Kyle Harper

And so that's why there's more DNA, ancient DNA that's preserved at more northern latitudes so far.

But it has as much to do with the fact that people aren't looking.

But –

We should be looking.

And if you've got skeletal materials from an ancient mass grave in India, call me.

We can definitely look.

Well, let me start with the plague where I'm a little more comfortable and I can say something as a knowledgeable person.

But I think it's relevant.

Because you said it's weird that plague seems to sort of evade some of these evolutionary constraints.

And it's worth just saying what these are.

a pathogen, you know, is a disease-causing organism, a microbe, usually a virus or a bacterium, but also fungi and single-celled organisms like protozoans that cause disease in a host.

But, like, they're not trying to cause you disease.

COVID doesn't hate you.

You know, plague doesn't hate you.

It's just evolution.

It's just trying to steal energy or hijack your cells to reproduce its genes.

And in fact...

it has incentives to try and do that as well as possible while doing the least possible damage.

And so it's always kind of trying to thread that needle or to find the right balance because if a pathogen just kills you instantly, there's nothing to steal and it can't transmit its genes into the next generation.

And so it's a really, every pathogen has these like basic evolutionary problems.