Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00We search the heavens for signs of intelligent life, but what would we do if we found it?
00:11Are we ready for first contact? Would we be smart enough to even know if someone was sending us a
00:17message? We've only been able to detect radio signals for a little over a century. Extraterrestrial
00:24civilizations could have been bombarding Earth with radio signals for millions and billions of
00:29years before them, and nobody here would have had any inkling that it had ever happened. And what if
00:36we seem just like ants to them? We all know how we treat ants. What if the extraterrestrials are
00:44smarter than we are, have technology, weapons that render us helpless? The history of first contact
00:50among terrestrial civilizations, the humans of east and west, north and south, has been scarred by
00:57genocide. In all of the cosmos, is there such a thing as a first contact story with a happy ending?
01:06I know of one first contact story, but it's too soon to know how it will turn out.
01:27is there such a sort of accidental
01:45reality?
01:47Maybe there's another island of mothers.
02:19This scientific and architectural wonder of the world is in southern China.
02:49It's the largest radio telescope on Earth.
02:56In fact, it's the largest telescope of any kind.
03:00The 500-meter aperture spherical radio telescope, or fast as it's known.
03:06This dish is a giant listening device for detecting radio waves that propagate throughout the cosmos.
03:13The mission of this telescope is to solve unanswered questions about the origin of the universe in its early history.
03:19It will also search for pulsars, those rapidly rotating neutron stars, and for telltale signs of gravitational waves, ripples in the fabric of space-time.
03:32And it will search for signs of alien civilizations, especially those very far away.
03:39I want to take you to a place where we've begun to eavesdrop on an intricate global communications network.
03:47We didn't even know it existed until recently.
03:50Complex beyond our wildest imagining.
03:53It was built by a community whose population is inconceivably vast.
03:57Our distant ancestors, tiny, shrew-like animals, came of age in places not too different from this one.
04:14Forests.
04:15Maybe they knew what we only recently discovered.
04:18The secret life of this place is filled with drama, abuzz with conversation.
04:24Much of it is spoken in an electrochemical language, and it takes place on a scale too small, and in motion too slow, for creatures like us to even notice.
04:35But there's something even more amazing that was going on right beneath our feet, for the longest time, and on a global scale.
04:42And we had no inkling that it was there.
04:45An ancient, subterranean, world wide web, a vast neural network, is what binds the forest together, making it an intercommunicating and interacting dynamic organism.
04:57One with agency, and the power to influence events above ground.
05:03It's called the mycelium.
05:15It's a hidden matrix, the creation of an enduring collaboration among fungi, plants, bacteria, and animals.
05:30Ninety percent of all the trees and plants on Earth are involved in the mutually beneficial relationship made possible by the mycelium.
05:40They exchange nourishment, messages, and empathy with one another, across species, and even across the kingdoms of life.
05:48Mushrooms are the reproductive organs, the fruiting bodies of the mycelium.
05:53To see a mushroom growing wild in the forest is to know that the great natural internet is online beneath your feet.
06:08Some mushrooms spread trillions of spores on the breeze, each spore a paratrooper carrying life's message.
06:16This is mushroom sex.
06:23After a while, in their search for moisture, this new segment of the mycelium will return down to the underworld and link up to the greater network.
06:34The secret lives of trees have been long hidden from us.
06:40For them, the mycelium is their lifeline to one another.
06:43It makes the forest a community.
06:46They use it to parent, to nurture each other.
07:00And even to devise a stay of execution, a reprieve from the axe.
07:04When a tree is cut down in the forest, other trees reach out to the victim with their root tips and send life-saving sustenance, water, sugar, and other nutrients via the mycelium.
07:17This continuous IV drip from neighboring trees can keep the stump alive for decades and even centuries.
07:24And they don't only do it for their own kind, they do it for the trees of other species.
07:33Why? Is it because they know that their lives depend on the health of the whole forest and even on beings very different from themselves?
07:41Is it possible that the trees can think in longer terms than we do?
07:47We know they have excellent parenting skills.
07:51Take this fir tree.
07:54This younger tree here is its offspring and it requires constant attention.
07:59It's hardly young by our standards, 60 years old.
08:04But young trees don't know that if they grow up too quickly, there will be too much air in the cells of their trunks.
08:10Later, when the stormy winds and predators come, they'll be weak and vulnerable.
08:16Like the young of other kingdoms, the fir wants to grow into the light as soon as possible.
08:20But their mother first shades it with her branches so that it cannot binge on sunlight and grow up too fast for its own good.
08:36How many forests have I been in without any awareness of what was really happening all around me?
08:42Who are we to search for alien intelligence when we can't even recognize or respect the consciousness all around us and even beneath our feed?
09:04This stately maple senses that the tiny caterpillar is nipping at its leaf.
09:09A signal is sent through the tree just as it would go through our own nervous system, but not nearly so fast.
09:17Again, the trees live on a much slower timescale.
09:21The speed of ouch for a tree is only an inch every three minutes.
09:33So it will take at least an hour for the tree to react by generating the chemical that will chase the tree.
09:39This pest away.
09:40When a predator strikes, the first thing a tree does is to take a saliva sample in order to sequence the DNA of the invading species.
09:49It then tailors its chemical response to the special vulnerability of its enemy.
09:54In certain cases, it releases the precise pheromone that will attract its enemy's enemy to do the trees fighting for it.
10:01Is it fair to say that the trees have a deep knowledge of chemistry, entomology, and other earth sciences?
10:08And other earth sciences?
10:09How exactly is their knowing different from ours?
10:15Is it any different when we humans do these things?
10:28Throughout nature, we find these electrochemical conversations between the life forms of different species and kingdoms.
10:40But what of a conversation between different worlds?
10:41What might we share with the intelligent civilization of another world?
10:42Science and mathematics.
10:43The symbolic languages of the scientist, mathematician, and the engineer?
10:44Avoid those things that are lost in transformation.
10:45It's not true.
10:46It's not true.
10:47It's not true.
10:48It's not true.
10:49It's not true.
10:50It's not true.
10:51It's true.
10:52It's true.
10:53It's true.
10:54It's true.
10:55It's true.
10:56It's true.
10:57It's true.
10:58It's true.
10:59It's true.
11:00It's truly true.
11:01Oh, I try to see it.
11:02It's true.
11:03I love it.
11:04I never truly have this true experience and ë°© ejercith meå‘Š,
11:06I've mentioned in this before thank you so much because it's good enough to be.."
11:07Hello, and?"
11:08I just had to witness it.
11:09I didn't get to today.
11:10I wouldn't mind anything about it.
11:11Living the Tam.
11:12I have a great dafür.
11:13For my Franc.
11:14My Father, I will never hold up.
11:15The 2003 Mal materno.
11:16I am ever Came a step back.
11:17Before I ask you back this week, we can as a ал� kw 눌러jee and I will see this a little
11:18little husband if you will know the whip and I feel like them.
11:21They're not as open to misinterpretation.
11:33I know of only one non-human symbolic language,
11:37and only one instance when we humans
11:39made contact with the life form that uses it.
11:43Their knowledge of astronomy and mathematics
11:45would astonish most of us.
11:48Their commitment to resolving their differences democratically
11:50and reaching the broadest possible consensus through debate
11:54is unparalleled by any human society that I know.
11:59Tens of millions of years ago, they had been carnivores,
12:02but they gave that up to become vegans.
12:07It changed their world
12:08and resulted in surpassing beauty wherever they wandered.
12:13They are explorers who use their symbolic language
12:16to tell each other about the things they've discovered
12:19on their travels.
12:24This is their night sky.
12:31I want to tell you their story.
12:34This is the shore of the Panthalacic Ocean,
12:50a sea that covered Earth's entire northern hemisphere
12:53in a period named the Ordovician.
12:56We've compressed all of the time from this very second
13:00back to the beginning of the universe
13:02into a single calendar Earth year,
13:06a cosmic calendar.
13:08Every month represents a little more than a billion years.
13:11Every week, nearly 300 million years.
13:15Every day, about 40 million years.
13:18The Big Bang is the first moment of New Year's Day.
13:22Our present right now is at the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve.
13:27I'm standing on the morning of December 20th on the cosmic calendar,
13:33480 million years ago in Earth's history.
13:37This was the time when life began to diversify.
13:42It's remembered as the great Ordovician biodiversity event.
13:46It came 40 million years after life's first big leap into diversification,
13:51known as the Cambrian Explosion.
13:54This was the dawn of the arthropods,
13:58the invertebrates who wear their skeletons on the outside
14:01instead of on the inside,
14:03as we would one day do hundreds of millions of years later.
14:07The arthropods of the Ordovician
14:09pioneered the most successful body plan ever evolved by life.
14:14Even today, more than 80% of all living animals are arthropods.
14:22But around the time the plants began to venture out of the waters,
14:26a crustacean staggered ashore
14:28and made a home in the new world of the land.
14:35Insects evolved from the crustaceans.
14:38A thought, I do my best to hold at bay
14:41whenever I'm dining in a seafood restaurant.
14:44We think that the insects and the plants colonized the land
14:50at about the same time,
14:52400 million years ago,
14:55or December 21st,
14:56on the cosmic calendar.
14:58This was a time
14:59when giant mushrooms towered over the world's trees,
15:04which were then
15:04no more than a few feet high.
15:06Mushrooms this gigantic
15:12make you wonder
15:13just how big the underground network
15:15that supported them must have been.
15:23And this was the time on Earth
15:24when life learned how to fly.
15:27The insects would have it all to themselves
15:43for another 90 million years.
15:46No flying reptiles,
15:48no birds,
15:49no bats to gobble them up.
15:51Just other bugs.
15:53Powered flight was a huge evolutionary leap for insects,
16:00allowing them to spread all over the planet.
16:04The insects put human pretensions to shame.
16:07Their tenure on Earth
16:08is hundreds of times greater than ours.
16:12They look much the same to us today,
16:14as they did to the dinosaurs in the late Cretaceous.
16:17Even back then,
16:20you didn't want to mess with a wasp.
16:23They've always been voracious hunters.
16:30Yes,
16:31they were giant redwoods on the Earth
16:33240 million years ago.
16:35That wasp is out hunting for food
16:49for her young.
16:50That wasp is out hunting for food for her young.
17:05Wasps did their thing
17:10for another 100 million years.
17:12And then,
17:13something happened
17:14on an almost microscopic scale
17:16that would paint the Earth
17:17in a whole new spectrum of colors.
17:20Back then,
17:22there was no such thing
17:23as an animal partner
17:24to aid the plants
17:26in their fertilization,
17:27to efficiently transport their seed
17:29to the reproductive organs
17:31of distant plants.
17:32In other words,
17:33to play Cupid for them.
17:35The drama unfolding here
17:40is not the struggle
17:42between the spider and the wasp.
17:44It's those tiny particles
17:45sticking to the wasp's legs.
17:47Nothing much to look at,
17:49just a few grains.
17:51But this magic dust,
17:53called pollen,
17:55contained the power
17:56to transform the world
17:57and to make possible
17:59some of the most beautiful sights
18:01ever seen on this planet.
18:03Even today,
18:04more than 100 million years later,
18:07this is still true.
18:09each grain of pollen
18:11sculpted differently
18:12by evolution,
18:14each a novel strategy
18:16for survival,
18:17sharpened by vast expanses of time.
18:21Pollen is tough.
18:23It has to be.
18:25It's so well-built
18:26that you can fire it from a gun
18:28and it will emerge unscathed
18:30with its identity fully intact.
18:33The wasps had nurtured their young
18:35during their helpless larval stage
18:38by bringing home game
18:39for them to feast on.
18:41The pollen was rich in protein,
18:43a meal for the grubs
18:45when mom came home
18:46without any kills.
18:47Over the eons,
18:50a new kind of life form evolved,
18:52one that stopped bringing meat home
18:54for dinner.
18:55This new creature
18:56brought only the magic dust
18:58that the flowers made.
19:02Bees.
19:03They had no appetite
19:04for the mangled parts
19:06of dead insects.
19:07They went on the all-pollen diet
19:10and it was no fad.
19:12The bees became
19:13fully committed pollinators.
19:14The plants rewarded them handsomely
19:18by evolving
19:19ever more alluring
19:20female sexual organs
19:22in outrageous colors
19:24and seductive forms.
19:26They concocted delicious secretions,
19:29sweet nectars
19:30that would keep the bees
19:32coming back for more
19:33again and again.
19:38The age of the flowers
19:41had begun.
19:44Bees are masters of time
19:54traveling across 100 million years
19:57and they're none the worse
19:59for wear.
20:00These beings
20:01did more than anyone else
20:03to fill the palace of life
20:05with sustenance
20:06and beauty.
20:08We will explore its treasures
20:10and mysteries
20:11later on our voyage.
20:14For thousands of years,
20:21bees have been symbols
20:23of mindless industry.
20:25We always think of them
20:26as being something
20:26like biological robots
20:28doomed to live out
20:29their lives in lockstep,
20:31shackled to the dreary roles
20:33assigned to them by nature.
20:35This is our first contact story.
20:39It happened in a place
20:40called Runewinkle
20:41in rural Austria
20:42in the early 1900s.
20:49From the time
20:50Karl von Frisch was a child,
20:53he longed to understand
20:54what the other animals knew,
20:56how they perceived the world.
20:58He wanted to know
20:59if tiny fish saw color
21:01or had a sense of smell.
21:03He invented experiments
21:04to explore animal experience
21:06and he filmed them.
21:09Starting in the early 20th century,
21:11he was the first to use
21:12the new medium of motion pictures
21:14to create popular science
21:16entertainment and communication.
21:19For thousands of years,
21:21humans have noted
21:22the eccentric dances
21:23of the bees.
21:24But no one had ever looked
21:26at them with the kind
21:27of respect that assumed
21:28there was a reason
21:29to their dancing.
21:30Before Karl von Frisch,
21:33no one ever thought
21:34to ask why they moved
21:36this way and that way
21:37in a succession
21:38of elaborate figure eights.
21:40Von Frisch studied
21:41every tiny bee gesture
21:43and became fascinated
21:45by a mystery
21:45he couldn't explain.
21:48He would set out
21:49a dish of sugar water
21:50for a bee
21:51from his experimental hive.
21:53The bee would feast upon it
21:55before flying back home.
22:00The marked bee
22:01would later return
22:02to dine
22:03on the delicious sugar water.
22:05Von Frisch noted
22:06that in just a few hours,
22:08a multitude of other bees
22:09would join her there.
22:12They were always
22:13her fellow hive mates.
22:17But here was
22:18the really amazing thing.
22:20Von Frisch knew
22:21that the other bees
22:22had not followed
22:23the marked bee
22:23to the feeding place.
22:25How?
22:26Because he had the hive
22:27closely watched at all times.
22:29He had been careful
22:30to use sugar water
22:31and not honey
22:32so that the bee's
22:33sense of smell
22:34could not guide them
22:35to the reward.
22:37He continued to move
22:38the dish of sugar water
22:39farther away
22:40until it was
22:41several kilometers
22:42from the hive.
22:43Still,
22:44the hive mates
22:45would find their way
22:46to it.
22:47So how did the painted bee
22:49reveal the exact location
22:50of the sugar water
22:51with such precision
22:52that her hive mates
22:53could unerringly
22:55find their way there?
22:56There was a secret message
23:00in her choreography.
23:03What had seemed
23:04to countless generations
23:05of observers
23:06to be nothing more
23:07than the meaningless
23:08spasmodic motions
23:09of a dumb animal
23:11was actually
23:12a complex message,
23:14an equation
23:15informed by mathematics,
23:17astronomy,
23:18and an acute knowledge
23:20of time,
23:20all synthesized
23:22to convey
23:23the location
23:24of the riches
23:24she hoped to share
23:26with her sisters.
23:30The dancer
23:31used the angle
23:32of our star,
23:33the sun,
23:34to indicate
23:35the general direction
23:36of the food's location.
23:41Von Frisch noted
23:42that when a bee
23:43danced straight upward,
23:45she meant
23:45fly toward the sun,
23:47and when she moved downward,
23:48she meant
23:49fly away from it.
23:51Her swivels,
23:52left and right,
23:53conveyed the food's
23:54exact coordinates
23:55in space,
23:56sometimes kilometers away.
24:05The duration
24:06of her dance,
24:07down to a fraction
24:08of a second,
24:09indicated the length
24:10of time it would take
24:11her fellow bees
24:12to get there.
24:16She even factored
24:17in wind speed
24:18to more finely calibrate
24:20the message she danced.
24:24And this was true
24:25at any time of the year,
24:27and from hive to hive,
24:29from continent to continent.
24:34Bees can do the math.
24:36Why do I call this
24:44a first contact story?
24:46Two species
24:47as different
24:48as any you can imagine,
24:50humans and bees,
24:52evolved on evolutionary pathways
24:54that diverged
24:55600 million years ago.
24:57And yet,
24:58these two species,
25:00and as far as we know,
25:01only they and we
25:03on this planet
25:04managed to create
25:05a symbolic language
25:06written in mathematics
25:08and science.
25:09We lived side by side
25:11with the bees
25:11for millennia,
25:13never dreaming
25:14of the complexity
25:15of their communications.
25:16What we've learned
25:17about bee society
25:18in the decades
25:19since von Frisch
25:20put some of our loftiest
25:21human aspirations
25:22to shame
25:24and changes forever
25:25our idea
25:27of intelligent life
25:29on Earth.
25:29We live in a time
25:43when the world's democracies
25:45are even more fragile
25:46than ever.
25:48But there are places
25:49on Earth
25:49where that's not true,
25:51where every individual
25:52has a voice,
25:53where corruption
25:54is unknown,
25:55where the community
25:56acts only when it
25:57has arrived at consensus,
25:59through reason
26:00and debate.
26:02This
26:03is one of those places.
26:14Contrary to popular belief,
26:16the hive is no monarchy.
26:19The queen is no absolute ruler
26:21controlling the other bees.
26:23The queen's role
26:24is almost entirely reproductive.
26:27Any female bee
26:29and that's what
26:30the vast majority
26:30of bees are
26:31can ascend to the throne
26:33given the right food
26:35and the space to grow.
26:37When the weather warms
26:38and the trees bloom,
26:40she graciously passes
26:41her scepter
26:42to a new generation
26:43of queens.
26:45That's the time
26:46in the life of a hive
26:47in late spring
26:48or early summer
26:49when about half
26:51of the hive's bees,
26:52around 10,000 of them,
26:54grow restless.
26:54They decide it's time
26:57to leave the mother hive,
26:59to found a new colony.
27:01They know not where.
27:03Once they depart,
27:05there is no turning back.
27:07It takes courage
27:08to leave home
27:09with no way back,
27:10to risk everything
27:11and choose the unknown.
27:15That pushing and shoving
27:17is not meant to be hostile.
27:18The workers
27:19are putting the queen
27:21on a rigorous exercise program
27:22so that she can lose weight
27:24and get back
27:25into flying shape.
27:27When everything's ready,
27:28it's time for the first leg
27:30of their odyssey.
27:32It's time to swarm.
27:34With the new queen
27:48now installed
27:49on her throne
27:50in the original hive,
27:52the old queen mother
27:53has pride of place
27:54at the very center
27:55of the swarm
27:56of adventurers.
28:00Hundreds of their
28:01most senior members,
28:03scouts,
28:03are dispatched
28:04on missions of reconnaissance
28:06over a five-kilometer radius.
28:09The scouts reconnoiter
28:11the local trees
28:12for the best possible
28:13new home.
28:14And they're extremely picky.
28:16Not just any place will do.
28:19The front door,
28:20a hollow in a tree,
28:21must be too high
28:22for bears
28:23and other marauders
28:24to easily reach in
28:26and plunder
28:26their precious honey.
28:28Total square footage
28:29is of critical concern.
28:31Honeybees don't hibernate.
28:33They'll have to heat the place
28:34for the long winter
28:35and be sure to produce
28:37enough food, honey,
28:39to see them through.
28:40Each scout must measure
28:42the exact dimensions,
28:44height, width, and depth.
28:46If it's even slightly too small
28:48or too large,
28:50the entire swarm
28:51will be wiped out
28:52before the next spring.
28:53When all the scouts return,
28:58the bees are ready
28:59to hold their annual convention.
29:02Each scout finds a place
29:03to stand on the swarm.
29:06There, she presents
29:07her argument
29:08for the best sight
29:09she has discovered.
29:10This house-hunting discourse
29:12is conducted
29:13in their scientific
29:14and mathematical language.
29:17Hundreds of scouts
29:18now use the waggle dance
29:20to advertise
29:21the home
29:21they've found.
29:23At first,
29:25opinions vary widely
29:26as each advocate
29:28attracts her share
29:29of followers.
29:32At our political conventions,
29:34people routinely lie.
29:36They press our buttons,
29:38demonizing,
29:39scapegoating,
29:40appealing to our fears.
29:41But the bees
29:42can't risk that.
29:44In both cases,
29:46ours and theirs,
29:47the future depends
29:48on seeing reality clearly.
29:51But for some reason,
29:52we are easily manipulated
29:54and deceived.
29:55The bees somehow know
29:57that they have to stick
29:58to the facts.
29:59They have to be accurate.
30:01They can't oversell.
30:03They act as if they understand
30:05that it matters what's true,
30:07that nature won't be fooled.
30:10The scouts
30:11who have found
30:11the optimum sites
30:12for the swarm's new home
30:13are the most passionate
30:15waggle dancers.
30:15Close scientific observation
30:19over many decades
30:20affirms this astonishing fact.
30:23Each bee
30:24has a platonic ideal
30:26of home in mind.
30:28Moreover,
30:29the members of the swarm
30:30don't take the testimony
30:31of the most popular dancers
30:33on faith.
30:34Many of them
30:35go to sea for themselves.
30:37Skepticism
30:38is a survival mechanism.
30:41The fact-checkers
30:43fly off to the site
30:44to make an independent evaluation.
30:47Just think for a minute
30:48how articulate
30:50the waggle dance messaging
30:51has to be.
30:53It's the coordinates
30:54for one particular tree
30:55in a whole forest of them.
30:58The scouts
30:59make a beeline
31:00for it every time.
31:02If the hollow
31:03turns out to be
31:04as good as advertised,
31:05they will return
31:06to the swarm
31:07where they too
31:09will dance its praises.
31:12Without deceit
31:13or violence
31:14or backhive deals,
31:17the scouts
31:17are the first
31:18to arrive
31:18at consensus.
31:21But the larger population
31:23remains to be persuaded.
31:25Once they all align
31:26behind one dance,
31:28once they've achieved
31:29unanimity
31:30on the best new place
31:31to call home,
31:32the great migration
31:34can begin.
31:35Within 60 seconds
31:37of the first takeoff,
31:3910,000 bees
31:40depart in formation
31:42for their new home.
31:44With the sun
31:45as their compass,
31:46the airborne colony
31:47turns to its queen
31:48for leadership.
31:50The swarm
31:51is a kind of mind,
31:53a collective consciousness
31:54to which every individual bee
31:57makes a contribution.
31:58Now that the move
32:05is complete,
32:06it's time to unpack,
32:08decorate the nursery,
32:10stock the pantry,
32:12and make the place
32:13their own
32:13until the weather warms
32:15and the trees bloom again.
32:17And so it has been
32:19for tens of millions
32:21of years.
32:24This intimate knowledge
32:25of the lives
32:26of the bees
32:27is a legacy
32:28of Carl von Frisch,
32:30who is the first
32:31to decrypt
32:32their symbolic language,
32:34to make contact
32:35with a completely
32:36different kind of mind.
32:40Today,
32:41we study bee brains.
32:43We are building
32:44a bridge
32:45over the chasm
32:46that has separated
32:46two species
32:47for a half a billion years.
32:50And yet,
32:51after all that time,
32:53there are places
32:53where our species
32:54and theirs converged.
32:56agriculture,
32:58architecture,
33:00language,
33:00and politics.
33:02We now know
33:03that bees sleep,
33:05and some scientists
33:06suspect
33:07that they dream.
33:14What knocked us
33:15out of our trance
33:16so that we could
33:17finally recognize
33:18another intelligence
33:20that had always been there?
33:21a few generations
33:22before von Frisch,
33:24one man did more
33:25than any other
33:26to open the way.
33:28For me,
33:29he was the greatest
33:30spiritual teacher
33:31of the last thousand years.
33:33The flowers he planted
33:34here long ago
33:35still bloom.
33:36The hive he founded
33:42and studied
33:43with open eyes
33:44continues to flourish.
33:46It was he
33:47who figured out
33:47how the palace of life
33:49could evolve
33:50from a modest
33:51one-room structure
33:52to an edifice
33:53of soaring towers
33:54reaching to the stars.
33:56And it was he
33:57who first glimpsed
33:58the secret lives
34:00of our fellow Earthlings.
34:02Somewhere,
34:17there's a place
34:18called the Halls of Extinction,
34:20a shrine
34:20to all the broken branches
34:22on the Tree of Life.
34:23But that tree
34:24still lives.
34:26It's seen
34:27four billion springtimes
34:28since it first took root.
34:30Its flowers
34:31burst forth
34:32with unforeseeable
34:33possibilities.
34:37A tiny,
34:38one-celled organism
34:39evolves into you
34:41and everything else
34:42that is Earth life.
34:43There's just no way
34:44of predicting,
34:45for now anyway,
34:46where life can lead.
34:48No way of foretelling
34:49the forms
34:49and capabilities
34:50that can issue
34:51from simpler organisms
34:52over vast expanses
34:54of time.
34:55Life itself
34:56can be seen
34:57as an emergent
34:58property of chemistry.
35:00Science
35:00as an emergent
35:02property of life.
35:03A way
35:04that life has found
35:05to begin
35:06to know itself.
35:14Four billion years.
35:19These are the most
35:21ancient towers
35:22that life built.
35:24plants
35:29as an emergent
35:33and formed
35:34as an eternal
35:35need to be saved.
35:35In the past,
35:36the only thing
35:36and the time
35:37to go
35:37and see
35:38in the past,
35:38the only thing
35:40has been
35:40to be seen
35:41as an emergent
35:41or an evidence
35:42as an emergent
35:42as an emergent
35:43and a transforming
35:43and a transforming
35:44in the past.
35:44Nobody knew this palace existed.
36:09It was hidden by the mists of time and shrouded in myth.
36:17But one man dared to part that curtain.
36:20He studied as many kinds of life as he could.
36:33He sailed to a group of islands on the far side of the planet in search of exotic species.
36:39He studied the bees, the flowers, the finches, mollusks, and earthworms for 30 years.
36:47A radical pattern emerged, one that would shake the world.
36:51It still does.
36:53He debunked the story of Adam and Eve.
36:57Humans are not the kings of life, created separately and charged with its management, but instead
37:03an upstart offspring of its stately ancient family.
37:07He waited to tell the world what he had discovered until he could demonstrate its truth beyond
37:12a shadow of a doubt.
37:14But then he made another great leap.
37:19Charles Darwin was also one of the first to recognize that if all life is related, there
37:25were certain philosophical implications.
37:33If we were not created separately from the other animals, must we not share more of who we are
37:39with them?
37:40Our awareness, our relationships with others, even our feelings.
37:46Instead of a single island of human perception in the universe, Darwin realized that we are
37:51surrounded by other ways of being alive and conscious.
37:56For Darwin, science was a pathway to a deeper level of empathy and humility.
38:03When word reached him that a local farmer was mistreating his sheep, Darwin dropped his research
38:08to make an arrest of the man.
38:11He exposed the horrendous suffering of wild animals caught in the jaws of steel traps and experimented
38:17on surgically without benefit of anesthesia.
38:21Throughout his entire life, he was haunted by an image of the helpless dog who licked his
38:26tormentor's hand while being dissected by a scientist.
38:30And this compassion extended even to our own species.
38:35He recognized the blindness of his 19th century contemporaries.
38:38In his autobiography, he recounted the story of an African woman who jumped off a cliff to
38:44her certain death rather than submit to being enslaved by the Portuguese.
38:49Darwin observed that if she had been a Roman matron from classical antiquity, she would be
38:55viewed very differently.
38:58We would be naming our daughters after her.
39:07It was he who began the scientific study of the hidden world beneath the forest floor.
39:14Darwin worshipped nature.
39:17His knowledge of science informed and drove his compassion to new heights.
39:36Behold, Saccharides coronarius.
39:41When it lived 550 million years ago, it was microscopic.
39:46But for us now, it looms large.
39:49Because this creature is the earliest common ancestor we've yet found.
39:54A physical connection we share with almost every animal on Earth.
39:59If we could only take that connection to heart.
40:13If someday we could synthesize all our knowledge of life and use it to build an arch of experience.
40:21A way for us to really feel what it's like to be the other.
40:26What if we could truly know the joy of a giant condor riding the thermals high in the Andes?
40:37Or the anguish of a humpback whale singing to its lover across the vast Pacific.
40:43Or the fear in the heart of our most hated enemy.
40:48How would that change this world?
40:53And all of them, and each of us, made from the same toolbox, with the same genetic material, but on different evolutionary voyages.
41:03Are there other possible worlds in the cosmos where life's pathways converge and intersect?
41:26Remember our friends, the tardigrades, who can rise from the dead to thrive on Earth in those hellish places where no one else can live?
41:34They have survived all five mass extinctions.
41:38And they can even live in the vacuum of space without protection.
41:42These creatures, too small to see with the naked eye, have been observed by scientists using a scanning electron microscope.
41:50Doing something that we like to think only humans do.
41:54They're not performing any of the known biological functions that organisms need to survive.
42:00They're gently giving each other pleasure, affection, tenderness, for its own sake.
42:10If bees dream and tardigrades snuggle, are there countless roads in the universe that life can take to wonder and to love?
42:22If we could stand beneath the arch of experience, or build one inside ourselves, maybe we'd be able to give our first contact story a better outcome.
42:36We know that by what we can do, what we like to think of humans.
42:42We could stand we're up here.