Hi again You're still here. Yeah, I'm still here. It's shocking to talk about this is culture the successor to evolution In Hebrew, we both know Hebrew. So culture in Hebrew has two Different terms one is tarbit when you talk about a culture of say germs and one is tarbut Which is the culture of of Culture of higher organisms Organisms like us so I assume you talk about culture the The outcome of the minds of higher organisms and there's an addendum are we headed towards a trans humanist future So this is there is this relatively new theory. It's called dual inheritance theory or Gene culture co-evolutionary theory or in short co-evolution It's the idea that all organisms Develop through a process of genetic biological Kind of adaptation and that's a classic Darwinian concept adapted and evolved But still it is grounded in genetics and biology. So organisms from microbes to chimpanzees Develop only so this is when I brought up tarbit. This is this is kind of this is the realm so this is with with allegedly One exception and the only exception is the human human being the human being develops both Genetically and biologically But it has another way of evolving and that is culture or civilization human human civilization is Actually a form of evolution That's how it started. That's how this theory started, but then later it was discovered that many many species Also have cultures Societies at least we know about the bees we know about from bees to gorillas. I mean Dolphins elephants Elephants, I mean so it's beginning to be actually a theory of evolution not a theory of human evolution But a theory of evolution which I think has the the potential to supplant to substitute for Darwin's evolution was Darwin limited himself to biology and genetics and I I think it was it's partial and Because it's partial. I think it's wrong if we talk about Darwin. I would like to know if you if you Take in with Darwin's theories some Lamar kiss theories that that come to that. Yes. Yes Yes, it's a good question because this is what culture is all about welcome to what is culture When I say culture first of all to define the terms when I say culture, I don't mean couture like in German I don't mean I but I mean the totality of human human Creativity so that would be society that would be technology that would be art that would be I I didn't I didn't quite Think that culture meant some the culture in German meant something else than culture Culture is only music on exactly And that's why I'm Clarifying okay what I mean is also the way the way human societies are organized what I mean is also Technology what I mean is also science what I mean is also religion and also and also and also you could say civilization Creativity creative civilization is a good is a good term but again, it's associated with some With some writings with some in the 19th century that again is a bit a bit problematic So we don't have a good word We don't have a good word to describe the totality of human creativity because human creates in a variety of ways Human creates with physical objects with ideas with social structures. It's all creativity. We don't have Create space or some words to some using culture for lack of a better word Okay, but it means all so what is culture in this sense? It's a simulation it's culture is Culture is an extension of the brains and minds of multiple individuals and When I extend my mind You inhabit it and I invite you into my mind Actually inviting you into a simulation because it's not your mind If I construct a building and then I invite you for the inauguration of the building I'm inviting you into my brainchild. I'm inviting you into my fantasy What we're doing today is exactly that you invited me to scope you exactly you said come to scope here We would like to talk about this this this and that so I came and I Actually joined you are in my reality in your world.   It's very easy to mistake culture for tables and buildings and sculptures, but no Culture is any human fantasy any any brainchild any eruption of the mind any so Culture is an abstract thing. It's a it's a so It seems that evolution is evolving both physically and mentally which brings us back to the Psycho to the to the to the initial conversation we had about body-mind the body-mind problem, right? okay, so why how could mental processes as Raphide in culture how could mental processes have evolutionary implications It's very simple If I create an environment Through my mind if my the first there's an idea in my mind a fantasy in my mind like cities We mentioned cities city cities the metaverse computer programs I mean books whatever if I create something and then I invite you in For you to inhabit that space you need to adapt You must adapt if I create a city You must adapt to the city. You can walk only in certain ways. You can buy food only there You have to be a physically less fit than a farmer.  It has effects on your body To cut a long story short Culture is an environment exactly like an ecosystem So it exerts what we call selective pressure culture Culture creates natural selection If If you can't use computers for example imagine that you are someone with technophobic and you can't use computers You're seriously handicapped. You are today definitely seriously handicapped So computers computers are not genes computers are not chromosomes computers are not the body So Darwin Darwin's work is Broken there. It doesn't apply to computers But I think that computers today are as important as your genetics For you to survive in the environment as it is You need to adapt to use computers and if you don't you're seriously disabled take a take a phone Yeah, who doesn't have a phone? Yeah children and if you don't you're seriously disabled So this creates selective pressure People who can use phones and technology are more likely to get to have children It's extremely simple. Why because if you are not if you can't use technology You are likely to have lower level of education much lower level of income These are predictors of reproduction You are likely to adapt less to the environment You are likely to be also treated badly by society. You're likely to be shunned and mocked and What woman would go with you right to be honest, right? I mean imagine that you're on a date.  What's your phone number? What's your phone? I don't have a phone. You don't have a phone. You don't use phones. No, okay. Thank you Thank you. Thank you for the drink, you know, it was nice meeting you. Nice meeting you It's very simple. If you are not adapted to your culture and to the technology and to society Then your chances to reproduce alone So people who are not adaptive in this sense will have fewer offspring That's a great description of natural selection. Exactly. Exactly. Moreover If I am embedded in a certain society or culture or environmental technology or whatever It activates some of my genes. We call it gene expression Most genes are dormant their sleep the hibernating and they're triggered by the environment you you mean Each each cell in our body has genes. Yes, they all sleep not all but majority do they sleep Okay, and then the environment provokes them That's why we get cancer when there is pollution you get cancer because it triggers some genes So gene expression is triggered by the environment. That's acceptable in all biology so so when the environment shape but He did too They were saying that gene expression genes are triggered by the physical environment like Quality of the air radiation is that it's not true Jeans are reactive to anything in the environment happiness for instance to well-being to social demands to Technology to genes react to everything genes don't make a distinction between a tree and a smartphone It's not that genes is what I mean. The smartphone is artificial. I'm not going to react to you They react. Yes in other words culture triggers your genes and this is passed on The is passed on to future generations. So this is a reddit. This is Lamar keys. This is epigenetics Epigenetics is the variant of Lamar keys and which which incorporates most of evolution incorporates big tenets of evolution but says that genes which are treated are likely to more likely to be passed on to future generations in other words your culture your society or technology Shape you and shape your children as well so Definitely, it's part of evolution. No question about this is why we see small toddlers being able to do things that we didn't think that Children can do Definitely, we come into a world that already has all these things that we thought we grew up with or ended up growing up with And and they are already born into this world and they they use the technology much easier than we do it's an excellent example because It applies to all the all life forms for example if you take a warm warm You know a lot a lot take a warm and you put it in a maze in a maze and there's food at the end. So the warm Meanders me and there's until she gets to the food and it's and she does it once and twice and three times It's because it's a lot. It's it's a female. It's very Hebrew. Yeah, but don't say it's not gender bias It it it meanders and it it's the food the offspring of the warm Do it much faster The the first one needs four hundred attempts to get to the food it goes through the maze It banks into a wall it goes back it tries again really and it needs four hundred attempts to get to the food The offspring of that warm needs a hundred attempts and as we proceed in the generations There are finally worms that just go straight for the food. Wow Yeah, so clearly The maze is not a gene. It's not a chromosome. It's all biological. It's culture. It's environment It's an artificial structure.  Yes, and the second reason is your genes activated and expressed and they are passed on to future offspring So you could say that culture is a way to adapt to diverse habitats because human beings are Not limited to genetic or biological heritage hereditary mechanism But they can invent their own hereditary mechanism. I didn't get that. I will explain. Okay, if you are a giraffe Okay, your way to evolve as a species your way to pass on properties and trades to your offspring Sex essentially. I mean, it's nothing much more. You can do your giraffe And so consequently you are usually limited to a specific habitat Because you would find it difficult to survive in the polar in the polar regions. Exactly Just if we mentioned Lamarck will just say that Lamarck had this hypothesis that the giraffe has a longer A longer neck because it strives to reach the that has been that has been disproved probably the higher fruit That has been disproved because it's a not needed assumption because probably giraffes with higher necks Simply reproduce more. So you're in this sense. You're more Darwinistic there's no need for the for this type of Lamarckism, but clearly if the environment changes suddenly and trees become Smaller smaller then clearly There would be some kind of adaptation to the environment somehow which will be transferred to offspring and that's where Lamarck So you see I think you tend to agree with Lamarck more than not fully the mechanism is Darwinian in the sense that the There will be giraffes Which will die and giraffes which will survive and the giraffes that survive are better adapted to the environment So they pass on their genes to there. So this is totally Darwin. Okay, that's the way that's the way But what I'm saying is there is a place for Lamarckism in epigenetics in the sense that the giraffes Who lower their necks to eat from the smaller trees this activates in them some genes and Through the Darwinian mechanism of heritage, they will transfer these genes onwards. Okay, so Ironically Lamarck is correct within one generation But not between generations Lamarck is correct in one generation, but Darwin is correct between generations. So Lamarck is right the genes change within a generation Darwin is right that these genes are passed on. So what Lamarck didn't know is that the genes are being activated yes, he of course didn't know about genes, but He was right that genes the genetic composition of animals changes Active within one generation span of one's life one generation. He was wrong about how this change is transmitted So that's where he was wrong. I see but he was right That's such that there are changes within one generation where Darwin was wrong Darwin said no Changes only intergenerations. Yes, you have what you have. Yeah, whatever and it's intergenerational. Okay, so they're both right and so they're both right. Yes, so mutations and genetic expression Can happen in a single generation and alter the species substantially and this alteration is then passed on to future generations as Darwin had said but humans went a step further Humans said humans said we are going to design a revolution Giraffes are limited, you know to epigenetics and to Darwinian transfer of genes Women said no, we are going to design Environments that will then affect our genes that will then allow us to better adapt in future generations So what what humans are doing? They are designing environments, then they are reacting to this environment epigenetically then they're transferring it to the offspring But they are women are doing humans humans humans humans design environments that then affect Their genes epigenetically and then they transfer them to offspring. Okay, so Humans trigger their own evolution in a way. You could say that humans are in control of the evolutionary process Absolutely in control and that's why The fact that humans control evolution through culture unwittingly by the way probably Until now now it's it's pretty wittingly but before that is We didn't know about epigenetics until recently. Yes, but Because we control evolution through an environment which is essentially artificial Essentially a simulation because we control this then we can Survive in all habitats We are not dependent on genes anymore. We we can we can trigger the necessary Genetic adaptation ourselves. We don't depend on it. We've seen this throughout history when when people who live in the Sahara have have adapted to living there and people who live at the Pole or close to the pole Adapt to different temperatures and it's a question. It's a question of speed also In a typical species animal species it would take tens of thousands to millions of years To adapt to adapt in human beings. It takes sometimes 8,000 years, which is Which is a lot but it's nothing in terms of evolution. It's a it's a here. It's a Moment a moment So humans adapt much faster and they adapt much faster They change much faster and the change was faster because they control evolution through environment Now there is this addendum which says are we headed towards a trans humanist future? What do you mean by that humanist not in the sense of you human human Humanism or humanism trans humanist future implies that In the future Technologies will integrate seamlessly with human beings So you will have for example combinations of artificial intelligence and your intelligence and you will be one like the chip You said like the chip would be implanted in your brain. It's an example And so you we will be we will all become cyborgs cyborgs combinations of technology and and hitherto humans Combined into a single entity. That's one version of the trans humanist future and Transhumanism simply means humanity as it is today will cease to exist and be replaced with some kind of variance Could be combination of you humans and technology could be only technology controlling humans could be so Question is well, will there be a danger of stratification for instance where societies remain as as they are as we are and others who have the means would Turn themselves into ever mention It's always the case that Technologies are first adopted by by the rich but the wealthy and they have an advantage for a while For example smartphones were first adopted by businessman very wealthy people So they had an advantage over you because they became much more mobile and it was very short But it was short. So the hope is in realities that Technology that because of the profit motive because of capitalism There is a strong urge and a strong impetus a strong incentive to make technology affordable so I believe that this technology will be widespread, but there is another it could be At the end result could be stratified but between Luddites and and Technophiles, so you could have groups of people. What's the first Luddites? LU DDITES Luddites are people who reject technology So for example when the weaving the weaving Machine was invented by high grieves are grieves in Britain the automatic weaver Manual weavers of fabric destroyed these machines. Okay, so this is called Luddism anyhow You could have in the future groups of people who would say I would never ever put a chip in my head and Other groups of people would say of course I want to put a chip in my head It would make me a we see this now in an anti vaccination. We see of course People in the United States of America who live in in in the attire and in homes of the 18th century Yeah, and so and survivalists who live in mountains and so on. Yes So I that's a perfect example because the technology will change the environment you will have the possibility to insert a chip in your head Those who reject this will be disadvantaged Because I will know every language in the world. I will have access to the encyclopedia Britannica I will make calculations in the speed of light. You will not because you refuse to put a chip in your head Who will women prefer to have children with you or me? Oh With it guy majority will go with me. There'll be a tiny minority of women who are like you They don't want to put a chip in there. Yes, okay, but majority will go with me with the likes of me So this will have a reproductive advantage This is perfect example of our culture Continuous evolution because then my children are much more likely to have a chip in the head So a chip in the head humanity will be the next iteration the next stage in evolution Driven by technology not by genes technology is the principle of natural selection It will be natural selection by culture and this is what they mean when they say co-evolution Ah one last thing. Yes, it can go alright. It can go bad We could have a process of negative selection or for example If society becomes a hell of a lot more narcissistic and a hell of a lot more psychopathic as I believe It's well is is the case not already is happening. I believe we see it in leaders Like yes in leaders in in the population for example college students the incidence of narcissism among college students It's five times more than in the 80s. So If society becomes more narcissistic and psychopathic There will be a big temptation To use culture and technology and societal structures and institutions to subjugate to bring about here a narcissistic psychopathic world It all depends on us which choices we make because we can shape our evolution as we see fit As we see fit we are gods in this sense We are the only species that shapes his evolution with his own two hands But we really were created in the image of God in this sense. We are creators Now other animals they use tools and yes, they have societies and But I don't think any animal would reach the level of consciousness of realizing that it can shape its own future This is only human beings. Yes, and they are bad human beings They are evil human beings there are and they are more and more of them And so it can the whole process can go seriously alright seriously bad. It's a warning


All right everybody What is going on guys? What is up?  In fact, it's it's not even 24 hours old yet but I thought You know with the way that my channel is going recently I'm pretty open I'm pretty transparent and I'm most definitely honest So I'm gonna talk about something that happened to me last night This is the first time anything like this has ever happened to me before I think the title of this video is gonna be something like I Had a health scare or I had my first health scare because I did I did I truly did I was standing right here last night At 10 o'clock p.m. It's 12 30 p.m. Right now, so it was about 12 14 hours ago. I was standing right here Recently I've been under a lot of stress.  I try to be positive. I try to be up when I make these videos And all of that as well as I I have a very Heavy caffeine habit. I don't know if I'm addicted, but I'm I'm certainly in a massive habit right now So every morning I will be drinking coffee every every video that I make I drink coffee I drink a lot of coffee and that means I drink a lot of caffeine Which is not good for your heart and you know when you do have too much caffeine you feel your heart pumping You know I thinking back like it's this what happened is to do with my heart. Okay, look I'll talk about all that. I just need to tell you what happened. I was standing here. I Felt this sudden rush of nauseousness come over me It was started in my started my fingers it came right up my arms came up my stomach and it was just too much and I actually collapsed It was like it was a feeling of that the the paramedic bit that came pick me up and took me to the hospital He actually mentioned it was a it was an overwhelming feeling and that's exactly what it was I couldn't put it down to anything. It's nothing. I've felt before So I actually I was standing here it happened I sort of stepped back over here and I knew that I couldn't stand up any longer It just got too much and I actually yelled out. I go ah, I went ah You know just thinking about that's scary man. I went ah I fell backwards and I lay down on the floor for about two minutes and I tried to sit up. I was very I Was confused I Was quite sweaty. I felt sick.  What is going on all these things sort of went around in my head I called out for my mom who's actually living with us at the moment thankfully and She came downstairs. I said look don't worry, but I've just collapsed. I don't know what's going on I don't want to stand up right now. I think you should call an ambulance and that's what she did So she called an ambulance. They got here about five minutes later I was coming I was good by that point. I The sweat from my forehead had gone away that nauseous feeling had faded and I was okay I was just lying there. I hadn't moved. I was okay. I was just lying there Paramedics come in they do my obs blood pressure is kind of high. I tell them that I Drink a lot of coffee, but nothing crazy today or yesterday, you know, nothing out of the ordinary I'd finished my last coffee at about 12 30 p.m. This happened at 10 p.m. I did mention that I'd had a couple of sort of sharp pains around my chest over the last couple of weeks, but Nothing that stayed for any period of time. It would just go away and I'd forget about it But every time it would happen. I think oh, what's what's going on there? The biggest coincidence of it all is that yesterday. I did a first-day training I did a full day eight till four at the first day training. We did CPR. We did defibrillator defibrillation We talked about heart attacks. We talked about strokes.  I didn't know what was happening. Anyways, I went to the hospital and They hooked me up to a cardio echocardiogram. I think they gave me a couple of those and Determined that I had a very irregular heartbeat So I had something what they call it atrial flutter That was my diagnosis They don't know whether I've had it for a while They don't know whether it just started after I had this collapsing episode I don't know but anyways when they did hook me up at the hospital to this echocardiogram ECG And then obviously just monitored my pulse and my heart rate it was I could see it I could see it right in front of me.  Why is my heart? Not working properly. Why is it not in sync? and they Basically from what I told them, you know from the way I've been feeling beforehand I was feeling okay. Nothing nothing crazy. I've never collapsed before they determined that this atrial flutter had started or had you know Basically come on after that it happens what they did they gave me two options either I Go under sedation. This is literally like a half an hour after it happened. I was in the hospital I was all hooked up.  You've got an irregular heartbeat. This is what you can do Okay, you can either take a pill Stay overnight or you can take this other option.  Literally my body would have gone like that when they shocked me Anyways, I ended up doing it. I said, yeah, okay. Let's do it. I was scared man So my pulse was at about 80 beats per minute once they got me hooked up once they said right they put the IV in they said right we're gonna Put you to sleep now my heart rate went from 80 to 160 instantly Everything was beeping.   I had what's called a panic attack. I suppose just before they said I was gonna go to sleep. I was like What if they shock me? And it doesn't work. What if they do something wrong and I have a full-on heart attack right now What if I never wake up? You know all this shit just went through my mind and this is stuff I'd had to compress and deal with Only in half an hour beforehand so look The last thing I remember is my heart is looking at that heart rate machine and seeing my heart rate at 160 beats per minute It was flashing. I could feel it in my in my chest. It was boom. Boom. Boom.  Well not next minute, but 10 minutes later. I woke up I looked up at the screen And my heart was going dip dip dip dip and it was back in rhythm Apparently they had they had shocked me with 50 joules Of electrical current and it didn't work. So they upped it to 70 and it did work So they shocked me twice got my heart back in rhythm And they did say, you know, you should be feeling better now. You should be feeling more relaxed, you know less anxious And lo and behold I I sat there and I I thought about it and I couldn't feel any beating in my chest anymore There was no irregular heartbeat. I felt okay So the treatment worked So Geez, you know It's it's scary. I don't I didn't have a heart attack I I think atrial flutter or a you know an irregular heartbeat is quite common But not in someone as young as me basically So I'm just gonna have to watch myself. They've they've bought me in for another ecg um in a month So obviously it's you know, it's it's it's not gonna require Too much care. It's just a matter of me being careful It's a matter of me controlling my caffeine intake. It's a matter of me just being in tune with my body You know knowing if something's up um You know truth be told I've been going through episodes of of dizziness When I get up too fast You know Depending on how much I've eaten that day if I've eaten not a lot I guess my blood sugars are quite low that can cause that but some days it was happening when I was eating a lot And you know, I'd I'd really have to catch myself as I get up I get up and I'd know that this feeling of of You know faint faintness is gonna come and it does come it sort of comes slowly and then it comes and then I'm just I'm holding myself and then then it's gone and I'm all right But um, you know once that's that's something I wasn't really thinking about I wasn't taking notice of but after something like this happens You do start to take notice of that and you're like what what has happened You know, were there any warning signs? How long did I have this atrial flutter for? Did it actually just start last night? I doubt whether it did. Honestly doubt whether it did So, um, I guess yeah, that's about it. This is just an update on on on how I'm doing. I'm okay. I'm here But last night it all just happened really quickly and I Definitely had a had a panic attack in the hospital bed And I got checked out at about 2 30 and um Went to work this morning at 8 at 8 And I'm back back home at 12 30 for my lunch break Which is half an hour and I'm making this video. So I've got this piece of paper here. I'll read it out for you Jacob was brought in by ambulance with a symptomatic irregular heart rhythm palpitations and unease Systematically well systemically well on examination. He had an irregular strong pulse BP normal Normal electrolytes decision made to cardiovert given cardiovert. That's what they did Decision made to cardiovert given clear onset of symptoms. So they're saying that they think that irregular heartbeat You know came on after this collapsing episode that I had In which case they want to treat it as fast as possible So they successfully synchronized The cardioversion in ed under sedation observed for a couple of hours afterwards and remained asymptomatic We have referred him for a non-urgent outpatient echocardiogram with the result to be copied to his GP If there is any evidence of a structural cardiac abnormality GP could consider an outpatient cardiology referral Advise patient to reduce his caffeine intake in case this is a contributing factor. So basically they're saying I'm going to do another echocardiogram if there's any evidence of Structural abnormality in my heart, which they didn't test. They didn't do a an ultrasound yesterday. So they're going to do that And I guess if there's any abnormalities, they'll pick them up there But for the next month, it's basically just monitoring things and being or being being careful man being being sensible You know trying not to stress myself out too much I guess I would say You know don't go too hard in the gym, but I've only been I've only been training in the gym The only training I've been doing is cardio down at the field and you've seen all that So I don't know man I don't know But that was an update on my first Ever health scare. It really was it was a scare. It's not something I'd wish on anyone But I think people do collapse from time to time people do faint. I didn't go unconscious You know So that's something But I was certainly confused after it happened a little bit and I was quite I Was quite sick. I felt sick So I don't know what happened man. My body malfunctioned in some way, but uh, you know, I Just hope that If you watch this you get something out of it. I hope that You know I don't hope for anything. I just wanted to make this video. I just wanted to talk about it So with that said guys, I'm not even going to ask you to like it just Just know I'm here And we all go through things and this is just the latest thing that I'm going through And like I said at the start my personal life is It's pretty terrible right now, so I've got to work on that I'll be seeing you Peace guys


biliary tract cancers are among the most fatal subtypes of gastrointestinal cancer. Mutations in the genes KRAS and P53 have been found to be associated with increased risk for developing biliary tract carcinoma. KRAS mutation is more common than P53 in activation in these cancers. This article was authored by Sara Ahmad, Bisma Badr, Azra Khan and others.


Over the years, Terranigma has attained a kind of mysterious aura to it. Some people consider it the lost classic RPG because it never got released in the United States, despite it being released in Europe. So first let's go over what most people do know about this game already. We know it's the third game released in the Quintet or Enex Trilogy, following Soul Blazer and Illusion of Gaia. It's got the same top-down adventure-style gameplay with some RPG elements mixed in. And by no means do you have to play the previous two games in the Enex Trilogy to enjoy Terranigma, and I'll talk about that a little bit later, but if you like the gameplay in the previous games you will definitely like Terranigma without a doubt. The story sadly however is not quite as bizarre as Illusion of Gaia, there's no suicidal pigs or talking flutes or vampires. It is a pretty strange story, just not as fricking whacked out as that one. It's a little tricky to talk about the story in Terranigma because there's a good twist about halfway through that I don't want to spoil, but it's about as good as any storyline twist in any Super Nintendo RPG. I'm not saying it's Shakespeare exactly, but it is very good. Anyway, you play as Ark, a boy who lives in a village that nobody's ever left. One day he opens a forbidden door, and who'd have ever thought something bad would happen if you open a forbidden door. Shockingly, the entire town freezes except for one mysterious old dude who promptly tells you what you have to do. So Ark becomes the first person to ever leave his village, only to find everything as a frozen wasteland. And it's up to him to revive everything, humans, animals, the weather, the wind, you name it, until he finds out he's in a little too deep, and that's all I'll say. The story is the best part of Terranigma in my opinion, I found myself enjoying it as much as Final Fantasy VI and the first Lufia game. That's all subjective of course, but I'm just saying it's an interesting story that clearly a lot of effort went into telling. And when you finish Terranigma, the story is the first thing you'll think of and remember when you think back on it. The gameplay takes what Illusion of Gaia did and adds a few things, there's a vast array of attacks and spells, and there's a new kind of magic system that's not exactly necessary, but it's still fun to have. There are some cleverly made puzzles to get past, and of course the sound of destroying an enemy is addicting as always. At its core it really does play like an advanced version of Illusion of Gaia. The bosses can be challenging, and it can take a couple tries to figure out what to do and how to time things.  So yeah, experience and leveling is a bit more open-ended than Illusion of Gaia, it's more important, and it's not just to unlock the next section like you did in that game. I will say I don't think the level design in Terranigma is quite as clever as it is in Illusion of Gaia, or Link to the Past or Lufia 2 for that matter, but that's okay, there's still some good stuff here. And really the incentive to keep playing Terranigma isn't just the gameplay, it's to allow the story to unfold, and not only that, it's to listen to this freaking awesome music. Every single track here is great, and I mean that, literally every single piece of music in this game is freaking fantastic. This is one of the very best Super Nintendo soundtracks from start to finish, and you know that's high praise considering how many other games also have tremendous music, but this is right up there with Final Fantasy 6, Chrono Trigger, Super Castlevania IV, Super Metroid, Secret of Mana, you name it, the Terranigma soundtrack belongs right there alongside it. There are two or three tracks in particular, like Light and Darkness and the Top of Saint Mountain, that are among the very best pieces of music from a technical and compositional standpoint from any game ever. My only real negative about Terranigma is that it's not always very balanced.  It's almost like they didn't spread the level gradient far enough, if that makes sense. All it takes is to be one or two levels below what's required, and you just have no chance, but the opposite is equally applicable.  Anyway, I know I've said more than once that you don't have to play the previous games in the Enix trilogy before you play Terranigma, but I do think if you want to keep your expectations in check, it actually does help to play Illusion of Gaia first. And while I don't think the level design is as clever, the extra gameplay mechanics and the story and the soundtrack are as good as you'll find on the Super Nintendo. While I don't think it's exactly on the level of Final Fantasy 6 or Chrono Trigger, it is still a tremendous game and a great experience. Go find Terranigma, go track it down, it's awesome.


I can just ask you about Dominic Calvert-Lewin is doing very well at the moment. He's forced his way into being the number one striker now at the club. You two have both walked the number nine at our club and you mentioned on another video how important it is. What have you made, first of all Andy, what have you made of Dominic Calvert-Lewin's progress over the last six months? It's good to see because I think it's a position that we need someone to take. No one's really grabbed it. It's been a problem for us since we're a bit of a crack with it, I guess. We haven't really found a setting forward to coming and do that. Dominic's a like what I see. I don't know him obviously, but I like his attitude. He seems to have a fantastic work ethic. His ability to run the channels and to work hard and play for his team. Without question. Still a bit raw around the edges. Still got lots of things to improve on. No one's ever perfect. He's got lots of things to work on. The basics are good. The attitude is good. I like the way he moves about the football pitch. Just subtle things like his touch has to become a little better. He definitely needs to see up his record of scoring goals. It's not easy in this league, we know that. I'd like to see him scoring more goals. I would like to see him. But I think giving him a longer spell and team will help him. Don't just leave him out if he doesn't get a goal in a couple of games. Keep him in it. Let him work through that. But I like what I see. Listen, the kid is a talent. There's no doubt about that. He plays for England at various levels and does the business for them. So it's a step up going up to the Premier League and doing it. But I like what I see and I hope we can continue to work with him and he will improve. But Sharpie sees much more of what I do. I agree with Andy. I think he's got all the attributes he wants from a striker. I think he's quick. I think he's good in the air. Andy quite right inside the runs of channels. I think if there's only a negative, people will judge centre forward by the goals he scores. He probably doesn't score enough goals. What you've got to remember there as well is we ain't creating an awful lot. That role he's got at the moment is his own striker. We've both played it. It is the hardest job in football being up there having to show, having to get in the box. So it's a really tough job for him at this moment of time. I think, listen, we tend to forget as well that he's only the age he is. It's just 2010-20 so he was last week. He's only a young lad. Unfortunately in football now we want instant success. I agree with Andy. I think he's got all the tools that you need to be a top player. I'm being overcritical. I'd like to be more, and I know it's difficult in the game nowadays, aggressive. To come out and say I saw him against Chelsea the other week and I thought he was excellent. I thought he gave... Has he not got aggression? Not against me. He played against Chelsea the other week and I thought, yeah, that's what I want to see. Because he gave them a really tough time and eerily challenging and messing them about.  I'm glad they don't have to play against him every week. I think if he gets that into his game, there's no stop. I think every other attribute you want, I think his timing and the air is excellent. He will be judged by his goals and I think we've just got to be careful there as well. There will be times when we're not creating a lot of chances and he's not getting on the end of things. But for me, he's got everything. And it's, again, we talk about that word, about desire and passion and being the best you want to be. I think he's got all the tools and the next steps out to Dom. That is, and what he's got, Dom. Dom, 160, that's what you're aiming for. You should get that, no problem. When you see Calbert Lewin taking over Shaft, right? Can I ask you... Can I ask you just what you should be for about coming in as an older centre forward. Do you think someone like Olivier Giroux looks like he's leading Chelsea? In the summer, it could be a good... I don't want to say mentor because obviously Dom's doing his own thing. I know there's a different type of player but another experienced striker. Or do you think I'm going to be better off going... because I'm sure they'll want to bring another one in as well. Going for a more mobile one to compete with Dom. Listen, Olivier Giroux... He's been linked with him before. Yeah, they've been linked with him before. Listen, the guys, I think he's... As a Premier League player, I think he's a terrific centre forward. I've always said that. It's a top-top bracket centre forward if we're talking about the really elite. He's not quite there but we're not batting in that part now. We're buying in another shot altogether. If we're buying in the shot with Olivier Giroux, would he be an asset for us right now? 100% he would be. He's a French international, he's a World Cup winner. He's just scored for France a couple of years ago in midweek in a qualifying match there. He's playing at the highest level internationally. I think he's good enough for them to play. So why would we not think he would be an asset if that's wherever they're going and if he wanted to come and join us? It certainly would be, I think, advantageous to somebody like Dominic to learn from someone like that. I don't think that's a bad thing at all in the same way that Shabby learned so much from me. I can't wait, can you? I know, I know. I mean I think it's a plus because the one thing, the hardest position in the world right now that everybody wants to buy, that everyone needs and everyone would like as a goalscorer and they're not around. There's not many of them around and everyone says go buy something, go buy, I would always say something. Who? Who do you have on the buy? Who can have on the form? I think it's a hard one. I think Giroux, people look at me and they say age-wise and everything, what Andy says about him or can't argue with. I don't know, I think we've got to be very careful. I think I'm next steps in the transfer market. I've got to be the right ones. I've got to be the right ones. I think, don't get me wrong, I think Dominic's here. Competition for places is good. We've got the boy, Cenk Towson there as well and his people's opinions on him. I don't think Cenk has been giving a proper run of games. I don't think he's been played two, three on the top really in and out, so it's been difficult for him as well. I think Dominic's certainly got the number nine at this moment in time. I'm sure the manager and the director of football will look to bring somebody else in who it is. We don't know. I think it's a really tough job and how you want to play and how you want your team to play what kind of focal point do you want. You look at Manchester City where it's not necessarily a big tag. It's how the manager's belief in how he wants to play determines who we bring in. There we go for it. Thanks for great. Thanks Andy, thanks very much. Thanks for watching.


Welcome to the Endless Knot. In an earlier video we looked at the word Sabbath and learned a little about the Jewish and Babylonian calendars. Well today we're continuing the theme by exploring one particular calendar related term, millennial, and seeing if there's a link between avocado toast and the apocalypse. In recent years there has been a spate of articles and public comments complaining about millennials, that generation of avocado toast eaters who are supposedly what's wrong with the world, at least according to aging baby boomers who often don't seem to have a grasp of who the so-called millennials actually are. In fact, they're usually defined as the generation after generation X, beginning with the cohort that came of age around the year 2000. So in other words, people born between the early 1980s and the mid-1990s. So really, they're not kids these days, they're all adults, many of them well into their 30s as of this video. But where do these generational terms come from? Well first, the word generation comes through old French from Latin generatio, generating from the proto-Indo-European root genna to give birth, baguette. Probably the earliest generation specifically identified as such, and of course we're talking about the so-called Western society for lack of a better term, was the lost generation born between 1883 and 1900, and included those who fought during the First World War. The term was coined by Gertrude Stein and made famous by Ernest Hemingway, who quoted her as an epigram on the title page of his 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises. Following the lost generation was the greatest generation. Broadly speaking, the generation including those who were shaped by the Great Depression and fought in World War II, being born between the early 1900s and the late 1920s. The term coming from the title of the 1998 book by news anchor Tom Brokaw, celebrating this generation. Following this was the silent generation born between the mid-20s and mid-40s, and though we don't know precisely where the term comes from, it seems to reflect the perceived conformism and restraint of this generation, who focused on career over activism. Then of course there are the baby boomers, reflecting the demographic surge in birth rates following World War II up to about 1964. The X in Generation X, or simply Gen X, came about because of the use of the letter X to represent an unknown variable, such as in mathematical equations, expressing the uncertain future of a generation, and in fact had already been used to refer to earlier generations, but in the end became permanently attached to the cohort born between the early to mid-60s to the early 80s. In other words, reaching adulthood in the 80s and 90s, because Canadian author Douglas Copeland used it first in a 1987 magazine article, and then again as the title of his famous 1991 novel, having been inspired in particular by the use of X in a similar way by cultural historian Paul Fussel in his 1983 book Class, a guide through the American status system, as well as the name of Billy Idle's band Generation X. It expresses the perceived disaffectedness and reluctance to participate in society associated with this generation. As a result, the following generations have been referred to as Generation Y and Generation Z, but now Generation Y is more commonly referred to as Millennials. This name for the generation comes, of course, from their proximity to the year 2000, but linguistically and historically speaking, this is rather an odd thing. See, the original sense of the word millennium is a period of a thousand years, not the thousandth year itself, and it was first used in reference to the period of 1,000 years in which Christ was prophesied to rule on earth after the Second Coming, based on the New Testament book of Revelation 21-5, appearing in English in the 17th century from the post-classical Latin word millennium, made up of mile, thousand, and annus, year. The Greek-based equivalent is chileasm, from Greek chileoi, thousand, which also gives us the prefix kilo in kilogram and kilometer, and interestingly, both these Latin and Greek roots seem to come from the same Proto-Indo-European root, geslo, thousand. Today, however, the most familiar sense of the word millennium is specifically the year 2000, that is, the transition between the second calendrical millennium to the third, so not a period of a thousand years, just a transition point, and that's the sense that lies behind referring to that generation as Millennials. We'll come back to the question of whether or not the year 2000 is actually the transition point in a minute, but it's important to remember that in early Christian usage, that thousand-year period in which Christ would reign on earth had no connection to the calendrical millennium at all. It could begin any time. In fact, the first generation of Christians believed it would begin within their lifetimes. The practice of dating the years from the birth of Christ didn't exist until the 6th century and wasn't commonly used for another 200 years, having been first devised by Dionysius Exigois, whose name means literally Dennis the short, though that might be metaphorically short, meaning humble, in the year 525. So the concept of a calendrical year 1000 wasn't even around yet for those early Christians. By the way, although we know the name Dennis comes from Dionysius, which comes from the name of the Greek god of wine Dionysus, also known as Bacchus, it's not certain where the name Dionysus itself comes from, though the Greeks themselves had a number of theories. The first part, dio, is likely related to Zeus, the chief Greek god, and the second element of his name might be from Mount Nusa, where the god was said to have been born, or it might be Nusa, an archaic word for tree. Dionysus is an unusual god in a number of ways. Firstly, Dionysus was said by the Greeks to have been a foreign god, but modern research shows that in fact, he was one of the earliest gods worshipped in Greece, and he has a number of different, and sometimes conflicting, birth stories associated with him, and was thought of as a god who was reborn a number of times, an aspect that led him to be connected with Jesus in early Christian iconography. In one of his birth stories, he was the offspring of the union of the god Zeus and the mortal woman, Semile. Hera, Zeus's divine wife, was naturally jealous, and tricked Semile into asking Zeus to appear before her in his natural guise, which was a lightning bolt, and Semile was burnt to ashes. Thinking quickly, Zeus rescued the unborn child from the fire and had him sewn into his own thigh from which he was eventually born, and that's the source of another proposed etymology for his name, meaning literally, Zeus limp, from the Syracuse and word Nusos, limping, because Zeus limped with the extra weight of the unborn baby in his thigh. In any case, it seems appropriate that someone who spent his time trying to figure out the precise details of Jesus' birth should be named after this reborn god with a complicated birth story. Now you may have noticed that we generally use BCE and CE in our videos, instead of BC and AD. Both systems are fine, but there are a couple of reasons we prefer this usage. You see, BC stands for English before Christ, and AD for Latin and Odomini in the year of the Lord. Both reckon from the supposed date of the birth of Christ, so technically, to preserve the syntactical order, the year should be given first with BC, so for instance, 46 BC, but second with AD, so AD 525. So not only does using BCE and CE, standing for before the common era and common era respectively, make the dating system a little less explicitly Christian, and therefore more appropriate for non-Christian contexts, it's also more consistent and tidier looking when written down. But getting back to the apocalyptic sense of the word millennium, and apocalypse, by the way, means literally the same thing as Revelation, uncovering, and was the Greek title of the book of Revelation, historically there wasn't really any dread associated with the coming of the millennium, because it would be a time of Christ reigning on earth for a thousand years of peace, so obviously a good thing. It's our modern millennium that had more of a sense of apocalypticism as something to be worried about. Though realistically, the only potential threat was the Y2K bug, in which the two number years used in many computer systems at the time were about to roll over from 1999 to 1900 causing mayhem. It never really happened anyway, due in large part to the hard work of a bunch of programmers, but most of us were too busy partying like it was 1999 for it to cause any real widespread millennial anxiety. But even this fairly mild panic was a lot more fuss than people made at the first turning of the millennium in the year 1000, contrary to modern myths depicting a wide scale panic of those poor benighted medieval folk. In fact, there was barely any mention of the significance of the year 1000 at the time, since as we've seen the apocalyptic millennium for them meant a thousand year period that could start at any time. And as it turns out, though they didn't know this then, Dionysius Exiguus' calculation of the year of Christ's birth was off by about four years, since King Herod of Judea, who features prominently in the Biblical story of the birth of Jesus, actually died in the year 4 BCE, so using BC AD isn't even technically correct anyway. And that's not the only mistake the Dominion of Denis made, since he didn't label Jesus' birth as year zero but as AD 1, meaning that the first actual end of the first calendrical millennium was the year 1001. Of course, Europeans didn't really have the number zero at the time. The numeral was invented in India and only transmitted to Europe in the 11th century. Though ironically, in another of Dionysius' works about the date of Easter, he was the first Latin author to use a precursor of zero, the Latin word nulla, in mathematical calculations. And people have been complaining about this no year zero problem ever since, whenever a new century starts, such as 1901, and more recently, pedants insisting, well actually, the new millennium began in 2001. But since clearly this whole mass is just based on arbitrary numbers all the way along, any pedantry arguing against the nice round number of 2000 is even more pointless than usual. I should say that any sense of Christian millennialism, or more precisely, millenarianism, a word meaning containing a thousand, though not including the Latin word anus year, hence there being only one n in millenarianism, and now often used to refer to a more extreme destructive apocalyptic version of the millennialist notion of a golden age of peace, has been downplayed by the Roman church for a very long time. In those early days of Christianity, the idea that the millennium would begin any day now was comforting, since those early Christians were often persecuted. But once the church became established, with Christianity becoming the state religion, and the church holding considerable secular power as well, they downplayed any literal interpretation of the millennium since it would upset the status quo and the stability of the church's worldly position, that is until Protestantism, which was itself a challenge to the status quo, and so many Protestant churches revived the notion of a literal millennium happening any day now, and some of the more extreme forms of Protestantism even engaged in militarily hopeless political revolts, so convinced were they that they were living in the end times. So for instance, Thomas Munzer, who opposed not only the Catholic Church but also his contemporary reformer Martin Luther, helped to lead the German Peasants' War in 1525, resulting in his torture and execution, and not to be confused with Thomas Munzer, is the similar and abaptist led Minster Rebellion of 1534. Now not all millenarian groups were involved in rebellions, and many of them exist to this day, such as the Jehovah Witnesses, who believed that the end times began in 1914, and it's not just Christians who revived the strong millenarian beliefs. The Sabatians, so-called because they were followers of Sabatai Zevi, were Jews who believed that Sabatai was the Messiah. Sabatai, whose name is indeed connected with the word Sabbath, referring to the planet Saturn which was associated with the advent of the Messiah, was probably influenced by English millenarianism, and the belief that 1666 was the apocalyptic year, being proclaimed the Messiah in that year, and though Sabatai later converted to Islam, his followers continued even into the 20th century. So all of this to say that there are two different senses of the word millennium, the apocalyptic and the calendrical. But beyond the etymological, what is the historical connection between these two? To understand this, we have to know a little more about the calendar itself, and its historical place in the world's belief systems, and this all has to do with finding order in chaos, trying to match observable natural cycles with meaningful numerical patterns. For instance, there is the biological accident of us having 10 fingers, which biases us towards a base 10 counting system, though not always, and the fact that our numerical abilities may have been side consequences of evolution without any adaptive benefit. Sure, it's perhaps useful to have enough numerical ability to think about herds of animals or estimate food requirements when gathering edible plants, but the complex calculations involved in tracking the motions of heavenly bodies and constructing complex calendar systems goes beyond this. This is what paleontologist and evolutionary biologist Stephen J. Gould termed a spandrel, a biological trait that is a byproduct of the evolution of some other rather than as a direct product of adaptive selection. It serves no adaptive advantage, but also has no disadvantage so it remains. He got the term from an architectural feature often found in medieval and Renaissance buildings in which there are spaces between the top of an arch and a rectangular frame, which are then often decorated, although they didn't originally exist for that purpose. The word spandrel is of uncertain ultimate etymology, but it might be a diminutive of Anglo-Norman's spandre, from old French, espandre, to expand, extend, spread, from Latin, expander, to spread out, unfold, expand, made up of the prefix x, out of, and pandera, to spread, stretch, from the Proto-Indo-European root peta, to spread. So our cleverness with calendars and calculations according to this view is a spandrel, and it's this ability that leads to the connection between the apocalyptic and calendrical senses of millennium, because as early Christians started to grow weary of waiting for the supposed imminent millennium, the Apostle Peter trying to quell these disappointed grumblings wrote in chapter 3 of his second epistle that, one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years, one day, and this led theologians, most significantly the 3rd to 4th century writer Lectantius, to use the day-year principle of interpreting biblical prophecy. Since the world was created by God in six days, Lectantius reasoned that world history would be laid out in six ages of a thousand years, which could then be calculated. As 17th century Irish Archbishop James Usher tried to do through careful examination not only of biblical history, but of other historical records as well, coming up with a creation date of 4004 BCE. Remember, the date of the birth of Jesus was off by four years as he realized, and leaving aside that annoying four-year problem, this would give us our millennial year of 2000, as the end of those six ages. As an aside, Dionysius' slightly flawed attempt to pin down Jesus' birth date arose from an effort to counteract a minor millennial panic in the 500 CE, that was based on the six ages concept in an older dating system that placed his birth in the 5500th year after creation, which would make our Genesis time the end times. But his calculations showed that it was already more than 500 years after Jesus' birth, so that particular theory had to be wrong. But if the conspicuous lack of the end of the world in 2000 points out the arbitrary nature of our calendrical patterns, it's true that there are also some non-arbitrary cycles that they can track. There's the solar year, which is important to track for agricultural and hunting purposes because it governs the seasons. There's lunation, that is the lunar cycle, which is useful to track because it roughly matches the length of a woman's menstrual cycle and because it's connected to the tides, which can affect travel, trade, and fishing. And of course, there is the daily cycle. And in fact, that's the real problem in our modern calendar. None of the cycles line up properly. The year can't be divided into an even number of lunations. There's about 29.53 days in a lunation and about 12.38 lunations in a solar year. So the loony solar calendars that track both cycles have to cheat by adding in extra days or months here and there to keep things in sync, what are known as intercalary days or months. And in fact, the year can't even be broken down into an even number of days. It's actually 365.24 days, hence the need for leap years. And anything longer than a year is entirely arbitrary, yet we still track decades, centuries, and millennia because of all of those even years ending in zeros, thanks to our 10 fingers. Plus, if you're going to count years, you need to have a reference point. Some calendars count from the date which the calendar's creators believed marked the creation of the world. Our modern calendar tracks the years from the date that Dionysius Exiguus mistakenly thought Christ was born on. The Romans had a different solution to the problem. One method was tracking the years from the date of the foundation of the city of Rome, which they refer to as AUC, Ano-Urbis Kunditai or Aburbe Kundita from the founding of the city, though it's anyone's guess if that date is in any way accurate. But more often, like many cultures around the world, they also used an eponymic or regnal dating system. In their case, they used the consular years, in which a year would be known by the names of the two people who were elected consuls in that given year, consul being the highest elected official in the Roman Republic. This actually works pretty well as long as you keep good records, which they did. We can see this tension between natural meaningful cycles and the arbitrary numbering systems of calendars in the history of the Seven-Day Week, which we discussed in detail in our video Sabbath. To briefly recap, the week seems to have started off in the Babylonian calendar, which always began the month at the new moon, as special named days of the month reflecting the phases of the moon. During their captivity in Babylon, the Judeans seemed to have adapted these named days as the Sabbath. But instead of having them tied to lunar phases, they were simply repeated in an arbitrary seven-day cycle with no connection to any cyclical pattern in nature, which came to represent the six days of creation in the creation story in Genesis, followed by the day of rest, the Sabbath. However, early Christians wanted to distinguish themselves from the Jews and move their day of worship from the Sabbath, in other words, the seventh day or Saturday, to the first day of the week, Sunday. But what does all this business about the creation of the world have to do with the end of the world? Well, later on, a number of churches decided to restore the day of worship to the seventh day of the week instead of the first day of the week, and this went along with the doubling down on the millenarian tendency of the Protestant Reformation. The largest and most famous church to do this was the Seventh Day Adventists, a member of the Adventist movement, term referring to the Second Advent or Second Coming of Christ. This movement was started by the originally Baptist preacher William Miller in the 1830s, and is also known as Millerism. Miller believed that the Second Coming would happen very soon, and though he didn't specify a precise date at the urging of his followers, he gave an initial range of between 1843 and 1844 after producing a detailed historical calculation much like that of James Usher. The movement also encouraged a careful re-examination of the Bible, which is what led some Adventist groups to move the Sabbath back to Saturday, hence the name Seventh Day Adventists. When Miller's range of dates had passed, an event which became known as the Great Disappointment, a new date was set, but when that passed too, the movement began to splinter into different churches, all of which maintained the general belief that the Second Coming was still imminent, but differed on various other points of belief. By getting back to the Seventh Day Adventists, they celebrate Sabbath from sunset on Friday to sunset on Saturday, following Jewish tradition, and church worship takes place on Saturday. Another major emphasis of the church is wholeness and health, and many Adventists are vegetarian or vegan and avoid smoking and alcohol and sometimes even caffeinated beverages like coffee, tea, and cola. They also follow the kosher dietary laws. And in one particularly surprising turn, the Seventh Day Adventists are largely responsible for the existence of breakfast cereal. In 1894, Seventh Day Adventist and medical doctor John Harvey Kellogg, yes that Kellogg, invented, somewhat by accident, cold breakfast cereal. He ran the Battle Creek Sanitarium, a kind of 19th century health spa, and believed that a bland vegetarian diet would suppress the urge to masturbate, which he thought was just about the worst thing you could do and would lead to a myriad of health problems, not the least of which was blindness. Kellogg was experimenting with a breakfast gruel made from a variety of grains, but accidentally allowed some to go hard. In an attempt to rescue the situation, he passed the muck through rollers and then toasted the resulting flakes, and voila, the cornflake was born, leading eventually to the multimillion dollar breakfast cereal industry. Kellogg had a number of famous patients at the Battle Creek Sanitarium, including two presidents, William Howard Taft and Warren G. Harding, aviator Amelia Earhart, playwright George Bernard Shaw, car manufacturer Henry Ford, inventor Thomas Edison, and actress Sarah Bernhardt. Another of his patients was the notorious traveler, adventurer and author Richard Halliburton, who spent time there because of a rapid heartbeat. Halliburton is known for such endeavors as swimming the length of the Panama Canal, retracing Odysseus' journey from the Odyssey, circumnavigating the globe in an open-air cockpit plane known as the Flying Carpet, and attempting to sail a Chinese junk named the Sea Dragon across the Pacific Ocean, during which attempt he went missing and was never found. Though as with Amelia Earhart, there were many rumors and theories about his fate. In his world travels, Halliburton maintained a stance of cultural relativism, that is that there are no objective standards by which to evaluate a culture and that a culture can only be understood in terms of its own values and customs, now a basic proposition in the field of anthropology. As anthropologist Franz Boas first put it in 1887, civilization is not something absolute, but is relative, and our ideas and conceptions are only true as far as our civilization goes. So Halliburton would adopt the clothing and customs of the people he visited, and apparently purchased a slave child in Africa, or so he claimed. As for Franz Boas, his concept of cultural relativism stands in contrast to the concept of ethnocentrism, which is the judging of another culture's beliefs and practices on the basis of one's own culture, a concept first described by sociologist William G. Sumner as part of his critique of imperialism. Boas also challenged the notions of scientific racism, arguing against the idea that race is a biological concept and that human behavior is a function of biological differences, instead believing it to be the product of culture and social learning, and also rejected the idea of cultural evolution passing through stages with European civilization at the summit. His students carried forward his ideas about culture and relativism, developing them in a number of interesting ways. Ruth Benedict, for instance, in her book Patterns of Culture, wrote that a culture, like an individual, is a more or less consistent pattern of thought and action, and argued that a culture was built upon a few basic characteristics and traits from which their values and aesthetics emanate. So for instance, she contrasted the cultures of the Pueblo peoples of the American Southwest and the Native American peoples of the Great Plains as being respectively based on restraint and abandon. She borrowed the Nietzschean opposites of the Apollonian and Dionysian. According to this, the worshipers of Apollo emphasized order and restraint in their celebrations, whereas the worshipers of the Wine God Dionysus, whom we saw before as the namesake of BCAD-originated Dionysius Exiguus, emphasized wildness and abandon. Anthropologist Margaret Mead was also a student of both Boas and Benedict and had a significant relationship, sometimes romantic, with Benedict. She herself is probably most known for her work in Samoa and her book Coming of Age in Samoa, in which she studied the lives of adolescent girls, arguing that culture is the primary influence of psychosexual development, an important work in the nature versus nurture debate. She reported on the comparatively relaxed attitude to sexual norms in Samoa compared to Western culture. This work later generated some controversy when New Zealand anthropologist Derek Freeman vigorously challenged her work, suggesting that one of her sources may have hoaxed her. And though most anthropologists seem to have upheld the importance and validity of her work, some scientists outside of the field of anthropology have taken Freeman's side in this debate, including psychologists Stephen Pinker and biologist Richard Dawkins, who we'll hear more about in a minute, with the suggestion that sexual mores are universal and biologically driven. As it turns out, Freeman seems to have had his own psychosexual issues. While visiting the Australian National University, Freeman brought his critiques to Mead in a private meeting one evening. The next day, in a public meeting, the two vigorously debated the importance of virginity in Samoan culture, and at one point Mead asked Freeman why he hadn't brought his undergraduate thesis on social structure in Samoan culture to their meeting the night before, to which Freeman responded, because it was afraid you might ask me to stay the night. At this point, Mead was in her sixties, walked with a cane, and was 15 years his senior, and so his peculiar remark resulted in the room breaking out and laughter. Freeman later said he didn't know why he said it and was mortified by it, but he also admitted to being intimidated by Mead and described her as a castrator of men. So perhaps his attacks on Mead were entirely motivated by academic differences. Mead also did work on the race and intelligence debate at the time, arguing against the validity of trying to connect measures of intelligence with race, and pointing out the problems with IQ tests, a subject that Stephen J. Gould, who came up with the idea of spandrels, focused on in his book the mismeasure of man, and will be hearing more about him in a minute too. Mead also influenced the work of Dr. Spock. No, not that Spock, the famous pediatrician Benjamin Spock, who happened to be her child's pediatrician, including his ideas on breastfeeding on demand rather than on a schedule. Spock received his own right-wing backlash from those who thought his child-rearing theories were overly permissive and were leading to moral decay and a shift to left-wing politics among young Americans raised according to his theories, that is, the baby-boomer generation. Before leaving for her fieldwork in Samoa, Mead had a brief affair with another of friends Boas' students, Edward Sapir, who was also a close friend of Ruth Benedict. The relationship apparently didn't work out because of Sapir's somewhat old-fashioned ideas about a woman's role in marriage. Sapir had previously worked in Ottawa as the director of the Anthropological Division of the Geological Survey of Canada, in which he documented the Indigenous languages and cultures of Canada insisting on studying Indigenous languages with the same rigor as European languages, rejecting the notion that those languages were too primitive for this. He became an advocate for Indigenous rights, arguing publicly for improved medical care for Indigenous communities, assisting the Six Nation Iroquois in trying to recover 11 wampum belts that had been stolen from them and put on display in the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania, they were only eventually returned in 1988, and arguing against the law banning the potlatch ceremony of the Indigenous peoples of the West Coast. Now Sapir applied the approaches of Boas in the linguistic realm, becoming hugely influential in the development of the field of linguistics. Sapir focused on the anthropological elements of linguistics, studying how language and culture influenced one another, and the relationship between linguistic differences and cultural differences, ideas that were further developed by one of his own students, Worf. No, not that Worf, Benjamin Lee Worf, in what is now known as linguistic relativity or the Sapir-Worf hypothesis. The chief critic of the idea of linguistic relativity was and is celebrated linguist Noam Chomsky, who instead advanced the idea that language was based on a universal grammar that is essentially hardwired into all humans. Though the exact definition of what that universal grammar is has changed over time, with Chomsky himself now being far less a Chomskyist than many Chomskyists. But in any case, his theories would therefore deny any meaningful connection between language and culture, which Sapir had argued in favor of. Another of the most famous proponents of the universal grammar idea is Stephen Pinker, especially in his book The Language Instinct. One of the differences between Pinkers and Chomsky's positions is that Chomsky suggested that universal grammar might have developed as a spandrel, barring from Stephen Jay Gould's evolutionary ideas. But Pinker argues in his book that language can be explained purely in evolutionary terms. Pinker was influenced in his evolutionary thinking by the work of Gould's chief adversary, none other than Richard Dawkins. Essentially, and this is probably somewhat oversimplified, the debate between Dawkins and Gould rests on how the mechanism of evolution works. With Dawkins arguing for the individual gene as a unit of selection, a notion made famous in his book, The Selfish Gene, which also launched the idea of memes, now so prevalent in online culture. Whereas Gould argued that evolutionary selection could operate on different levels, including those of the whole species, or clade. In addition to arguments about species level evolution and the idea of spandrels, Gould is also known for the theory of punctuated equilibrium, that evolution involves long periods of stability, which are sometimes punctuated by rapid periods of change, and the concept of non-overlapping magisteria, or NOMA for short. Essentially, he argued that science and religion are, and should be thought of, as two domains of authority which do not overlap, and therefore do not have to be in opposition to one another. If religion can't claim higher authority in terms of physical truth, so too can science not claim higher authority in terms of moral truth. However, hardline atheists, most importantly Dawkins in his book The God Delusion, reject this notion. And as a final side note on Stephen J. Gould, bringing us full circle, not only has he done work on genetics and natural selection, both of which words derive from the same root as generation, he is also the author of the book Questioning the Millennium, a rationalist guide to a precisely arbitrary countdown, one of the key sources for this video. Thanks for watching, and if you haven't yet, why not have a look at our previous video all about the word Sabbath? If you've enjoyed these etymological explorations and cultural connections, please subscribe and click the little bell to be notified of every new episode. And check out our Patreon where you can make a contribution to help me make more videos. I'm at alliterative on Twitter, and you can visit our website alliterative.net for more language connections in our podcast, blog, and more.