Escaping Your Lane: The 289th Evolutionary Lens with Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying

Summary

DarkHorse Podcast Episode 289: Escaping Your Lane

Hosts: Bret Weinstein & Heather Heying
Date: August 13, 2025

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Episode Overview

In the 289th episode of the DarkHorse Podcast, Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying discuss the value and dangers of intellectual "lane-keeping," provoke an extended exchange with vaccine scientist Geert Vanden Bossche, and explore issues of scientific generalism versus specialization. The episode also features a detailed naturalism segment from Heather's wildlife observations and an analysis of recent Canadian government restrictions on forest access. Themes of expertise, evolutionary reasoning in science and society, public trust, autonomy, and responses to risk and authority run throughout.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Introduction & Sponsor Briefs

Ad and introduction content omitted per instructions.

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2. The Vanden Bossche Critique: Lane-Keeping in Science

(12:51 – 35:17)

• Trigger Event:
  A social media clip features Bret and Heather discussing systemic vs. mucosal immunity—questioning the logic of intramuscular COVID vaccines for respiratory viruses.

  • Key Quote (Bret):
    “What happened is a clip of ours…in which we discussed the difference between the systemic immunity and the mucosal immunity and the problems with immunizing people with an intramuscular injection in order to create a mucosal immunity to a respiratory virus.” (12:51)

• Geert Vanden Bossche's Objection:
  Geert, a vaccinologist, publicly critiques Bret for "not staying in his lane," and asserts that systemic (IgG) antibodies can cross to mucosal surfaces via "transudation," offering mucosal immunity.

  • Key Quote (Geert, as read by Bret):
    “Vaccines that trigger systemic immunity and create high titers of IgG antibodies in the blood can definitely give you mucosal immunity. That happens through transudation of IgG antibodies, something Weinstein has probably never heard of.” (16:36)

• Bret's Response:
  Admits not previously knowing the term "transudation" but emphasizes the limits of such immunity:

  • Notable Clarification:
    “The leakage into the mucosa is strictly of this protein. It is not of the cells that allow adaptive immunity. … The fact that the product, these antibodies, gets into your mucosa, is a dim shadow of what you’re hoping for when you have a true mucosal immunity…” (18:18)

• Evolutionary Lens and 'Stay in Your Lane' Critique:
  Bret rejects the demand to "stay in your lane" as anti-intellectual, highlighting DarkHorse’s mission as evolutionary biologist generalists bridging gaps between laypeople and siloed experts.

  • Key Quote:
    “The idea of lanes is anti-intellectual. … It is the sum total of all of the different specific disciplines and the ability to integrate them with a generalist perspective that actually makes us wiser and capable of critically evaluating important claims…” (25:02)

• Reconciliation & Reflective Critique:
  Although respecting Geert’s contributions, Bret notes the limits of expertise and the hazards of specialist gatekeeping, as well as the risks of overconfidence in any field during fast-moving, complex crises like COVID.

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3. Defending Generalism & Evolutionary Perspectives

(35:17 – 56:33)

• Heather’s Broadside Against 'Stay in Your Lane':

  • Argues life science disciplines need evolutionary context; “nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.” (39:00)
  • Warns against reductionist, static notions of expertise that stifle progress and suppress dissent.

• Ecological Metaphor:
  Bret compares scientific specialization to “territory” vs. “home range” in animal ecology:

  • Key Quote:
    “In science, there is no place for defending a territory. Anybody is welcome to investigate any question with whatever toolkit they bring to bear.” (45:14)

• Corruption and the Specialist Trap:
  Bret suggests generalists are less prone to systemic corruption because they aren’t professionally or socially captive to the dogmas of a single field.

• The Limits and Risks of Vaccine Technologies:
  Bret reviews three broad vaccine technologies (live attenuated, killed/inactivated, mRNA) and their inherent safety and evolutionary risks, arguing for a more nuanced, less default pro-vaccine stance.

  • “There are three basic vaccine technologies, none of which are safe. … If you take a normal evolutionary approach to human health, you would suspect most of the drugs that people are on for chronic conditions are going to be unhealthy, and you’ve got to be pretty darn unhealthy to justify taking the risks.” (53:29)

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4. Heather’s Field Notes: San Juan Island Wildlife

(56:37 – 69:00)

• Wildlife Encounter Recap: (56:37–69:00)
  • Heather describes a dawn hike among bald eagles, foxes, and the discovery of a headless seal carcass, illustrated with videos and naturalist reflections.
  • Highlights fox behavior and draws connections between wild canids and domestic dogs.
  • Discusses predators (eagles, orcas) and human cultural impacts (e.g., the legacy of orca captivity).
    • Memorable Commentary (Heather):
      “There’s just no denying—everything that fox did there was doglike. … If you’ve got a dog and your dog has ever gotten into something you didn’t really want it doing, well, that’s this right here. On the other hand, this is a wild animal who's found an amazing meal…”

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5. Canada Forest Closures: Authoritarian Risk Response?

(69:00 – 77:02)

• Recent Edicts in Nova Scotia & New Brunswick:
  Both provinces close public (Crown) lands to hiking, camping, and other activities due to wildfire risk, with stiff fines for violations.

  • Key Quote (Heather): “The idea that you can’t walk in the woods and that that is being considered now a privilege and a luxury … feels very much like what happened during Covid. … What does public mean?” (72:03)

• Authoritarian Overreach Concerns:
  Both hosts critique the logic and tone of the announcements, seeing disturbing echoes of COVID-era outdoor restrictions.

  • Quote (Bret):
    “The idea that walking in the woods…we can't stop you from starting fires. This is nonsense. Punish the behavior that's actually wrong. You have no right to stop people from walking on public lands. This is—this is effectively a God-given right.” (73:20)

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6. Poll Results: Lend Me a Hand or Leave Me Alone?

(77:02 – 92:58)

• Summary of Fox News Poll Results:
  Examines Americans’ preferences for federal government intervention: “Lend me a hand” vs. “Leave me alone.” Key findings:
  • Younger people and urban dwellers are more likely to want help from the government; rural people and seniors prefer being left alone.
  • Both hosts debate interpretations: generational effects vs. changing opportunities, urban self-sufficiency mythology vs. rural realities, and the legacy of Democratic social programs.
    • Quote (Heather):
      “…now it feels increasingly like the programs are for anyone who says, actually I feel like I could use some help.” (82:21)
    • Quote (Bret):
      “Unless you can clear that threshold, you’re going to be on the downstream side of it. … As it was with the woke revolution, I have zero sympathy for what these people are demanding, but I do understand why they're pissed off.” (91:53)

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7. Concluding Thoughts

(92:58–end)

• Both hosts emphasize the need for intellectual autonomy, humility, and evolutionary literacy in navigating science and society, and urge skepticism toward top-down, one-size-fits-all authoritarian solutions.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “The idea of lanes is anti-intellectual.” (25:02, Bret)
• “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.” (39:00, Heather, citing Dobzhansky)
• “Generalists are probably more immune to corruption than specialists.” (45:14, Bret)
• “You have no rights to stop people from walking on public lands. This is—this is effectively a God-given right.” (73:20, Bret)
• “Lend me enough of a hand to get to the level playing field, and then I want to be left alone. That is kind of the ideal.” (91:46, Bret)
• “We have a bigger problem and we know that we have exactly that bigger problem.” (92:58, Heather)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Sponsor Segment: [03:00–12:51] (Ads omitted in this summary)
• Lane-Keeping Critique/Vanden Bossche Exchange: [12:51–35:17]
• Generalism, Specialization, and Evolutionary Science: [35:17–56:33]
• San Juan Island Foxes & Bald Eagles: [56:37–69:00]
• Canada Forest Closures Discussion: [69:00–77:02]
• Fox News Poll on Government Assistance: [77:02–92:58]
• Wrap Up/Closing Thoughts: [92:58–end]

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Tone & Style

The conversation is lively, occasionally playful, and appropriately passionate—reflecting both hosts’ intellectual curiosity and commitment to inquiry "outside their lanes." The mood oscillates between serious critique, philosophical rumination, and affectionate banter, with memorable naturalist storytelling and impassioned appeals for autonomy and humility in the face of complex modern dilemmas.

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For listeners seeking a precise yet vivid roadmap of this episode, this summary tracks the trajectory from scientific controversy (and personalities involved) into wider explorations of expertise, constraint, and evolutionary thinking—interwoven with stories from the wild and critiques of contemporary authority.

Transcript

[A]

Foreign.

[B]

Hey, folks, welcome to the Dark Horse podcast live stream. It is episode 289. I have just been alerted. I am Dr. Brett Weinstein. You are Dr. Heather Hein. Nobody need to alert me to that.

[A]

289. Not a prime.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But a perfect square. 17 squared. I like it.

[B]

You know, perfect is a bit extreme.

[A]

It's perfect.

[B]

It's. No, no. There's a level. If you measure carefully enough, you will find it is not perfect. But I'm not going there. I'm just willing to stand at a distance and see it as perfect. I know that's not how math works. That's why you go into math, is because you don't like the imperfection that happens if you go into literally anything else. Yeah, that's my. That's my thought. Not my only thought. I got others.

[A]

I think it's going to be one of those days.

[B]

Yeah, I think that is certain.

[A]

All right, so we are. We're gonna talk about a number of things today, including. You're gonna start us off, but then I am going to talk a little bit more about San Juan island wildlife. Some cool stuff I saw this morning at dawn. And I haven't even told you about it yet.

[B]

Some stuff I missed because I was. I was gearing up for an interaction that I must tell you, I have come to regret. But anyway, more on that later. And I do mean moron.

[A]

All right, so we're going to follow this live stream today with a Q and a. Please join us on locals for that and locals now for the watch party going on. We have a lot of fun with those and we really appreciate you are our audience who is subscribing to locals and just. Just for being here, for watching, etc. And we're going to pay the rent right up at the top with three sponsors this week. Three amazing sponsors. As always, we choose our sponsors carefully and do not read ads for anyone who makes products or offers services that we do not actually fully vouch for. So our first sponsor this week is as it was last week, Fresh Pressed Olive Oil Club. We love these guys and their olive oils so much. Extra virgin olive oil is delicious and nutritious. It's actually good for your heart. Helps prevent Alzheimer' high in antioxidants. The list of health benefits from olive oil goes on and on and on, and it is a cornerstone of Mediterranean diets. But if you've never had excellent fresh olive oil, you may wonder what all the fuss is about. Fresh Pressed Olive Oil Club is the brainchild of TJ Robinson, also known as the olive oil hunter. He brings the freshest, most flavorful, nutrient rich olive oils from harvest to your door. TJ's Farm Fresh Oils are incredible. We have received several different varietals now, all with noticeably different flavors, and have used them in all sorts of culinary contexts. In marinades for meat and fish, tossed with carrots or asparagus or potatoes before roasting or grilling, rubbed directly onto steaks before grilling, used fresh in salads or drizzled as a finish on a cold soup or on grilled halloumi cheese. We made olive oil cake and several raw sauces that benefit from amazing fresh olive oil, A mostly classic Italian pesto and a Venezuelan green sauce that's rich in cilantro. And all of these, the olive oils from Fresh Pressed Olive Oil Club take it above and beyond what you would get from anything that you would be able to buy in the store. You will not believe how good this olive oil is and how many uses there are for it. Olive oil is a succulent, delicious food that, like pretty much all fats, is best when it's fresh. But most supermarket olive oil sit on the shelf for months or even years, growing stale, dull, flavorless, even rancid. The solution is to have fresh pressed artisanal olive oil shipped directly to you after each new harvest when the olive when the olive oil's flavor and nutrients are at their peak. And they've now got amazing vinegars too. These are just as surprising fresh and vibrant as their olive oils and with a wide range of flavors and histories. We have add a splash of fresh vinegar to bone broth to roasted vegetables, and so much more. As an introduction to TJ Robinson's Fresh Pressed Olive Oil club, he will send you a full size $39 bottle of one of world's finest artisanal olive oils fresh from the new harvest for just $1 to help him cover shipping. And there's no commitment to buy anything now or ever. Get your free $39 bottle for just $1 shipping and taste the difference freshness makes. Go to getfreshdarkhorse.com that's get fresh dark horse.com for a free bottle and pay just $1 in shipping.

[B]

I must say, I even find myself feeling good about the moment when you reach for it, to add it to something, you know, it's the thing that has to happen next. And it just, there's something, there's something that just feels right about the entire thing.

[A]

Absolutely. And the bottles feel good. In the hand. They just. Just great.

[B]

Yep, they look good. The labels are different and interesting and.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, that was beautiful. Our second sponsor this week, also amazing and I feel the same way about these guys. Products when I reach for them are new to us this summer. We're just thrilled to have them as a sponsor. It's the Amazing Garlic from Sundries Farm. Eat garlic because it is delicious and exceptionally good for you. Numerous studies attest to the health benefits of garlic on heart and human immune the health benefits of garlic include benefits to heart and immune health as an antioxidant and an anti inflammatory. Garlic is a staple in many culinary traditions for good reason. So that's why to eat garlic but eat Sundries Farm garlic because this is a family farm of amazing people who care deeply about the land and their product, who know garlic in all of its intricacies, and who produce a diversity of garlics that is, in my experience, unparalleled. They grow 11 varieties of garlic, each one notably different, some mild and some hot, some ideal for baking, others great to eat raw. Some have huge clothes cloves, others store for a very long time. Like grapes, garlic takes on the terroir of its environment and becomes unique according to where it is propagated. Sundry's Farm, which is in Idaho's rich volcanic soils, is ideal for growing perfect garlic. You may not know that 73% of the world's garlic is produced by China and 80% of the garlic consumed in the US is grown in China. Imported garlic is always fumigated with methyl bromide and often bleached. Methyl bromide is so toxic that it was phased out of use in the US back in 2005 except for critical uses. And as with all imported garlic, application to agricultural products before they are shipped to the US So methyl bromide, which is otherwise not allowed in the US is sprayed on imported garlic as well as other things. And again, 80% of our garlic in the US is imported from China. In comparison, the amazing garlic from Sundry's Farm is naturally grown on a four year rotation with COVID crops to suppress weeds and build soil. And Sundry's Farm does everything by hand. Every head of garlic is touched at least eight times by human hands. Cloves are separated by hand for planting, hand planted, hand weeded scapes are picked by hand, hand harvested, hand hung up to dry, hand trimmed, trimmed, hand sorted and hand packaged. This year their two year old is helping with weeding. The crew outside of their immediate family are all local to the farm and Paid a fair wage. We used a head of music garlic last night in potato salad and on grilled black cod, and we had it in our Venezuelan green sauce as well. It is so delicious. It is also delightful to unwrap the different varieties of garlic and discover their secrets. Sundries Farm offers hardneck and softneck varieties, selling a year's supply of gourmet garlic for your kitchen and also offering seed and gardening packages. Go to www.sundriesfarm.com to place your 2025 garlic order and enter code DARK HORSE for 10% off. That's sundriesfarm.com it's gonna be dot com, right? That's sundriesfarm.com code darkhorse sundries s u n d r dash I e s f a r m dot com code darkhorse. Check them out, read their origin story, check out their farming practices, look at the amazing varieties of garlic that they sell, and get yourself some absolutely amazing garlic. Once again, that's sundries farm.com use code dark horse at checkout for 10% off.

[B]

Now that does raise a point.

[A]

Does it?

[B]

Yes. I think one of the things I'm learning as we become aware of the horrifying things that have happened to our food is about supply chains and the hidden role they play in all sorts of things, including human health. But you can detect that the supply chains are very long because when you supply things, when you get things supplied locally, they last much longer than you expect that food stuff to last in your refrigerator or your cabinet. And this garlic is lasting incredibly long. Right. I'm used to garlic not lasting that long.

[A]

And, you know, even though the garlic we've got at the moment is fresh and we're supposed to be using it up fast, and we are using it fast. And what we'll get and what you'll get if you. If you order from them as you should. Sundries farm.com is the. I can't think of the word for cured. I guess it's not quite the word, but you'll get cured garlic, which explicitly should be lasting for many, many, many months.

[B]

Right. But the fresh stuff is lasting a long time. And once you realize that the other stuff you're getting is very frequently from China, you understand why that the clock has been.

[A]

I'm just resisting because you never otherwise get fresh garlic. You always get cured garlic.

[B]

Right.

[A]

So the comparison is what you're saying is. Is not exact.

[B]

Got it?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

All right. Our final sponsor, Heather, this week is one of our longest continuous sponsors one of our favorites and Maddie's all time favorite it is Sundays. They make extraordinary dog food. You'll love your dog. No, you love your dogs. That's what it says. So you want to make them happy, of course, and you want to keep them nourished and healthy. Sundaze helps you do all of those things. Sundays makes dry dog food, but it is not like any dog food you've encountered before. Standard high end dry dog food is fine and dogs like it well enough. Even our Labrador Maddie, who is a lab, will basically eat anything. But she discriminates and she loves the food that Sundays makes. Seriously loves it. Sundaze is the only human grade air dried dog food on the market. Air drying combines the best of cooked and raw approaches. Air drying preserves nutrients and taste just like the raw food does. Better than raw though. Sunday's unique air drying process includes a kill step which kills pathogens. So unlike raw dog food, there's no safety or handling risk with Sundays. And Sunday's has no artificial binders, synthetic additives, additives, right. English or other garbage. All of Sunday's ingredients are easy to pronounce and healthy for your dog to eat. It's far better for your dog than standard dry dog food. And apparently it's delicious. Not even just apparently. I'm telling you, even Fairfax are epic. Tabby like it. And and I say it's not bad too. Hey, this is written in the first person. When we were first introduced to Sundays, I tried it for myself. Yep, that's me. Made for dogs tested by cats and podcasters. Sundays, isn't it? Say men and men, but I am only one men. You're also only one podcaster, but for some reason it still seems more right. Sundays is an amazing way to feed your dog. There's no fridge, no prep, no cleanup, no wet dog food smells. It's a total pleasure for the human interact with it. Which is a bonus. In a blind taste test, Sundays outperformed leading competitors 40 to 0. When we feed Maddie, she bounces and spins and leaps in anticipation for a bowl of sundaes. Way more than for her previous food. Do you want to make your dog happy with her diet and keep her healthy? Try Sundays. We've got a special deal for our listeners. Receive 35% off your first order. Go to sundaysfordogs.com darkhorse or use the code darkhorse at checkout. That's S U n D a y s F-O-R d o g s.com forward/darkhorse switch to Sundays and feel good about what you are feeding your dog. All right, we are going to start today by doing something that ordinarily I would not do, which is to pick up some. It's not that I've never done it, but some stuff that came my way over social media and respond to those criticisms here. And the reason that I'm doing it is that actually I think it does the job that you and I have been doing or one of those jobs very well. What it does is it educates to look at what it is that I said, what the criticism is and what the net take is once you parse these things out. So what happened is a clip of ours that went up, I think, on Instagram and then was reposted on X, in which we discussed the difference between the systemic immunity and the mucosal immunity and the problems with immunizing people with an intramuscular injection in order to create a mucosal immunity to a respiratory virus. The basic argument we will not go through that clip again. We will post a link to it. But the basic problem is you have effectively two different adaptive immunity systems. One of them is for your circulatory apparatus, and the other is for your mucosal surfaces, where, of course, you encounter a great many pathogens. And when we inoculate you with an intramuscular injection, it creates immunity if it works properly, but the immunity does not cross over into the mucosa. That's what I effectively said and suggested that, therefore, the idea of delivering something like Covid injections on the MRNA platform injected into your arm was fated to fail from the beginning. My friend Gert van Den Bosch did not take kindly to my description of these two kinds of immunity. And let's put up his tweet. So we are going to go through this in detail so that you can understand the nature of the interaction. I'm going to say I do not take kindly to Gert's portrayal of me or his tone. And I don't think he's right. But I will say that I'm going to say he's 5% right and I'm 95% right in this case. And you'll come to see why, why I see it that way. So here's Gerrit van den Bosch yesterday. He says, how many times have I told Weinstein to just stay in his lane? Now we're going to come back to the very idea of stay in your lane, because I think it tells the tale. But nonetheless, how many times have I told Weinstein to Just stay in his lane. He keeps trying to act like a smartass in areas he doesn't know anything about, and it just makes him look ridiculous. Now, I think he is misusing the word smartass here. English is not his first language. He speaks beautifully, but sometimes gets a term wrong. And I think what he means is he's imagining that smart ass and badass have some relationship or something. But anyway, he's taking me to task, saying that I'm pretending to know things I don't. Does he really think he knows better than people who've worked in this business for over 30 years? Well, yes, Garrett, I do think I know better than a lot of people who've worked in the business for over 30 years because of what I just saw during COVID where you and I ended up in a very different place from the mainstream vaccinologists. So, yes, if my position, which is pretty close to your position on the COVID vaccines is better than your colleagues who disagreed with you, than I do think in many cases I know better than them. Than them. For whatever reason, I think it's embarrassing that they seem to either not know more than they do or pretend they don't know, but for some reason, that's the world we live in. All right, back to Gerd von Den Bosch's tweet. Vaccines that trigger systemic immunity and create high titers of IgG antibodies in the blood can definitely give you mucosal immunity. That's going to be the key sentence here. That happens through transudation of IgG antibodies, something Weinstein has probably never heard of. Okay, this is where Garrett earns the 5%. He's right. I've never heard of transudation before now. I've now looked fairly deeply into it. After booster shots, or if you get exposed to the virus after being vaccinated, those antibodies shoot right back up thanks to the recall effect, and flood the mucous membranes again, including the respiratory tract. Weinstein really needs to quit his naive rambling about vaccines and immunology. He is basically spoon feeding arguments to the hardcore vaccine fans who laugh him off and label him as some clueless anti vaxxer. So I don't know what's with all the bile. Or maybe I do. We'll explore that a little bit later. But let's get to the substantive part of Gerd's claim here. His point is, it is incorrect. What I said is incorrect. That you cannot generate mucosal immunity with an intramuscular injection. Injection Because. And now I will try to elucidate the mechanism that he outlines here. Because if an intramuscular injection creates an adaptive immune response to the intended antigen, so that you have cells that are now educated about what they're looking for, then these IgG antibodies through this process, transudation, end up in the mucosa. This is true. I did not know it.

[A]

So so far I've just heard the word twice, but I still don't know through this process, transudation.

[B]

What it means is effectively a leakage from basically through some sort of a membrane. And it is indeed true, apparently, that.

[A]

Igg came, but a leakage that is common and explicitly part of normal function.

[B]

Yes. And it is even the case we should distinguish that sometimes it is pure leakage, where we can't say that it's an adaptive process, but we can say that the thing that was on this side ends up on that side. The membrane is permeable, but can also be facilitated. So in this case, I don't know which of those two mechanisms is in play, but let's give them the benefit of the doubt, say maybe both are. But here's the problem. What he says in that tweet is that you can indeed elicit a mucosal immunity through this process. But what he elides is that it's not an immunity in the more important sense of the term. And in fact, it ironically runs afoul of gerd's primary contribution in the COVID fiasco. So here's the problem. An antibody. Basically, you've seen the presentations in scientific papers, you've probably seen images projected on the news. Animations or whatever are Y shaped proteins. And the IgG IG is immunoglobulin. It just means antibody. IgG is a simple Y shaped protein. The two tips of the Y are the part that are specific to an antigen and allow it to stick. And then it has a T, triggers the immune system to see and do things. The problem is that the leakage into the mucosa is strictly of this protein. It is not of the cells that allow adaptive immunity. And so what that means is that the antibodies leaking into the mucosa provide at best a very low level kind of protection. Effectively, if they see what they are looking for and stick to it, they can gum up a pathogen, which can and sometimes does prevent it from invading cells and making you sick. So that's conceivable. It's the same mechanism, effectively, as you've heard of the treatment monoclonal antibodies. Well, basically what we do is we create antibodies with a particular target, and we can inject you with them. And then if you encounter the pathogen in qu question, they gum it up. And that can be valuable. So Gerd's point is, those antibodies that can gum up a pathogen can make it to the mucosa, giving you a mucosal immunity. And my point would be, well, that is not an adaptive immunity. The adaptive part has already happened in your circulatory system. And the fact that the product of it, these antibodies, gets into your mucosa is a dim shadow of what you're hoping for when you have a true mucosal immunity, which is the product of an evolutionary process. So let's go back to the classic version of adaptive immunity. You get sick, you get a pathogen, it invades a cell, it starts producing more pathogen. That means that your system now has a lot of material in it that is foreign. And those of your B and T cells that are somewhat close in being able to respond to it, respond, and they proliferate. And each new generation creates variants that are closer to being a perfect match, which are then favored because they find their target. And so you get a process of evolution that refines your immune response. That can't happen if all you've got is antibodies gumming up pathogens. There's no cells to proliferate. All you have is these proteins. So an ideal mucosal immunity would involve delivering the vaccine to the mucosa, where you could get an adaptive immunity that would then be capable of dealing with things like immune escape, which is, frankly, the point for which Gerd van den Bosch is now known to the world. His point was that these shots being delivered into an ongoing pandemic were going to cause immune escape, basically for two reasons. One, you had a lot of people who were either in the midst of an infection or having been recently vaccinated, encountering the pathogen, who were going to effectively select for those variants of the virus that were invisible to the immune system in its partially immune state. So his point was you don't vaccinate into a pandemic because what you're doing is effectively creating a gain of function experiment where you're driving the pathogen to evolve, so it becomes invisible. So the scenario he lays out sets this exact thing up in the lung. You've got a system that cannot adapt because all you have are the proteins. You don't have any reproductive capacity of proteins that have leaked into the. Into the lumen of the lungs. And those things are therefore going to select against the variants of the virus that you have encountered that are the best match for the vaccine you supposedly got. You're selecting for things that are invisible to the vaccine in a place where the immune system cannot adapt. So it creates that very scenario. Okay, now go ahead.

[A]

Just, just a clarification. What he says is that happens through transudation of IgG antibodies. And your argument is because antibodies are static, because the adaptive process has already acted on them, they. They cannot continue to respond to changes in the pathogen.

[B]

Right. The thing that adapts are the cells. The product of that evolution is different proteins. But if the cells aren't involved, if it's the proteins that have leaked in, this doesn't happen. And I'm not arguing there's no benefit to it. There may be a benefit to it, although in researching this, it is not considered a major contributor. Now, that can vary. Maybe that's a wrong result, but in terms of your design for a vaccine, you should be trying to create the most robust response possible. So leaky membranes and IgG antibodies is not sufficient. So how do we evaluate this claim? And why is Garrett taking such an aggressive stance? We'll go back to the question of, hey, Brett, stay in your lane. Well, what is my lane exactly? I would argue the following thing. The idea of lanes is anti intellectual. What am I doing? And what are you and I doing on dark horse? And what did we do throughout the pandemic? We came at it as generalists. We came at it as people who frankly did not know a lot about vaccines. I knew a bit about immunology, but the process of our becoming educated, taking what we were being told, having a better position as evolutionary biologists to understand what the claims that we were being fed were, and then educating ourselves meant that we actually were in a position to stand between the lay public, which doesn't know how to evaluate what it's being told, and the experts who may or may not be telling the truth. Right? So we did that job by virtue of the fact that we are generalists. What lane is it to be a generalist? The fact of generalists effectively means that lanes is a bad metaphor. You, Gert, are a vaccinologist. I would defer to you on technical matters of vaccines, but as a vaccinologist, you're not an evolutionary biologist. You may not be an epidemiologist, you're not a physiologist. So, point being, it is the sum total of all of the different specific disciplines and the ability to integrate them with a generalist perspective that actually makes us wiser and capable of critically Evaluating important claims like, hey, here's a shot and you should take it. So to be honest, I resent being told to stay in my lane. It's not like I'm representing myself as expert in something that I'm not expert in. I come to the table as an evolutionary biologist and this is a squarely evolutionary question. Do I know about transudation? Well, now I do. You educated me. Thanks, buddy. Do I know about immunology? A bit. Enough to understand what I'm told better than most. But point is, there is something strange about this comment. It's designed and in fact, explicitly he tells people, tells me that I should stay away from these questions and leave it to the experts. Even though he's seen what the experts did. So why would that be? I have two hypotheses and in general, I don't like looking into other people's minds and mind reading. It's a. It's a fool's paradise. Except in Gerd's case, he gives us some evidence on this question. In a later tweet, he recounts something that I don't think is accurate. Do you have that tweet about his book? He says yes. Typical. That's how it went with my book too. At first he that's me. Hung on my lips. I think he means hung on my every word to understand the phenomenon of viral immune escape, which my book is about. But when I asked him to write a blur, he probably means blur of a few sentences for the book, he completely ignored me too. Regardless of that poor behavior, he suffers from a pathological overestimation of himself, at least when it comes to his knowledge of immunology and vaccinology. Okay, this is not how I remember the interaction. Gerd gave me a copy of what this tweet tells me was a book. He gave me something that he asked me to read. I do not believe he asked me to blurb it, but maybe he did and I missed that part. I didn't ignore it. I started reading it and I this. We were together in England and I told him I can't remember what the term was, but I specifically told him that I believed that he was misusing a word in English that was going to cause him a problem, which he then told me I was wrong about. Now, this was just a simple matter of English as my first language. It's not his first language. I would. It's not surprising that you, even if you're fluent in a language, you could misunderstand a nuance. Nuance of a Term. So anyway, the idea that I ignored him is just simply not true. So one question is, is he. Can you actually run that clip of my. I've. I've had him on dark horse twice. He's done a very good job in some regards. So that my second discussion with him, the first one was remote. The second one was when we were in England, actually. The interaction that he's specifically referring to. Do you have that, Jim? All right, so that last time we spoke, you said, this is going to produce escape variants, that that's what we should be looking for. And you believed that we were going to see escape variants that were both more infectious and more virulent. Is that right?

[C]

Yeah, I was in fact not distinguishing that much at that point between, you know, the higher level of virulence and infectiousness. I almost thought, you know, when the virus is going to become highly infectious, that was really my conviction. Then automatically it's going to spread much faster and doing much more harm in the population. So that has come out, I guess. I think everybody acknowledges that this mass vaccination now has really promoted, I should say, the expansion of highly infectious variants. I've never been saying that the mass vaccination induces the mutations, because of course it does, but it enables the virus to do a natural selection between all the different mutants that are produced anyway and to select those that are most appropriate to overcome this pressure, you know, on the infectiousness of the virus. This is to say we'll select the more infectious variants and enable those to become, through the system that we discussed, the mass vaccination, the same medium everywhere, to become predominant, of course, in the population.

[B]

All right, so that was my second interaction with Gerd. You can hear that he is alarmed. He's very concerned about the progression of the pandemic. He, I think correctly predicts that you will see a proliferation of variants based on the fact that the vaccines, both MRNA and DNA based vaccines, were not only delivered into a pandemic, but were very narrowly targeted, making it a very easy evolutionary progression for them to escape, which we saw many times. But he does not do a perfect job himself here. In fact, do you have that clip of his? We won't show the whole thing, but he delivered a final video message in what I think was May of 2023 that I think is worth listening to a piece of.

[C]

Okay, so what will we see in the coming weeks? According to my predictions, what we'll see in the coming is still a further increase in acute autoimmune diseases, for example, autoimmune myocarditis, autoimmune diabetes, type 1, juvenile diabetes, more than inflammatory organ disease, what we have been seeing in the past. So now we see more and more autoreactive organ disorders. We also see more and more, and that trend will still increase, in my opinion. Turbo cancers, so acute cases, accelerated cancer with metastasis, etc. So this excess deaths due to autoreactive immune disorders and cancer will then be followed by a substantial wave of hyperacute COVID 19 disease in highly vaccinated populations. So I expect this to occur late summer, early autumn.

[B]

That's. That's enough. My point here is that I think Gertrude played a really important role in the pandemic. His track record is far from perfect, though his concern about potentially prolonging the pandemic by driving the proliferation of variants. I think he was pretty well on the mark in terms of some of the pathologies that he is describing. Again, pretty well on the mark in terms of his fears, which he expressed, I believe, from the beginning, or at least the beginning of my interaction with him about a wave of devastating Covid spreading through vaccinated people. I don't believe that materialized. And I don't hold that as an indicator that he doesn't know what he's talking about. I hold that as an indicator that we were dealing with complex systems. They're very difficult to predict. In the case of a pandemic and a immunological phenomenon, you're dealing with multiple complex systems interacting with each other. And so it's not surprising at all that he got things wrong, but it is his sense that what he got right goes to his credit. That others are not entitled to the same leeway is preposterous. Did you have something you wanted to throw in here?

[A]

Well, I thought we would come back at some point to the question of staying in your lane, but you keep going.

[B]

Maybe we should do that now.

[A]

Only if you're. Only if you're. Yep.

[B]

Let's do it.

[A]

Well, I was just looking. We've returned to this question. From the beginning. We have been advised to stay in our lane. And part of. From the beginning of COVID from the beginning of us talking on dark horse about things that appear to be outside of what we have thought about before. I remember early on when there was the first inklings that there might be a vaccine on the horizon, when the public was first hearing about it and the word adjuvant was. Was new, at least. At least to me. And we. We talked about it on air and some of the comments that came back were, you know, who are these people if they don't even know what an adjuvant is, how dare they talk about vaccines? And this, this was obvious from the beginning as a way to shut down discourse. We have been, I, I find three actual three episodes in which we focus on even naming the episode some version of here's why you don't stay in your lane on this kind of critique, which is narrow minded, assumes that expertise is both perfect and static, and is a kind of gatekeeping which serves mostly to preserve the autonomy and unquestioning authority of those currently in power as opposed to those who don't have it. And I don't see that in the Persona in general general of Geert Vandenbusch, never having boshed, never having spoken to him myself. But it is a state to which many people with some legitimate expertise like to return. And, you know, I think we've seen this over and over and over again during, not just Covid, but with the, the woke stuff that has been invoked, of course, that, you know, you're, you're told, you know, we are told, okay, there's a specific expertise that you must have in order to speak on this. And if you don't have that, then you can't speak on this. Well, that's the kind of reductionist thinking that has gotten us into the absolute mess that we have gotten into. But then you also have the more transparently insane. If you are not black, you can't speak to the black experience, for instance, right? If you, if you are not Latina, you can't write a book in which a Latina shows up as, as a character, which obviously the end of literature, the end of fiction, the end of story, the end of so much of what makes us human, but over in what you might think is more important territory. Although I'm not sure that story isn't just as important. You obviously can't do science this way either. You simply cannot. We've talked about this over and over and over again, and to your point that you made several minutes ago, we have said this many times and I, I'm always a little bit hesitant about it because it seems like we then are creating a pedestal on which we stand and say, ah, but you know, because of the particular field in which, in which we are trained and in which we have educated ourselves, we have an ability to have a window in all of these things. But it's true, true, you know, nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution. Was that Dobchansky, I think.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

So this is, you know, one of the great 20th century evolutionary biologists, one of the framers of the modern synthesis in the 1930s, 1940s. And it's just true. And yet it's also true that most biologists and in biology, I include all of the things, you know, I don't include chemists inherently or physicists, but I certainly include vaccinologists and virologists and public health people like, and, you know, ecologists and molecular biologists and all of these things, because they're working within the sphere of biology, ought to imagine themselves as biologists and therefore understand deeply something about evolution. Yet most people do not. And there are many aspects of evolutionary change, and we have fluency in many of those different, both scales and dimensions that the micro evolutionary scales and at small timeframes and the macroevolutionary scales at larger timeframes, both in neonatology and the paleontology. And, you know, and we don't expect other people walking in to questions that have an evolutionary framing to understand all of those things. But if you are speaking about anything that is biological, you are inherently speaking about something that is evolutionary. Therefore you ought to know something about what the evolutionary framing is, and you have no grounds on which to shut down an evolutionary biologist who has come in and said, I'm going to take a look at what it is that you're saying and what your claims are and see if it holds up. And we're going to be wrong sometimes. And you're going to be wrong sometimes. And the goal is that we all do the investigations that we're doing in good faith and admit when we're wrong, learn from those mistakes and, and do not hold each other to insane standards that will only restrict human knowledge and flourishing.

[B]

Beautifully said. I am reminded of the ecological distinction between territory and home range, because effectively what we're saying is in inquiry, especially in science, there can be no territory. You can have a home range, you can have a set of topics that are the place that you spend your analytical time. But the idea of saying, actually, well, then you don't spend your time there to somebody who comes in with a different toolkit, no, that, that is absolutely illegitimate. It is the product of an economic environment of limited resources in which people wish to exclude others. It causes the science to be purer, but because it basically removes a set of challenges that are difficult to field.

[A]

So the ecological terms that you've just invoked perhaps need defining. We have talked about them recently on Dark Horse. But a home range, just in ecology, strictly speaking, literally home range is all of the space that you ever go to. So for terrestrial organisms, it's every piece of real estate that you ever visit it, you know, the entire landscape over which you roam. Whereas so every, every organism has a home range. Every organism has some space which they have been to and that can be considered their home range. Some organisms, but not all, also have territories. And we refer to those organisms as being territorial. Territory is always going to be smaller than home range. And territory is a subset of the space in which you travel, which you defend against intruders. You may not defend, defend against all intruders. You may defend it in ways that don't look like defense to those on the outside. It may be intrinsic defense, it may be time delayed, non synchronous defense. There's a lot of ways to defend a territory, maybe chemical defense. But if you are defending some piece of the landscape against others, then that that space that you are trying to defend is your territory or your, your hoped for territory. And your point here is that in science we do, we are trained in particular kinds of questions, and those are the questions about which we will be most native and we will have the greatest understanding both of the types of methods that are used. And because just as you prefer to have a surgeon who is not brand new and also not so old that he can't hold the scalpel, you want someone with a lot of experience but still has the chop stops. You want someone when you are going into a question and trying to figure out what is true, perhaps you will have better luck at getting a good answer from someone who has run into several questions like that before. On the other hand, with the failures of modern science and the productionism of modern science, which does tell you to stay in your lane and does tell you to specialize, and that you shouldn't ask questions over here because they aren't going to get you more publications, which means you aren't going to get tenure. The specialists are becoming less and less reliable with regard to the very questions on which they are being asked to describe reality. And so we actually may come to expect that the specialists know less. And what we would hope for is that more and more people say, you know what? I'm actually a scientist, I can think scientifically and so should we all. And, and therefore I'm going to walk into this space and say, what do I know? What do I not know? What can I infer? How would I know that I was wrong? What kind of evidence would demonstrate that I'm wrong. What would be confirmatory evidence. But what I'm really looking for is falsifying evidence. And only then really. And what do the other people who think they know what they're talking about in this space think is going on? That shouldn't come first, and it certainly shouldn't be the only thing that you rely on.

[B]

So I wanted to just add lots of animals don't do have a home range some place that they exploit and they don't defend any part of it. So my argument would be, in science there is no place for defending a territory. Anybody is welcome to investigate any question with whatever toolkit they bring to bear. And some toolkits will be less effective over here, some not at all. But you can't exclude somebody from your question because it's your question. You don't have that kind of ownership. Now, your analysis makes me wonder actually, if there isn't a principle here that actually a generalist. Generalists are probably more immune to corruption than specialists. What happens in an era where you have high degrees of specialization is that the lies that your discipline tells in order to cause the grant money to flow become sacred. You can't afford to have people challenging the wisdom of vaccinating within vaccinology, so you will effectively have a kind of religion of vaccinology in which it is taken as a given that there are lots of places that we can simply make you healthier by upgrading your immune system, which if your entire career is.

[A]

Based on this one thing, you are likely to stay in your lane, stay the course, do you know, become canalized. Which means that at the point that it becomes clear, which it will for some people, because this is just the way of discovering reality. Oh, actually, that course you've been on for your entire career turns out to have been misguided. It's much harder to say, oh, that sucks, and I guess I'll go look over here now. If it's the only thing you know how to do, you really don't have the option.

[B]

In fact, it's strangely analogous to original antigenic sin, which is one of the concerns about vaccines, which is that if you show the immune system a version of a pathogen, right, you have gone through the process of creating a vaccine, you inject somebody with it, the immune system leaps to the conclusion that this is the proper response, rather than developing an organic response that is dynamic and basically attuned to the particular version you got. So original antigenic sin is one way in which vaccines can be counterproductive and there's an intellectual equivalent of it, which is, let's say that we've got three cases in which a vaccine is clearly the right way to address something. Let's take one that I think you and I would still agree is a valid vaccine, the rabies vaccine. Not saying that rabies vaccine isn't full of risks, but the point is, rabies is a terrifying disease. This vaccine, as far as I know, does prevent you from getting it, and therefore a disease that you basically can't survive. But this vaccine prevents you from getting it. If you're likely to encounter rabies, it makes sense to be vaccinated. So if you've seen that case, and your point is, oh, God, vaccines are lifesavers. Right. And then you start applying it to Covid, and it's like, well, that disease is not very deadly, and your vaccine technology is extremely radical, and what are the chances that it's going to be a net benefit for anybody?

[A]

You also redefined what vaccine means.

[B]

Right. You did it. Yeah. In order. I mean, it's almost the worst case of original antigenics and is now, you know, you. You see things that come with a needle as if they're vaccines rather than. Than a gene therapy. But here's. Here's my real point to Garrett. And, you know, I still feel warmly toward Garrett, even though I take quite a bit of exception to the tone he takes with me here. And frankly, I don't like the tactical shift. Right. The idea that what he wants to do is drive up my costs for speaking by claiming that I'm embarrassing myself. Well, look, you know, one of my strengths. One of our strengths during the pandemic was admitting when we got stuff wrong. Right. We did that lots because it was really easy to get stuff wrong. And you got stuff wrong, too, Garrett. But being able to do that and becoming smarter because, you know. Well, today I do know what transit is. And I can now say something more nuanced about the wisdom of giving an intramuscular injection to create a mucosal immunity. And I know it's not 100%. I know that there is some degree of something you will call immunity that can leak over, maybe it's even facilitated. But the point is, it's not the immunity you want when you're dealing with an evolving antagonist. You want an immunity that's capable of adapting. Am I saying there's no conceivable way that you could even get there from, you know, IGG leaking over into the lung? No. This is a complex system. I'm sure that I don't understand most of it, but can I take a pretty good guess as to whether or not the cost of X is going to exceed the benefit of it? Yeah, I'm doing all right on that front. So anyway, I think we maybe wrestled one. I would least want to put forward as a hypothesis that generalism is creates an immunity to corruption because you are not so closely tied to the fate of your particular discipline. And this is the other question I wanted to raise about Garrett's point. I'm concerned that one of the reasons maybe Garrett is angry at me because he thinks I refused to blurb his book, when probably if he even said that he wanted me to blurb the book, I just lost track of it, which is something I'm prone to. But. But I worry that there's another thing here, which is that Garrett is professionally a vaccinologist. I'm not saying that's all he is, but I am saying that that's one of the ways in which he identifies himself professionally. He has worked with Gavi, he has worked with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He has worked inside of Pharma. Now, if that's your pedigree, right, if you've been schooled in a milieu where it is simply understood that we make the world a healthier place by bringing vaccines to it that are well targeted for the various pathogens that we encounter, then it's very hard to have have the what I think is a real epiphany that you and I have had, which we've talked about here. And I'm concerned that Gert has seen it and that it's sacrilege and that maybe we have a clip of it. Me talking about we have three vaccine technologies and none of them are safe. There are three basic vaccine technologies, none of which are safe. The three technologies are live attenuated vaccines, not safe because individuals react differently. So you can actually a attenuated virus that causes one person to have a tiny mild infection that does them no serious harm may cause another person to have a much more serious infection. And more importantly, it can evolve and it can spread. You're not supposed to have a contagious vaccine, but this can make a contagious vaccine witness, not necessarily about contagion, but the polio vaccine, live attenuated, has created many, many cases of polio. That's an intolerable downside for the vaccine. Second technology is the killed virus or virus fragments that get injected. And the problem with this is it doesn't convince the immune system that there's something to fight. And so the immune system doesn't mount a useful response unless. Unless it is triggered to do so by something called an adjuvant, which we've talked about many times. And adjuvants. The problem with them, as I discussed at the very beginning of the podcast here, is that they're non specific. They just tell the immune system to freak out. And so the immune system will freak out, yes, at the antigen you've injected, but also to maybe the pollen that's blowing in the air that week, the stuff that is in your gut and possibly leaking out because of exposures to other things. So an adjuvant is a very dangerous technology because. Because telling your immune system to freak out is not a safe thing to do. And then the final one is this new MRNA technology. And the MRNA technology is unsafe because it moves haphazardly around the body. It triggers cells wherever it happens to be taken up to produce an antigen. And the immune system is going to regard your own cells producing a foreign antigen as virally infected. It's gonna kill them, which is very bad for you if it happens in your heart. There may be other places in the body where it's not so serious. But the point is, random or haphazard destruction of tissues around the body is not fundamentally safe. So edit that down to a paragraph. You've got three technologies. None of them are fundamentally safe. They all have their severe downsides. So I'm concerned that that's the state of my understanding right now. It could change. But the state of my understanding right now is that because each of the platforms on which you might build a vaccine are dangerous in their own right, that the case in which the disease is sufficiently dangerous and the vaccine is sufficiently safe to justify that, those cases will be few and far between. And if you're a vaccinologist, the idea that a useful vaccine is something that we should expect very rarely is like agreeing that your sector of the market should be much tiny. Right. In the same way that pharma more generally brings lots of drugs to market, and it takes us decades to find out what the harms are. But if you take a normal evolutionary approach to human health, you would suspect most of the drugs that people are on for chronic conditions are going to be unhealthy, and you've got to be pretty darn unhealthy to justify taking the risks. And therefore, the more bang for the buck is almost always going to come in terms of making yourself healthier to begin with. So you don't have the pathology and don't need the drug. But you know, from within pharma, I expect that to sound like crazy talk. Right, I expect that. Because, you know, the point is it's, you know, it is agreeing that most of what we do is more harmful than benefit. And you probably wouldn't have gone into pharma if that's what you thought. Right. So anyway, the generalist can see this, that I wonder if specialists again and again are prone to falling into not only bad assumptions but a self serving worldview that is protected by people staying in their lanes.

[A]

I think that's exactly right. I think, I think we see plenty of evidence of that.

[B]

Yep, I think so too.

[A]

I wasn't in my lane this morning.

[B]

You were not?

[A]

No. Instead I went into the forest, which.

[B]

You did not drive other people out of, making it part of your home range, but not your territory.

[A]

So before dawn this morning, it has been a beautiful several days like remarkably hot, unusually hot for this far north. San Juan Islands off the coast of Washington, off part of Washington State. And a bit before dawn this morning I headed out for, for a hike and as I was rounding a corner that you are well familiar with and a hike that we do often into a lagoon, saltwater lagoon area, third lagoon. I saw two bald eagle standing on the beach. Now if you've never been close to a bald eagle, you may not recognize just how gigantic they are. We are, we are rich in bald eagles here. And so we have been fairly close to a number of them, but they are truly giant birds and they flew off, revealing. Well, actually let's show, let's show this first. I've got a couple of videos and some stills. Let's just show that first 30 second video first. So we got one bald eagle. Actually one of them flew off and I get close and you see this fox underneath the bald eagle and over where the other bald eagle had been. I see another fox at a headless seal carcass is what we're looking at here. And this I believe is cheeks. This is one of the kits from the litter of five that we have talked about several times this year. He is, I don't know if it's a he or she. I'm going to call him he for the moment. He is maturing. And so the cheeks on his, on his butt are a little bit less clear than they have been in the past. But I'm pretty sure this is cheeks. And okay, let's go to the, just the picture I've Got next just, just a moment later, this is the bald eagle who we just saw standing on the driftwood. His mate presumably or her mate had flown off calling and this next video which is about three minutes and we'll just talk over it. So there we have the bald eagle flying off over the seal carcass, maybe, you know, flying a little lower than necessary, hoping to scare away cheeks here who is dragging the seal carcass by turns trying to get into it. So it's already unlike the raccoon carcass that we showed you a little while ago. So remember this is before dawn, this is right about 6:00am this morning, just before the sun comes up. So apologies for the.

[B]

Yeah, you were not working with a lot of light.

[A]

Not working with a lot of light. And then as soon as I zoom out a little bit I get, I get a better picture here. But we have, we just have the seal, the seal, the seal is not doing much at this point. The seal carcass being worked on by this one fox kit. And then over where one of the bald eagles was, we have two more foxes. Both of them are kit, I believe from the same litter. We see one of them is about to leave. They're playing around on driftwood as all good exploratory mammals do. Oh yeah, we were doing that with our 19 year old son Toby just the other day right here.

[B]

There are times of day when this beach is made of hot lava and you have to walk on the driftwood in order to get over it.

[A]

You have no choice. And I mean we have the burns on the bottom of our shoes to prove it, to prove that we have not always been perfect about jumping from, from driftwood to driftwood.

[B]

So I just wanted to add here that at the beginning of this video the eagle flew and the fox flinched.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

We are maybe two months out from the period where that eagle would actually have been one of the active dangers that these fox kits would have experienced.

[A]

It is now mid August. We first saw these fox kits above ground almost exactly just a little bit more than three months ago. It was early May and they were tiny at that point and eagle could have easily taken them out.

[B]

Can and can and do.

[A]

I think probably a month later as well. And it's as you say, probably by mid June. They were big enough that they were not going to be much of a risk, much, much at risk from eagles. But, but I saw an eagle carrying a full, full grown gull the other day and that's not a small bird either. Yeah, although gulls Being birds are much lighter than than a similar volumed fox would be because birds have hollow bones and so are much much less dense to carry.

[B]

True.

[A]

And therefore lighter to carry. So you see this other and again I think that these are three littermates from the same litter. This is what maybe half a mile from the place where we first saw them come above ground obviously on the water here. We haven't been seeing them as much over near where we live recently. We've been wondering where they are. Well, they seem to have moved into. This is public lands adjacent to the national park. This is not technically in the national park here but there's Bureau of Land Management and Land Trust and national parklands all sort of locked in together in a mosaic in this part of the island. And let's go to.

[B]

So hold on. Earlier this year we encountered a half a deer washed up and concluded that it very likely while swimming which they do lots of creatures swim occasionally to get between islands and things. But we concluded that it had had a run in with a shark probably maybe an orca.

[A]

So I, I do not think shark because they're very rarely shark sightings here whereas they're frequently orca sightings. But.

[B]

But something something halved a deer and.

[A]

And my sense, my sense here was they're the orca that are present in the area now are. So the orca tend to in. In this part of the world niche partition and you have sort of the seal specialists, the mammal specialists and the fish specialists and we should be seeing more of the fish specialists right now because the salmon are coming back back the fall breeding Anchorhynchus, the Pacific salmon that, that not fall. Yeah, fall breeding anchoring are coming back now for their single return to their natal streams. And there are a lot of fishermen out there and there are clearly a lot of fish in the water. And although we haven't seen any yet, there should be a lot of orca around. But those should be different orca than the would go after seals.

[B]

Yep. But. Well, I mean the sad fact is that the residents which are the fish specialists in recent years the population that was reliably around has moved on failed to rear a calf successfully for years and is now mostly elsewhere. And there is a good bit of evidence that actually that is downstream of disruptions from the era in which orcas were being captured for. For Aquarius SeaWorld and the like and that they never. That that was so disruptive that actually the population never recovered. So it's obviously a complex story in which there's a Question about the rate at which the fish are being fished, the disruption of whale watch boats and things like this, all of these things are playing a role. But one of the things that happened is humans naively and callously walked into a system that involved very long lived, very culturally refined creatures and pulled a bunch of them out of the population. And that wasn't a minor matter.

[A]

Yes, indeed. So let's, let's go to the next video. Another about three minutes here we still have the individual who I think we've called cheeks, working on the seal carcass by turns digging at the meat in the exposed wound from where the head was and dragging it away from the water. We see another seal swimming out out there and there was a lot of flopping around over to my right as well. There are a lot, a lot of seal activity here. But then back in the driftwood where the eagle had been, we see another one of these foxes. And I don't know what he or she is ending up going after, but this just felt so doggish like this. Everything this fox is about to do, it just could be done by your domestic dog. There's digging, there's exploration, there's. Oh God, what was that? Looking, thinking about going over to join his friend, his sibling sitting. He's going to be kicking himself here soon. And this, I'm pretty sure this is a, this is a kid. He's super fluffy. The, the adults are also beautiful right now, but they're not quite so just perfectly fluffy. You know, these, these guys just have the perfect, the perfect everything of, of the adolescent mammal, you know, kicking himself in the face as you know, so many critter friends do at some point he's going to drag himself into, off across the ground here in a moment.

[B]

So did you have the sense that this was a seal pup that had died or an adult?

[A]

Don't know. Here he's chewing on wood, dragging himself across the ground to, you know, scratch his butt. Sitting around looking. I do not know if that was a seal pup. I did not have the sense that it was particularly small, but I did not, did not want to disturb them. I was actually, I had stopped. The eagles saw me coming and they flew off pretty quickly. The foxes, I thought, knew I was there. I was standing above, you know, many, many dozens of feet back on a trail on a bluff and positioned behind a tree. And I don't have the video at the moment that all three of them, we've mostly seen just two of them here, noticed that I was there and they all ran off, even though I had done nothing new. Maybe the wind changed. But. So this, this bit of video is, is just about how obviously foxes are dogs. There's just, there's just no denying every, everything that fox did there was, was dog like. And of course, if you've got a dog and your dog has ever gotten into something you didn't really want it doing, well, that's, that's this right here. On the other hand, this is a wild animal who's found an amazing meal and so that, that is what he is engaged in. Yeah, that doesn't particularly look like a tiny. Tiny.

[B]

Looks smallish. I mean, it depends how much of it's missing.

[A]

Just the head as far as I can tell. Like I said, I didn't. I did not want to disturb them further. Okay, so this is all right at this point in this video, just after the sun has begun to rise. And let's just show the. This is the view over the water to the north. So the sun is rising to the east off the right here. This is the water in which that seal presumably lost his head. And then 15 minutes later or so, as I'm walking up through the forest away, I heard the eagles come back. And you can show the picture up through the forest. This is just one of my favorite spots on this trail as the sun is coming into the trees and it's. This feels like it could be from middle Earth. This, this spot in again adjacent to the national park on San Juan island where we're seeing bald eagles and foxes take their turns. Not explicitly, but ending up both going after a seal that has, that has shown up headless on the coast.

[B]

Cool. I'm sorry I missed this hike. That sounds and looks great.

[A]

And I guess the segue there for the forest is what the hell are they doing in eastern Canada? On August 5, we had this announcement from Nova Scotia. You can show my screen here or you can't show my screen because nothing works. Maybe you can show my screen now. Still not. All right. So this is an official announcement From Nova Scotia, August 5, 2025 news release. Travel activities in woods restricted to prevent wildfires. With this very helpful graphic. I'll just make it bigger. Stay out of the woods. The province is restricting travel and activities the woods because continued hot, dry conditions have greatly increased the risk of wildfires. The restrictions effective as of 4pm Today are August 5th include hiking, camping, fishing and the use of vehicles in the woods are not permitted. Trail systems through woods are off limits. Camping is allowed only in campgrounds These and other measures are in place on provincial ground, on provincial, crown and private land until October 15 or until conditions allow them to be lifted. The fine for violating the restrictions is $25,000 and if I can just have my screen back for a moment, I will find the second link. Five days later, New Brunswick made a similar announcement on August this is. This says August 9th, but the announcement was official as of August 10th. Stay out of the woods New Brunswick Closing Crown lands due to extreme wildfire Hazard those living in and visiting New Brunswick are being told to stay off crown lands due to extreme wildfire. File I can't read today. Due to an extreme wildfire hazard on Saturday, the province announced as of 12am Sunday, August 10, all Crown lands will be closed. This means, just like in Nova Scotia, hiking, camping, fishing and the use of vehicles in the woods are not permitted. Trail systems through woods are off limits. Camping is allowed only in campgrounds, but the public is being asked to consider their camping plans until such time the forest risk decreases. This is an unprecedented situation and is getting worse, said Premier Susan Holt. So we're here on a Saturday afternoon to ask all New Brunswickers to get off the woods, out of the woods and to stay out of the woods. It raises questions of what public lands means. Crown lands is different in Canada. I don't know as much about what that means that these are crown lands as opposed to what would be public lands in the US A few other. A few other provinces in Canada did not declare being in the woods off limits, but imposed fines for. For setting fires. Fines for setting fires. Seems like.

[B]

You mean setting fires like controlled fires?

[A]

Controlled fires. Any, any kind of fires. And this seems like a reasonable measure to, to me. It's not that the objection that I'm having, and I know that you have had to what is going on in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick is to the idea of any restrictions at all. But the idea that you can't walk in the woods and that that is being considered now a privilege and a luxury and that you just have to sit on your hands and put up with it until the people who have made the decision decide that the risk is gone feels very much like what happened during COVID Very. You know, they can point to hot conditions, dry conditions, fires that they've already had to put out. And so it doesn't seem arbitrary at one level, but the moment at which they impose such such draconian measures is somewhat arbitrary. And the fact that they feel that they can them and that they should and that they did is Extraordinarily terrifying, I would say, to those living in the places where you are now being told you just can't go into the places that you thought were public. What does public mean?

[B]

Yeah, it. When I saw the initial announcement and, you know, I almost wish we had the initial announcement.

[A]

This is the initial announcement, the initial.

[B]

Video announcement, announcement in which this was presented.

[A]

This is, this is the initial announcement here.

[B]

The demeanor of the guy who is announcing this I found even more alarming the sort of sense of superiority and that he is on the side of right and that it is all of the little people who can't manage not to start fires that need to be controlled in the most draconian way. It reminded me actually of the. I forget who the vile local government guy was in Australia during the pandemic who was telling people how miserable he was going to make their lives if they didn't get the vaccine. But it had that kind of feel to it. And, you know, who knows what these things are. There's a, you know, kind of person who delights in controlling others. And it may be, you know, that petty bureaucrats have discovered that they have the power, you know, to, to wield this kind of authority and affect people's behavior. But like you, you know, you and I suffer many years from smoke, from fire sometimes in Canada that degrades the quality of life. And I would like to see that end it. But the idea that the place to end it is by telling you not to go into the woods and fining you if you do is preposterous. I'm not against the idea that if you are careless and it starts a fire, that the massive cost of fighting that fire partially belongs to you. Right. I'm not against the idea of penalizing the actual behavior that we all suffer from, which is carelessness with fire. But the idea that walking in the woods, you know, well, if you're going to be walking in the woods, we can't stop you from starting fires. This is nonsense. Punish the behavior that's actually wrong. You have no right to stop people from walking on public lands. This is, this is effectively a God given right. And the. There is a question as to whether or not we are being tested to see what we will put up with. The claim that's what it feels like. Yeah, the claim that this is an unprecedented circumstance and that's why you're hearing unprecedented regulations. It's not unprecedented. Bad seasons, dry seasons, that's a feature of life.

[A]

Out of an abundance of caution, they're shutting down all of your access to walking.

[B]

Right. Which you know, is, is. I mean, it's an obvious sign that something is tyrannical and out of control. And, you know, it does just feel shockingly reminiscent of the terrible Covid years and those exact things at the moment when, you know, a virus that wasn't capable of being transmitted outdoors was the reason for all of these regulations were being, you know, the trails are being closed, the beaches are being closed. Exactly the place where you should be, the place where you'd be making vitamin D. So yeah, it's, it's remarkable and I think it means something. The problem is we don't know what it means. I don't even have the sense that the people who are doing it know what it means. It could be local pettiness, it could be something larger. But we are obligated to, to reject this and to defend those who do.

[A]

Yes. Yeah, I agree. And so that's happening in, in Canada. And Canada, of course, did a number of authoritarian things during COVID which were, which were publicly viewable and which we commented on. But I, I think relevant here to just wrap, wrap this up. There's a poll that came out and I actually, I'm not going to vouch for the poll at all. I don't know anything about how it was done, anything about. Anything about it. You could show my screen here and then I'll enlarge the actual image on interactive polls. This is on Twitter, Fox News poll. If you could send just one of the following two messages to the federal government, would it be lend me a hand or leave me alone? Okay, so lend me a overall Lend me a hand got 52% and leave me alone 45%. And these numbers don't add up to 100 because there was always some number of people who said, I don't know. I do wonder why people who don't know persist in taking in polls at all. I always wonder about, about. About those numbers. But okay, if you. So this is. This appears to be question 10 in some longer poll. Again, I didn't vet anything about what the other questions were or how leading any of the questions were or, or, or anything. But there are a couple of things here that I found interesting. There was a race difference. I don't know what to make of it. I'm not that interested in it. You know, white people a little bit more than a little bit wanted to lend a hand rather than be left alone. Non white people was closer to a 2 to 1 ratio. This may have to do I can't.

[B]

Read it in which direction?

[A]

Non. Oh, I can't, I can't do it that way. Lend me a hand to two to one ratio. Lend me a hand to being left alone amongst non whites. Yeah, but that's, I, I just think it's, it's, it needs to be said because it's on here. But those aren't the things that, that's not the place that I'm most interested here. Where I'm most interested is with regard to age and geography. Under age 45, at almost a 2 to 1 ratio, people want to be lent a hand by the federal government as opposed to be left alone. Whereas over 65, at a slightly smaller ratio, people strongly want to be left alone rather than be lent a hand by the federal government. You might think that the older you are, the less capable you are of actually doing everything you need to do for yourself and that you might actually benefit from government help and that you therefore might be interested in government help, for instance, from the massive Social Security and Medicare programs that we have. But in fact what we see is that, that the younger you are in America, the more likely you are to be hoping the government lends you a hand as opposed to leaves you alone the other. To me, interesting result here. And again, I'm not vouching for these results, I'm just showing the results of this poll that was apparently done at Fox News is urban versus rural people. In the bottom right we have urban, I want to say voters, but I don't think this is voters, just urban Americans who answered the phone when these pollsters called. 64% of urban people said I would like the federal government to lend me a hand as opposed to 33% of urban dwellers who said I want the federal government to leave me alone. So almost a two to one ratio, whereas rural people, it was almost even rural people slightly edging out, slightly edging towards I want to be left alone as opposed to do I want the federal government to lend me a hand. And I'm thinking the coastal elites who talk a lot about flyover states and not finding much of interest in the parts of the country where they aren't big cities that they can identify are actually speaking of people who, much more than the urban dwellers themselves are interested in, in being self sufficient and living their lives and being left alone by the federal government. And it's the urbanites and the young who are looking for handouts more than anyone else.

[B]

Yeah. Which of course does not match the mythology exactly that one hears, you know, there's also a question about how much help various populations get. And I, you know, I'm curious about the result that the young are biased in the direction of, of preferring to be given a hand. There's a question about whether that's because of a generational difference or it's because you age out of that. You know, you go from being helpless to, you know, having your parents do most of everything for you, but you start doing some stuff and it's possible that it's, you know, a natural progression. It's also possible that it's this moment and these particular generations have this different view. Hard to distinguish, it is impossible to.

[A]

Distinguish that from, from, from these data, so to speak. Yeah, and I don't, I, I, I'm not even sure they count as data. Again, haven't vetted the poll, but specifically the idea that the urban people who, you know, we know that cities aren't self sufficient, we know that cities can't, can't do what they do without the farmland surrounding them and the infrastructure around them. But people who live in cities who largely don't know how their food gets to them and how their electricity gets to them and any of the rest of it tend to have this sanctimonious attitude towards the rest of the world that they are the ones who are really doing the important stuff and doing the good work that needs to be done. And yet they are the ones most likely to be saying that they are hoping that federal government steps in on their behalf. And that is of course consistent with the cities tending to be voting blue. And historically voting blue meant that you were voting for social services for, for programs that would help those in need. And I think that's the distinction that I am seeing now that growing up and through the 90s, I still thought that the Democrats programs were about helping people who actually needed them as opposed to helping anyone who wanted help, help but maybe didn't need it and maybe actually needed to be pushed a little bit in order to help themselves. And it feels increasingly like the programs are for anyone who says, actually I feel like I could use some help.

[B]

Yeah, actually it is an important distinction, isn't it, that you know, in the, the version of this that I grew up with, that I assume all of us liberals of a certain age grew up with was the idea that there were disadvantages and it was in our collective interest to neutralize them by helping those who, you know, weren't within range of the ladder. But the idea is if you can reach the ladder, then you're expected to climb it. Maybe that's the wrong analogy.

[A]

Well, not just expected to, but it's. It's enhancing and it's. It's good for you and it's good for everyone. And how else will you learn how to be a human being? Being? Yeah, like you. You. You have to strive. You have to seek self sufficiency. You have, you have to look to be independent and autonomous and capable unto yourself. You should never ask for a handout when you, when. When you can at all in any way avoid it. That was, that was what I thought the Democrats used to stand for.

[B]

Yeah. Although I'm not defending the perspective in which everybody deserves aid. I don't like that perspective. I think it's dehumanizing and as you point out, just simply bad for us. But I also do think that we live in novel times where, you know, I was struggling as you were talking to try to figure out, well, what is it that people in cities do that they consider so all fired? Productive. Right. Most people, you know, send emails to other people. You know, they print things. Most people do not have a job. You know, it does go back to David Graeber's point about jobs. Most people are employed in some system, and maybe the system arguably is productive, but what they actually do is not especially productive. And that is not the nature of man. Right. Nature of man. You know, what would Jeff Bezos be 500 years ago? Right. Maybe he would have been super innovative and he would have come up with a way to centralize the distribution of stuff in his town, but it wouldn't be the continent or the globe, and he wouldn't therefore be thousands of times as wealthy as the next person. So the point is, if you're in an era, era where what would have been dozens or hundreds of comparatively wealthy people who were doing something in their little corner of the globe, you get one and he's ultra wealthy, and then a lot of people who are sort of pushing paper on his behalf. There is sort of a sense of like, well, in the prior world, there'd be a lot more things that I could strike. Strive towards. Right?

[A]

There would be a lot more things that you could strive towards. There would be less concentration to your point at the very top, and there would be fewer rules already imposed by the very federal government that we're talking about that force you to continue seeking resources, even when you might actually like to just be left alone. So in various places, if you were, you know, if you own your land outright, but your property taxes Keep going up. You may be screwed. If you find yourself in a situation where you were fine as you were, but now suddenly you're being required to get health insurance. And health insurance is absurdly expensive and it pays for crap that you don't want anyway, but you are required to get it. You may be screwed. So these are external requirements that have nothing to do with reality inherently, where you could have done everything right, you could have acted in a way that demonstrated your self sufficiency and your competence and your desire to be again left alone. And now you find yourself unable to do what you need to do because of external rules that have nothing to do with you.

[B]

Yeah. Actually, you're more or less in an economic desert. Now, this isn't true for everybody. There are people who are born close enough to some vibrant sector of the economy that there's something for them to figure out to do. But for most people, you look around and you know, well, I should start something that creates wealth and that's how I will make my way. But you know, the thing is so saturated with big players doing all of those jobs, you know, I know I'll. I'll start a shop. Okay, but you're in, you know, competition with Target. Right. So, okay, how is your shop going to, you know, pay its rent and, you know, deliver something of value? So it's an economic desert in one way, because the opportunities are all. Maybe desert's the wrong analogy, but you're walking into a mature ecosystem, trying to figure out what niche isn't full, and it's like, well, no, it's a mature ecosystem. They're mostly full, but at the same time, you're being forced to idle at a high rate.

[A]

Right, Precisely. The expense of being the cost of existence existing.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Is artificially high. You. It's. It's impossible to completely extricate yourself from the expectations of the system. Even if you want to make no demands of it at all, it persists in making demands of you.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And that. And that is an actual inequality. And in, In. In what? In the relationship that citizens have with the government.

[B]

Yep. And in fact, it is not terribly surprising to discover that the Titans very frequently have mechanisms for evading the high idol that you don't have access to. Right. So various tax haven strategies.

[A]

Right.

[B]

So, you know, I guess, I guess my point would be this. I really think the, the objective of the exercise has to be be as level a playing field as we can get. And then the expectation has to be, you play the cards you're dealt as well as you can play them. And that is the game. We're not going to beat that. Right, Right. But that is not where we are. We are in a situation where you've got a radically unlevel playing field, mostly not about some demographic factor, but about the fact that, you know, the little people, people have disadvantages that the big people don't face, and that's a positive feedback. So unless you can clear that threshold, you're going to be on the downstream side of it. So I guess. I guess the point is, as it was with the woke revolution, I have zero sympathy for what these people are demanding, but I do understand why they're pissed off. Right, right. They know that they've been handed a puzzle they can't solve. They've been, you know, poisoned by bad food, maybe fluoride in their water. They've been miseducated mostly by a public education system that doesn't know what it's doing. And then they discover, hey, life is competition and we've just armed you really badly. Right. And so, okay, yeah, they lashed out in all sorts of insane and analytically wrong ways. But what did you expect when you, you took a bunch of people and, you know, handed them, you know, a cardboard sword and told to, you know, find dinner.

[A]

And also, I mean, the desire to be lent a hand could be reframed in many cases as, lend me enough of a hand to undo the harm you have already done and then leave me the hell.

[B]

Yeah, lend me enough of a hand to get to the, you know, to get to the level playing field, and then I want to be left alone. That is kind of the idea ideal.

[A]

So that's slightly different from what I said. I think both, both of those are goals. But I am speaking specifically about the hypernovety that you were just talking about. And, you know, can't. Can we. Can we undo some of the harms and then. And then encourage independent, autonomous work that involves struggle and may involve failure and may involve you falling back into an underclass position because the risks that you took were too risky or you didn't have the background you needed or, you know, whatever it is. Right. Like, there will be failures. There will be people who fail even though they did the right stuff, and there will be people who fail because they didn't do anything at all. And the idea that we need to keep on supporting the people who are failing because they are not doing anything at all is wrong. That said, if they're failing because they don't do anything at all, because they have been broken by a system. We have a bigger problem and we know that we have exactly that bigger problem.

[B]

Very well said.

[A]

All right.

[B]

All right.

[A]

Are we there?

[B]

I believe so.

[A]

Okay, we are going to take a little break and then encourage you to join us on Locals where we're going to do a Q A. Uh, we've got a question from our Discord. Discord server, as always. And then we'll be taking questions there on. On Locals. We have lots of. Oh boy. I can't even read my. My web. My, my screen at the moment. Go to darkhorsepodcast.org the website where we have our upcoming calendar. Some changes to stuff coming up, access to to our store and various other things that you might be interested in in seeing. Our sponsors this week were amazing as they always are. They were Fresh Pressed Olive Oil Club, Sundries Farm and Sundays Dog Food. Fresh Pressed Olive Oil and Sundries Farm with their amazing garlic. Those two products go great together in all sorts of things. I don't recommending adding. I don't recommend adding the Sunday's dog food food but you can give that to.

[B]

In fairness, we haven't tried it and.

[A]

I'm not going to.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Yeah. And garlic's not good for the dog, so you don't want to. You do that and we'll see you next week. Until we do see you next week. Remember to be good to the ones you love. Eat good food and get outside.

[B]

Be well everyone. It.