[music playing] MATT: OK, Craig.

We've seen how people have conquered nature through the biosphere and through the manipulation of genes and a whole bunch of other ways.

Now, it's our turn to try to conquer nature ourselves.

CRAIG: Is that why we're in the woods?

Yeah, we're deep in the woods.

OK. And you're going to try to start a fire using only what nature can provide you.

That sounds terribly hard.

And I'm going to try to spear a fish.

OK, that sounds harder.

That's harder.

I don't know.

I've got pretty good confidence in myself.

I don't.

But OK, well, you can try.

You can try.

Let's try.

OK, but how do I start a fire?

I don't know how to do it.

I don't know either.

Good luck.

Is there instructions somewhere?

I hope so.

[music playing] So I have to build a fire, I guess.

Oh, hey!

What's this?

That's convenient.

Nature provides instructions.

OK, I will open up number one.

No money in here.

Fire starting tip number one, fire.

The control of fire by early humans was a turning point in the cultural aspect of human evolution that allowed humans to cook food, remain active at night, live in cooler climates, and obtain warm and protection from predators and insects.

Harnessing the power of fire is one of the key aspects that separates humans from all other animals.

Flameage.

CRAIG: And has given our species the evolutionary advantage needed to thrive and to spread to all corners of the Earth.

Go make fire.

Well, that didn't really tell me how to make fire.

Well, I did happen to find a nice chopped log over there.

So that's good.

We got some kindling.

And I got a stick right here.

Do that for a while.

[blows] I'll heat it up a little.

[blows] [groans] I think I want to open up instruction number two.

I don't know what I doing.

MATT: Here we are in the woods.

I'm going to try to spear a fish.

But there's a couple things we have to do before we spear a fish.

One is we have to find water.

I can see the water through the trees there.

Oh, and also, if you spot any poison ivy, please direct me away from that.

I wish I knew what poison ivy looked like.

CAMERAMAN: Me, too.

The other thing that I got to be on the lookout for is a good spear.

It's a spear.

It's a stick.

A good stick would be a long stick, pretty straight, sturdy, and ideally, already sharpened.

Like this seems pretty good.

So now, I just need to sharpen this somehow.

I found this guy.

So it's been broken.

And it's got kind of a sharp edge here.

I mean, it's sort of working.

I mean, it's not really getting sharper.

I mean, slowly-- CAMERAMAN: You're making it smaller.

Yeah.

But maybe that's what sharpness is, right?

CAMERAMAN: I guess.

It's making something smaller.

Logs.

The first porch.

I really feel like I'm getting back to nature and how our ancestors lived, like Gandalf in The Hobbit.

CRAIG: OK, instruction number two.

Fire starting tip number two, the hand drill.

The hand drill is one of the oldest and simplest methods of starting a fire.

It works by generating heat through friction, thus creating an ember that can then be used to build a fire.

For the hand drill, you need a flat board and a spindle approximately two feet in length.

Nice freshly cut board that I found.

That was the way the branch grew.

It's totally nature.

OK, I got to find a spindle.

Here, spindle, spindle.

This one might do.

Spindle break, commence.

Yeah.

With your knife, cut a v-shaped notch into the board and a small depression adjacent to it for the spindle.

Snip, snip, snip, snip, snip, snip.

Place the spindle in the depression.

Then, while maintaining a good amount of downward pressure, roll the stick between the palms of your hands, running them very quickly down the spindle.

Keep doing this until the spindle tip glows red and you get an ember.

This is impossible.

I'm going to be sore tonight!

[grunts] And cold.

I'll probably catch pneumonia.

No fire.

CAMERAMAN: So Craig, how's that going?

Not great.

It's not even that warm.

I feel like it needs to be warmer if it's going to start on fire.

All right.

Let's move on.

Let's move on to number three, shall we?

I think this video might turn out to be just Matt attempts to sharpen a stick.

[laughter] CAMERAMAN: Does this feel like it's going to work?

I mean, in its current state, no.

But I'm not beaten yet.

It's just going to take a while.

CAMERAMAN: Right.

Oh, oh.

We have some-- looks like shoelace and twine.

Fire starting tip three, the bow drill.

Enclosed in this envelope, you'll find a string to help you create a bow drill and some twine that can be used for your tinder.

You'll need your spindle and board from the hand drill, as well as a socket and bow.

The bow should be about as long as your arm.

Use a flexible piece of wood that has a slight curve.

The Good Stuff needs to invest in better axes.

String up your bow and you're ready to go.

Stringing up my bow.

Loop the bow string around the spindle.

Place one end of the spindle in the fire board and apply pressure on the other end with your socket.

Using your bow, start sawing back and forth.

The spindle should be rotating quickly.

Keep sawing until you create an ember.

No, that's now working.

All right, I'm going to make this really tight.

If this doesn't work, we were never meant to make fire.

There we go.

This seems to be working.

It's not spinning a lot.

But I can go back and forth real quick.

Oops, and I broke the board.

I need to make a new notch, I think.

I wonder how Craig is doing.

You know, wouldn't it be crazy if he has a fire blazing right now?

Oh, god.

I'm getting tired.

I feel like I'm wasting as much energy doing this as I was doing it the other way.

I feel like this should work better.

It's warm, but it's not even hot.

Oh, man.

MATT: Well, it turns out the sharpening was a little trickier than I thought.

So I think I'm going to have to figure out a different way.

And I think I might have found a way, with this knife.

Oh, it's a pocket knife.

Nature provided.

It's a pretty nice knife.

CAMERAMAN: Yeah, where'd that come from?

Oh, yeah.

That's working a lot better.

So I've got this pretty sharp.

It's getting down to close to sunset.

And that's when the fish are out.

And so I think maybe we should try to see if we can find some fish to spear.

All right, let's try this spear out.

Now, one thing I know is that light refracts through the water.

So you can't aim directly at the fish.

Either you have to aim ahead of them or behind them or something.

I don't remember which way.

CAMERAMAN: Did you see a fish?

No, I was just practicing.

CAMERAMAN: OK. Oh, it feels like there's stuff in here.

Enclosed in this envelope, you'll find a piece of flint.

Use a rock or your knife and scrape against the entire length to create sparks to ignite your tender.

Easy.

I hope that that's easy.

Oh, pretty easy.

Come on.

Come on.

Starting fires is hard.

MATT: Look at those people over there.

Fishing with fishing poles and a boat, they don't know what they're missing.

You know, maybe it's not about making a spear and spearing a fish, but about getting back to our roots, communing with nature, realizing how hard people had it thousands of years ago.

CAMERAMAN: What's going on, Craig?

I'm pulling the twine apart, making a smaller pile so I can get it lit.

Oh, there we go.

It's flames.

First fire we saw all day.

And it's promptly burning out.

That was close.

Fires are hard.

Number five, let's see what we got.

Oh, it doesn't feel like there's a blowtorch in here.

Flint and magnesium.

Have you used your flint tool to its full potential?

Shave narrow side opposite the black spark insert.

Accumulate magnesium shavings about the size of a quarter into a small pile and placed next to tender.

Scrape the entire length of the spark insert rapidly.

This action will generate sparks, causing magnesium shavings to ignite, providing a white hot flame.

Oh, OK.

There we go.

There we go.

White hot flame.

Yep, lighting the tinder.

All right, we got more tinder here.

[blows] No.

Well, it went out.

I think I walked too far.

I waited too long to get to the fire.

I was just kind of hoping there was something there.

And I lost a prong.

CAMERAMAN: Oh.

Well, we got close.

But you know, you don't spear fish every day.

It's all about trying.

At least I tried, right?

CAMERAMAN: You tried to survive.

Yeah, but you know, that's evolution for you.

There's always a significant portion of organisms that just die out.

But that paves the way, for those who do survive.

So I'm just making room.

CRAIG: All right.

We're going to try this again.

I got some more magnesium.

That twine that I have, I spread out a lot of it.

So we got a big pile of twine that should just go up in flames.

And then we got little bitty sticks in there.

And then, we'll add a little bigger sticks.

And then we'll add logs.

And then we'll have a fire party.

So here it goes.

OK, OK, yeah.

Light them sticks on fire.

OK, got some leaves, maybe.

No, no.

[blows] How did anyone ever make fire happen, ever?

[laughs] I could just to do this all night and it looks like there's a fire.

All right, number six.

This better be a blowtorch.

Oh, matches.

Oh, sweet matches.

Fire starting tip number six, matches and paper.

Wow.

You are pretty bad at this.

Go ahead and tear up all the previous instructions and envelopes and use that as your tinder.

Then use the matches to light that and start your fire.

You have made our early human ancestors very disappointed.

[snickers] All right, let's make a fire.

Now, this doesn't work, we're going home.

Oh, geez.

Match went out.

Match went out.

[music playing] Well, what I have learned is that starting a fire is really hard.

And I'm very thankful for today's technology.

I'd like to try again sometime, maybe not when cameras are rolling and no one's watching so I don't make a fool of myself.

But someday.

But for now, I'm going to just enjoy this fire that I've created.

But maybe a little bit back because it's hot.

I'm sweaty sitting there.

Every day, we influence and mold the natural environment to suit our needs.

We've been doing it for thousands of years.

But even though we exert an absurd amount of influence over our environment, we are entirely dependent upon nature and we survive at its mercy.

And whatever change, whatever damage we inflict upon it, we're inflicting upon ourselves.

So we should probably take better care of it.

Yep, because it's the only one we got.

For now, until we find another the planet.

Or a multiple universe scenario.

Yeah, or we start terraforming Mars.

Like in Sliders.

Have you seen Sliders?

Oh, yeah like in Sliders.

Chris O'Donnell?

No, it wasn't.

Jerry O'Connell.

Jerry O'Connell.

I get those confused very often.

And John Rhys-Davies.

So Chris O'Donnell is not the only Chris O'Donnell we've got.

We've also got Jerry O'Connell.

[laughter] So that concludes our Humans versus Nature playlist.

If you enjoyed it, please go ahead and click that like button and subscribe.

And if you want to support our show and see future playlists forever, you can go check out our Patreon page.

Last week, we asked you what you thought about Jack Horner's dino-chicken.

This is what you had to say.

And this is what we're going to say back to you about it.

Yeah, it's mostly us saying things back to you.

Andrew Young said that it was amazing how he explained the egg and chicken problem.

But he said, that doesn't explain egg one.

Well, I actually think it does.

Egg one is referring to the first egg ever laid, which was itself only one instance in a long chain that began billions of years ago with the first self-replicating molecule.

The problem here is that we think of eggs as permanent, unchanging things, when in actuality, they're always evolving, just like chickens are, just like we are, just like all life on the planet is.

But the egg always comes first because when it comes down to it, we all come from a single cell, which is what an egg is essentially.

So at one point, all life was an egg, or at least, there was no distinction between the egg and the organism.

So every time a chicken or any animal reproduces, the process of going from an egg to a baby is basically an abstract of the entire evolution of life on this planet.

Ciaron Bennett asked why Jack Horner's project focuses on chickens as opposed to some other bird.

Because chickens are readily available.

You could probably use any bird.

But it's just easier to get a chicken.

have you see the price of peacock embryos lately?

Through the roof!

Knate44 pointed out that when dealing with gene manipulation of a species, the "because I want to" argument can be potentially harmful to the animal we create.

And we should be really careful.

In the video, Jack Horner compared what he's doing to selective breeding of dogs, which has actually led to a lot of unintended problems due to hereditary defects.

Big floppy ears, for example, may be cute, but that characteristic makes certain breeds more susceptible to ear infections.

Dachshunds, AKA, wiener dogs, are extremely prone to spinal injuries just because someone wanted a little long dog with short little legs.

Genetics is a complicated thing.

And it's impossible to know what the quality of life for the dino-chicken would be.

But it's something we should take into consideration.

Thanks for your comments.

Next week, we will begin the playlist where we conquer outer space.

Yeah.

Not inner space.

No, not the one starring Dennis Quaid and Martin Short.

No.

And is it Meg Ryan?

Was she in it?

I'm not sure.

I thought we were done.

But we're still going?

Leave it in the comments Who was it?

Was it Meg Ryan?

[ALL SINGING "WE DIDN'T START THE FIRE" BY BILLY JOEL] [all whooping] CRAIG: I started the fire though.