On this, our 345th Evolutionary Lens livestream, we discuss immigration, AI, and rawness. First: a new Harper’s article chronicles the effects on local people of the mass migration across the Darién Gap in Panama between 2021 and 2025, and what has happened since the number of people coming up from Colombia has dropped to a trickle. The reporting on the ground is excellent—human and honest—while the political analysis is naïve at best. Then: what is it to be raw, how is it inherently human, and what is its relationship to grief, and to AI?
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Music: "Marble Machine" by Wintergatan
This track can be downloaded for free at www.wintergatan.net
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Thumbnail Courtesy Getty Images: John Moore / Getty Images South America
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Mentioned in this episode:
Minding the Gap: https://harpers.org/2026/09/general-interest-minding-the-gap-belen-fernandez-jasmine-liu/
Fernández – At the Edge of Empire: https://harpers.org/archive/2026/10/at-the-edge-of-empire-belen-fernandez-panama-immigration-towns/
Heying – Raw: https://naturalselections.substack.com/p/raw
Crawford, Why We Drive: [can you create an affiliate link for this] https://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Drive-Toward-Philosophy/dp/0062741969/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&dib_tag=se&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.Y-PChdMBwHIDKvANAvihY7QLld0SKDGsAFdX8CZrjpTCa4LSx-TBsJo41Sl6JPbm-Ag2zIDy2woM-RCOjRAS0caXHPTH9ozjlifRrjsqc9Q.XcCZSCGXxdZVue61CBJ8YSVti4Emu5qyMkb7a1mFUiw&qid=1790800365&sr=8-2
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Timestamps:
00:00:00 Boredom Makes the Time Go Slow
00:03:57 Sponsor: Cozy Earth
00:07:35 Sponsor: Puori
00:09:22 Sponsor: SaunaSpace
00:12:05 Fat Bear Week: The Prepper's Mascot
00:16:40 Back to the Darién Gap
00:18:52 Invasion or Migration? Both.
00:24:24 How America Carved Panama From Colombia
00:30:33 Is a Boom Now a Right?
00:35:41 Where Did the Aid Organizations Go?
00:40:53 The Surge Was Too Fast to Be Organic
00:44:41 Why There's No Road Through the Darién
00:46:31 Great Reporting, Bad Geopolitics
00:51:00 Mayorkas, HIAS, and the Chinese Camp
00:52:10 Deport Only the Worst of the Worst?
00:58:09 This Is All of Us
01:02:12 Migration as Osmotic Pressure
01:06:15 The Feminization of Systems
01:10:01 Raw: Unprocessed, Unfiltered, Unclothed
01:21:02 The AI That Couldn't Lace a Wheel
01:27:27 Speedometer vs. the Wind in Your Hair
01:33:16 The Rawness of Grief
01:35:41 Why Can't Sociopaths Fake Grief?
01:39:59 Real Grief Is Raw. AI Is Cooked.
01:42:34 Playgrounds With Nails Sticking Out
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