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Up next, Everything about humanity is changing—except our bodies ►
What if your existence hinged on a single cosmic accident that took place millions of years ago? Biologist Sean B. Carroll examines the chain of events that made humanity’s domination as a species possible.
From the specific chemistry of an asteroid to Earth’s shifting atmosphere, Carroll unpacks how a series of fortunate events made our planet the perfect cradle for mammals.
00:00:00 Part 1: The role of chance in the creation of life
00:00:16 What are the odds that life exists on any given planet?
00:00:48 What developments led to life on Earth?
00:01:58 Where do you begin our origin story?
00:04:51 What is unique about the last 3 million years on Earth?
00:06:04 What mass extinctions has Earth faced?
00:07:33 What events allowed humans to flourish?
00:15:37 Why was the K-Pg asteroid so devastating?
00:18:25 How did life on Earth rebound from the K-Pg asteroid?
00:19:57 How much have we evolved since the age of hunter-gatherers?
00:24:16 Are we lucky to be here?
00:27:20 Part 2: The resilience of nature.
00:27:30 Would nature heal itself if humans ceased to exist?
00:29:36 How much of an impact have humans had on Earth?
00:33:16 Can we think of Earth as an organism?
00:37:16 What are the “Serengeti rules?”
00:39:48 What is the leading cause of biodiversity loss?
00:46:56 How resilient is nature?
00:51:12 What did COVID teach us about nature’s ability to rebound?
00:53:09 Why is biodiversity critical to human flourishing?
00:54:04 What can we do to protect both us and the planet?
01:00:39 Is there time for the planet to rebound?
01:04:42 PART 3: The evolution of human experience.
01:04:52 Has the quality of human life improved over time?
01:06:27 What impact has medical science had on humanity?
01:08:23 How have agricultural advances changed lives?
01:10:12 Why is it important to understand the rules of life?
01:09:14 How are our bodies regulated?
Read the video transcript ►
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About Sean B. Carroll:
Sean B. Carroll is an award-winning scientist, author, educator, and film producer. He is Distinguished University Professor and the Andrew and Mary Balo and NIcholas and Susan Simon Chair of Biology at the University of Maryland, and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He was formerly Head of HHMI Tangled Bank Studios, and led the Department of Science Education from 2010-2023. He is also Professor Emeritus of Genetics and Molecular Biology at the University of Wisconsin.
An internationally-recognized evolutionary biologist, Carroll’s laboratory research has centered on the genes that control animal body patterns and play major roles in the evolution of animal diversity. In recognition of his scientific contributions, Carroll has received the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Life Sciences, been elected to the National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, named a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and elected an Associate Member of the European Molecular Biology Organization.
His latest book is A Series of Fortunate Events.
source
Having large ruminants, say cattle and sheep, in the crop rotation is highly beneficial to the arable crops as well as monetarily profitable. Says an old Kiwi farmer.
❤❤
The NASA Science portal notes that the cosmos holds more stars than all the grains of sand on Earth….
Astronomers estimate the observable universe contains between 70 sextillion and 1 septillion stars (7×10²² to 10²⁴) distributed across trillions of galaxies.
Low Estimate: 70 Sextillion stars (7×10²² by 7×10¹³) gives about 1 billion civilizations.
High Estimate 1 Septillion stars (Dividing 10²⁴ by 7×10¹³) gives about 14.3 billion civilizations, 1 for every year since the "big bang" 😄
The coollision of Thea with earth creating the moon was also important.
The Bible is our source of truth. So thankful that we have it to show us some of the important details as to how God created everything.
Interview is ok at best. He seems to be a capitalist/colonialism apologist. We are born with the knowledge of the importance of every species on this planet. This importance is stripped from us as we get older. He constantly justifies our fake "ignorance" when is it the ignorance that is being taught. We turn our heads and allow this destruction 😢
They got us…
more brainless speculation
This person leaned on his own understanding
Gary Vee would love this interview. 😂
So we've all just nestled into some strange existence-probability valley that is so rare in the cosmos, that no one like us exists in our galaxy and even maybe not in any galaxy near us.
a rock enters 30mins early and now I have to suffer through 9 hours of corposlavery for 50years. Brilliant. Just, brilliant!
When it's so unlikely you have to start to consider maybe it's because we're fundamental.
Maybe India and China could start doing those things. Our contributions to endangering the environment pale in comparison
22:55 you made it sound as though if we didn't leave Africa we would not have shared jeans and culture but there were no other jeans and there wasn't any other culture before we left Africa. This kind of sounds like you're trying to retrofit phenomena. Sounds like what you're saying is if we had not left Africa we wouldn't have experienced that. That's retrofitting, is it not? We became diverse because of ultraviolet rays, tectonic plates movement and other phenomena. Life might be quite different if we rotated faster than we do. If the Earth revolve every 84 minutes instead of 24 hours we would have people near the equator gravitating. The Earth's outer atmosphere might be different as well right?
Of course we're evolving we're never not evolving. Look at the change in women's menstruation.
21:24 I beg to differ if anyone thinks that humans are more reliable for a sustainable life. Recently the largest packing company for beef has closed some of its doors do to low heifer production. This means that mismanagement is going to cost lives across the United States.
5:07 We may be able to say that this is an unusual time for this planet but we certainly can't say that it's an unusual process. This physically has always pointed to a "if this, then that" probability. Anyone in the business of predicting the future leans on that theory
The mammals were already here long before the asteroid hit 66 million years ago.
Here’s the sequence:
Life began in the oceans more than 3.5 billion years ago.
Vertebrates—animals with backbones—first evolved in the water. Early fish-like vertebrates existed more than 500 million years ago.
Some descendants of fish evolved limbs and began living partly on land around 370 million years ago.
Those land vertebrates eventually produced different branches, including the lineage that became mammals.
The first true mammals appeared roughly 225–200 million years ago, so mammals had already existed for well over 100 million years when the asteroid struck.
66 million years ago, the asteroid impact contributed to the extinction of the non-bird dinosaurs and many other organisms. Mammals survived, and afterward they rapidly diversified into many of the ecological roles left vacant.
So the asteroid didn't create mammals. It dramatically changed the world in a way that gave surviving mammals an enormous evolutionary opportunity.
And if you keep tracing mammals backward, yes—their extremely distant ancestors ultimately lead back to animals living in the sea.
Some mammals such as whales made their way back to the sea. We might too at some point in time if we survive long enough.
I didn't know about DDT and the American Bald Eagle's decline. Another example of many positive and successful government regulations. I thought it would be interesting to ask if the chemical companies fought the ban of DDT with propaganda. The answer of course is yes, aggressively. They smeared the publishers of the DDT findings. They published "The Desolate Year" which described an America overrun by disease carrying insects because pesticides had been banned. They told the public of the coming societal and agricultural collapse, global disease and starvation. I also should point out here they called the scientists the alarmists. 😆
so on aliens. presumably their stats mirror ours…so the chances of coexistence and hence aliens are slim within a single timeframe.
That’s a generous estimate. 70 trillion is more like the amount of variables needed. We are alone.
eh, we exist so the probablitof our existence is just about 100%. Some tiny chance we think we exist but really its just me in a lonely simulation 😂
In 200 years they will look back at this video and wonder how extremely dumb we were in talking about the number of years ago we thought these things happened. Just like now and how we look back at the people a few hundred years ago and what silly things they were saying.
If cellular life was so easy to form in nature, why can’t they do it in a lab they’ve given up trying
the dude lost me once he said plants provide more efficient calories for humans than animal foods do and cited the CEO of Impossible Foods as a source. This is 100% incorrect.
Have to call bullshit on the part about humanity being ignorant about the harmful effects wrought on the planet. Oil companies knew long ago about climate change, chemical companies knew about the effects of lead and certain forever chemicals but they kept doing until governments had to step in so let's not let ourselves off the hook so easy
Whats really is mind bending or mind blowing is the probability of abiogenesis happening. Its massively Impossible. Yet it happened on Earth.
Hes filling a void in your dumb head and this entire conversation is about a probability Fallacy. Hes implying that someone rolls dice before every decision. Well hes implying that there are Decisions being made at all. Instead of the truth that all things are a chain reaction and the odds of your existince in this exact spot are 100%. not 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000001%
If this is true (and the odds arent 1/1) then WHO ROLLED THE DICE?
What IQ range do you think it takes to understand this probalistic fallacy? what IQ do you think the speaker has? (i will estimate that 75% of people above 120 IQ can understand the fallacy here on their own. I will also estimate that the Speakers IQ is 115-120)
Have we reached the point in humanity where people cant keep up with the logic of reality and charlatans take over all the public speaking seats? This whole video and comment section gives me catholic church dark age vibes. This video is presenting a really simple statistical fallacy as fact, and yet here we are with 2 million views on a 10 mil channel.
The universe is a SIV. probability of things happening as they did is 1/1. you will trickle down to where you are now no matter what happens. THERE IS NO MIRACLE HERE, just existence.
This is Childish Logic. odds of our existence in an infinite universe is 1/0. In a finite universe the odds of us landing here are still 1/1. WE CHOSE the habitable zone, THE HABITABLE ZONE DID NOT CHOOSE US. your logic is backwards.
I hate when people try to say "the odds of us being here are X, the odds of the moon being perfect is Y. THE REALITY IS THAT if the universe is infinite, then the odds of our existince is 1/1. its not that we chose some point in space and decided to start a species, and got lucky that the moon and everything is so perfect for life…. WE are HERE because this was the habitable zone for life, its not some probabilty miracle that magically spawned around us. Theres got to be SOMEWHERE in the universe that is habitable for life, and thus why we spawned here, because it was the habitable zone. Its not rocket science, but to see such big channels support this idea that we won some kind of intergalactic lottery, its absolutely childish. That thought only goes to make the christians believe that god is responsible for the false probabilistic miracle, and that goes on to hurt science funding and capabilities.
We don’t eat cows, we eat steers. Also- how many times did you fly to Africa?
And then add the ridiculousness that YOU as you are showed up. If your father gets stuck in traffic or your mom gets delayed, even minutes, their biology is different when they tuck and a different you shoes up nine months later.
We are alone
The final answer will be the Matrix the real life Matrix. The extremely wealthy will do everything they can to gain more wealth and Destroy Everything along the way and I'll just be a handful of humans with many many machines and computers doing their biddings
Il y a la terre et le reste c’est juste de la decoration combien stupide de penser qu’on est seul dans un univers infini??????????????
It’s a meaningless statistic. i.e. stupid.
Doubt
its by orders of magnitue far more likely one could dump ink molecules into a drainage ditch and have a university chemistry book swirl into existence than having a universe full of life sustaining molecules mindlessly coalescing into a living cell even given an eternity of time to work with..
Had to shut it odf after the 1st minute of hearing his subjective analysis of what I probably would or wouldnt find interesting about the first 3 billion years of boring microbial life. Truth is. It is the hard and slow work that gives rise to the drama humans so covet.
Hello mt Carroll you lost me at earths evolution and what we humans are impacting.
The trade off for no humans thus no impact vastly outweighs the fact that humans are the only reason that anything does exist.
Without us humans yes nature carrys on imaccuatly but know one would be aware,then whats the point of nature becsuse without human intelligence there would be know nature at all
Simply brilliant. The way the man describes complex phenomena is outstanding. Perhaps republicans should listen to him.
What if the asteroid hitting earth stopped us by being more advanced dinosaurs by 100 million years evolution. If for a second we don't care about what body or creature we ended up being and just ended up "being". Or other more active planets could have more advanced beings because more life-ending events cause many more evolution re-starts.
Millions of buffalo used to roam the prairies. So, I disagree with the cattle analogy. Where's the beavers ? Huge ecological disruption.
Amazing how such a clever scientist manages to leave God out of the equation. Might there be an Intelligence planning all these lucky coincidences?