tonight at choir some new lady came to sing with us, and while I was making chitchat, she asked what I do. always a hard thing to explain but I tell her I search for the theories that are going to be popular fifty years from now. she chuckles cynically, and says it's impressive that I think humans are still gonna be around fifty years from now. I, of course, cannot help myself, and let her know that even in the worst case scenario it'll be ok, because there's a theory that human populations declined to something like 2000 individuals at some point. she has not heard of the theory. I mention that there are other reasons to be optimistic, too. it's entirely possible that there have been global civilizations on the planet already. has she heard of the ancient megalithic structures built just after the last ice age? What, like Stonehenge? Oh, no, way older than that, I tell her. They built these crazy temples full of carvings and ceremonial images like 12,000 years ago. No one knows how they learned to do that. I can see the fear in her eyes. I think of telling her about haplogroup x, another compelling line of evidence for there being a missing piece in our story about human timelines. I decide against it. the conversation ends. she does not ask what the podcast is called