# Thomas Henry Huxley

An episode of [Stuff You Missed in History Class](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/283605519), 29 Jul 2026, 41 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/cfb428ef-eafc-44d0-9d09-ae2701747e6f/260a3473-d806-4229-901f-b495016b50f8/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=fb626e1f-112c-4246-a40d-ae2701747e7d

Huxley is an example of having a good attitude about publicly acknowledging errors and learning from them. He earned the nickname “Darwin’s bulldog” for his very vocal support of Darwin’s work, and he wanted to promote science and education, particularly to people that didn’t normally have access to those things. Research: • Bernoulli, D., Jenkyns, H.C. “Thomas Henry Huxley, a stone tablet, coccoliths, and deep-sea sediments in the high Alps.” Int J Earth Sci (Geol Rundsch) 112, 1661–1669 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00531-023-02330-5 • Bowen, Keith. “Thomas Henry Huxley.” Ebsco. 2024. https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/history/thomas-henry-huxley • Burkhardt, Richard W.. "Jean-Baptiste Lamarck". Encyclopedia Britannica, 14 Dec. 2025, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jean-Baptiste-Lamarck • Darwin, Charles. “On the Origin of Species.” JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. London. 1859. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1228/1228-h/1228-h.htm • Desmond, Adrian J. "Thomas Henry Huxley". Encyclopedia Britannica, 25 Jun. 2026, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Thomas-Henry-Huxley • Dolan, John R. “The famous and lesser-known illustrations of Thomas Huxley’s Bathybius.” History of Oceanography. International Commission of the History of Oceanography. https://oceansciencehistory.com/2020/07/13/the-famous-and-lesser-known-illustrations-of-thomas-huxleys-bathybius/ • “Freshwater Bathybius.” Nature 4, 49–50 (1871). https://doi.org/10.1038/004049b0 • “The Great Debate.” University of Oxford Museum of Natural History. https://oumnh.ox.ac.uk/great-debate • “The History of Evolutionary Thought.” Understanding Evolution. Berkeley University. https://evolution.berkeley.edu/the-history-of-evolutionary-thought/1800s/early-concepts-of-evolution-jean-baptiste-lamarck/ • Huxley, T.H. “Agnosticism.” K. Paul, Trench. London. 1889. https://archive.org/details/a622650700huxluoft/page/169/mode/1up • Huxley, T.H. “Aphorisms and Reflections. From the Works of T. H. HUXLEY, Selected by Henrietta A. Huxley. Macmillan and Co. London. 1907. Accessed online: http://aleph0.clarku.edu/huxley/Book/Aphor.html • Huxley, T.H. “Autobiography and Selected Essays.” Riverside College Classics. 1909. Accessed online: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1315/1315-h/1315-h.htm#link2H_4_0007 • Huxley, T.H. “Collected Essays, Volume V: Science and Christian Tradition.” https://www.gutenberg.org/files/15905/15905-h/15905-h.htm • Huxley, T.H. “Evidence as to man's place in nature.” D. Appelton and Co. New York. 1863. https://archive.org/details/evidenceastomans00huxl/page/n1/mode/2up • Huxley, T.H. “On Some Organisms Living at Great Depths in the North Atlantic Ocean.” Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science. viii., new Series, 1868, pp. 203-212. http://aleph0.clarku.edu/huxley/SM3/bathy.html • Huxley, T.H. “On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals.” Project Gutenberg eBook. 2001. https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/2932/pg2932-images.html • Joshi RS. “The Inner Root Sheath and the Men Associated with it Eponymically.” Int J Trichology. 2011 Jan;3(1):57-62. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3129131/ • Lamarck, Jean-Baptiste. “Zoological Philosophy.” Macmillan. London. 1914. https://archive.org/details/ZoologicalPhilosophy • Lyons, Sherrie L. “Thomas Henry Huxley : the evolution of a scientist.” Prometheus Books. New York. 1999. • McGraw, Donald J. “Bye-Bye Bathybius: The Rise and Fall of a Marine Myth.” Bios, vol. 45, no. 4, 1974, pp. 164–71. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4607257 • “Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1963.” The Nobel Prize. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/1963/summary/ • Pearce, JMS. “Thomas Henry Huxley.” Hektoen International. Sept. 18, 2020. https://hekint.org/2020/09/18/thomas-henry-huxley/ • Schwartz, Joel S. “Darwin, Wallace, and Huxley, and ‘Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation.’” Journal of the History of Biology, vol. 23, no. 1, 1990, pp. 127–53. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4331120 • “Thomas…

## Transcript

[0:01] Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
[0:04] Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
[0:14] Speaker 1: Frye and I'm prayse A V.
[0:15] Speaker 2: Wilson. This is an.
[0:17] Speaker 1: Episode that we are recording while we are on a
[0:20] Speaker 1: visit to the Bahamas. We are in the studio at
[0:22] Speaker 1: Baha Mar So I wanted to do something that related
[0:26] Speaker 1: to marine biology. It is a little related to marine biology.
[0:30] Speaker 1: There is a lot more to the story of Thomas
[0:33] Speaker 1: Henry Huxley than the embarrassing scientific blunder in marine biology
[0:37] Speaker 1: that he made, although that is one of the most
[0:40] Speaker 1: famous events of his life, and he actually, in my opinion,
[0:44] Speaker 1: offers up a pretty good example of having a good
[0:46] Speaker 1: attitude about learning in public, about making a gaff and
[0:50] Speaker 1: then acknowledging errors and learning from them. He also is
[0:54] Speaker 1: sort of famously known by his nickname Darwin's Bulldog for
[0:58] Speaker 1: his very vocal support part of Darwin's work, and he
[1:02] Speaker 1: also just generally wanted to promote science and education, particularly
[1:06] Speaker 1: people that normally did not have access to those things.
[1:10] Speaker 1: He wrote late in his life quote, it is with
[1:12] Speaker 1: this intent that I have subordinated any reasonable or unreasonable
[1:16] Speaker 1: ambition for scientific fame, which I may have permitted myself
[1:20] Speaker 1: to entertain, to other ends, to the popularization of science,
[1:24] Speaker 1: to the development and organization of scientific education, to the
[1:28] Speaker 1: endless series of battles and skirmishes over evolution, and to
[1:33] Speaker 1: untiring opposition to that ecclesiastical spirit, that clericalism, which in England,
[1:38] Speaker 1: as everywhere else, and to whatever denomination it may belong,
[1:42] Speaker 1: is the deadly enemy of science. So he's pretty interesting.
[1:47] Speaker 1: Heads up, there is so much documentation written about and
[1:51] Speaker 1: by Thomas Huxley that there's no way to cover it all.
[1:54] Speaker 1: So if you are a Thomas Huxley scholar, you may
[1:57] Speaker 1: be like you're leaving some stuff out.
[1:59] Speaker 2: There's no way not to just know that there is.
[2:02] Speaker 1: Also plenty that is edited out of his story here,
[2:07] Speaker 1: But also that means there is plenty that is readily
[2:10] Speaker 1: available and easy to access. If you look at our
[2:13] Speaker 1: show notes for today's episode, you will find plenty of
[2:16] Speaker 1: things that he wrote and people wrote about him. Also,
[2:19] Speaker 1: we just have to say, right out of the gate,
[2:20] Speaker 1: this man had spectacular sideburns. Thomas Henry Huxley was born
[2:26] Speaker 1: May fourth, eighteen twenty five and ealing England today.
[2:30] Speaker 2: That is part of London.
[2:32] Speaker 1: At the time, it was a village outside of London,
[2:34] Speaker 1: but the city eventually just absorbed it. It became part
[2:37] Speaker 1: of the greater city through urban expansion. His father, George,
[2:41] Speaker 1: was a schoolmaster who ran a small but respected school
[2:44] Speaker 1: for boys. George and his wife Rachel, had seven children,
[2:48] Speaker 1: and Thomas was the youngest. Only six of those children
[2:52] Speaker 1: lived past infancy, though Thomas was born in their home,
[2:56] Speaker 1: which was an apartment above a butcher's shop, and he
[2:58] Speaker 1: wrote a humorous story about his early childhood later in
[3:03] Speaker 1: his life, saying quote, I am not aware that any
[3:07] Speaker 1: portence preceded my arrival in this world, But in my
[3:10] Speaker 1: childhood I remember hearing a traditional account of the manner
[3:13] Speaker 1: in which I lost the chance of an endowment of
[3:16] Speaker 1: great practical value. The windows of my mother's room were
[3:20] Speaker 1: open in consequence of the unusual warmth of the weather.
[3:24] Speaker 1: For the same reason, probably a neighboring beehive had swarmed,
[3:28] Speaker 1: and the new colony, pitching on the windowsill, was making
[3:32] Speaker 1: its way into the room when the horrified nurse shut
[3:35] Speaker 1: down the sash. If that well meaning woman had only
[3:39] Speaker 1: abstained from her ill timed interference, the swarm might have
[3:43] Speaker 1: settled on my lips, and I should have been endowed
[3:47] Speaker 1: with that molefluous eloquence, which in this country leads far
[3:51] Speaker 1: more surely than worth capacity or honest work, to the
[3:54] Speaker 1: highest places in church and state. But the opportunity was lost,
[4:00] Speaker 1: and I have been obliged to content myself through life
[4:02] Speaker 1: with saying what I mean in the plainest of plain
[4:06] Speaker 1: language than which I suppose there is no habit more
[4:09] Speaker 1: ruinous to a man's prospects of advancement. Beyond that, he
[4:14] Speaker 1: wrote quote, I have next to nothing to say about
[4:16] Speaker 1: my childhood. I love him, and I know that was
[4:19] Speaker 1: a long story to read, but I wanted to include
[4:21] Speaker 1: it because it really sets you up for what they're
[4:23] Speaker 1: going to get from Thomas Huxley. He's a little of
[4:27] Speaker 1: self deprecating all the time, but he's also very simultaneously
[4:33] Speaker 1: able to kind of stick a little jab in at
[4:36] Speaker 1: what he thinks is the pompous nature of a lot
[4:39] Speaker 1: of the institutions of English society. And also, I don't
[4:44] Speaker 1: know why getting stung by bees would have made him
[4:45] Speaker 1: more eloquent, but I think it was that they would alight, oh,
[4:49] Speaker 1: they would alight onto his mouth and give him the
[4:52] Speaker 1: gift of speech, not that they would sting him, they
[4:55] Speaker 1: would make him buzz and buzz. Although Thomas grew up
[5:00] Speaker 1: in an educator's household, he only had two years of
[5:04] Speaker 1: formal schooling. He attended his father's school starting at age eight,
[5:08] Speaker 1: but the school closed in eighteen thirty seven and that
[5:11] Speaker 1: was the end of that. George moved out of education
[5:15] Speaker 1: and he moved into a career in banking. The family
[5:18] Speaker 1: did continue to struggle financially, and from the age of
[5:21] Speaker 1: ten on, Thomas's education was entirely self directed. It wasn't
[5:25] Speaker 1: like they could afford to send him to a school.
[5:28] Speaker 1: His father had amassed a significant library though, through his teaching,
[5:32] Speaker 1: so Thomas just decided he would sort of work his
[5:35] Speaker 1: way through that. He not only read books in English,
[5:38] Speaker 1: but he also taught himself French and German, so he
[5:41] Speaker 1: could read books written in those languages as well, including
[5:45] Speaker 1: the works of Descartes and Guerta. Although his father had
[5:48] Speaker 1: been a teacher, it was Rachel, his mother, who he
[5:51] Speaker 1: really credited with giving him the gift of natural intelligence.
[5:55] Speaker 1: He wrote of her quote, with no more education than
[5:57] Speaker 1: other women of the middle class in her day, she
[6:00] Speaker 1: had an excellent mental capacity. Her most distinguishing characteristic, however,
[6:05] Speaker 1: was rapidity of thought. If one ventured to suggest she
[6:09] Speaker 1: had not taken much time to arrive at any conclusion,
[6:12] Speaker 1: she would say, I cannot help it. Things flash across me.
[6:16] Speaker 1: That peculiarity has been passed on to me in full strength.
[6:20] Speaker 1: It has often stood me in good stead, it has
[6:23] Speaker 1: sometimes played me sad tricks, and it has always been
[6:28] Speaker 1: a danger. But after all, if my time were to
[6:31] Speaker 1: come over again, there is nothing I would less willingly
[6:34] Speaker 1: part with than my inheritance of mother. Wit Zelle Huxley
[6:39] Speaker 1: was raised in an Anglican family. By the time he
[6:41] Speaker 1: was a teenager, he was starting to question religion, and
[6:45] Speaker 1: is often described as having aligned with the dissenters of
[6:48] Speaker 1: nineteenth century England, who rebelled against the dogma of the
[6:52] Speaker 1: Church of England and sought their own path. Throughout his life,
[6:56] Speaker 1: Huxley moved farther and farther away from religion as he
[7:00] Speaker 1: examined its place in the human social structure and viewed
[7:04] Speaker 1: it from a progressively more scientific lens. When he was thirteen,
[7:08] Speaker 1: Huxley was apprenticed to John Charles Cook, a doctor who
[7:12] Speaker 1: was also his sister Ellen's husband. Encyclopedia Britannica described Cook
[7:17] Speaker 1: as a medical materialist, meaning someone who believes that all maladies,
[7:22] Speaker 1: including psychological ones, traced back to a physical problem, but
[7:27] Speaker 1: Holly didn't find much about Cook anywhere to really verify that.
[7:32] Speaker 1: Huxley didn't stay with Cook for long, though, and eventually
[7:36] Speaker 1: moved on to a different apprenticeship in London with a
[7:39] Speaker 1: doctor who served the city's poor. But Huxley acknowledged that
[7:43] Speaker 1: medicine in terms of actually treating patients had never been
[7:47] Speaker 1: a passion for him. He was really just interested in
[7:50] Speaker 1: physiology and was trying to find a way out of poverty. Yeah,
[7:55] Speaker 1: it's said that he was really very struck by the
[7:59] Speaker 1: horrible soircumstances that London's poor were living in, and that
[8:03] Speaker 1: part of his apprenticeship really impacted the way he thought
[8:07] Speaker 1: about education for the rest of his life and what.
[8:10] Speaker 2: He could do to help people.
[8:12] Speaker 1: Huxley described once going to an autopsy with his friends
[8:16] Speaker 1: as a boy drawn near because he was interested in physiology,
[8:20] Speaker 1: and he described what he called dissection poisoning, although in
[8:25] Speaker 1: this account where he talks about it, he says that
[8:27] Speaker 1: he didn't cut himself in any way like there was
[8:30] Speaker 1: no place for anything kind of dangerous to enter his
[8:34] Speaker 1: skin or his blood stream. But even so he didn't
[8:38] Speaker 1: get better. He continued to get sick, and he describes
[8:41] Speaker 1: having to go to the country to a farm to
[8:44] Speaker 1: get better, stating quote, I soon recovered, but for years
[8:48] Speaker 1: I suffered from occasional paroxysms of internal pain. And from
[8:52] Speaker 1: that time my constant friend hypochondriacal dyspepsia commenced his half
[8:57] Speaker 1: century of co tendancy of my flesh Lee Tabernacle. At
[9:01] Speaker 1: the age of seventeen, Huxley had acquired enough knowledge and
[9:05] Speaker 1: the ability to apply it that he was given a
[9:08] Speaker 1: scholarship to study medicine. This was through the charing Cross
[9:12] Speaker 1: Hospital at London University, and Huxley met this opportunity with enthusiasm.
[9:17] Speaker 1: He won a gold medal for his achievement in anatomy
[9:20] Speaker 1: and physiology from the school. Just after Huxley's graduation from
[9:25] Speaker 1: London University in eighteen forty five, he made his first
[9:28] Speaker 1: mark on the scientific world through his observations of hair
[9:32] Speaker 1: follicles under a microscope. He identified a layer between the
[9:36] Speaker 1: outer layer and the interior cuticle that gives hair its
[9:40] Speaker 1: strength by connecting keratin filaments, and that is now known
[9:44] Speaker 1: as Huxley's Layer. We will talk about Huxley's next somewhat
[9:49] Speaker 1: surprising career move after we pause for a sponsor break.
[10:02] Speaker 1: In eighteen forty six, Thomas Huxley joined the Royal Navy.
[10:06] Speaker 1: This was, by his account, something one of his friends
[10:10] Speaker 1: encouraged him to do so. He had graduated from medical school,
[10:14] Speaker 1: but he was still too young to become a member
[10:16] Speaker 1: of the College of Surgeons, and he needed some kind
[10:19] Speaker 1: of income, so his friends suggested that he write to
[10:22] Speaker 1: the Director General for the Medical Service of the Navy,
[10:25] Speaker 1: Sir William Burnett. And Huxley actually thought this was way
[10:29] Speaker 1: too forward, but he was desperate enough that he did
[10:32] Speaker 1: it anyway, and to his surprise, Burnett asked him to meet,
[10:36] Speaker 1: and after a brief interview, Huxley was in the Navy
[10:40] Speaker 1: because of his medical background. He was assigned first to
[10:42] Speaker 1: Haslar Hospital and then several months later to the HMS
[10:46] Speaker 1: Rattlesnake as the ship's assistant surgeon. The Rattlesnake had orders
[10:51] Speaker 1: to embark on a multi year mission to the South Pacific.
[10:54] Speaker 1: Huxley describes this time on this journey as exceptionally rough,
[10:59] Speaker 1: but he also he said it was really good for him,
[11:01] Speaker 1: stating quote, it was good for me to live under
[11:04] Speaker 1: sharp discipline, to be down on the realities of existence
[11:07] Speaker 1: by living on bare necessities, to find out how extremely
[11:11] Speaker 1: well worth living life seemed to be when one woke
[11:14] Speaker 1: up from a night's rest on a soft plank, with
[11:17] Speaker 1: the sky for canopy and cocoa, and weevily biscuit the
[11:20] Speaker 1: soul prospect for breakfast, and more especially to learn to
[11:24] Speaker 1: work for the sake of what I got for myself
[11:27] Speaker 1: out of it, even if it all went to the
[11:29] Speaker 1: bottom and I along with it. The Rattlesnake was on
[11:33] Speaker 1: a surveying mission, and in addition to fulfilling his daily
[11:36] Speaker 1: work duties, Huxley took on a side project. He studied
[11:40] Speaker 1: sea anemones and jellyfish throughout the voyage, and he compiled
[11:45] Speaker 1: his findings into a paper that he sent to the
[11:47] Speaker 1: Royal Society in eighteen forty nine.
[11:49] Speaker 2: That paper was titled on.
[11:51] Speaker 1: The Anatomy and the Affinities of the Family of the Medusa,
[11:56] Speaker 1: but he never heard anything back from the Society. Upon
[11:59] Speaker 1: his return to London in eighteen fifty he was very
[12:02] Speaker 1: surprised to learn that his paper had been received, published
[12:05] Speaker 1: and lauded by the scientific community. Huxley also came home
[12:10] Speaker 1: an engaged man. While he was on that journey, he
[12:13] Speaker 1: met a young woman while the ship was docked in Sydney, Australia.
[12:16] Speaker 1: Her name was Henrietta Ann Heathorne. The two of them
[12:20] Speaker 1: fell in love and they agreed to be married. But
[12:22] Speaker 1: when the ship left, it wasn't like Henrietta could just
[12:25] Speaker 1: go with them, so she agreed to wait for Thomas
[12:28] Speaker 1: in Sydney until the time came that they could be together.
[12:32] Speaker 1: In eighteen fifty one, because of his paper on anemones
[12:36] Speaker 1: and other critters, Huxley became a Fellow of the Royal Society.
[12:40] Speaker 1: He continued his naval career for a while, but he
[12:43] Speaker 1: was also always working on his own research projects. A
[12:47] Speaker 1: year after he became a fellow, he submitted a paper
[12:49] Speaker 1: on invertebrate animals, and he won a gold medal for it.
[12:53] Speaker 1: Huxley had a couple of factors leading him away from
[12:56] Speaker 1: his military career in the early eighteen fifties. For one,
[13:00] Speaker 1: he was feeling ready to transition into research being his
[13:04] Speaker 1: full time occupation. For another, there were arguments between the
[13:08] Speaker 1: Admiralty and the scientific community about whether the Navy should
[13:12] Speaker 1: pay for some of the printing costs of Huxley's work.
[13:16] Speaker 2: That was not out of the blue.
[13:17] Speaker 1: The military had made promises that they would support and
[13:21] Speaker 1: encourage officers doing scientific work, but after several years of
[13:25] Speaker 1: back and forth, the Navy, according to Huxley quote cut
[13:29] Speaker 1: short the discussion by ordering me to join a ship,
[13:32] Speaker 1: which thing I declined to do. So he was on
[13:35] Speaker 1: his own in London without a job, and if he
[13:38] Speaker 1: had been born into a wealthy family, this is the
[13:40] Speaker 1: point where he could have just set up his own
[13:42] Speaker 1: lab and dedicated himself to research while living off the
[13:45] Speaker 1: family fortune. A lot of people we've talked about on
[13:48] Speaker 1: the show have done just that, but Huxley needed a job,
[13:51] Speaker 1: and leaving the stability of the Navy was actually a
[13:54] Speaker 1: pretty risky move. But he didn't only want to fund
[13:58] Speaker 1: his research. He also wanted to make enough money that
[14:01] Speaker 1: he could send for Henrietta and bring her to London
[14:04] Speaker 1: so that they could start.
[14:05] Speaker 2: A life together.
[14:07] Speaker 1: Huxley had already made a name for himself, and because
[14:10] Speaker 1: of that name, he landed two jobs. One was as
[14:14] Speaker 1: a curator at the Museum of practical geography. The other
[14:18] Speaker 1: was a professor position at the Royal School of Mines,
[14:21] Speaker 1: where he was to teach paleontology and natural history. This
[14:27] Speaker 1: was not a job he actually wanted because he was
[14:29] Speaker 1: not an expert at paleontology, so he accepted the job provisionally.
[14:34] Speaker 1: He wrote that he told his new employer quote that
[14:37] Speaker 1: I did not care for fossils, and that I should
[14:40] Speaker 1: give up natural history as soon as I could get
[14:42] Speaker 1: a physiological post. But I held the office for thirty
[14:46] Speaker 1: one years, and a large part of my work has
[14:48] Speaker 1: been paleontological. Neither of Huxley's new positions was especially high paying,
[14:54] Speaker 1: but the two combined meant that he could finally send
[14:56] Speaker 1: for Henrietta, and they got married in eighteen fifty five. Yeah,
[15:00] Speaker 1: they were, by all accounts, very very happy together. In
[15:04] Speaker 1: his thirties, Huxley committed himself fully to promoting the new
[15:08] Speaker 1: ideas arising in science, and this often meant that he
[15:12] Speaker 1: was at odds with the establishment, because so much of
[15:15] Speaker 1: thought and culture in Britain, Europe and the US was
[15:19] Speaker 1: built around biblical ideology, and a lot of the emerging
[15:22] Speaker 1: science was very counter to that. This was a period
[15:26] Speaker 1: of time when scientists were really focusing on the origin
[15:29] Speaker 1: of humans, which even today gets people riled up sometimes,
[15:32] Speaker 1: so you can imagine how contentious it could be for
[15:35] Speaker 1: an idea like evolution to be introduced in nineteenth century England.
[15:40] Speaker 1: But though Huxley was eager to understand where human life began,
[15:45] Speaker 1: that didn't mean that he supported all scientific ideas that
[15:48] Speaker 1: explored that topic. In eighteen oh nine, French naturalist Jean
[15:53] Speaker 1: Baptiste Lamarque had published a book titled Philosophy Zoologice. That
[15:58] Speaker 1: book built on work that Lamarck had been doing for years,
[16:02] Speaker 1: and it laid out the origin of life as having
[16:05] Speaker 1: been the result of spontaneous generation with regards to the
[16:09] Speaker 1: simplest forms of life, and then suggested that two drivers
[16:13] Speaker 1: led to more complex forms of life. One was what
[16:16] Speaker 1: he called the power of life, which he described as
[16:20] Speaker 1: a natural progression toward increased complexity. The other was an
[16:24] Speaker 1: environmental effect. The needs of an organism's environment would cause
[16:28] Speaker 1: them to adopt various behaviors for survival, and those behaviors
[16:33] Speaker 1: would change their bodies, and those changes would be inherited
[16:37] Speaker 1: by their offspring. The classic example that he used for
[16:40] Speaker 1: this was giraffes. He made the case that as they
[16:43] Speaker 1: stretched to reach high leaves in trees for food, their
[16:46] Speaker 1: necks elongated, and that that elongation made it into subsequent generations.
[16:52] Speaker 1: Of course that was incorrect, but it was the beginning
[16:56] Speaker 1: of scientific discourse about evolution, and writing several decades later
[17:02] Speaker 1: about it, thought that Lamark had some really interesting ideas,
[17:06] Speaker 1: but that he was not correct in his assessment, and
[17:09] Speaker 1: that he had made some leaps that were not really
[17:11] Speaker 1: supported by any kind of scientific evidence. He wrote, quote
[17:15] Speaker 1: Lamarck sagacious, as many of his views were mingled them
[17:19] Speaker 1: with so much that was crude and even absurd, as
[17:22] Speaker 1: to neutralize the benefit which his originality might have affected
[17:26] Speaker 1: had he been a more sober and cautious thinker. In
[17:29] Speaker 1: eighteen forty four, Robert Chambers published a book titled Vestiges
[17:34] Speaker 1: of the Natural History of Creation. No one knew that
[17:38] Speaker 1: it was Chambers who wrote it. The book was published anonymously,
[17:42] Speaker 1: and Chambers, who was a Scottish publisher, was not revealed
[17:45] Speaker 1: to be the author until forty years later. He had
[17:48] Speaker 1: withheld his name because he knew it would be controversial
[17:51] Speaker 1: and he didn't want the potential fearer to destroy his livelihood.
[17:55] Speaker 1: He was really correct to be worried about this. This
[17:58] Speaker 1: was not a case where he was scientists who had
[18:00] Speaker 1: discovered something so new that it would break people's understanding
[18:04] Speaker 1: of the world. He was parroting things that a bunch
[18:07] Speaker 1: of other people had claimed and kind of combining them
[18:10] Speaker 1: into one scientific history of the world from the beginning
[18:14] Speaker 1: to the point where humans appeared.
[18:16] Speaker 2: And the work repeated a lot.
[18:17] Speaker 1: Of things that the scientific community had already dismissed as
[18:21] Speaker 1: incorrect and in some cases even silly.
[18:24] Speaker 2: Yeah, it was like he did no vetting.
[18:26] Speaker 1: He read the internet and said I did my research,
[18:29] Speaker 1: and he wrote one big paper about it, and then
[18:31] Speaker 1: everyone was like, oh my dude, that's not it.
[18:34] Speaker 2: No, nope.
[18:35] Speaker 1: Uh. Huxley's writing about this work is frequently described as scathing.
[18:40] Speaker 1: Scathing is the word almost everyone uses, and that is
[18:43] Speaker 1: really pretty accurate. He wrote, quote, we grudged no man
[18:47] Speaker 1: either the glory or the prophet to be obtained from Charlotteanery.
[18:50] Speaker 1: And we can hardly expect that those who are so
[18:53] Speaker 1: ignorant of science as to be misled by the vestiges
[18:56] Speaker 1: will read what we have to say upon the subject.
[18:59] Speaker 1: But a book like a weed acquire an importance by
[19:03] Speaker 1: neglect which it could have attained in no other mode.
[19:06] Speaker 1: And therefore it becomes our somewhat unpleasant duty to devote
[19:10] Speaker 1: a few of our pages to an examination of some
[19:13] Speaker 1: of the leading points of this once attractive and still
[19:16] Speaker 1: notorious work of fiction. Indeed, we feel the more called
[19:20] Speaker 1: upon to undertake this criticism at present, since, as we
[19:24] Speaker 1: shall see, the vestigiarian has bolstered up his case by
[19:28] Speaker 1: the use of names and authorities which were justifiable might
[19:32] Speaker 1: give a certain value to his statements. But then, in
[19:36] Speaker 1: eighteen fifty nine, Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species,
[19:40] Speaker 1: which changed science forever, and it became a pivotal work
[19:43] Speaker 1: in Huxley's life and career. Unlike the Lamarck and Chambers
[19:48] Speaker 1: writing on evolution, Darwin's work captured Huxley's attention, and that
[19:53] Speaker 1: started before it was ever published. Darwin had brought the
[19:56] Speaker 1: work to Huxley for review before it went to print,
[19:59] Speaker 1: and Huxley had made an in depth study of the manuscript.
[20:03] Speaker 1: Andy felt that the reasoning and science of natural selection
[20:06] Speaker 1: as outlined in Darwin's work really stood up the reason
[20:11] Speaker 1: why Huxley got the nickname of Darwin's bulldog was because
[20:14] Speaker 1: he was comfortable embracing the conflict around this controversial writing
[20:18] Speaker 1: and just towing up with the detractors.
[20:21] Speaker 2: But Darwin was not Yeah.
[20:23] Speaker 1: It was like Darwin was like, I don't want to
[20:25] Speaker 1: fight about this, and Huxley was like, oh, I will
[20:27] Speaker 1: bring it off. We are going to talk about some
[20:30] Speaker 1: of these debates after we hear from the sponsors that
[20:33] Speaker 1: keep stuff you missed in history class going. Huxley got
[20:46] Speaker 1: into a lot of public debates about Darwin's writing, and
[20:49] Speaker 1: the most famous of those was a formal debate staged
[20:52] Speaker 1: at Oxford University on June thirtieth, eighteen sixty. It has
[20:56] Speaker 1: actually come to be known as the Great Debate, and
[20:59] Speaker 1: this event was part of the ceremony to open the
[21:02] Speaker 1: new University Museum, and it pitted Huxley against Samuel Wilberforce,
[21:07] Speaker 1: who is the Bishop of Oxford. Wilberforce was a fellow
[21:11] Speaker 1: of the Royal Society in addition to being a leader
[21:13] Speaker 1: in the Anglican Church, so it wasn't like he didn't
[21:15] Speaker 1: know about talking about science. He was a very strong
[21:19] Speaker 1: public speaker and he was there to defend creation as
[21:22] Speaker 1: it is portrayed in the Bible as the true origin
[21:25] Speaker 1: of man. There is actually no full detailed account of
[21:30] Speaker 1: how the debate played out that evening. I sure wish
[21:33] Speaker 1: there were, and I know I'm not the only one,
[21:36] Speaker 1: But there is a moment that has lived on in
[21:38] Speaker 1: accounts of the debate and has been told by many people.
[21:41] Speaker 1: It was written about by a lot of people that
[21:43] Speaker 1: were there. And this moment is one in which Wilberforce
[21:48] Speaker 1: tries to throw the theory of evolution in Huxley's face
[21:52] Speaker 1: by suggesting that if he believes this, that means he
[21:55] Speaker 1: has to acknowledge that one of his forebears must have
[21:57] Speaker 1: been an ape. And Huxley Famesley replied, quote, if then
[22:02] Speaker 1: the question is put to me whether I would rather
[22:04] Speaker 1: have a miserable ape for a grandfather, or a man
[22:07] Speaker 1: highly endowed by nature and possessed of great means of influence,
[22:11] Speaker 1: and yet employs these faculties and that influence for the
[22:15] Speaker 1: purpose of introducing ridicule into a grave scientific discussion. I
[22:20] Speaker 1: unhesitatingly affirm my preference for the ape. You'll see other
[22:25] Speaker 1: variations of that sentiment that are written a little bit differently,
[22:28] Speaker 1: because again we're getting them through everybody's secondhand accounts, but
[22:33] Speaker 1: they all say essentially the same thing, like they're very
[22:35] Speaker 1: pro ape. The room where that debate took place and
[22:39] Speaker 1: where Wilberforce is recognized as having kind of gotten the
[22:42] Speaker 1: SmackDown is known as the Huxley Room today, and it
[22:45] Speaker 1: houses more than one million insect specimens. Huxley's story and
[22:50] Speaker 1: his writing also offer up an opportunity to sort of
[22:53] Speaker 1: set the record straight regarding humanity's place and the order
[22:57] Speaker 1: of things and what Darwin did and didn't say about it.
[23:02] Speaker 1: A lot of people who argue against the idea that
[23:05] Speaker 1: humanity and apes share a common ancestor kind of blame
[23:09] Speaker 1: that idea on Darwin, when it was really Huxley who
[23:13] Speaker 1: went hard on it. Darwin's writing on the origin of
[23:17] Speaker 1: species did not ever make the leap to saying anything
[23:21] Speaker 1: about the humans and this discussion of various species having
[23:25] Speaker 1: common ancestors. He literally puts off the question, including it
[23:29] Speaker 1: as an example of something that will likely be researched later.
[23:34] Speaker 1: He states quote in the distant future, I see open
[23:37] Speaker 1: fields for far more important researches. Psychology will be based
[23:42] Speaker 1: on a new foundation that of the necessary acquirement of
[23:45] Speaker 1: each mental power and capacity by gradation, light will be
[23:49] Speaker 1: thrown on the origin of man and his history.
[23:53] Speaker 2: He would eventually write.
[23:55] Speaker 1: About humankind's origins, but not for more than a decade
[23:59] Speaker 1: after the Origin of species. Yeah. At that point he
[24:02] Speaker 1: is kind of building on what Huxley was about to
[24:04] Speaker 1: put forward, because Huxley, unlike Darwin, was willing to jump
[24:09] Speaker 1: into the fray regarding humankind's evolution. Four years after Darwin's
[24:13] Speaker 1: book came out, Huxley published Evidence as to Man's place
[24:17] Speaker 1: in nature, and in it he makes the case that
[24:20] Speaker 1: humans and grade age should be in the same taxonomical class,
[24:23] Speaker 1: namely mammalia. He knew this was going to be difficult
[24:27] Speaker 1: for people to accept, and he addressed it in the work,
[24:30] Speaker 1: and he suggests in the writing that we pretend we
[24:32] Speaker 1: are from another planet and observing humans as a specimen
[24:36] Speaker 1: without our own baggage, to make all of these ideas
[24:39] Speaker 1: easier to accept. Writing quote, bearing this obvious course of
[24:43] Speaker 1: zoological reasoning in mind, let us endeavor for a moment
[24:47] Speaker 1: to disconnect our thinking selves from the mask of humanity.
[24:51] Speaker 1: Let us imagine ourselves scientific saturnians. If you will fairly
[24:55] Speaker 1: acquainted with such animals as now inhabit the Earth, and
[24:58] Speaker 1: employed in discussing the relations they bear to a new
[25:01] Speaker 1: and singular, erect and featherless biped which some enterprising traveler,
[25:07] Speaker 1: overcoming the difficulties of space and gravitation, has brought from
[25:11] Speaker 1: that distant planet for our inspection, well preserved, maybe in
[25:15] Speaker 1: a cask of rum, we should all at once agree
[25:19] Speaker 1: upon placing him among the mammalian vertebrates, and his lower jaw,
[25:23] Speaker 1: his molars, and his brain would leave no room for
[25:26] Speaker 1: doubting the systematic position of the new genus among those
[25:30] Speaker 1: mammals whose young are nourished during gestation by means of
[25:34] Speaker 1: a placenta, or what are called the placental mammals. So
[25:38] Speaker 1: he's basically like, just pretend you don't know you're a
[25:40] Speaker 1: human and you're looking at this very objectively, it's so
[25:43] Speaker 1: obvious they're connected. Although Huxley was promoting concepts that he
[25:48] Speaker 1: knew were going to cause a lot of controversy and disdain,
[25:51] Speaker 1: particularly from religious quarters, he viewed even that conflict as
[25:56] Speaker 1: a necessary step in moving humankind's understanding of the world forward.
[26:01] Speaker 2: In the late.
[26:01] Speaker 1: Eighteen fifties and early eighteen sixties, Huxley was examining the
[26:05] Speaker 1: silty deep sea mud from the floor of the Atlantic
[26:08] Speaker 1: Ocean when he noticed something that he thought might be important. Incidentally,
[26:14] Speaker 1: that mud sample was collected by the vessel HMS Cyclops
[26:18] Speaker 1: while it was surveying for the best route for the
[26:20] Speaker 1: Transatlantic telegraph cable. We talked about that on the show
[26:24] Speaker 1: all the way back in November of twenty sixteen, and
[26:27] Speaker 1: while the Cyclops was still at sea, the mud that
[26:30] Speaker 1: it gathered was examined under a microscope and it was
[26:33] Speaker 1: seen to be quote full of minute shells.
[26:36] Speaker 2: So by the time.
[26:37] Speaker 1: Huxley had it, there was already some speculation about it
[26:40] Speaker 1: having some kind of minuscule forms of life in it.
[26:44] Speaker 1: That was something that everybody involved was really excited about.
[26:48] Speaker 1: Huxley dubbed these cocoliths, and that was a name that stuck.
[26:53] Speaker 1: There was not a huge surge of research about them, though,
[26:56] Speaker 1: and they seemed to drop out of the consciousness of
[26:58] Speaker 1: the scientific community. But then in eighteen sixty eight Huxley
[27:03] Speaker 1: revisited the mud, which had been preserved in a jar
[27:06] Speaker 1: for more than a decade at that point, and at
[27:08] Speaker 1: that point it appeared that there might be a living
[27:11] Speaker 1: substance in the mud Huxley observed what he described as
[27:16] Speaker 1: quote innumerable lumps of a transparent gelatinous substance that had
[27:21] Speaker 1: not been there before. Then he examined these lumps, and
[27:25] Speaker 1: he found that they contained cocoliths as well as other
[27:28] Speaker 1: foreign bodies and granules. Through testing, he came to the
[27:33] Speaker 1: conclusion that he described in his paper about it, which
[27:36] Speaker 1: was titled on some organisms living at great depths in
[27:39] Speaker 1: the North Atlantic Ocean, and he described it this way.
[27:42] Speaker 1: Quote the granule heaps and the transparent gelatinous matter in
[27:46] Speaker 1: which they are embedded represent masses of protoplasm. Take away
[27:51] Speaker 1: the cysts which characterized the radiolaria, and a dead spherozoum
[27:55] Speaker 1: would very nearly resemble one of the masses of this
[27:58] Speaker 1: deep sea ersk climb, which which must I think be
[28:01] Speaker 1: regarded as a new form of those simple animated beings
[28:05] Speaker 1: which have recently been so well described by Heckel in
[28:08] Speaker 1: his monography der Moneran. I propose to confer upon this
[28:13] Speaker 1: new owner the generic name of Bathhibius, and to call
[28:16] Speaker 1: it after the eminent professor of zoology in the University
[28:19] Speaker 1: of Jena, B.
[28:21] Speaker 2: Hakeli I.
[28:22] Speaker 1: The scientist that he's talking about there, and for whom
[28:25] Speaker 1: he wanted to name this was Ernst Heckel, who was
[28:28] Speaker 1: very flattered by this situation. Bathhibius Heclei was entered into
[28:33] Speaker 1: the zoological record that same year, and it became the
[28:37] Speaker 1: source of a lot of scientific interest as researchers tried
[28:40] Speaker 1: to analyze its place in the understanding of the origin
[28:44] Speaker 1: of life. Additional samples were collected and similar findings were
[28:48] Speaker 1: made with them until the expedition of the HMS Challenger,
[28:52] Speaker 1: which began in eighteen seventy two. A chemist named Buchanan
[28:56] Speaker 1: was on board the ship, and he conducted some experiments
[28:59] Speaker 1: of his own on the four year voyage. He had
[29:02] Speaker 1: noticed that their samples that were kept in plane seawater
[29:06] Speaker 1: did not form globules like Huxley's samples had, but when
[29:11] Speaker 1: he added alcohol to the seawater, it spawned a precipitate.
[29:15] Speaker 1: What Huxley had found was not protoplasm spawning life. He
[29:20] Speaker 1: had just misidentified a chemical reaction of calcium sulfate or
[29:24] Speaker 1: gypsum combining with alcohol. Who when Huxley was informed of
[29:30] Speaker 1: this information, bless him, He did not get indignant, He
[29:34] Speaker 1: did not get in a big fight about it. He
[29:37] Speaker 1: wrote a letter to the editor of Nature for publication
[29:40] Speaker 1: in which he acknowledged his embarrassing error with very good humor,
[29:44] Speaker 1: stating quote, if you have read your Shakespeare, you would
[29:47] Speaker 1: know what it is to mean by eating a leak. Well,
[29:50] Speaker 1: every honest man has to do that now and then.
[29:52] Speaker 1: And I assure you that if eaten fairly and without grimaces,
[29:56] Speaker 1: the devouring of that herb has a very wholesome cooling
[29:59] Speaker 1: effect on the blood, particularly in people of sanguine temperament.
[30:03] Speaker 1: He also stated, my poor dear Bthhibius appears likely to
[30:07] Speaker 1: turn out to be a blunderubus. And he stated that
[30:11] Speaker 1: he intended to always set the record straight at every
[30:14] Speaker 1: opportunity if anyone was walking around with the misinformation that
[30:18] Speaker 1: he had promoted, and he did that he'd lived that
[30:21] Speaker 1: out the entirity of his life. While he was absolutely
[30:24] Speaker 1: willing to admit this error, what he would not do
[30:27] Speaker 1: was let other people use his gaff to try to
[30:30] Speaker 1: discredit science. George Douglas Campbell, the Duke of Argyle, was
[30:35] Speaker 1: particularly enthusiastic about using this mistake to claim that all
[30:40] Speaker 1: of the theory of evolution was ridiculous. Huxley responded by saying, quote,
[30:45] Speaker 1: the most considerable difference I note among men is not
[30:48] Speaker 1: in their readiness to fall into error, but in their
[30:52] Speaker 1: readiness to acknowledge these inevitable lapses. Thomas Huxley, who had
[30:57] Speaker 1: gained his vast knowledge through self directed study, believed very
[31:02] Speaker 1: deeply that education was for everyone, and he used his
[31:05] Speaker 1: position as he became a well recognized intellectual, to give
[31:10] Speaker 1: other people an opportunity for education, and in a way
[31:13] Speaker 1: that actually tried to decrease the divide between intellectuals and
[31:17] Speaker 1: average people. In the eighteen fifties, he started a project
[31:21] Speaker 1: called the Workingman Lectures, which sought to demystify science and
[31:26] Speaker 1: showed that it was for everyone. These were talks that
[31:29] Speaker 1: were open to anyone who wished to attend, and they
[31:31] Speaker 1: were particularly targeted to adults who, like him, did not
[31:35] Speaker 1: get a formal education in their youth. And he laid
[31:38] Speaker 1: out in really easy to understand terms the ideas that
[31:41] Speaker 1: were being bandied about by the Royal Society, and he
[31:44] Speaker 1: made clear to any attendees that science was really just
[31:47] Speaker 1: a matter of observing things, questioning them, and examining evidence.
[31:52] Speaker 1: His advocacy for education for all was really for all
[31:55] Speaker 1: not just for men, but also for women. In eighteen seventy,
[32:00] Speaker 1: he was one of the founders of the London School
[32:02] Speaker 1: of Medicine for Women. This effort was in conjunction with
[32:06] Speaker 1: names that have appeared on our show before, including Sofia,
[32:10] Speaker 1: Jex Blake and Elizabeth Blackwell, the doctor not the botanical
[32:14] Speaker 1: illustrator that we just talked about. They were also both
[32:17] Speaker 1: involved in the school's founding. Additionally, he helped put together
[32:21] Speaker 1: curricula for teachers to teach science so that educators in
[32:24] Speaker 1: small towns and more rural areas could benefit from the
[32:28] Speaker 1: same information that was readily available in the cities. At
[32:32] Speaker 1: the age of sixty eight, Huxley published Evolution and Ethics,
[32:36] Speaker 1: a book which sought to lay out ways that believing
[32:38] Speaker 1: in the information that science could show, rather than just
[32:41] Speaker 1: following religious faith, did not mean that morality was left
[32:44] Speaker 1: out of the equation. Huxley made the case that ethics
[32:48] Speaker 1: were a vital part of humankind's survival, and that if
[32:51] Speaker 1: everyone is treated ethically, both the individual and the larger
[32:55] Speaker 1: group are going to benefit and have a better outcome.
[32:58] Speaker 1: Huxley is also often credited with coining the term agnostic,
[33:02] Speaker 1: and he was definitely using it in his writing by
[33:04] Speaker 1: the eighteen sixties. Throughout his life he often wrote about
[33:08] Speaker 1: the unknowability of a supreme being and how justice with
[33:12] Speaker 1: science a person should look at available evidence when assessing
[33:15] Speaker 1: matters of morality. In an eighteen eighty nine essay titled
[33:19] Speaker 1: Agnosticism in Christianity, he wrote, quote, the extent of the
[33:23] Speaker 1: region of the uncertain, the number of the problems the
[33:26] Speaker 1: investigation of which ends in a verdict of not proven,
[33:30] Speaker 1: will vary according to the knowledge and the intellectual habits
[33:33] Speaker 1: of the individual agnostic. I do not very much care
[33:37] Speaker 1: to speak of anything as unknowable. What I am sure
[33:41] Speaker 1: about is that there are many topics about which I
[33:43] Speaker 1: know nothing, and which, so far as I can see,
[33:46] Speaker 1: are out of reach of my faculties. He had also
[33:50] Speaker 1: included a reference to a footnote after the word unknowable,
[33:54] Speaker 1: which is sort of charming. He says in that footnote quote,
[33:59] Speaker 1: I confess that long ago I once or twice made
[34:01] Speaker 1: this mistake, even to the waste of a capital you
[34:06] Speaker 1: uh and you know, said in eighteen ninety three. So
[34:08] Speaker 1: basically he went from the unknowable being a capitalized thing
[34:12] Speaker 1: as being you know, kind of a reference to some
[34:15] Speaker 1: sort of deity to be like, it doesn't even get
[34:17] Speaker 1: a capital letter for me anymore. The last dozen years
[34:22] Speaker 1: of Huxley's life included a series of challenges. His daughter
[34:25] Speaker 1: Marian started to have mental health issues. She's described as
[34:29] Speaker 1: having gone mad, although the specifics are not very clear.
[34:34] Speaker 1: This happened as Huxley was already stretched a bit thin
[34:37] Speaker 1: after touring North America giving lectures about the connections between
[34:41] Speaker 1: birds and dinosaurs, and he was still continuously engaged in
[34:45] Speaker 1: debates about science. He was basically living with a lot
[34:48] Speaker 1: of stress, and Marian's mental illness really seemed to have
[34:52] Speaker 1: kind of broken him. Yeah, he lived his life in
[34:55] Speaker 1: a constant online argument. Basically, everyone was always coming for
[34:58] Speaker 1: him because they knew he was the mouthpiece of evolution
[35:01] Speaker 1: and evolutionary science. He had been made President of the
[35:04] Speaker 1: Royal Society in eighteen eighty three, but he resigned that
[35:07] Speaker 1: post in eighteen eighty five as his family faced the
[35:10] Speaker 1: strain of what was going on with Marion. He also
[35:13] Speaker 1: stopped lecturing, and at that point the Prime Minister, in
[35:15] Speaker 1: recognition of Huxley's lifetime of work, gave him a state
[35:19] Speaker 1: pension of twelve hundred pounds a year. His health really
[35:23] Speaker 1: began to decline by the start of the eighteen nineties.
[35:26] Speaker 1: He had issues with his lungs in his heart, and
[35:28] Speaker 1: he moved to the seaside in Sussex in the hopes
[35:30] Speaker 1: that getting out of London would help. London was having
[35:33] Speaker 1: a very bad small problem at the time. Thomas Huxley
[35:36] Speaker 1: died of heart failure on June twenty ninth, eighteen ninety five.
[35:40] Speaker 1: In nineteen oh seven, Huxley's widow, Henrietta, published a book
[35:44] Speaker 1: of Thomas's writings that she had selected. It was titled
[35:47] Speaker 1: Aphorisms and Reflections. She wrote the preface to it, and
[35:52] Speaker 1: no doubt accidentally bolstered this misunderstanding about what Huxley had
[35:58] Speaker 1: actually said about the origin of man. But it's a
[36:01] Speaker 1: lovely tribute to him.
[36:02] Speaker 2: Quote.
[36:03] Speaker 1: Thomas Henry Huxley may come to be remembered by the
[36:06] Speaker 1: public merely as a man who held that we were
[36:10] Speaker 1: descended from the ape, or as the apostle of Darwinism,
[36:14] Speaker 1: or as the man who worsted Bishop Wilberforce at Oxford
[36:19] Speaker 1: to prevent such limitation and to afford more intimate and
[36:23] Speaker 1: valuable reasons for the remembrance of this man of science
[36:26] Speaker 1: and lover of his fellow men. I have gathered together
[36:29] Speaker 1: passages on widely differing themes. Some of the passages were
[36:33] Speaker 1: picked out for their philosophy, some for their moral guidances,
[36:38] Speaker 1: some for their scientific exposition of natural facts, or for
[36:42] Speaker 1: their insight into social questions. Others for their charms of
[36:46] Speaker 1: imagination are genial humor, and many not the least for
[36:50] Speaker 1: their pure beauty of lucid English writing. I hope that
[36:54] Speaker 1: these selections may attract the attention of the working man
[36:57] Speaker 1: who's caused my husband so ardently espoused, and to whom
[37:02] Speaker 1: he was the first to reveal, by his free lectures,
[37:04] Speaker 1: the loveliness of nature, the many rainbow colored rays of science,
[37:08] Speaker 1: and to show forth to his listeners how all these
[37:12] Speaker 1: glorious rays unite in the one, pure white light of
[37:15] Speaker 1: holy truth. They were both very good writers. Yeah, yeah,
[37:20] Speaker 1: I just feel like hanging out at their house listening
[37:22] Speaker 1: to them speak must have been terrific.
[37:24] Speaker 2: Well, and he.
[37:24] Speaker 1: Thought he was so bad at it because the bees
[37:26] Speaker 1: never visited. But he was a terrific writer. Just in
[37:30] Speaker 1: case you were wondering, writer, Aldus Huxley was Thomas Huxley's grandson.
[37:35] Speaker 1: In fact, several of his grandsons were quite impressive and
[37:38] Speaker 1: continued Huxley's legacy in science. His grandson Andrew Fielding Huxley
[37:43] Speaker 1: won the nineteen sixty three Nobel Prize in Physiology or
[37:47] Speaker 1: Medicine alongside Alan Lloyd Hodgkin and Sir John Carew eccles
[37:51] Speaker 1: quote for their discoveries concerning the ionic mechanisms involved in
[37:55] Speaker 1: excitation and inhibition in the peripheral and central portions of
[38:00] Speaker 1: the nerve cell membrane chip off the old Block. And
[38:02] Speaker 1: his grandson, Julian Sorel Huxley, was UNESCO's first director and
[38:07] Speaker 1: one of the founders of the World Wildlife Fund. So
[38:10] Speaker 1: quite a family to be a part of. Yeah, I
[38:13] Speaker 1: really like him, and boy do I love his writing.
[38:16] Speaker 2: He's so quotable.
[38:17] Speaker 1: I spent a lot of time just reading things he
[38:19] Speaker 1: wrote that really had no place in the podcast. Yeah,
[38:23] Speaker 1: you have some listener mail for us I do. This
[38:26] Speaker 1: is from our listener Melanie, who writes, Hi, First of all,
[38:30] Speaker 1: I love your podcast. My teenager recently asked me a
[38:33] Speaker 1: history question, and when I said I didn't know the
[38:35] Speaker 1: answer and we should look it up, he looked at
[38:36] Speaker 1: me and said, I thought you would have heard about
[38:38] Speaker 1: it in that podcast you listened to. I love to
[38:41] Speaker 1: talk about the things I learn at the dinner table.
[38:43] Speaker 1: I'm not sure my kids love it as much as
[38:45] Speaker 1: I too, though. I am writing because recently you shared
[38:49] Speaker 1: a reader's email about kids and historical clothing, so I
[38:52] Speaker 1: thought it would be fun to share a few of
[38:54] Speaker 1: our family holiday card pictures. Back in twenty seventeen, I
[38:58] Speaker 1: decided I was bored with doing whatever everyone else was
[39:01] Speaker 1: doing for their cards and opted to use my theater
[39:04] Speaker 1: costuming background to be a little creative. Each year, I
[39:07] Speaker 1: choose an era and make historical clothing for my entire family.
[39:11] Speaker 1: I like to make the card look as close to
[39:13] Speaker 1: a card or photograph might have in the time it
[39:16] Speaker 1: is set, or as close to what I imagine they
[39:18] Speaker 1: would do if they had the technology to do it.
[39:21] Speaker 1: It has been a very fun journey. I'm sending you
[39:23] Speaker 1: my three favorite which were hard to choose, as well
[39:25] Speaker 1: as a picture of our frog for pet tax. We
[39:28] Speaker 1: have many pets, but I haven't heard anyone sharing a
[39:30] Speaker 1: frog yet. And Moss, named after Richard Ioaid's character from
[39:34] Speaker 1: The It Crowd, is adorable. Moss is adorable. These pictures
[39:39] Speaker 1: of her family are so stink and cute. The one
[39:42] Speaker 1: that I there were two that I really really love.
[39:43] Speaker 1: I mean, they're all great. One though, is like nineteen
[39:48] Speaker 1: fifties where for everybody and it looks like they're essentially
[39:51] Speaker 1: on the first opening day of Disneyland. It's the cutest
[39:54] Speaker 1: thing you've ever seen in your life. Another is them
[39:57] Speaker 1: in Victorian bathing costs, which is also near and dear
[40:01] Speaker 1: to my heart. And then there's a third one where
[40:04] Speaker 1: they might have been hobbits. I'm not remembering because I
[40:07] Speaker 1: printed them out and I looked at them, but we
[40:09] Speaker 1: have since been on flights that made my brain break
[40:11] Speaker 1: and my print out came out like my printer just
[40:14] Speaker 1: had a fit. But that frog sure is cute. Moss
[40:17] Speaker 1: is real cute. I have not watched the It Crowd
[40:19] Speaker 1: me neither, but I like that frog, and you love frogs.
[40:22] Speaker 1: I just think they're precious.
[40:23] Speaker 2: They are.
[40:24] Speaker 1: If you would like to write to us, you can
[40:26] Speaker 1: do that at History Podcast at.
[40:28] Speaker 2: iHeartRadio dot com.
[40:29] Speaker 1: If you would like to look at the resources we
[40:32] Speaker 1: use to make the show. As I said, there's a
[40:35] Speaker 1: lot of Huxley writing it, and it is all in
[40:36] Speaker 1: the show notes. You can look at that at mistinhistory
[40:39] Speaker 1: dot com. You can subscribe to the show on the
[40:42] Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, or anywhere you listen to your favorite podcasts.
[40:50] Speaker 1: Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
[40:54] Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
[40:59] Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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