ASM189 School Zones, Carbon Emissions, and When life Begins

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school zones carbon emissions and when life begins all that and more on this week's episode of ask sciencemike [Music] welcome to ask science mike the weekly podcast where i answer your questions about science faith and life i'm your host science mike my real name is mike mccarthy i've been doing the show for a few years now i'm an uncredentialed rando on the internet who answers questions honestly and sincerely because i believe that all questions matter and we've got a podcast to do so let's get it started i'm on tour right now with my friend michael gunger we're doing a tour called tabs and wafers which is a liturgist tour and it is a look at all kinds of things finding and forming community uh during and after faith transitions uh what it looks like for people whose beliefs have changed to engage in spiritual community what it looks like for people who don't want to be a part of the church anymore to build community and then also like how we connect to spiritual practices and then a whole lot about the war on drugs if you're curious about what those things have in common then you'll want to join us at tabs and wafers and will be august 16th in tempe arizona uh will be uh what uh august 21st in san francisco california uh we'll be in dallas and houston and austin texas and uh so there's lots of stops coming up you can go to the liturgist.com tabs and wafers to learn more or you can go to ask sciencemike.com and click on the events button in case you can't spell liturgists we've had tons of funds at the tons of fun at these events and we've also made free tickets available which we're going to do for all future liturgist events in a nod to economic accessibility so uh you can get a ticket to these events completely free you can learn more by going to the liturgist.com tabs and wafers and then october 29th i will be at the christian transhumanist conference in nashville tennessee really excited about that one you can learn more at sciencemike.com just click on the events button [Music] hey science mike i was wondering if there's a scientific agreement as to when life begins human life that is and i asked this in regards to the arguments that i keep hearing from pro-lifers and the pro-choicers and each side keeps throwing the word science in it to back up what they're trying to say and it's just making me more and more confused so i was just wondering if you could uh enlighten me on that a bit if you have time for another question i was wondering if it's scientifically accurate to call the field development of a child while it's still inside the womb of parasite all right mike thanks for all you do love your work and we love you as a human being bye there aren't many questions that make me nervous but questions about when life begin does i have concerns that um i'll be misquoted and that science will be misquoted in this debate about a woman's right to choose and the abortion debate because on the one hand the science is clear if you look at the question in a certain context but on the other hand the science actually doesn't help us really make these decisions at all because it's a different kind of question so if you want like you know a bigger look at uh public policy and the philosophical questions around abortion i'd point you to the liturgist podcast episode pro-life pro-choice with me and michael gunger and uh my dear friend rachel held evans uh looking through this issue and discussed in a pretty non-judgmental way i also want to say that i don't really like to weigh in on the abortion issue because i don't have a uterus and a lot of men get upset when i say that uh but the fact is i am not as deeply impacted personally in discussions about you know reproductive health care because uh i'll never carry a child to term it won't happen so i don't like to weigh in with policy that could affect someone else's life in a very dramatic way i believe strongly that women should lead these conversations and that their opinions should be given more weight and if that upsets you i i do not mean to upset you um but it's it's just my stance it's where i am there is absolutely a scientific agreement or consensus as to when human life begins and that would be about uh 200 to 300 000 years ago when our species first emerged no problem there we totally know when human life began it's a big range 100 000 year difference between 200 000 and 300 thousand years ago but that's when human life began began i know that's not what you mean but i think that's an important context it is much easier to tell when humans emerged on the planet than when an individual human appeared on the planet it's complicated people are made of other people right you have two parents and reproductive cells are alive both sperm and eggs are alive they're just part of someone's body like a like a a skin cell or a brain cell uh now reproductive cells are are unique and different in that they only carry half of your genetic information but yeah so what they're part of your body and at some point they stop being so sperm leaves a father's body and enters a mother's body and you know it takes a long time it takes hours or or more a day and a half even for sperm to get deep enough into a woman's body to fertilize an egg so you know we think about fertilization as being this moment of passion but it's not it happens later and the sperm undergoes tremendous changes uh as it moves up to a woman's reproductive system and through a fallopian tubes to finally meet an egg and then that creates a through a very complex process a cell with the potential to create a unique human life and that cell is alive both before during and after that process so it is human life already now before you pro-life folks jump up and down yelling ha told you i mean yeah that's true it is a cell with the potential to become a whole person but these days with cloning cloning technology any one of your body's cells could potentially become a person does that mean a skin graft of yours has a right to life the important thing to look at here is the question of when personhood begins is different than the question of when life begins your life as in cellular life represents an unbroken line of cellular life going back to the first life that appeared on this planet and we we can't overlook the fact that you know these early fertilized eggs these zygotes these embryos these early humans human masses of human tissue uh they're not terribly good at becoming viable somewhere between 50 and 80 percent of fertilized eggs don't implant uh and then of those that implant a very very high number fail so it's it's i don't think you can ignore that medically the complexity there um so no one debates that cells that lead to human life are alive the question is is when do when does a human a collection of tissue get personhood that answers varied a lot in history by the way uh it used to be that abortion was fine all the way until something called the quickening that's the first time a baby you felt a baby kick as we've been able to look in the womb we've we've realized that oh wow you know there's a baby that can kick is a pretty fully formed person and people have gotten less comfortable with that so the abortion age has rolled back so our views have changed dramatically over history and formed by the science but ultimately the question of when personhood begins is not a scientific question so science can inform our philosophical questions and our ethical questions and our theological questions but it won't make those decisions for us science doesn't give anybody in this debate like a slam dunk win because it is a genuinely complex question that ambiguity by the way is why i kind of identify as a pro-choice person is sympathetic to pro-life people i can see why you can make a ethical argument about of fetuses rights i think those are often overblown based on my interpretation but i understand how people get there um i am pro-choice i am wildly pro-choice um but i understand the confusion i'm more i am more sympathetic to the confusion on you know or the controversy around abortion than say same-sex marriage you know i don't have a lot of sympathy anymore for people who don't affirm an adult's right to marry any person of their choosing that's a complicated question i'm going to do a couple of things one i'm going to link to an article called why science can't say when a baby's life begins it's a really good piece that you should read i'll also link to pro-life pro-choice on the liturgist podcast the ultimate thing here science doesn't say when personhood begins science does say when life begins life began billions of years ago human life appeared between 200 and 3 000 years ago and it's remarkably difficult to say precisely when cells go from being part of another person's body to a unique body it's not as clear-cut as you might think when you look at the science [Music] our next question came in via email and it reads hey science mike as you're probably aware this week a study called the global tree restoration potential came out in the journal of science this study claims that planting one trillion trees will significantly reduce carbon emissions and play a big role in fighting climate change which sounds super freaking awesome but many scientists are saying that this sounds too good to be true i'm curious as to your thoughts on this study and what planting 1 trillion trees would do to help us in our battle against climate change thanks for all that you do on this podcast you've played an instrumental role in my development over these past four years and i couldn't be more grateful thank you for your thoughtful response much love noah so if you didn't see the global tree restoration potential it is a study that was basically a big data study they did a lot of computer modeling using machine learning to look at like kind of where you would plant trees and how many to plant and what kind of potential that had to reduce atmosphere or carbon it is a fascinating project i was very interested in it and it is a kind of necessary conversational starter i'd call it a slightly more rigorous fermi estimate fermi estimate is a style of estimating numbers that you do very very quickly and get a rough answer that you can kind of use to begin a more formal inquiry and i'd say this is like the next step so the fact that it was published and scientists are pushing back that's part of how it works i think a study like this is meant to be a conversation starter there are all kinds of problems with the way they approached answering this question for example let's say we start planting a lot of trees in southern latitudes well climate change is going to kill a lot of those trees so they're not going to reach maturity right it also would take a long time tree planting is a very slow way to remove carbon from the atmosphere trees can take you know in some cases 80 or 100 years to mature and reach their uh carbon sequestration carbon sequestration potential i don't know if that's even a word they're to reach their peak potential to sequester carbon let's say it that way um so we do need to tran plant trees trent please i've really been having some uh issues verbalizing the last couple of weeks really weird maybe i'm just tired too much touring yeah so we do need to plant trees that's very important and we do need to plant trees and reforest on massive scales we also need to slow or eliminate our deforestation rate right that's critical um so what's kind of interesting about the study is it looks at one factor in an interconnected system and i think it's good to say like from a public relations perspective hey we need a massive tree planting project worldwide but that's going to have to be something that's executed on a more local level you can't accurately estimate where trees trees need to be planted on a global level right that's going to require some local expertise and certain certainly local funding and local effort yeah so it's a great study it's fascinating um i'll have two links to talk about that in the show notes one is massive forest restoration could greatly slow global warming that's kind of a pro study po article and then another one that says a model too far the global tree restoration potential uh paper and science that that lays out you know why this model probably is so vague um that it's not actually all that helpful in planning policy other than oh yeah we should start planting more trees uh not to to discount the interesting work it's um machine learning does best when you have a clear measurable outcome so machine learning has advanced very quickly especially in gaming where you know what the wind conditions are uh w-i-n conditions not wind conditions um but not all that helpful and more open-ended questions today and i think that's kind of what happened here um the machine learning model generated some some information that specialists were pretty easily able to push back on it's a fascinating project uh worth tracking and certainly worth tree planting you know i try to plant as many trees as i can personally and and support charities that plant trees and reforestization but it's not just reforestation that will help us there's other ecosystems that need restoration trees in the wrong place actually hurt right uh i can think of you know ranches in texas that a lot of cypress trees were planted and something that was more arid and they dried up rivers and then when those trees were removed and a more prairie-like environment allowed to return the river returned and wildlife flourished right so it's not trees alone aren't the answer allowing ecosystems to recover to a more not locally appropriate natural environment uh is the best strategy for combating climate change [Music] i just love kiwico one of the ongoing sponsors of ask science mike and they are an incredible company we are in a time where science literacy isn't great seems to be getting worse and we also those of us who are parents we have the constant epidemic of dealing with our children's desires for screen time gosh these devices they captivate our children just as much as they captivate us don't they well kiwico sends kinesthetic hands-on learning experiences in a box around science technology engineering arts and math my children have built room decorations for their own space that gives them skill in crafting arts they've built planetariums they built walking robots every month i love seeing whatever the newest thing is that my daughters build from their kiwi co-crates and my daughters are 14 and 12. so they're older and they still love it but i've seen pictures from so many ass science white listeners with small children and grade school children as well kiwi co is a terrific service and they're going to do something incredible for listeners of ask science mike if you go to kiwico.com science they're going to send you a crate completely free for you to try in your household i've really enjoyed watching the way my children have deepened their understanding of science and actually found applying science in the classroom easier with the hands-on lessons they've learned by building science projects together so kiwico.com science for your free crate for your family [Music] hi science mike i have a really honest question here so my family and i are looking to buy a house and as i'm looking at where to buy a house i'm finding that i'm being subtly racist and i hate saying that but i want to pick a good school district for my kids and i want them to grow up in a good neighborhood and i find that those school districts and neighborhoods tend to be in white neighborhoods and i don't know what to do about that because i want what's best for my children but i also don't want to be even subtly racist but i'm not sure how to how to balance both of these how do i be looking for what's best for my children but also trying to bridge this gap between blacks and whites i i just don't know what to do so i'm just wondering if you have any insight about how to like what does this mean that i feel this way when i'm looking for a house and that all of the good school districts in my area seem to be in white neighborhoods i just don't know what to do so this is just a really honest question would you really just love some insight on this and maybe some advice on how to go about bridging this gap but also looking out for my family i don't know it's just a really just really raw honest question so anything you have to say about it would be awesome thank you so often in our culture when we discuss racism we want to discuss personal attitudes beliefs and behaviors when we talk about donald trump being a racist we're talking about his personal attitudes beliefs and behaviors this is what we talk about about our family members about the culture we grew up in we talk about individual racism and individual racism is a problem and individual racism is a problem that we can address through personal advocacy and through self-development work we all have internalized racist ideas everyone it doesn't matter your race or your gender or your ethnicity the culture has internalized white supremacist ideas in you and you can confront those and that is important work and that is necessary work but it is not all of the work about racism very few things illustrate as well structural or systemic racism as buying a new home this will reveal to anyone paying attention that the problems we have with race and racism in america and around the world listen to me canadians and australians and europeans you do not live in a post-racial utopia yes america is worse but that doesn't mean you're doing fine i see the comments all the time online from white people in canada and australia and the uk saying why do we have to talk about racism that's such an american problem friends that's white supremacy i know people of color in your countries and i know indigenous people in your countries and they do not speak of your culture as a post-racial utopia they merely speak of it as better than the united states well gosh being better than the united states in matters of race and racism is no blue ribbon forgive me for being a little hot there for a moment everyone needs to listen right now this this affects the entire developed world what do you do when you're buying a home or renting a home you know a lot a lot of us don't buy anymore i i'm renting a house i don't think i'll ever buy again but i'm renting a house when we were renting a house i faced a similar set of decisions i wanted good schools good schools tend to be schools that have a lot of affluent white children and a lot of affluent asian children and some affluent indian children and some affluent hispanic and latinx children and maybe even a few affluent black children but when you dig through you quickly find out that we segregate schools wildly based on income and that income and wealth is racially distributed you can't separate the racial distribution of income from the home buying process in school zones the average white family is many times more wealthy than the average black family and the average white family has inherited wealth that has moved through generations that came from literal government handouts homesteaders were given land by the government and people who had land that wasn't given to the bangalore they purchased the land a lot of that land was enriched by slave labor unpaid labor and selling people generated the wealth that created that wealth gap post-war america post-world war two america the boom of the middle class the gi bill a government handout for military service don't get me wrong uniquely benefited white families that's still at play today so if we look at our individual choice how do i individually combat white supremacy when buying a home do i buy a home in a poor browner neighborhood lower income more brown people if you do that you're gentrifying you're gonna you're gonna buy a house you're going to displace families that live there you're going to raise rents you're going to raise home prices you're going to start a cycle happening all over the country by the way and i've got a an article in the new york times that really breaks this down in the show notes from april of this year about the massive movement of white people back into inner cities because it's cool to live close to shops and density there's a reason those communities exist in the first place before white people fled into the suburbs now white people are returning raising rents and displacing people of color so it doesn't solve anything just to buy a house in a poor neighborhood just get you a good home deal and your presence starts to reshape the neighborhood because of your wealth but if you buy into a mostly white neighborhood or i'm i'm in a majority minority neighborhood but that majority is mainly wealthy korean people um and then wealthy hispanic latino people get past the 50 mark in our community that doesn't make me some ethnic pioneer doesn't make me some enlightened white person just because i i live near a different set of wealthy people that new york times piece i would highly encourage everyone to look at it it is packed packed with the data of gentrification and the current movement of displacing brown people and black people black people by the way among people of color are uniquely affected by racism in the home buying process to that note i've got a rice kinder study linked in the show notes that lays out how racism comes into play at literally every stage of the home buying process including breaking out the stereotypes that real estate professionals and financial professionals use when discussing different racial and ethnic groups which is really difficult to read but i think necessary and important for example in discussing asian or middle eastern customers and home buyers they will talk about them being affluent and difficult to work with loyal to uh co-ethnics and smart and they value education when they think about black people also they family oriented they have a rich history oh that's nice they're unsafe or dangerous or undesirable as neighbors this is from an actual study oh every stage of buying a home introduces additional racial filtering and racial segregation and i've got a study that talks about it so what do you do individually well it's not an individual problem it's a systemic problem the way we develop communities is problematic when we go into dense neighborhoods that have been the communities for people of color now for some time and we buy houses and we tear them down we put up cute houses instead and i cute highly sarcastic there we just displace people we have to change the way we develop communities i actually think it would be great if people of different races and ethnicities lived near to each other that would help fix the school segregation problem help fix the school funding problem but to do that you can't displace the people who already live in the neighborhood i advocate mixed income developments if you're going to tear something down you've got to replace it with something that can accommodate the existing population and then add more which means we've got to have toothy laws and we've got to fight the nimbyism not in my backyard ism that makes people not want low income housing near where they live so i've got another tool here another another resource that's going to be in the show notes from the brookings institute uh that is about specific actions we can take to fight race inequalities in health and housing you'll obviously want to focus on the housing but they outline several major points uh four things especially uh that stand out one is zoning the way we zone uh has racial implications the transportation network has racial implications we've typically allowed highways to bisect and tear apart communities of color the steering process by realtors and agents black home seekers are shown fewer homes and they're steered into specific areas and people of all races are steered by race with references to local schools and of course there's a large credit problem linked with race and racism so your individual home buying decision one way or another is going to participate in a system that perpetuates racial inequality and does so exceedingly well so the answer for us white folks is to start thinking about this at times other than when we are buying a home and change our public policy attitudes the people we elect and what we support to mitigate and combat race inequality in housing there's no other way to do this there's no individual choice you make as a homeowner that solves this problem we actually have to change the structure we don't want to talk about that it's a lot harder that's big work that doesn't have a clean ending that's not what we do abc and everything's fine it's a multi-generational effort it will require radical reinvestments and reprioritizations of our economy but the alternative is to just keep rolling with american white supremacy and i'm personally done with that and i hope that um everyone listening is as well so make sure you go to ask sciencemike.com and check out all three links on this answer that's going to be the new york times piece the neighborhood is mostly black the home buyers are mostly white that's going to be a study from rice called when looking for and buying a house racial inequality and discrimination compound and finally from brookings a report time for justice tackling race inequalities in health and housing [Music] trigger warning on this question it discusses sexual abuse and sexualization of children and if that's something that's going to trigger you i'd encourage you to press pause now and listen to something else and if you start listening and find that you're upset always remember that you can stop the podcast anytime and take the space you need to feel safe and to feel healthy the question reads hi mike i discovered you and the liturgists almost two years ago in the middle of long deconstruction and briefly before starting to actually learn about and deal with trauma of being raised in a closed and abusive religious household my life is much different now i'm married to a wonderful woman and expecting our first child in a few months i was hoping you might suggest some starting points for reading and learning about sexual abuse from a science perspective what is it i'm trying to understand both my past and inform myself of how to raise a child after my split with religion i've spent a lot of time rebuilding my understanding of morality apart from god said so but i don't really understand this part yet i've experienced a lot of pain from the absolute crushing of sexuality by authority was that abuse my wife and i like to walk around the house naked if we do this around a child is that abuse i don't know how to approach this can you point me to stable reasoned research work that can help clarify my thoughts thank you from the bottom of my heart for the work that you do it's been light through some dark times mike mike first i'm just really sorry that your caregivers let you down in such a profound way i'm sorry for the hurt that you've felt and the pain that you've had to process and i'll have a link on science mike to a list of books on understanding and recovering from sexual abuse and i hope that you find that those are enlightening and helpful i will warn you that there is not a universal consensus on what is and is not sexual abuse that it is highly contextual based on culture nudity between parents and children is generally frowned upon in the united states and much less of a deal in many european societies and gosh no deal at all in indigenous cultures all around the world we have to admit that america is a strange combination of hyper sexualization and hyper sexual repression and i think that fuels all kinds of strange maladaptive and abusive behaviors in our culture so i can't give you like a this is abuse this is not easy checklist what i can tell you to do is to ask yourself some questions in how you relate to your children because i i have no concern that i'm sexually abusing my children because i neither sexualize my children nor deny or fear that they have sexuality my my children my daughters have sexuality i'm completely comfortable with that i feel no need to own their sexuality or control their sexuality and certainly not to shame them for their sexuality but i as their father and as their parent understand that there should not be any sexual component to my relationship with my children and for many people you would say gosh that's obvious it's not always obvious to everyone depending on how you were raised and how your parents treated you there may have been inappropriate sexual behaviors or contact that has been normalized in your family in many families in the united states incestual activity is multi-generational and normalized and deeply traumatizing so i just want to be explicit for everyone listening we want to be careful with touch we want to be careful with nudity it doesn't mean touch is wrong it doesn't mean nudity is wrong sexual touch between a parent and a child is wrong now how do you know if tuck if your touch is sexual or not well are you becoming aroused argue sexually interested in your children those are the biggest possible red flags i could imagine um but i think most people understand that sexual encounters between parents and children is wrong and it's damaging to children i've always used the approach that caution is best and a foundation of trust will cover a lot of mistakes i ask myself these questions am i empowering my child by empowering am i equipping them to make their own decisions about touch as their parent i don't assume i have some inherent right to hug or be near my children if my children approach me for a hug then i return one enthusiastically but if i want to give them a hug or if i if they seem down i i usually simply ask can i give you a hug right now just that simple consistent honest asking for consent lays a groundwork for my children to know that their bodies are their bodies that they have a right to control who touches their body and how people touch their body and when people touch their body that's a very very important skill especially for girls to be taught in our society i ask myself in interactions with my children am i shaming my children not just about their sexuality but about anything i i never want to shame my children i want to teach them i want to instruct them i want to demonstrate things with them but i don't want to shame them i ask am i sexualizing my child i get very concerned with the way i see parents interact with daughters and their clothing the questions they ask about the length of clothing items to me begins to both sexualize and shame simultaneously so that's something i've resisted in our home i don't want to even unintentionally sexualize my children nor do i want to deny their sexuality by shaming them about sexual desire if you grow up if you if you offer a supportive and trusting environment to your young children you're going to find that they very likely begin to explore and touch their genitals and family settings and in those situations it's not a big deal you don't have to panic you can just encourage them to go find some private space if they want to continue with that activity so you just set a nice healthy boundary the underlying theme here is am i honoring and fostering my child's right to autonomy right am i empowering my children to make their own decisions to be aware of appropriate sexual boundaries with other people especially caregivers but ultimately to understand that sex is a personal beautiful act between two consenting people who aren't family members one of the most powerful questions i can recall in the history of ask science mike was someone who wrote in to say that they had been sexually abused and victimized as a child and as an adult were attracted to children that had never acted on that but they felt that attraction and they were aware of it and i thought that was great that that person was aware that a cycle of sexual violence had caused some maladaptive desires in their own psychological makeup and that awareness created a foundation to create strategies to break that cycle of abuse and victimization so i just want to honor the fact that you're aware that you've been hurt and you don't want to hurt your child in the same way and i believe that that care and that study especially with professional support will help you to be the kind of parent you desire to be one who empowers your child one who does not shame or sexualize your child and one who honors and fosters your child's inherent right to personal body autonomy thanks to caitlyn hermstad for uh pre-production work on science mike andrew golucky for pre-production work uh one thing greg nordin for production sound design jeb botteford frying the theme song listen folks i need your questions the listenership of the podcast is up more people are listening than have ever listened but we've never gotten so few questions so if you want to have a question on ask science mike you can do so by going to asksciencemike.com and right there you can either fill out an email question or record a voicemail question for your chance to have your question appear on the podcast and right now you have your best chance ever i mean we're down to you know sometimes a couple dozen questions a week so we'd love to see that increase uh so send your questions in i'd love to answer them thanks for listening everybody and i can't wait to talk with you next week