Vultures and the Public Health: The 323rd Evolutionary Lens with Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying

April 30, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

In 2024, economists Frank and Sudarshan published a paper tracing a chain of cause and effect that begins with the expiration of a patent on a common painkiller and ends with a 4.7% increase in human mortality across India. The drug was diclofenac, a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory that had been under patent by Novartis since 1973. When the patent expired in the early 1990s, Indian pharmaceutical companies began producing cheap generic versions for veterinary use. Farmers started treating their cattle with it. The drug is harmless to humans and to cattle, but when vultures consumed carcasses of treated livestock, they developed kidney failure and died within weeks. Over the course of a few years, India’s vulture population collapsed from an estimated 50 million birds to a few thousand — the fastest decline of any bird species in recorded history.

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What you'll learn

1 DarkHorse Podcast #323: Vultures and the Public Health
2 Timestamped Outline
3 (00:04) **Welcome and Travel Reflections** - Bret and Heather are back after time away in Florida, North Carolina, and New Orleans
4 (03:52) **On Jargon vs. Terms of Art** - Bret and Heather distinguish between exclusionary jargon and the honorable precision of terms of art
5 (06:52) **Setting Up the Main Topic** - A biology-focused segment that will connect to broader lessons about complex systems
6 (07:53) **Sponsor Segment: Lovebird Cereal** - A new sponsor offering clean-ingredient, organic, grain-free cereal
7 (10:56) **Sponsor Segment: Fresh Press Olive Oil Club** - Artisanal olive oil shipped directly from harvest

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Guests on this episode

Bret Weinstein Heather Heying

Show Notes

On this, our 323rd Evolutionary Lens livestream, we discuss vultures, politics, and complex systems. Vultures, which have evolved multiple times (like mangroves, poison frogs, and “trees”), specialize on carrion. In India, a painkiller commonly used in people but toxic to vultures, diclofenac, came out of patent, began to be used in cattle, and the vast majority of vultures in India died. Downstream effects include the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, and tens of billions of dollars in economic losses. Now in Africa, vultures are being poisoned intentionally, and a similar devastation is likely to happen. Vultures are ugly, smelly, and gross…and utterly central to the health of not just their ecosystems, but the people who live in and near them. Welcome to complex systems. Also: Katie Wilson, the mayor of Seattle, seems to be engaged in a kind of “scientific socialism,” akin to “scientific racism,” in which quasi-scientific ideas are used to justify (bad) policy.

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Mentioned in this episode:

Frank & Sudarshan 2024. The social costs of keystone species collapse: evidence from the decline of vultures in India. American Economic Review 114(10): 3007-3040: https://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/id/eprint/171014/13/WRAP-twerp-1433-Sudarshan-24.pdf

Anoosh Moonka tweet: https://x.com/anishmoonka/status/2049394252573004057

On the Origin of Species: https://dn710801.ca.archive.org/0/items/darwin-online_1859_Origin_F373/1859_Origin_F373_text.pdf

Katie Wilson clip from Brandi Kruse: https://x.com/BrandiKruse/status/2049562844862324861

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