Matt Kielty

I guess, I mean, I was seeing Nick's explanation as yet another loss.

You know, he's pointing out that our beginning, even our scientific beginning, isn't as clean of a story as we thought.

You know, there was no lightning strike, no clear moment where it all began.

Just this slow and like bad breath out of a vent, churning, clumsy mix of chemicals in a dark, dank pit.

To me, that

That rips away the last shred of order that I thought the old soup version had, you know?

Huh, yeah.

I don't know, because to me it sounds like maybe at the very beginning of life, there was an orderliness built right on top of the orderliness of the planet itself.

You are making me think, if I focus on the structure of the vent and the cell—

There is a sense of belonging in that.

Like every cell in our body looks a little like this planet.

Maybe we don't matter and the fact that we're here is random, but we do belong.

guess that's it this episode was reported by Latif Nasser Matt Kielty Heather Radke Candice Wong and me Lulu Miller it was produced by Matt Kielty and Simon Adler with sound and music from Matt Kielty Simon Adler and Jeremy Bloom Bloom

Big thanks to Alan Gofinski for creating that song and Alita Gofinski for belting the heck out of it.

Thanks also to Chuck Cheeseman, Sarah Luderman, Doug Irwin, Candice Wong.

Thanks to David Sapkoski, whose book Rereading the Fossil we drew on for the story about Stephen Jay Gould and extinction.

Thank you to Nick Haddad, Ayanna Johnson, Chris Klausmeier, Laura Verhaegh, and Noelle Bolin.

That'll do it.

Thanks for listening.

Goodbye.