genous groups down there, and it was taken from the sea and gifted to this group that lives way in the mountains where at like sixteen thousand feet. Like I couldn't breathe. These people were running around, you know, they're used to it, but I was like, okay, I help me, you know, And so I'm talking to this man and he hands reaches out the shell to me and I
take it and it's heavy and it's alive. It is a marine organism that has lived for probably upwards of fifty years in the mountains. The spines of it have broken off and they've healed, like they've grown back a conch shell like. Granted I didn't do like an X ray on it. I don't know. Maybe it's like mammified. I couldn't even tell you, but like it had the weight of a living organism in it, and it had healed. The physical spines of it had healed. And I am
a very science oriented person. I was standing there holding this thing in my hands and I was like, I have no fucking idea what is going on here? And that has been like in my head since. I'm like, there is some magic going on with this that I cannot explain.
What was the city in case I want to go?
Patakanca? Okay, it's a little village. It's if you like really twisty roads and feeling like you're gonna fall to your death down a cliff at any second, enjoy that. Yeah, okay, well it's the place for you.
Awesome. Oh, we love you, and thank you so much for stopping by and spending so much time with me. This has been very informative and wonderful. You're amazing. I really appreciate it.
Thank you, thank you. I appreciate you guys having me here. It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for having me on. This is an honor. And uh, you know, follow me on YouTube Mini minute.
Man, Many minute Man on YouTube.
Milo Rossi, you can find me there. I'm trying to go away from many minute Man more Malo Rossi. You feel like it's a little better branding.
Yeah, Many minute Man. Maybe in the future could get you caught up in some other nonsense.
I know, I know I've heard about that. Yeah. Yeah, we'll stick with Milo Rossi for now. Thank you for having Thank you.
Okay, so let's get to the burn book. Because this burn book, I think Andrew was upset about it as well as me.
Yes, yes, I was more shocked by your response.
Oh were you Yes, you didn't expect that from me?
Well, you said you were going to do it, and then it was like and did and then I saw the response and I was like, like I almost fell off my chair.
I was shocked.
I have a new reply to people who upset me. So, first of all, Billy McFarlane, you're getting burned. Billy McFarland, if you don't know, he was the genius behind Firefest. We remember Firefest right where the one guy was going to go suck some dick for water because it was so so crazy everything that was going on. Do you remember that?
Not that not that par I didn't watch the dock, but I knew all about it, Like I knew what was going on. See I watch enough crappy TV and crappy like you know, circumstances on my Real Housewives that I don't have time for things that are actually crappy in real real life that happened to people.
So okay, okay. This was a good one though, because it really shows the power of or at least not the power of. It really shows how quickly influencers will just jump on a bandwagon for no reason with no evidence or research, and why you should never trust influencers, which we've known for a while anyway, So Firefest, we know it was a shit show. It was a dumpster fire. All of the things that was terrible. He got in trouble. He would do jail for all of the stuff that
happened with Firefest. Fast forward, he's out now and he thinks he's gonna throw a Firefest too, and he's really trying to make this little comeback, which is bizarre. So I thought, oh, this would be great. Let's talk to him because we could have some fun with that. So I reached out on Instagram directly to Billy McFarlane's page. I got a response that said, absolutely, I would love to do this. Email me here, Andrew sends the email. Suddenly some guy is copied in on it. Who was it?
Oh me, no, omar, I don't know.
Okay, someone gets copied in on this email and we're like, oh, who's this guy? This guy is his very stupid manager or marketing person who hit us with the gem of Billy would love to do your podcast. His typical fee for radio is five thousand dollars an hour.
It is crazy an hour, not like total five thousand dollars for an hour of his time.
So immediately I just slammed my laptop shut and I'm like, this is probably the stupid thing I've ever seen. And then I thought, now I'm not gonna let people get away with this anymore. And I think there's a very simple response that conveys a lot. So I just wrote back, and I told Andrew I was gonna do it. I said, please let me respond to this. I'm just gonna write lawl and that is my new response to anything that upsets me. Ever again, I'm just gonna lull at you.
Oh my gosh. Did you get a response from that?
No, of course not. What are you gonna say? What are you laughing at? You know what I'm laughing at? How dare you laugh why? You know why I'm laughing?
You're right, you could do that just lol.
Yeah, I lalled at old Corin Stuffan's superhead.
Ye.
I just wrote back, law very weird.
I feel like your bird book is just people who are doing ridiculous things, either not coming on the podcast or charging you to be on the podcast.
You're right, this is very selfish.
No, I'm here for it. Let them burn.
Yeah.
Last episode, Diamond and I actually lit people up on like the Greater Good of Society. We were talking about how horrible it is when people don't wear headphones and decide that they want to watch whatever they're watching. On their iPad or their phone. That's horrible.
Yeah, yeah, that kid. I'm still thinking about your kid. Don't know your name, but I'm still thinking about you.
So, Billy McFarlane, you've been burned. That's my flame. Sound wow, I love book. You have a permanent place fucker. Okay, Andrew, do you have an ask me anything I do?
Amanda Kozar asks what's your favorite snack?
I like that.
Of all the things, that's what we're gonna I thought these were gonna be like deep and good. Oh it's my favorite snack.
See it is?
It is?
I mean I like all snacks.
You know me.
I'm a snack person. If there's something to munch on, I'm doing it.
That sounded dirty, Yeah it kind of did, but I liked it.
I meant snack wise, I would have to say I'm a sucker for Chex Mix.
Oh come on, I love it.
I don't disagree with you.
Thank you, Andrew. From Afar.
On United, they now give you a little snack bag that is basically checks Mix. I forgot how good it was. The bagel chips, the pretzels, the weird cracker thing that's just like a bland cracker I'm confused by it, but it's also good and if you throw some cheesy parts in there too, like.
What so, did you know there's a cheddar checks mix that has a cheese mix in there. There's Bold that's my favorite one, the Bold, but also just regular checklis Man here for it.
Okay, guys, you have got to step up your paletts honestly.
Oh really's your diamonds? Its super exotic? What is it?
I'm allergic to most things, so if he's.
Gluten free, I like old Babe gluten free chips.
But then I also eat olive oil chips.
From the local jelly, which goes against my gluten allergy.
But whatever.
Okay, is that how you feel? I say with your chest? I like siete is it? Cassava chips?
Oh?
Ten out of ten with a lime on them?
I love it?
I love it?
Or nothing could beat a good green grape okay?
Nothing you do eat green grapes in the morning?
Yep?
You have that often? Okay, Yeah, let's hear about you, loser, Andrew.
I like the jipeno chips from uh what's the one? I love those? I think that's my favorite snack. It's spicy, it's delicious. You can't go wrong. Asshole burns afterwards, but I have to put.
That in your assholes from jalapeno chips.
I'm just saying spicy things are not good for me personally. My Chicken bindoaloo incident.
Is not great to talk about the chicken.
I ate chicken Vndulu. The next day was the Casey Musk Graves concert. I was with my best friend Miranda. The two of us are at the concert. May have had an edible, and I feel like on an edible, you just become very aware of where you are in your body. And all of a sudden, I was like, huh, gastro intestinal distress and not great. And the concert did not start yet, and I'm literally like, oh God, oh God, I'm gonna put my pants in Madison Square card in
this most embarrassing thing in my life. Luckily, power Through made it through the whole show. But then afterwards, I was with my friend and we're like, Okay, what are we doing? Where are we going out? I'm like, I cannot go out. I cannot go out.
I don't know.
I'm literally gonna die if I like we walked into the path. It's at twenty minutes, I go, I'm gonna shit my pants, Like I cannot take the path train right now. I'm so sorry we got outside. I called an uber. The uber dropped me off at the old studio because I was like, I will not make it home and I'm so sorry.
I need to like go now.
It dropped me off at the old studio and it wasn't great. It wasn't a great day for me. So chicken Mindalu repeated the next day.
Okay, not happy.
I argue this one. It definitely could have been the chicken Vndalu because it is spicy and there's oil and like gee and all kinds of stuff in there. But a lot of times these edibles, like even with shrooms, they make you have to shit your pants. Yeah, it was that's a part of it.
Well, I learned my lesson and I will not be doing it for any of the Casey munscrape shows I'm coming to this year.
I love that for you.
Yeah, I can't believe you held it the entire show.
I can't race a God.
I was just like focus Andrew.
Focus.
Was it one of those things where like if I move, it's coming out.
The pain I felt was immeasurable. I cannot explain. It's just the cramps. It was like one of those where you're just like.
I think one of my favorite things is that, like you don't realize how intense your thoughts are about it until that moment comes and you're like, I'm thinking of nothing else, nothing else matters in the world right now. Dear God, just let me get through this because I cannot ship myself in public. It happened to me in Thailand. We were there yourself. No I thought I was going to We may or may not have eating a bunch of mushrooms, and that's that's that happens. Sometimes people throw up.
Sometimes you have to like crap, whatever it is.
It is like you are eating like a tainted mushroom, like it's going to cause you absolute.
It's like fermented and fungified whatever it is. It Yeah, yeah, we're having a great time. I'm like in paradise. This boat is rocking, it's wonderful. And then all of a sudden, I was like, oh no, oh, no, no, thankfully we had pulled up to this island. But it's not like there were just bathrooms all around, but there were a few boats. So I said, please, God, tell me that there is a restroom somewhere. They're like, yeah, you just got to walk through those trees. There's this public bathroom
over there. When I tell you, the walk was probably half a mile. It was awful. You also had to walk through this like temple area. Mind you, I have on a bikini top and I'm like scurrying through a temple ready to ship myself. Went into the bathroom. Oh my god. And the worst part getting off the little boat that we were on. A wave came top of my bathing suit, flipped right up, boots everywhere.
Oh wow, yeah wow.
And here's my boyfriend and my friend's on the boat. They're like, nice titday. No, couldn't get worse too, But I made it so it wasn't so bad.
You should have done an aquedumpt.
Excuse me, you know exactly.
No, no, no, no, no, no, we got to cut.
You don't have to talk to either Michelle.
We're talking about this. Either of them were on Survivor. They said, like people, when you're on Survivor, you aquaedump. So you just go in the water, and you have to make sure you go out far enough so this way, the wave doesn't carry in the food, but you would just like float and then you just do your business.
Okay, that sounds like the dirtiest. Also, i'd be very nervous that something would come up come up on me while we were doing that. And also, I mean, I know they're not eating in the ocean, and everything else craps in the ocean, so I guess it's not really that weird, but I feel like you can't shit that close to where you eat.
Literally, so you swim again, as it's been explained to me, you swim out a little bit, and then you just are floating. And if someone's just like out there floating, you're like, ah, they're doing the thing. Or they dig holes. But the problem is they film at the same location now for like all the seasons, so you can if you're back on the island or it's a new season and you're on that island, can actually find the poop holes.
We're going okay, all right, okay, Oh.
Diamond's gonna call it. Diamond's calling it. She doesn't want to talk about the poop anymore.
Yeah, I'm gonna go shit tot and a toilet in a toilet by the way here, I can't I know, I can't say who it is, but there is a mad shitter in this building.
Oh yes, Oh Diamond somehow has encountered multiple times.
She needs to be burned. Can we burn her the next episode? Can I burn her right now?
Burner? Wait, let's save it for the next episode. It's gonna be a good burn. Absolutely, absolutely yeah. By the way, I went to the bathroom today to pee and I encountered it. Said, oh my god, and then she tried to speak to me. On my way out, I was like, I can't.
I can't.
I know.
Shame, No, shame, I know, shame.
Wait for the next episode.
Okay.
And on that note, we're out. If you want to like, follow and subscribe, I would love that. Uh Sauce on the side with Gandhi anywhere you get your podcasts, preferably iHeart but Apple, Spotify all that stuff at Baby Hot Sauce. If you can find me on Instagram, still living through a shadow band and Andrew and Diamond where can they find you, guys?
Andrew go at Andrew Pug on Instagram and.
Diamond at diamond Sincera on Instagram.
All right, come find us and if you have questions or you want to hit us with an ask me anything, because apparently a snap question can lead to talks about where you nearly crapped yourself. Hit us. We would love to know and we'll see you next time. Say bye bye,