Idea Almanac

“For close to 4 billion years, every single organism on the planet evolved subject to natural selection. Not even one was designed by an intelligent creator. The giraffe, for example, got its long neck thanks to competition between archaic giraffes rather than to the whims of a super-intelligent being. Proto-giraffes who had longer necks had access to more food and consequently produced more offspring than did those with shorter necks. Nobody, certainly not the giraffes, said, ‘A long neck would enable giraffes to munch leaves off the treetops. Let’s extend it.’ The beauty of Darwin’s theory is that it does not need to assume an intelligent designer to explain how giraffes ended up with long necks.”

Excerpt From: Yuval Noah Harari. “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind.”

Idea Almanac

“The generals sitting around the Saudi Defense Ministry’s situation room table thought they had a pretty good idea of what was about to happen. They’d been running the Saudi armed forces for decades and believed their new defense minister would be pretty much like the last one. When facing adversity, Saudi Arabia followed the lead of the United States of America, its longtime protector. There would be grave deliberations and a decision to have more grave deliberations the following day and the following week until Washington, DC, decided what to do. But when Mohammed bin Salman, twenty-nine years old and with less than eight weeks of experience running the Saudi military, sat down at the head of the V-shaped table and issued an unprecedented order, “Send in the F15s,” they were shocked into silence. Saudi Arabia was not just going to war. It was leading the way.”

Excerpt From: Bradley Hope. “Blood and Oil.”