Eske Willerslev

April 11, 2024

AI Summary

5 min read

Eske Willerslev, the internationally recognized Danish geneticist, almost took his own life at age 23. He sat with a rifle in his mouth. What stopped him was not a religious conversion or a sudden burst of hope, but a tree. Looking out the window, he remembered something from his evolutionary biology studies: that all life on Earth shares a common origin, and that he existed only because an unbroken chain of ancestors had survived for over a billion years. "Life is connected," he realized. "I'm in a family with the tree."

The broken dream and the crisis of meaning

Willerslev grew up a worried boy who felt he could not live up to unspoken expectations. He longed for freedom, romanticizing the life of a fur trapper in Siberia. After high school, he traveled there three times. The third time, he stayed through winter to live the dream. What he found was not freedom but brutality: minus 50-60 degrees Celsius, dogs eaten by wolves, animals found with legs half cut off in traps, rampant alcoholism, murder. "It was brutal all the way through," he says. "There was not the romantic that in reality was what I thought it was."

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What you'll learn

1 (00:00) **Podcast Introduction & Guest Welcome** - Sørine Godfredsen introduces the topic of suicide and the episode's focus on finding meaning. She welcomes Eske Willerslev, an internationally recognized DNA researcher and twin.
2 (01:44) **Guest's Core Source of Meaning** - Willerslev identifies two things that make life feel meaningful: learning about life and, more recently, being something for others.
3 (02:36) **The Foreword: Balancing Meaning and Emptiness** - Willerslev reads a foreword describing him as someone who balances "the meaning of life and a strong feeling of the emptiness of life," which he confirms is accurate.
4 (03:36) **A Worried Childhood & The Desire for Freedom** - Willerslev describes his childhood as a time of worry, uncertainty, and a constant search for a "happy life" and ultimate freedom, which he romanticized as a prairie Indian.
5 (07:39) **The Twin Identity: Strength and Frustration** - Growing up as a twin meant being treated as a single unit ("Rane og Eske"), creating a strong need to differentiate as an adult but also providing an ever-present support system.
6 (09:48) **A Crucial Bond with His Father** - A year spent alone with his father in Sweden, working and living a simpler life, created a crucial, loving bond and a unique experience of being an individual.
7 (11:39) **The Competitive Spirit and Its Consequences** - The twin dynamic fostered a competitive spirit that was not natural to either brother, pushing Willerslev away from a potential life as an artist and into his current path.

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Show Notes

I starten af tyverne rejser evolutionsbiolog Eske Willerslev til Sibirien for at blive pelsjæger. En drengedrøm, som dog hurtigt viser sig at blive til et mareridt. Kort tid efter hjemkomsten mister han sin søster og far. Sorgen og meningsløsheden får ham til at miste lysten til at leve videre. Hans redning bliver en tanke, han har lært på biologistudiet: At vi alle stammer fra livets træ. Det minder ham om, hvor mange pinsler Eske Willerslevs forfædre har været igennem, for at han er i live i dag. Evolutionsbiologien bliver hans redning, og i dag er han anerkendt som en af verdens førende DNA-forskere.