Highlights from Natural Selections in 2024
A little bit of everything
We start with motherhood, before getting into some of the mess of modernity – fake food and corrupt experts, ideological capture and education and the politicization of sex, and the absolute need for science to be wrested back from the technocrats and the scammers. We talk politics. We’ll also visit Madagascar, and point to some lovely, apolitical biological and astronomical realities, before, finally, embracing aspiration.
Both of my sons left for college for the first time this Fall, and they went all the way to Europe. As I write this, they are back home for the Winter break, but watching them both fly away in a tiny plane before they would board far larger planes was heart-wrenching. I wrote about motherhood:
I was two weeks shy of my 35th birthday when I had my first baby. Not quite an ‘elderly primigravida’ in the language of obstetrics, but very close. By then I had earned a PhD in Biology and done award-winning research in Madagascar and written a book and married the love of my life and gotten a tenure-track job.
I don’t regret having all of those experiences before becoming a mother. Nor do I regret having a professional life that I loved after becoming a mother. But of all the things in a life that a person could regret, motherhood has got to be at the bottom of the list….
Those who would have you avoid parenthood, they have words. Words to scare you with: dangerous and difficult and restrictive and boring and high stakes and unfair. I can come up with counterparts to those words—exhilarating and worth it and expansive and exciting and yes, high stakes, and the most extraordinary thing that you can do. But those words still do not capture the experience. - Tiny Specks in the Universe
Food & Science & Food-Like Substances & Science-Like Substances
“Drug us with substances that are not food, but which play food on TV.” –Era of the False Narrative
It should perhaps not be surprising that an era in which Hollywood movies gush over Pop-Tarts also has millions of Americans embracing Ozempic and its pharma relatives. “Food science” assures us that Froot Loops are healthier for us than meat or eggs, but the MAHA movement spearheaded by Kennedy knows this isn’t true. Big Food is in the crosshairs, as it should be.
“We feel an aching void. We call it hunger. Probably, in part, it is, because our bodies are craving food that is becoming impossible to grow.” –Pharma Darlings
Big Food is in the crosshairs. So, of course, is Big Pharma.
“Rather than fixing our food or fixing our behavior, we could just take some pills and hope for the best. That does seem like the new American way.
“Alas, there’s no such thing as a free lunch.” – Pharma Darlings
Ozempic is a quick fix that will cause people to crash and burn. It comes with promises from experts, experts with degrees and lab coats and clinical trials, experts who claim to speak in the name of science. So much does these days. Science is the new Religion, that thing to be followed, and to put one’s faith in. Kant, the father of the Enlightenment, worried about things like this. He wrote, in 1784, of the ease that experts promise to bring, the ease of no longer having to make your own decisions:
“I need not think, so long as I can pay; others will soon enough take the tiresome job over for me.” – Kant, 1784
To which I added
“Think before paying anything more to those experts who would take from you the gifts of the Enlightenment.” - Growing Up is Hard to Do
Those who assure you that Ozempic is safe and will save you from a worse fate if you don’t take it…they don’t understand complex systems, or are lying to themselves, or to you. In any of those cases, you’re not in good hands with them.
It is up to you to be capable enough to do your own thinking.
Understanding how to wield the tools of science is an individual imperative for everyone, for without that capacity, you are beholden to others, and can be taken advantage of by anyone who claims the mantle of science. That mantle is yours. It is not theirs to have. But in order to claim it, and keep it as your own, you need practice discerning patterns and falsifying ideas, and you need a combination of confidence and humility. Confidence and humility are the very things with which one does science. – Technocrats in Science Skin Suits
Now, of course it is true that we live in a gigantic world with a whole lot of things that are already known, some of which are even true. How could anyone do their own analysis of every issue that a person might have an opinion on? It’s not really possible. But you can begin to have a sense of things, a skepticism, and an ability to recognize patterns, and a tendency to work really hard to establish that you are wrong, even when you really hope that you’re right.
Some of my thoughts on education—how to improve K-12 education (with gardens and art and sport and actual science), and what I had to say to the Department of Justice in 2018, when invited to speak on the problems with higher ed—help describe a path to becoming a free-thinking, scientifically-capable, skeptical yet generous human being.
Free-thinking, scientifically skeptical people become savvy to shenanigans.
One of the tricks of the modern trade—both (pseudo)scientific and (pseudo)journalistic—is to make claims that simply aren’t true, in the expectation that nobody will point this out. In going down the rabbit hole of climate science—and I didn’t even go very far—I found the place riddled with false claims and motivated reasoning.
I am really, really, really tired of having science paraded in front of me that doesn’t turn out to be science. “Scientists find X” all too often means “Scientists modeled Y and extrapolated Z and snuck in X at the end because that’s the conclusion they were shooting for all along.” - Bad Storms, Bad Science
We need to recognize the creativity and messiness inherent to science and the scientific process, and wrest it back from the credentialed thugs who would claim it as their own. – Art, Craft, Science, Engineering
Oh and speaking of science, kind of, did you know that the coal-tar based, carcinogenic food dye that makes Doritos orange—that’s yellow #5—also turns mice transparent? Now you do.
It is in this moment—the one filled with fake food and fake science and drug dealers and pushers who either are the government or are helped along by government grants and deals—that Make America Healthy Again emerges.
Our children are being drugged and drugged and drugged some more—drugs to “treat” normal childhood variation. Speed to make the active young boy more compliant in the classroom. Anti-anxiety meds to quiet the concerns of the sensitive girl, and make it far more difficult for her to learn how to soothe herself down the road. Children are not normally sick, but American children are, and ever more so. We are a chronically sick people, and our children are following in our footsteps. – Childhood Under Attack (speech for Rescue the Republic Rally in DC)
In part because Kennedy embraced Trump, and asked his supporters to do so as well, many people voted for Trump this year who had not before. I was among them. My reasons were many—he is not owned, he is taking counsel from truth-speaking patriots, he is better for Americans, he is better for women (yes, really), and he is better for America. I wrote clearly and strongly for Trump (rather than against Kamala), publishing my piece one week before election day. It hit a nerve. Here’s one paragraph that is not representative, but I don’t know that any of it is like any of the rest:
Kennedy sees the death grip that Big Pharma, Big Food, and Big Ag have on the American people, and he has the capacity to address those problems. We have become a sick, out of shape, and confused people. We accept meds for every perceived ailment, including the ones caused by the last meds. The ingredients in the prepared foods on our grocery store shelves are a toxic brew—far more toxic than the products allowed on the shelves in other countries. Our food pyramid is inverted, and the recommendations coming out of nearly every agency tasked with watching out for our health are the inverse of what healthy people should do. Do not listen to the FDA, the USDA, or the CDC. Instead, eat animal proteins and fats, and produce that has been grown with as little chemical intervention as possible, savoring every single bit. And then do what is free and feels good. Go outside and face the sun. Walk. Form relationships. Touch people, and also grass and water and soil. Be barefoot under a night sky. - Why I Am Voting for Trump
Two weeks later, after the election:
Maybe I am wrong to have bet on Trump. I doubt it. But whatever happens next, we should all be united in having optimism for the future. We are the ones who will realize our dreams. - Reason for Optimism
The politicization of sex has been part of the conversation this year too, of course—everything from abortion to pride parades to the gender gap in politics has been the subject of scrutiny, including here at Natural Selections.
And of course there is the hopefully waning trans-insanity. Remember Imane Khelif, the Algerian athlete who went to the Olympics, and took home gold in women’s boxing? I wrote about him in August:
Imane Khelif is XY, and almost certainly has one of several well-understood Disorders of Sexual Development. This means that when Khelif was born, he appeared to be female, and lived as if a girl until puberty hit. But male puberty transformed his external appearance into that of a man, which is, in fact, what he now is. Just as girls become women, boys become men.
It can’t be an easy thing, to believe yourself to be a girl, and to have everyone around you believe that you are a girl, only to have adolescence reveal that everyone was wrong. But as much compassion as we might have for the younger Khelif, who no doubt went through a baffling and painful puberty, we owe the adult Khelif, a man who takes pleasure in beating up women, no compassion at all. Would that Khelif were not encouraged in his delusions by a world of people who have forgotten how to say no. There, again, is the misplaced compassion of women, being weaponized against our own selves. – Open Letter: Why Have the Sexist Tropes Returned?
Even mothering has taken a hit, with some pundits attempting to politicize the intersection of motherhood and race, claiming that the term “mama bear” is racially coded. As is usually the case, such analysis tends to ignore reality, both evolutionary and otherwise.
Mothering is older than mammals, and many other species have good relationships with their mothers. But most do not.
Every animal on the planet has a mother. But most don’t have a relationship with her.
Mammal mamas, though, we defend our children.
For well over one hundred million years, we have had the ability—and the obligation—to nourish our children from our own bodies. From this early truth has emerged another: among mammals, all mothers defend our children. We have an ancient, unbreachable bond. We mammals are—some more metaphorically than others—mama bears.
This is true for polar bears and for black bears. Their color makes no difference.
It is even true for spectacled bears, who have a particular fondness for avocados. Their fondness for avocados does not get in the way of their mothering. - Maternal Love & the Mama Bear
I also began republishing my first book, Antipode, this year, but got waylaid by world events. I will return to republishing it soon, as I refocus on writing my next book. Antipode: Seasons with the Extraordinary Wildlife and Culture of Madagascar, was published in 2002 by St. Martin’s Press. Included in the chapters published thus far are an attack by a wild lemur, naked sailors, and the Madagascan god of ground transportation. And so much more.
Downstream of my research in Madagascar, I became a college professor and taught biology to undergraduates. Some of those students were truly extraordinary—one of them started a non-profit to help bring beavers back to the Western states. I wrote about beavers and Jakob’s work in 2023. In 2024 he and I exchanged letters about what had happened after I published my piece in 2023. Short version: he got cancelled by a mob that included one of his board members, because he refused to denounce me. The reason that I needed to be denounced, apparently, is that I’m a transphobe. She doesn’t know the half of it.
Jakob is building a phoenix from the ashes of the fire set by a woke mob, and he is finding good people along the way. In his words:
These are the people who are behind Project Beaver, and our agreement is simple; they entrust me with their money and I use it to support our mission in the most effective way I can. We listen to the people who are still on the land. We aren’t shy about using hypothesis-driven field science. We prioritize understanding reality. - Never Cave to the Mob – A Big Flat Cautionary Tail
Some apolitical biological things that I thought about this year included mammalian brains, amphibian milk, and the evolution of shoulders.
And this: How can we understand our night sky, without the help of technology?
And what is the meaning of the equinox—to us, and to the Mayans, who knew the equinoxes well, creating quite a spectacle which revealed itself only on two days of the year:
The feathered snake god slides down an ancient stone temple. Like all of the best gods, Kukulkan is not visible most of the time. His head, a gaping maw of serpent badassery, is fixed in place at the base of his temple in southern Mexico. But most days, his body is absent. Twice a year, a one-two punch of astronomical reality and Mayan insight come together, creating the massive, undulating body of a serpent out of shadow and stone. – Light spreads into darkness, not the other way around.
Finally:
Make music and dance. Build functional, beautiful things—tables and lamps and bowls. Grill meat and make bread and savor and share it. Lay tile and pipe and wire. Walk and think and walk some more, and write, or paint, or drum or however it is that that you choose to physically express the ineffable in your head. - Let Us Aspire
Yes. I think I'll go bake some bread.
You always make me think. Today you made me smile.