From the Vault: Ant Wars, Episode 2
Stuff To Blow Your Mind
iHeartPodcasts
4.3 • 6K Ratings
🗓️ 3 June 2021
⏱️ 49 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The war has raged for at least 100 million years. Armored warriors boil up out of the ground and surge across the battlefield. Mandibles clash. Bodies are torn asunder. As the will of one colony clashes with another, forces advance, withdrawal and sometimes whole populations perish in the Earth. Such are the wars of the ants, compared to which the wars of humanity are but a blip. In this classic episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe explore the history and tactics of ant warfare, and what humans can learn from it all. (originally published 6/14/2020)
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is Robert Lam. |
| 0:09.0 | And I'm Joe McCormick, and today we're bringing you an episode from the Vault. This is Ant |
| 0:13.7 | Wars Part 2, originally aired June 14th, 2020. Let the Ant Wars continue. |
| 0:22.0 | Deliver thyself as a row from the hand of the hunter, and as a bird from the hand of the |
| 0:27.5 | fowler, go to the ant, thou sluggard, consider her ways and be wise, which having no guide, |
| 0:35.1 | overseer or ruler, provided her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest. |
| 0:45.5 | Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of I Heart Radio. |
| 0:48.6 | Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is Robert Lam. |
| 0:58.8 | And I'm Joe McCormick, and that was a reading from the King James translation of the Bible. It's |
| 1:03.7 | from the book of Proverbs chapter 6. And I was looking right before we started. I was like, |
| 1:09.4 | oh, let me check my scholarly Oxford annotated edition of the Bible to see if it's got any insights |
| 1:15.5 | on how the author of this passage knew that all of the workurrants in the colony were female. |
| 1:21.8 | And no, it just says, this passage appeals to the natural world. |
| 1:27.2 | I love that. That's great. |
| 1:28.1 | That's great. |
| 1:28.1 | It's right there. |
| 1:30.4 | Because I had questions about this one. I was not familiar with this passage. We just kind of, |
| 1:34.0 | we're looking for fun things to read at the top of our second Ant War episode. And I was like, |
| 1:41.2 | oh, I wonder what the what the old King James version had to say about ants. And here we are, |
| 1:46.8 | a verse that at once seems to get the gender of the vast majority of an ant colony correct. |
| 1:54.6 | And also doesn't get hung up on the idea of a central ruler. Like in a couple of ways, |
| 2:01.3 | this is a very accurate reading of ant civilization. |
... |
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