Living analogies wake us up to the weirdness of the world.

It's hard to notice the strangeness of something you accept as normal

until you see the same phenomenon in a totally different context.

I never thought twice about aesthetic orthodontics, for example.

Envisaline, veneers, teeth whitening, all of that seemed like

totally banal human behavior to me until a cultural anthropology professor of mine compared it to

tooth sharpening in other cultures. Another example, the writer Jonathan Saffron Fowar points out

that many don't notice ethical issues with American pig farms

until they find out other people around the world farm dogs in identical ways.

And many of us never noticed how strange it was that we are bald mammals until we see a hairless cat or a

hairless guinea pig or a naked mole rat and realize how weird our appearance is.

And this might sound strange to you now, but I know I never noticed how strange the lives of ants were

until I learned about the lifestyle of the naked mole rat.

Heterocephalus glaber.

I'm Mackin. This is species.

Welcome to the show.

If you don't know anything about the naked mole rat, except that they look weird, you are in for the podcast of your life.

This is going to get preposterous.

This podcast doesn't have any ads, thanks to the generous donors who subsidize the show.

I'm not a huge fan of the ad model that dominates podcasting.

I think it's bizarre that podcasters are expected to publicly pretend we like products for money.

I think the subscribe for bonus content model is so much better, but as a listener, I always

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