Doomed to Fail

Ep. 47: Doomed to fail species? The story of the passenger pigeon

Episode Summary

Join us for the story of the Passenger Pigeon - America’s most prolific bird that flocked in the billions until we discovered they were easy to kill and also delicious. Within 100 years, they went from blocking out the sun with their flocks to being totally extinct. Learn their history and the possibility of their future with de-extinction technology. Listener poll: Should we bring back dinosaurs? Farz says 100% yes, Taylor says we’ve been through this, and it’s never a good idea. Pics via the Creative Commons & #midjourney #AI Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod   Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod  TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod  Email: doomedtofailpod@gmail.com

Episode Notes

Join us for the story of the Passenger Pigeon - America’s most prolific bird that flocked in the billions until we discovered they were easy to kill and also delicious. 

Within 100 years, they went from blocking out the sun with their flocks to being totally extinct. 

Learn their history and the possibility of their future with de-extinction technology. 

Listener poll: Should we bring back dinosaurs? Farz says 100% yes, Taylor says we’ve been through this, and it’s never a good idea. 

Pics via the Creative Commons & #midjourney #AI

What Caused the Mass Extinction of Billions of Passenger Pigeons?

38. Back From The Dead And Ready To Party: Passenger Pigeons, De-extinction, & Cloning with Revive & Restore's Ben Novak - Grow Everything Biotech Podcast

The Birds | The New Yorker

Did not read but should have read - Amazon.com: A Feathered River Across the Sky: The Passenger Pigeon's Flight to Extinction (Audible Audio Edition)

Passenger Pigeons – On Wildlife 

 

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Episode Transcription

Hi Friends! Our transcripts aren't perfect, but I wanted to make sure you had something - if you'd like an edited transcript, I'd be happy to prioritize one for you - please email doomedtofailpod@gmail.com - Thanks! - Taylor

all right exciting welcome to do to fail the podcast will be covered two stories

one historical One True Crime about things that are doomed to fail I'm far as joined here by Taylor hi Taylor

hello and we are we're discussing how we're such a jet setting podcast group

the emotions I'm in California at the moment and then I'm gonna have dinner with ours in Texas

later today and then I'm leaving for Seattle the next day

Chris I don't love Seattle you don't love Seattle why do you not

love Seattle um it's like I don't it's dirty it rains there and

um I was really disappointed by the um what's it called Space Needle oh yeah

that's not like go to Las Vegas and see the stratosphere that's like way better

yeah I mean I don't even know I think Seattle I might have been to Seattle at this point like 180 times like I'm over

it yeah I I could see the value the first 10 times I went and now it's just

like another place I have to go so I only went once and it was for your wedding and it was fine it had really good um

it's Soleil which is not a Seattle dish but I just happened to go to a Mexican restaurant and have really good soup really which restaurant that's all I got

I have literally no idea if Mars it was like a million years ago I don't when when I even get married I got married

seven years ago I was pregnant with my my beautiful boy but other than that I

don't know yeah yeah uh and then I need to send you suggestions for where we should go get dinner tonight

yay unless you have preferences I absolutely do not okay then we will I

will figure something out let's go ahead and kick things off

because you got to Scurry off the airport um and I gotta get about doing life stuff so you go first this time I think

right I do yep okay so my drink is going to be an

espresso Martini which I think I've done before but it just feels like it's like do I always say something all you drink

is espresso Martini it's like that's all you drink now it's weird there's so many calories in an espresso Martini um I

don't want to know great I'm happy for you that you love them so much I found this one place in Austin that

does a really fun one which is they take they have a Nitro cold brew station so they filled Nitro cold brew and then

pour the liquor in on top of that and then put a little powdered sugar and stuff oh it's so good so rich and delicious it's like a four logo I know

it's like diabetes it's really bad but it's delicious

awesome well great um that that's exciting

um mine is an Astoria cocktail which I just picked because it was

number one on the list of the top cocktails in 19

14 because my story ends in 1914. um so the story of cocktail is one dash

of orange bitters um two-thirds of a [ __ ] of Tom Gin and one-third [ __ ] of French vermouth

um so it's like a martini with orange bitters sounds lovely in old-timey

yeah yeah I think it is too um okay so I will go and get started so

I was in New York last week and I was like there are so many people here I don't know what to do like I saw

more people maybe I said this but I saw more people last weekend that I've seen in like six years

two tracks physical people um and then I was like oh my God just

there's so many people then I was thinking what if I didn't do a person this this time and I did something else

instead so I looked around New York City and I was like what else do I see and I saw a pigeon So today we're gonna talk

about the passenger pigeon do you know anything about the passenger pigeon is is it it's a generic pigeon

that was trained right nope wow so okay it's a species of women

yes okay well interesting and it is and so we'll get into it but it is it is

extinct it no longer exists the passenger pigeon no it's one type of pigeon

um yeah it's a sad story it's really weird um so another thing that happened when I was in New York let me look at this

right now so there was this I was on the street um and there was a woman and she was

like um looking at a bug and taking a picture of

it and then she like really dramatically stomped on it and I was like that's weird but then I like Let It Go and then

later I got like I saw an article I think of the New York Times there's this bug called a I think it's a spongy moth

it is a moth and it is red on the inside I believe it's this one and New Yorkers

are and they told everybody in New York to kill them on the spot spongy moth

yeah it's like red and blue I don't know or maybe Lantern flies is it a landing flight it's a lantern fly okay

now I'm back on the New York Times um there's a lanternfly and anyway they're like red in the middle they're actually

kind of pretty but they're invasive they can hurt plants and trees yeah but like you're supposed to kill them but it was just so weird to see a woman like

frantically stomping this red bug on the street and I was like what is that but anyway I know that is a weird level of

aggression so like you just witness randomly it was just yeah I was like it's so weird to be like really everyone in the city kill these

books they are but they're bad but they're baddies they're trying to trick you I guess anyway that just I thought

about that but so farce I want you to imagine that it's

1813. and you are hanging out with your good friend John James Audubon and John James

Audubon [ __ ] loves Birds you've heard of his Society I've heard

of you all about Society yes for the longest time I thought I had seven cars and then I learned better ah yeah I met

my Porsche on the Autobahn yes but yeah because it sounds like Auto Body exactly yeah totally

um so James John James Audubon loves birds and he loves birds in a natural

history is new kind of way so like a pre-teddy Roosevelt Teddy Roosevelt's

like born a couple decades later um but he loves it in like a rich

dude way of loving Natural History so when I was at Hyde Park to bring it back

to FDR and um in the Roosevelts there are cases and cases of birds in their

house like just like behind glass like these birds that FDR himself killed

stuffed and like cataloged you know like that was like a Pastime for these like

rich rich young boys and they like wanted like his dad was like you can do

it but like make sure you're cataloging it you know what I mean like don't just like shoot these animals for fun like do it in like a scientific research way

which is ridiculous um they're just like that how ridiculous but like weird well no that that sounds

familiar do you remember the um the two kids the rich kids who wanted to commit convict commit the perfect murderer

I think one of them his stuff ended up going into like the

Museum of Science and History or whatever yeah yeah I remember and they won't tell you who which ones are his because people

would get mad exactly I remember that yeah um yeah so

exactly so I think it's weird because it's like a rich guy in a really rural guys hobby right it's like I just

picture like a dude in the middle of like Texas and like a small town killing birds and I also picture like Tay

Roosevelt killing birds because there was a weird there's a weird overlap between like the rich and the poor where

like Hobbies eventually come back together it's just like in different orders of magnitude one is yachting in

the ocean and the other one is like hunting alligators in the swamp

exactly exactly um so yeah FTR he gave the rest of his

Birds to the Natural History Museum and and I saw them like that the day after I saw them at his house and I think it's so interesting this has nothing to do

with passenger pigeons but he had a really special thing where FDR knew his face his place in history like he knew

that his home was going to go to the public and be a museum sometimes I think about like what if I like roped off my

office of people would like look into it and be like oh this is where Taylor had an office you know what I mean we are

going to be famous enough to where that will happen to us

as well he escaped into nature a lot when he was sad uh I don't know if you if you know

this but Teddy Roosevelt's mom and wife died on the same day um and it was terrible and he kind of disappeared to the Wilderness

um he went to school and everybody was like this dude is weird because he has all these dead birds in his room you know just like something that they did

but before them um Audubon is drawing birds and killing

them but drawing them very beautiful if you look at his his images they're beautiful he does beautiful wildlife

paintings and drawings um so again it's 1813 and you and jja

John James Audubon are on horses riding through the plains of America like

they're in the Northeast I don't know exactly where and I'm going to read you a quote and it's

pretty long but I'm going to read you the whole thing so imagine you and him riding horses out in the in the woods in America got

it same page I can't see your face but I feel like you're like yes I love this okay so here's what he said

on a horse I just mounted seated myself on an Eminence okay I'm sorry I dismounted

suited myself on an Eminence and began to Mark with my pencil making a DOT for every flock that passed in a short time

finding the task which I had undertaken impracticable as the birds poured in countless multitudes I Rose and Counting

the dots then put down I found that 163 had been made in 21 minutes I traveled

on and still meant more the farther I proceeded the air was literally filled with pigeons the light of the noon day

was obscured as by an eclipse the dung fell in spots not in like melting flakes

of snow and the continued Buzz of wings had a tendency to lull my senses to Repose I cannot describe to you the

extreme beauty of their aerial Evolutions when a hawk chance to press upon the rear of the flock at once like

a torrent and with a noise like thunder they rushed into a compact Mass pressing upon each other towards the center in

these almost solid masses they darted forward in an under relating in angular lines descended and swept close over the

Earth with inconceivable velocity mounted perpendicularly so as to resemble a vast column and went High

were seen wheeling and twisting within their continued lines which then resembled the coils of a gigantic

serpent Before Sunset I reached Louisville distance from from Hardinsburg 55 miles the pigeons were

still passing in undiminished numbers and continued to do so for three days in succession

that is a very Posh way to describe a murmuration

it's a [ __ ] ton of pigeons this is yeah what he was seeing was like

probably a billion passenger pigeons they would fly overhead for days and

days and days um so right now in America we have billionaires you know and people have

you seen those graphs where it's like how do you conceive a billion dollars you know yeah yeah it's orders of

magnitude that are like so dramatic that your brain can't comprehend exactly so a million seconds is 11 days

a billion seconds is 31 years you know like it's just so much more so like

a billion passenger pigeons is like eight times as many regular pigeons as we have today like

so many [ __ ] pigeons it's unbelievable um so that was in 1813 where Audubon is

seeing them in the air they're flying over you for days and days and days

um in 1900 The Last Passenger Pigeon was killed in the wild and in 1914 101 years

later after that account The Last Passenger Pigeon Martha Washington died in captivity at the Cincinnati Zoo wait

what year 19 what what happened 1914. Ah that's why you said 1914 got it

yeah that's yeah that's when that's when Martha died so what happened they how do

you go from like a billion or something to zero of something in in such a short amount of time so

the passenger pigeon lived in North America from the Great Lakes down to

Mexico they were probably always there um in these huge flocks they also were

in smaller flocks as well it wasn't like they didn't have to be in the huge flocks but most of the time they were

um they were there were so many pigeons I feel like I wrote so many pigeons in caps so many times in this outline

because there's so many [ __ ] Visions um they would like come and Roost in

a tree and they would break the tree they would be on every branch of the tree you know and the trees would break

so I also there was a there's like a thing a meme I saw like many years ago

but it was like God gives Birds the gift of flight and the pigeon says no thank you I'll get

there by walking through the Home Depot parking lot I love that

um but um so they there were so many passenger pigeons that would snap trees when they

would land I mean of course because you have like a billion birds like landing on a forest they would like destroy the

forest destroy the trees um they were together in those big groups you know to keep their numbers up

and to stop Predators from attacking them they also left behind a lot of bird

poop no of course and that quote above it's like when auto body was like it's falling like the snow that's [ __ ]

disgusting and then they would leave like up to a foot of

bird poop on the ground after they were done like nesting they're really pretty

they're really pretty they're an elegant pigeon they don't look like they're not like they're like more dub like than

current pigeons you see like that yeah when a dove is a pigeon is it really but

yeah it's like so they're they're more genetically similar to like the mourning

dove um which is also a pigeon it's like the same

this is I I got a little bit into genetics a little bit later but like yeah it's like there's the same like

you know family or whatever oh yeah the Columbia family is doves and pigeons

yeah yeah sweet um yeah so the dove gets the good rep

and the pigeon gets the bad one um but so they would so they do these

big fox they'd poop all over the ground um sometimes it help the land sometimes it didn't as we know like land needs to

rest um so that's why there's like you know burning of land and you have to like rotate your crops and things like that

so sometimes it helps those a little bit sometimes it just would destroy land if there was a ton

um they um are believe you're talking about what they look like so um what's rare for this

type of bird is they have sexual dimorphism which means the male and the female look different

um obviously we see that in like um

yeah yeah we see that in like all sorts of animals but um usually not in pigeons but in the passenger pigeon they were

different um they both had um black feet and oh they had red feet

and red eyes which is terrifying red eyes black beaks um and then the man

would the male had a a red belly and the women's women's whatever was great so that's red and

gray I know I'm like what am I even doing the female it was great so um they you know they looked a little

bit different they ate nuts and seeds and berries Farmers didn't love that so now we're like farming the land because

obviously they lived in the land with like native um people for you know centuries and

then um they Farmers would be like oh they're eating all of our um you know all of our seeds they eat

some acorns but not like terrible they could eat insects if they wanted to

um if they like had to but not without a ton um animals would you know eat them obviously they had natural Predators but

like they didn't even make a dent Like an Eagle isn't going to kill a billion passenger pigeons you know

um but you know who is going to kill a billion passenger pigeons people

and you know why we killed them crude swab yeah they were delicious yeah

um they were delicious that's like eating it's like eating right now because I'm so used to La pigeons it's

like I know once you've seen one you're like oh my God and so did you watch I

can't remember did you watch succession I've seen bits and pieces so they're Ma so obviously it's about

it's about their dad but their mom there's like there's so much like symbolism in it I'm sure but their mom

is like this like British woman who's very very thin and she has this thing where she like doesn't well she hates

her children and she's like pretty awful but she doesn't eat very much and she like does things like they come to visit

and she's like oh I didn't bring I just didn't buy a lot of food I figured you wouldn't want to eat you know stuff like that and she she'll be like oh she hates

her oldest son and she's like why don't we just like do have this conversation while we're eating an egg later and then she like doesn't show up for that egg

eating but I want part of it she's like oh I'm so glad you guys need her all of our pigeons are here and she's like

little pigeons like cooked on the table for them to eat just like little birds and like the Kieran Culkin is like ew

like Mom [ __ ] you like it's just really funny because like she's just gross and like she just like has this gross relationship with food and anyway that's

the last time I saw someone eating a pigeon yeah that's not some people

yeah but they're delicious but also they're small so like you can eat a

couple of them before you get full you know like if they're not like a turkey there's like it's like very little meat

on it um they were easy to hunt because there were so many of them there's like legends that you could just like put a

stick up into the air because they would fly low and just like stab one you know kind of like a reverse stabbing a fish

in the water yeah it's like they would they were traps they would

set the um the trees on fire to make the passenger pigeons all fall out of the tree

um they would burn sulfur underneath the trees and they would fall so you could kill like tens of thousands of them at

the same time and uh with it with like the Advent of the railroads um you could eat a

passenger pigeon you know in the country and in New York City at a fancy restaurant you know they were like everywhere

I mean they must have been good if you were trying to eat them that badly yeah I mean I think it felt like a

unlimited resource of meat right you know

um very little meat though I'm looking at pictures of it and it's like yeah very little meat

exactly yeah it's not they're not exactly they're not like a Turkey um so they were the population probably

had ebbed and flowed for all time um the

passenger patients that like we know of that we like saw um they had Logan that genetic diversity

so we talked about that a little bit we talked about the volcano which means that like something happened and then they were all from the same like pool of

pigeons so they could have had like a big group of them and then it could have gotten down but they were from like a

small a small group but then they grew to like this huge group pretty quickly

um in this time up until the 1890s there's no regulation on wildlife in the

United States like you can do whatever the [ __ ] you want you know um then in 1913

um a little bit later there's a an act called the weeks McLean act and that said that you couldn't hunt during

mating season because he needed like they're like okay we're like killing a bunch of animals it's like not good and

we're not giving them the opportunity to like have more babies you know um also both the passenger pigeon and

other birds and I've heard I can't remember where I heard this but um a lot of birds were close to

extinction or went extinct because um during this time it was very fashionable to put feathers in your hats

like for real and they would kill birds just for their feathers you know

we're so wasteful I know so um they had to stop doing that as well so

um all kinds of animals are being you know obviously like ruined by by people being here and seeing them in the early 1900s

The Last Passenger Pigeon was shot in the wild and in 1895 Martha the pat The

Last Passenger Pigeon ever she was born in Chicago at like uh in the University

of Chicago there was a professor who was you know trying to um understand the passenger pigeon she

Martha is an endling which is the last of your species which is like such an amazing terrifying word that's so sad

she yeah so she there were some like um they brought some males with her she

ended up she didn't have you know they didn't make they tried to find a mate for her they were like we'll give anyone a thousand dollars or they could find a

mate for her out in the wilds and like no one could um and she died on September 1st 1914

and as soon as she died they froze her in a block of ice and sent her to um

a a lab to like try to like understand like what you know what she was like and

then they took a bunch of pictures of her did a bunch of stuff and then they um they skinned her and you can still

see her she's stuffed in a museum um so she was the last one and

then you know that was it so imagine like you have all of these something is everywhere and then it's nowhere like

literally nowhere in the 100 years so the question then is like

what's next for the passenger pigeon because there actually can be a next because there's people who want to bring

it back from Extinction which is something that's technically possible so in 2013 it's about 10 years ago this

was like a big thing people were talking about there was a tedx um like Symposium called the extinction

about like bringing you know other extinct animals back besides the passenger pigeon just like what we could

do with that and I listened to I listened to some podcasts for this or I didn't tell you my sources but I listened to some

podcasts um there's a book that I did not read but I wish I would have um it's called a feathered River across the sky the

passenger pigeons flight to Extinction but I also listened to a podcast with um called back from wait I don't know it's

called but oh sorry grow everything biotech podcast with revive and restore and the dude

that works there his name is Ben Novak but he was talking about um he did a tedx d Extinction talk and

one thing that they want to do at revive and restore which is where he works is you know bring back

um you know animals that are extinct or also save animals from extinction by

cloning animals and like helping them you know breed faster also I listened to

like several podcasts and it took a very long time for anyone to mention Jurassic Park which I was very disappointed

because like we know that this is a bad idea technically um we also know how to do it you just

find the mosquito first yeah yes that's true that's true

um it's a little bit different with um Birds which is actually funny because birds are dinosaurs now that I think

about it but um it's easier to clone a mammal than it is to clone a bird because of like the way

that the eggs are like having an egg inside a body is easier than having an egg outside of a body with a shell for

genetic reasons um but so they've been cloning so they they have this idea that we're going to

clone the passenger pigeon 10 years ago everyone was really excited about it all these books came out they ended up they didn't do it and they didn't do it I

think because there are other things that are more pressing so there's animals that are so close to extinction

that we need to save them somehow so on December 10th 2020 they cloned a

black-footed ferret her name was Elizabeth Ann um so it's the first time that a U.S

endangered species was cloned and so they can do that now with uh with

mammals they also cloned a horse it's called the preswalski's Horse and what

they're trying to do with that is restore genetic diversity in the horse population so they're just like making more horses so they can like breed and

then they'll have more and then they'll be able to you know not be extinct so they're not extinct yet but they

um were on the path to being extinct does that make sense yeah

it's still cool well so that's the question like what do we need and what don't we need you know

like do we need more ferrets I mean whatever probably not but also like should we not let animals go extinct I

feel like that answer is yes like we should try to save them if we can um I also think that like

but we talked about this a little bit when I talked about like the genetic diversity of humans

after the um volcanic eruption of Mount Toba so they look back and they can say

oh we're all from this population that survived 70 000 years ago and they also found the same in like pandas and lions

like they also had the same like genetic bottleneck and we know that but the reason that we know that about those

things is because they're cute you know like who gives a [ __ ] about an ugly animal we want to know about cute

animals so we are you know cloning these cute animals because they're the ones

that we would be like most sad if they went extinct have you seen a California condor

they're [ __ ] disgusting looking yeah but also have you seen like

them fly

okay have you seen the bird show at the LA Zoo I cry every time is there a

condor there it's in horrible yes it's like an extinct in the wild in

1987. this world yeah but then we'll be we're able to

like save them and bring them back which I think is so cool and like honestly if you ever go to the bird show at the LA Zoo it's like so beautiful and you're

like can I dedicate my life to birds like they do a really good job it's really nice

um so yeah well yeah they're trying to like save these animals oh this is where I also like um there was a bald eagle

at the Big Bear Zoo that I saw recently and she was blind because in like the

80s she ate a fish that had been poisoned with DDT from like

a thing so like so I mean those are the things you're like yeah we should fix that because that was our fault you know

and like same with the passenger pigeon like that was 100 our fault um if we brought them back what would

happen we have no idea like what would they be like in the wild um you know would they be there's like a

a thing where they can like put passenger pigeon DNA and also in this in researching this they talk about how

about junk DNA and that just blows my mind that like most of our DNA is junk that like cannot be true

I don't know why I like don't believe that so hard but I'm like how could it mean nothing it's crazy but so they can

put passenger pigeon DNA they don't really have they don't have the DNA they have like a little bit of like

tissue from like an old one because it was like a long time ago but they can if they put it into another pigeon it's

something where like that pigeon would have to continue to have babies and those babies

have babies and then out of a hundred thousand you might get one actually genetically perfect pasture pigeon

you know it's like a whole thing is wild so they're like you know they're working on that but they don't know what it

would be like in the wild would it be do we need a billion pigeons flying around probably not you know but also like

should we try to have some pigeons also like I know this is silly but like

what would they be thinking you know like this is weird around here is like me I don't think

it's or they don't they think it's like well no because

it's a new thing that comes back so it's only frame of reference is what it sees

today it doesn't have like markers from like the 1800s to understand that it's

ancestors this is like a hundred year Gap and it's ancestry you know right

totally but also like what is it what does it do instinctually you know same

probably what any pigeon does right it's flies forms these large walks around the Home Depot parking lot yeah probably

just run into your windshield like you should be a stupid bird right like it's not that complicated of an organism I

was looking up this one's really sad the um the Rhinos like there's a picture of

like the last Rhino that died in um his name was it was a boy it was a male named Sudan and it was in Sudan and

there's it was the last Northern white rhinoceros and it had 24 7 armed guards

that like walked around with it because of poachers that [ __ ] is like heartbreaking it's like really sad like

the very last one it died 18.

that's so sad yeah I feel so sad and worth it you know like I feel so sad for the whole thing but like the good thing

the good news with that Rhino at least is that we can't because it died so

recently I'm sure they have tons of its like genetic material Frozen somewhere

so there's a thing called biobanking where you keep cells and tissues from

animals and you freeze them so you can clone them later so as technology catches up with like this idea it should

potentially get easier and easier and so there's people like revive and restore this organization who have these like

huge things there's like a frozen zoo at the San Diego Zoo where they have all this

tissue of and cells of these animals so that when they can clone them they will be able to you know oh my God you're

right dude they created three embryos so that was the last male they had two

females somewhere in captivity and they were able to

generate three embryos in 2019 since it's remaining female Northern

rhinos are not suitable to carry pregnancy oh they're gonna implant the embryos in

a southern white rhino as a sir it's just so crazy to me but I think but I think like right how do you decide what

to do and what not to I think when it's all human driven it's all because of us then yeah like it's not their time to

expire we force it on them right exactly so try and bring it back

you know yeah so um yeah so that that's where we are

right now is you know the passenger pigeon is on the list to try to clone and bring it back to life we'll see what happens I know people want to do some of

the bigger ones like the woolly mammoth like that seems kind of fun um also I was gonna say please don't

clone dinosaurs because it's not gonna turn out well oh my God Taylor we are so in different camps I'm so gonna be in

the Pro clone dinosaurs champ have you seen what happens we've been

through this every dollar every dollar you donate to an anti-clona dinosaur

Camp I'm gonna somehow crowdfund ten dollars to get to the pro diploma dinosaur camp

I'm so excited and I will I will also put a dollar into

a savings account for your funeral when you get eaten by T-Rex I I would be the first one I would definitely be one of

the first ones yes so worth it oh my God so absolutely worth it I gotta stop looking at pictures of rhinoceros

yeah it's sad it's sad yeah so and also another thing other thing when listening to

um Dan from revive and restore talk about it he was saying that like he's

like Pro Zoo which is like so funny because like I feel like there's you know people who are on the like animal I

love animal sides where they're like they should be in captivity but also like they need to be in captivity to be

studied you know and their animals so like there's you need to be able to have a fair amount of them in captivity to be

able to be studied to be able to understand like what they need in the wild to be able to protect them better we have to understand them and you can't

really understand them if they're all in the wild you know so some part of the population always needs to be in in his

opinion and I think I agree in in some sort of captivity just so that we can like understand it you know oh man it

really in my opinion depends on like where they're in the zoo like if you go to the old LA Zoo like that was horrible

of course it's not 1900 yeah or or when you hear about like the animals and like

zoos in Syria where like everybody has to flee and now all these animals like locked in cages waiting to die like it's

like like you know yes San Diego should have a zoo but that might be it absolutely

yeah no totally that that's right I mean obviously yes of course there's like those places in like Asia where you can like

sit with a monkey for like a whole day but like it's really bad for the monkey right right exactly you get that writing

elephant like if you're doing it like the right way putting chores on top of like elephants in India like so that

they can take their [ __ ] funny pictures like that's gross yeah no 100

um yeah that's it that's the the short story of the passenger pigeon because we don't know what they were like before

and it's another thing it's another thing just like I think last uh episode with the weather changing from Mount

Tambora where they like ask the oldest person that they know like weren't there more of these you know yeah like yeah

they used to darken the Sun and you're like interesting they don't do that anymore you know like I only see a couple and like you you kind of like you

didn't if you just like you know were born in you know 1900 you didn't know the magnitude of what was lost but if

you remember it and it happened in people's lifetimes you know like I used to see this thing all the time and I

don't and I see it now never like that's wild yeah yeah and it's funny living in

cities it's like you don't even really think about it because the only animals you see are like the gross pigeons or

like disgusting this has so many rats of New York yeah yeah yeah

it's so weird nobody values can like persist and like

be completely unkillable and then you have these beautiful rhinos that are just whatever it is it's life I guess I

know um sweet well Taylor thank you for sharing and the we can go ahead and you

know cut this off unless you have listed our mail or announcements to make I do I have less than a mail and it is from me

because I'm an idiot and I just want to share this with everyone so I sent an

email to everyone I [ __ ] know asking them to subscribe to our podcast my first few hundred emails

got zero attractions I was like maybe I'm just like writing a bad email maybe it's people don't remember me I don't

know so I ran it through chat GPT and then they made it made it a little jazzier and then I sent that email but

in doing that it broke all the links and I didn't test it because I'm an idiot and I know that's email 101 just to test

your emails and like I used to get so worried about emails and like messing them up and then like this time I was

like I don't give a [ __ ] I'm just gonna do this I'm really excited about this I want to share it and then it took like eight days and Nicole is a

freaking hero and she's the only person who told me that the links didn't work and I was like oh I was like obviously

thank you so much Nicole and so I emailed everybody again and I said My Links are broken here's new links and

since then if we've gotten a couple uh more email signups two people um Robin and my mother-in-law Lily have

um pledged that if we ever want to start charging for our our podcast they would they would pay for it which is very

sweet um and yeah so we have a couple more people who subscribe to our newsletter

um if you want to do that please do it's in our link tree in our in our Instagram at Doom to fail pod um but I will send

an email every Friday with um our our shows from the week so our Monday show or Wednesday show and on

Fridays I'm doing um a bonus episode so I I'm usually doing a um dividing up some of older

episodes and doing them a little bit shorter and this week I interviewed the author of where they burn books they

also burn people which was super fun so that's up now as well very cool except for emails we don't miss anything

um a rare a rare self-written email into

our email address which is great attraction we'll take it

um but if you do have other feedback obsessions assume defelpot gmail.com please do write us we do like it it's

fun we love it great cool I'm gonna go ahead and cut this off in the next 10 years it will be Wednesday