20 – Human Evolution to Mars Mission

Episode Summary:

Episode 20 launches straight into big questions, with Kyle and Adam picking up their ongoing thread on human evolution — starting from microscopic life and spiralling all the way to the future of humanity among the stars. They explore classic evolutionary theory, questioning whether humans are truly “special” or simply mobile collections of molecules shaped by chance and time.

The discussion quickly turns inward, examining the idea that the gut may influence the brain more than we realise. From gut instinct and microbiomes to mind-altering spores and fungi, they debate whether bacteria and microorganisms could shape behaviour — and whether this might be the most plausible explanation for a zombie apocalypse.

From there, the episode dives into pandemics, panic buying, media sensationalism, and how fragile modern society might be if systems shut down. They reflect on COVID-era behaviour, fear cycles, and whether humans themselves — not zombies — are the real threat when resources run low.

The conversation then pivots outward to space, survival, and colonisation. Mars, the Moon, terraforming, algae-based oxygen generation, and long-term human expansion all come under scrutiny. They question whether leaving Earth actually solves anything if human nature comes along for the ride.

The episode wraps with a distinctly Continuum-style detour into Elon Musk, alien conspiracies, AI-generated “average humans,” measurement systems, and why nobody can agree on gallons, litres, or miles — before teasing a continued journey toward Mars in the next episode.

Thoughtful, funny, and unapologetically speculative, Episode 20 is classic Continuum: starting with evolution and ending somewhere far beyond Earth.

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Episode Transcription

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And welcome back to the continuum, everybody. My name is Kyle and in the other corner is my good friend Adam. How are you doing? Us?
I am good, mate. You?
Yeah. I’m good. I’m good, thank you. I’m. I’m bits interested as to where human evolution is going to take us in the next.
We’re getting straight into it.
20, 30 years. It’s what I do. Yeah. So.
Unless you’re go forwards, do you want to go back first? Do you like, what do you believe in? Like the how the humans have evolved?

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Well, how far do you want to go back now.
That all the way back. Let’s go all the way back.
Okay. So what’s what’s the current? What’s your understanding of the current theory of where where man came from.
All right. It starts like as a little tiny little microbe. I’m going to call it that evolves into some sort of fish type thing. Like a sperm. Yeah. Like a sperm. Okay. Sperm freeze legs becomes like a nuke on,
On this note, have you played have you played the game spore? Well, the thing it was, it was a small one that Microsoft brought out.
No, I don’t think so.
It was really cool because it was kind of an evolution game where it did exactly this, where you, you start off as like a little microorganism microorganism and you kind of have to start growing and growing and you eat all the other microorganisms and then you start, you know, you want to get defensive. So select horns or you know, and as you kind of evolving, you just go through the next stage eventually kind of go from microorganism all the way through to the space age.
Yeah. As a man.
As whatever man or alien, whatever you want to create. So it was quite cool in that time. You could make whatever you wanted, if you wanted your legs on your head, or if you wanted a head at all, you know? So yeah, why bother? Yeah. But yeah, I think when I. Oh, I wonder if it had stopped from some somewhere.
Yeah, I think so. Yeah. So micro organisms like say. Yeah micro.
I think, I think we now although we probably think of ourselves as special and we think of ourselves as one unique being, I think we are just a conglomerate of molecules and masses that just so that, just in a mobile form, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, I think even even know, like our thoughts that that we’ve got in our brain, you know, we’ve kind of had a lot of and I hear more and more about this, but everyone has thought like, your brain is the center of your thoughts and how things work.
And, you know, the brain drives the rest of the body. Yeah. But people are saying more and more now that they wonder if maybe the gut, you know, your your gut and your gut health is actually what’s driving more of your body than anything else. And, you know, you think of how many microorganisms and that you’ve also got in your gut, in your gut, billions of different bacterias and yeah, everything else kind of evolving in there.
Where have you heard this?
What, like guts?
Well, I mean, like, where have you sort of like heard that people are saying this because I, I’m not so sure.
Okay. Why not?
Well, I think because your brain is, you know, there’s no, like, intelligence in your gut, is there? Or is, I mean, for want of a better word. Yeah. Your brain is what, sort of triggering everything, isn’t it? But then I suppose that’s where gut instinct comes from.
Yeah, exactly. And you think if are bacteria or, you know, let’s even say viruses that can go around, that’s intelligence.
So anything thinking. Yeah.
Well, they can change your state of mind. You know, you hear about these spores. Did you ever hear about these spores? I watched this documentary.
You listened to Rogan give me that. Well, I do, I do listen this. Very good. You heard this on the Rogan podcast. I’m sure I’ve heard this before about the spores. What do they do? They. There’s ants that they take over.
Yes. Yeah. Well, maybe did speak about us on that, but there was there was also a, Netflix documentary where they’re talking about mushrooms and, you know, the impact of mushrooms and all the spores and that. Yeah. And you think if there’s a mushroom that can go in there, or spore that can affect things like ants and it’s going to cause them to do certain actions.
Well, you mean. Yeah, different bacteria can do this. Why? Why couldn’t the bacteria control your mind? Well, how do you know that’s not what’s concerning you?
Yeah, that’s a fair point.
If you eat better, you feel better.
Do you think that’s probably a more plausible way to start a zombie apocalypse? But because it’s always. Was it always. It’s always some sort of like that or something, isn’t it? How do how do most zombie apocalypse is start? I haven’t really thought about it, but they didn’t explain it did they. In in like The Walking Dead or anything?
I don’t know if they did in The Walking Dead thing might have just happened. Yeah. I think there’s a variety of ways. I mean, Resident Evil was pretty much like Covid, wasn’t it? Yeah. Athletes. I was lab.
Yeah. They were they were trying like making some sort of formulas and testing things out on a is all. That was all man made. Whereas I feel like a spore based zombie apocalypse would be more plausible.
Did you see that one movie where I think it was, I want to call it like The Happening or something.
I had a feeling you were going to say that where the trees were the problem.
Yeah, the trees were fixing the people and the.
And the people were killing each other, like film.
So killing myself.
That film.
Sucked so bad.
I remember that was I think that’s what my qomolangma should, I should say, surname my film and, me and my, my went to the cinema to see it. Honestly, we left that cinema right? That was awful. Literally nothing happened. Why were they calling it The happening? Nothing happened. It was terrible. I go had in shame every night.
He did some good movies as well.
But he’s done a lot of crap as well as me, let’s face it.
Yeah, but that’s same as Nick cage. That’s okay. Yeah. We’ll go. Forgive them for coming down so much. Good for the world.
Has he done any good movies?
We’ve been through this.
Yeah, well, we had this this podcast becoming Nick cage obsessed because of me. Every episode he gets adventure.
Did you did you see that? He was supposed to be Superman as well?
Well, we’ve talked we’ve talked about this.
I can’t remember it. So yeah. Okay. I’m not going to raise that again.
Get to that. No, but to yeah you’re going to talk about a happening okay.
So yeah you’re talking about spoilers. Yeah I think spoilers it’s probably a likely way of it happening. Oh yeah. Humans kind of getting infected with with something like that, and then they start kind of attacking each other.
Yeah. I don’t think it’s ever going to reach the point where there’s going to be brain eating things like that maybe. Yeah.
I suppose I don’t know if that’s going to happen, you know, like the zombie apocalypse in that way.
Yeah. I’m thinking of transfer as well.
That’s I think I’m not a scientist. Yeah, but, I would probably say we’re a week away from an apocalypse happening. Yeah. At any given moment. You know what I mean?
Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. But no one really expected the pandemic. Did they know last? No. No one ever expected that. And when do you remember when it first sort of came about is, oh, this isn’t really the sort of conversation people probably want to listen to because we’ve just got we’ve kind of got over it now. It’s years ago when I forgot, you know, when it first started happening over in China, like it was on the news, but no one really thought anything of it until it started sort of spread in.
I was like, oh, this is pretty serious now.
Yeah, yeah, I can I think that was kind of the way the media kind of published.
On it.
Just spun out. And yeah, I mean, for, for the when you look at this, probably for the good or for the best because it keeps people, people informed, you know, if it did go the other way, I think that’s what’s what’s interesting is because it didn’t go the way people initially thought it had gone and it was going to go.
People have forgotten about. It’s like, oh, you know, it’s just even now you get stories, you know, even strip when there was a new infection of strip going around all of a sudden the media puts it out and it’s this big thing.
Again, big panic, widespread panic. So I think.
That’s like but they do it to sensationalize everything, don’t they. Where they kind of go, oh, this is the new Covid. Yeah. Well not really because it’s like I think Covid wasn’t.
Do you think the government would sort of take the heat off them for doing other stupid shit, right.
Yeah. I mean, this is the thought as well, isn’t there? Where the government will do things like this to drag your attention away from something else that’s going on somewhere else.
Brexit at that point.
Yeah. You know, and I mean, it’s pretty Sofia way too.
It was a perfect excuse though isn’t it.
Yeah it is, but when you think how do you remember going I remember going to the shop at one point when Covid kind of it wasn’t even really a thing yet. And I still remember Saints rage, you know, before they closed everything, I said I’m just going to go to the shop, just go get a few essentials, you know, just to make sure that we’ve got enough food.
And even by that point, well, it was late. Like they were there, the shelves were empty, nothing was bought because everyone had panic.
At that point. And it was crazy. I remember going there and and it was, you know, a normal sort of Tuesday, Wednesday night and you’re or it shouldn’t have been busy at all, but it was rammed and people were like screaming, almost like, oh, we’ve yeah, there’s nothing left. What are we going to do? So that’s what we’ve all just chilled out and not gone panic buying in the first place.
It wouldn’t have been an issue exactly.
But that’s that’s why I kind of make that statement, sort of say if you had to think of everything, had to shut down tomorrow. Yeah, I think would be a week away from an apocalypse happening, you know, because people.
Would literally be.
Yeah, they’d be losing it to other people to try to get food and, you know, then then it becomes a mess. I think I’m probably more scared of people than I am of zombies. Yeah, I feel like.
Yeah. Oh yeah, yeah, the.
Zombies are just those like, you know, kind of walking up.
Well, this is the thing. We don’t really know what zombies like. Do you know, have you seen. Is it World War Z? What? What is.
That? As a scary zombies?
Yeah. It’s fast, you know that? Yeah, that’s probably more likely. The case is that people aren’t going to lose their ability to run and stuff if they become zombies.
Well, even at that point, you turn into, like, a wild animal. You’re not going to listen to your brains clear. Oh, I’m tired now. I don’t want to run any further, you know?
So you just keep going.
I want that meal and you’re going to go for it.
Yeah, it’s going to be. It’s going to be crazy when that day comes.
Yeah, well, let’s hope not. So I mean, what’s what’s the other option? Because I think we’ve got to get off this planet. I think the next station.
That’s going to help us to be honest. Well, at the end of the day, if you get off the planet, you get off the planet with more humans. And humans are probably the biggest cause of all these issues.
I think I could probably have in mushrooms. Yeah, I was it might help the, I want to say the survivability is that the word of this of our species, I see.
Yeah, I see what you can’t see.
You know.
Anything more?
Yeah. If anything has happened here, I mean, anything could happen. At least then you know that they’re on another planet. But it’s like. Yeah, it makes you wonder, where do we go?
Where do we go? Do we go to Mars?
Nothing’s Mars is the idea.
Is that habitable or I suppose that’s what they’re trying to figure out at the moment, isn’t it?
Well, I am listening to this podcast about, terraforming as well.
Well, so let’s make sure planets making a make a secondary Earth.
Yeah. Making cloud planets inhabitable. All right. And I think the because one of the biggest things that we need is like water and oxygen is probably the biggest things. And what they were kind of saying, you know, a lot of people think that we got a lot of oxygen from trees. My understanding is.
That’s what I want to be honest.
Trees are great, but they don’t do nearly as much as, I think certain ladies do. Oh, and I think there were, I want to say, you know, beds upon, you know, beds that were perhaps kilometers or miles wide. You know, when the, when the planet first. I don’t know when the meteor maybe first landed here or something.
It’s creates life. From what I understand, this algae was growing, and that’s what’s kind of evolved and creates more oxygen and for, for our environments. So I don’t even think of the stable here, but I think that’s what they’re going to have to do before let’s forget about trying to get people over there. Let’s send a few rockets.
Let’s shoot rockets with algae or whatever.
To try things. Yeah, get things started getting started. But then how does the algae survive? Right. We need to we need to try and figure out a way to get that algae there and get it to live, because our is obviously a living thing, isn’t it? So must think to must have to have some sort of way of absorbing whatever it needs to to live.
And we don’t know if that’s going to be on Mars to begin with. But we we settle in on Mars. Is this where we where we’re. Yeah, let’s let’s go. We think in the moon.
No.
The problem we’ve got over the moon. If we go into the moon to get away from the Earth. And then the reason. Well, I don’t know. It’s the reason we’re getting away from the Earth is because of a meteor or something’s going to hit and destroy the planet. The. Yeah, the moon is not going to be any good to us, is it?
Oh, because it uses all gravitational pull. So the moon will just be shot off into space until it pulls into another into another gravitational field.
Yeah. I wonder I wonder what would happen if that did happen. What would be? What would be the next planets it would go to? We’ll kind of start.
It just depends where, where it which direction it goes. I suppose it’s just going to go to whichever one it like pulls too fast, isn’t it.
Yeah. If. Yeah I think I think you’ve got a point there. Yeah. There’s no point going to the moon. Although I think the moon would probably be a lot easier to actually if you’re going to start testing things, let’s, let’s go with the I mean.
I think it’s way closer than Mars and it’s like.
Yeah, like we’ve got to stop.
We’ve got things on Mars right now. We we’ve got the rover on Mars, have we not?
Yeah, but I believe so. Is there a Tesla.
There as well?
That was.
Didn’t I feel like Musk sent a Tesla up there.
I think to send one to space or something.
And I think he might send it to Mars. Yeah. So purpose just to say that he’s go on a mars.
Yeah, but he’s got no charging stations. It’s like a.
Lost very long. So very good point. Do you think, do you think Elon Musk’s a human?
Previously I thought no. Right. I think previous to his purchase of Twitter, I thought, no, and I don’t know, I’ve got I’ve got my ups and downs or like the ups and downs about it’s, my reasoning behind it is very up and down. What what are your thoughts?
Oh, he’s definitely some sort of alien. I think.
Is a weirdo, dude. And he he’s. Yeah, I feel like. I feel like he looks. Yeah. Even Elon Musk looks like how an alien would make themselves put in human form, if that makes sense. So if an alien came down and was over, I need to make myself look like a human. FAM. Elon Musk.
Yeah.
And then. And then because obviously these aliens are going to be super advanced compared to us, like mere mortal humans, they’re able to like make loads of money by making electric cars.
So hold on now, I’ve.
Convinced myself even more than Elon Musk’s movie.
So hold on. Do you think I’m so let let’s let’s let’s get out there. So you’re thinking that aliens have kind of stereotypically taken a look at humans, and they’ve kind of seen this is what a human looks like, a human man.
Let’s just make something. Yeah.
In the same way, you know, again, stereotypically that would say that, you know, when you see in movies and that or whatever else, like, oh, you know, all black people look the same way. Asian people would say, well, white people look the same, you know, to to certain people.
You’re saying aliens are like all humans look the same. Let’s, let’s make one of those and then they’ve basically vanished together. A load of Play-Doh, and it looks like Elon Musk.
Interesting, interesting. I wonder what would happen if you took every, every human now and like, yeah, like I said, get an AI and just combine it all together. What would that create? And you see it’s pretty much going to create Elon Musk.
Oh no. Because there’ll be the life maybe.
And yeah, I think.
What you’re sorry before we get too far away, if an alien was going to create a female form, who would you think it would be?
Oh, man. That’s that’s obscure, isn’t it?
Who’s I can see? I’m thinking it’s got to be something along the Joan Rivers. Is it Joan Rivers? I know she’s dead now. I think.
Well, that’s no good to. Let’s think it’s an.
All right.
Yeah, I do know.
I don’t know.
I don’t know. I’m gonna say no.
It’s strange. Yeah, I think there’s certain instances where. Yeah, kind of thought maybe. Maybe he’s an alien or been sent from the future or something along those lines to kind of help evolve things, even even with the Twitter, the Twitter thing. I mean, there’s huge up rules about Twitter before everything, kind of before he did the takeover.
Yeah. But again, that that’s social media and communication holidays, isn’t it? And I kind of wonder. Yeah, it’s the, the thoughts that I have for just coming out and, and splitting up. But I kind of wonder if yeah, he, he perhaps knew that there was going to be a major social issue and something like Twitter was going to be the platform to kind of help stabilize everything.
Or he could take control of it, stabilize it, or in another way, because you listen to the way people are trying to put it, this shadow banning and, you know, the cancel culture that people have on these platforms, it’s maybe he’s trying to destroy it altogether. I, I don’t know.
Personally, I think he’s probably just bored because he’s got so much money, doesn’t know what to do if you’re paying, what, 40 billion or whatever it was for Twitter, you gotta you got to be just bored. You just gotta have, you know, when you when you’re earning such ridiculous amounts of money, you gotta find something to spend it on.
Yeah, I think he strikes me as the kind of person that would rather be doing something else, though. I don’t know, maybe maybe it’s going to his head a little bit, but, the fame and fortune is, I don’t know. But yeah, if you talk about the mission to Mars, isn’t that for me? That would be a much more exciting venture to kind of explore and do.
My first step would be, yeah, okay, guys, let’s send them to. Do you remember the movie The Dome? So I.
Was I.
Don’t know, it was I think it was a comedy about, yeah. Basically they created this dome, you know, that I think was awful, like fully terraformed. And they had to live in there for, say like 90 days or something along those lines.
Did The Simpsons Movie do like it did like a parody of it in that in The Simpsons Movie.
I think they I think The Simpsons one was something to something similar to Under the Dome. It’s under the dome. That was a stifling novel.
I write. Yeah. Anyway, carry on the dome.
Yeah. So I just wondered if maybe that would be the best thing to do is, first of all, see what people are going to do in that environment.
Yeah.
Wait with you got no resources whatsoever. How is that going to work? And then next stage, let’s send it up to the moon, because that’s only how far is the moon?
I just I need a couple of miles on it.
Yeah. Got to be good to be.
All right. I’m going to say. Are you going to look it up if I, if I make my guess.
Yeah. I’ll have to look this up because I don’t look I don’t look foolish.
Of course I’m going to say 1325 miles.
But how long would it take?
Takes? I could. Takes life to take a week together. I don’t know, I’m going to say two days. Two days. Okay.
It takes about three days.
Three days. Damn it. So how many miles?
During that time, spacecraft travels at least 240,000 miles.
I was way off. I was like, 1300 or something. 240,000 miles.
Yeah, that’s 386,400km for those which are using the more superior metric system.
It’s, mostly parent space. It probably is. Yeah. It’s a lot easier to work out of things off of, isn’t it?
Yeah, I think I think again, times have changed where I think increases were cool because you go, oh yeah, that’s about an inch, you know. Yeah. That’s, you know, that’s a foot. The foot is about a foot. But as things have gotten smaller about it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
As things have gotten smaller and smaller I think they changed. Yeah. You’ve got to change it to metric now. Yeah. I think it’s like I say it’s better to work out, but you don’t want to go. This is 5/8 of a of an inch. So what does that mean.
Yeah okay.
What’s A58A.
You know. Well exactly. Yeah. So eight inch Keefe. Yeah.
But that works. It works better for me because I’ve, I grew up with metric system. So it makes more sense.
Most of us did now. Right. People. All right. Probably did.
The one thing that still baffles me in this country is how we fill up in liters, considering we don’t use them, really use the metric system, but we fill up a cause in liters and we have biosolids. Yeah, we buy that cars based on the miles per gallon that it uses. And how much is in a gallon for a 4.5l.
4.5, 4.4 for four, five, four, I think. Look that up. The whole, it’s about it’s about 4.5l to a gallon.
Pretty sure if you didn’t quite. Well, how many liters? But is a UK gallon the same as a.
I would have thought gallon is universal.
I don’t think there’s an Imperial gallon.
Is that.
Yeah. So an Imperial gallon is a 4.5 for 4.54.
I got 4 or 5 round. The only.
Yeah. Just so you know, a oh, there’s a liquid gallon, crust.
But that’s a point like the difference between milliliters and milligrams when it comes to like measurements. I mean, it all depends on the liquid, doesn’t it. But how did they work it out? I think it’s based on water. Yeah. Yeah.
But then water’s I think we’ve mentioned this before, but water’s got water is going to have different weights as well.
And there’s no. Yeah yeah yeah. What’s what a different like if.
You got different temperatures north you know that’s that soft wall strap there mate.
Yeah.
Compared to.
It’s lighter. Yeah.
We have the hard water down. Yeah.
Heavy heavy stuff. Hard water.
Yeah. So I mean that that makes sense to me. If it’s got more minerals and they’d probably. Okay. This is why I enjoy kind of discussing these scientific things with you and trying to work it out. But if all.
Of us know the answer, we’ll never know the answer. We just talk about it. Regardless of the fact that we we probably won’t look it up. We just.
Exactly. Yeah, we only look up the important things like.
How far away the moon is. Yeah.
And we’ll figure out how to get there. But yeah, if I had to do it, I’d probably want to make sure I’ve got, like, not boiled water. What do you call it? You know, like a distilled water. I think that’s what I’m looking.
Okay. Yeah.
Yeah. Distilled water.
That I of demonized.
Yeah. Denoised distilled, filtered water. So that’s that’s where that ideas. But. Yeah, that’s that’s why I use the measurements for. But this doesn’t help us out in trying to get to Mars.
Okay. So this is what we’ve got to figure out then how to get to Mars. Yeah.
But.
We’re going to have to figure that out on the next podcast. I think the whole thing, I think we’ve run out of time. This is.
Going to be a journey.
A journey to Mars.
All right. Cool. Well, Yeah. Take it easy, everybody. Thanks very much for that. It’s, Yeah. Please just join us on social media and. Yes, like and subscribe and we’ll see you all on the next one.
Excellent.
See you later. Is. But.


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