Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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I'm Bowen Yang. And I'm Matt Rogers.
During this season of the Two Guys, Five Rings podcast, in the lead up to the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games, we've been joined by some of our friends.
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Hey, Elmo. Hey, Matt. Hey, Bowen. Hi, Cookie. Hi. Now, the Winter Olympic Games are underway, and we are in Italy to give you experiences from our hearts to your ears. Listen to Two Guys, Five Rings on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, everyone.
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Chapter 2: Who was Charles Darwin and why is he significant?
The point of this episode is not to stomp on anybody's beliefs. No. I think science can be just as dogmatic as religion. Sure. So that's not what we're doing. No. If you believe in creationism, to each his own. We're not going to pound... our beliefs into you or, you know, vice versa. I've never understood that. Like, who cares?
Right.
It's proselytizing either way. Yeah. You know, it's like convert to my way of thinking. Yeah. Or else you are just so wrong. It's mind boggling. Right. But that's not the point of this. No. I think we should just see away with that because it's not what we're like. There's some people who don't always listen. Maybe this is their first episode. Welcome. We are not those kind of guys.
No, and specifically with this episode, it's on Charles Darwin, the man, and kind of what made him who he was. And we'll tackle, are we committing to go ahead and doing natural selection? I think we shall. To pair with this? As a matter of fact, we'll have this one come out on a Tuesday. We'll do natural selection on a Thursday. Look at that. All right, I agree. Let's do it. Let there be light.
But Darwin is a fascinating dude, though. So he deserves his own show. Yeah, because you can't really overstate the idea that he was, as Robert Lamb puts in this fine article, I have to say one of his best. Agreed. That Charles Darwin was the fulcrum by which, or on which, the entire sea change from a religious worldview to a scientific worldview took place. It was on this man's shoulders. Yeah.
Even though, oddly enough, he wasn't the only person to come up with natural selection.
Yeah.
No, and we'll get to that. He wasn't the first or the last, but it turns out he was the most thorough in his research. Right, and had the most social breeding. Yeah. And inbreeding. Yeah. Man, this is the ultimate tease. It is. So let's get started, Chuck. Let's talk about Darwin. He wasn't born with a Bunsen burner and a flask in his hand. No, he was not. He was born, if anything...
with a stethoscope in his hand because his father, Dr. Robert Waring Darwin, had designs on little Chuck being a doctor, like him. Right. Because he was, you know, they had some dough. He was an English gentleman. They weren't poor by any means. No, apparently his grandfather amassed a vast fortune in China, and not the country, but the porcelain. Oh, really? Yeah. Interesting.
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Chapter 3: What did Darwin's early life and education look like?
During this season of the Two Guys, Five Rings podcast, in the lead up to the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games, we've been joined by some of our friends.
Hi!
Hey, Elmo. Hey, Matt. Hey, Bowen.
Hi, Cookie. Hi.
Now, the Winter Olympic Games are underway, and we are in Italy to give you experiences from our hearts to your ears. Listen to Two Guys, Five Rings on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What do you do when the headlines don't explain what's happening inside of you?
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Listen to If You Can Hear Me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Segregation in the day, integration at night. When segregation was the law, one mysterious Black club owner had his own rules.
We didn't worry about what went on outside. It was like stepping in another world.
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Chapter 4: How did Darwin's voyage on the HMS Beagle influence his ideas?
Yeah, but he would sell them, which kind of degraded his standing, I think. Right, but he was using those funds to further fund more scientific exploration. Right. You know, it's not like he was funding his opium habit or something like that. No, no, no, but the point is Darwin didn't need to sell it, so I think people were like, well, this guy's collecting species and selling them.
He's a merchant. Right, exactly. That's exactly right. And regardless of whether Wallace Russell was a great scientist or not, it didn't matter. If you put these two men and their theories were exactly equal, but one was of higher social standing and greater wealth, well, that guy won. And that was Darwin. He was the fittest. Exactly. Under Victorian aristocracy rules.
But he became, again, the rallying point, the fulcrum, the center of the universe in this new debate that he unleashed between creationism and evolution that's still going on today. Literally. Not today, but a couple weeks ago.
Right?
So almost literally. And he didn't like that at all. So what he said was, you know what? You guys talk this over. I'm going to go hit the spa. Yeah. Throw up. And do what you want with it. Right. I'm going away. I've got a lawn to not mow. But lucky for him, he had a lot of supporters like right out of the gate. Yeah, he had both. He had supporters, scientists that I think some wanted ā
wanted to say this stuff all along. And now that they had such a wonderful, concise, and well-researched piece of work to back them up, they came out of the woodwork and like, yeah, see, this is great. But some people weren't. In fact, I think, oh, I can't remember the guy's name. Someone he really respected and his wife really respected basically slammed him and Called it heresy.
And that was really impactful again. More anxiety. Well, yeah. More throwing up. And there was a lot of name calling. There was a lot of political cartoons that were unflattering. And unflattering for the Victorian age. So basically his head on a monkey or something like that. Right. But while he had his detractors, he had his supporters. And there was one guy in particular named Thomas Huxley.
And he was, I believe, the grandfather of Algeus Huxley. Oh, yeah? Uh-huh. And sometimes if you see Darwin's theory mentioned, you'll see the Darwin slash Huxley theory. Because Huxley basically was a religious man. Yeah. And Darwin, I think...
first hand not just through the origin of the species but through the correspondence as well convinced him like no dude natural selection is actually right and very ironically just like Saul converting to Paul on the road to Damascus Huxley converts from a religious fervent to a natural selection fervent yeah
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Chapter 5: What was the impact of Darwin's findings on the scientific community?
In our Kent State episode, we said Mussolini had his brown shirts. Yeah. They were the black shirts. Duh. No biggie. It's the presence of all color, not the presence of some colors. Brown is the new black anyway. Is that right? Oranges. All right. I'm going to call this amputee. Amputee. Like amputee comma amputee? Mm-hmm. Okay. Hey guys, been listening for a couple years now and really enjoy it.
As a 60-year-old woman who had her right leg amputated above the knee in 1969 due to cancer, I was especially interested in that podcast. First, I want to correct one offhand comment in which you stated that being an amputee probably becomes the focus of your life. Not always. In my case, being an amputee did not become the focus. In fact, occasionally friends forget that I am an amputee now.
I consider it a compliment. As you said, life isn't over because a person becomes an amputee. I was married for 20 years, went to graduate school for my master's degree in counseling psychology. I have two wonderful grown children. I worked from the age of 14 to 55 with time off for raising kids and attended graduate school and have been able to travel quite a bit.
I've been lucky not to have experienced phantom pain. I have always had. and have been told by my doctors will always have phantom feeling, though. That is so weird. I know. It feels as though my amputated leg is present, but asleep. Sort of a benign prickly feeling. The feeling quickly faded into the background and I only notice it now when I'm thinking about it.
You may be interested also to know that the artificial leg I received in 1969 was literally a wooden leg from the knee down. I am now on my fourth prosthesis. I thought she was going to say, like, an old Bessie is still with me. Knock, knock. I'm now on my fourth prosthesis, and they get better and better. My current leg is very high-tech and impressive. It can make coffee.
That is from Denise Slatengren. Awesome. From Arcata, California. Nice. Not Arcadia. That's Northern California. A-R-C-A-T-A. Thanks, Denise. You sound like a very well-adjusted person, and we appreciate you writing and calling us out on that. And I hope you still have old Betty on the shelf somewhere at least. It's Betsy, Chuck. Betsy. Yeah. I would keep it. Just got it carved into the side.
Nice. You know? Yeah. Thanks for writing in. And if any of you out there want to write in, share your story, we love hearing them. We're pretty much like the central clearinghouse for people's stories. So... Bring them to us. We will disseminate them as best we can. That's right. You can go on to stuffyoushouldknow.com and check out our social links.
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