Sarah Rose Siskind and I talk about the uneasy dance between nature and human intention — from childbirth, medicine, and evolution to the technologies that help us survive and create.

We also explore AI filmmaking, creative pioneers, and how salt, pepper, and software reveal a recurring pattern: once-scarce tools can become universally abundant.

Transcript

Sarah: Nature can fucking suck. My favorite love story of all time talks about overcoming nature.

It’s the 1970s and there’s this inventor called Martin Rothblatt, who meets a woman named Bina in a club and they fall in love and it’s controversial because she’s black and he’s white. But they overcome that and they get together and they have this beautiful blended family together. Then a little while later, Martine realizes she’s Martine, not Martin. And so Martin transitions to Martine and their love survives a huge repudiation of nature to say, I am not what I was born into naturally. I know that I am something else. And their love overcomes that transition. It’s not done yet. First it overcomes race and prejudice and tribalism.

Next it overcomes biology in the form of sex and gender. Third, they have a daughter. She has an incurable blood disorder. But Martine is one of the greatest inventors of all time. And she literally invents and creates a company that cures that blood disorder. And love overcomes race. It overcomes sex. It overcomes incurable blood disorders. That entire story is motivated by love.

Pablos: I learned this lesson from a Love and Rockets song: “Cannot go against nature because when you do, it’s part of nature too.” Probably they stole it from Mao Tse-Tung who stole it from someone. But I think it helps me to have a sense of what nature means. I grew up basically in the woods. And I think that it has positive effects for sure. But what I see is nature being invoked. And people saying, this is natural, that’s not natural or whatever. And I think that’s not the way to look at things. We are nature. And everything we do is natural.

And we invented Coca-Cola and we drink that shit. And it’s our nature to want it. And eventually we’ll have a mature relationship with that too. We made this world and everything about humanity that’s possible is because of the work humans have done to tame the natural environment and make it possible for us to survive and to thrive. But we should be thankful for the effort and the sacrifices of our ancestors who made it possible for these natural forces that want to kill us to be tamed. Even if you take out a motive, they’re still trying to kill us whether they want to or not.

We have this super El Nino coming, all the global warming fanatics are going to be vindicated. These things are constantly happening and humans are getting better and better at handling it. And we’re going to have descendants who exist and who have rich lives and who love the way you described because of what we’re doing right now. Why wouldn’t you want to contribute to that?

Sarah: I think it’s a dance. The efforts humans make to combat natural forces versus the natural forces themselves. That was made tangible for me last year when I gave birth. That is such a biological process that takes over your body. You have no control, but you are doing a super power act. It’s a crazy irony to live inside of. Okay, how am I going to give birth? Am I going to have the maximum epidural and induce early and all of these interventions? Or am I going to give birth at home? On my hands and knees with an older woman? And I was very open-minded.

Both sides were making unbelievably compelling cases. One of the biggest cases: don’t have hubris here. We are incredibly smart creatures, but nature is a system that has been around for millions of years.

And we still don’t fully understand it. There are certain processes. We still don’t understand breast milk. We can’t manufacture a really good substitute. It literally changes in the morning versus the nighttime. Melatonin at night, cortisol in the morning. It adapts to the baby’s needs. That’s fucking crazy. A baby’s covered in schmutz because they get pushed out the vagina—a sort of car wash situation. That helps the babies live longer and we don’t know why. C-section babies don’t have that. There’s discussions now about whether you should swab the vagina and put it on the C-section baby. It’s a dance.

Science and nature are trying to work together. Nature adapts to science. We have antibiotic resistance. And then we have science adapting to nature in ways we obviously know from everything from fire extinguishers to the epidural. Now, as it turns out, I gave birth with the most interventions possible. And it was amazing. Epidurals are fun. Nobody tells you that. But unless they break through, the pain breaks through, which is the worst thing ever. And it truly is as painful as childbirth. When the epidural is working, it’s awesome. Everyone should get an epidural. Recreational epidurals for everyone. A hundred percent. But I also totally understand the nature people.

And the nature people, the natural birth people: you get a totally different hormone infusion when you’re in that much pain. It’s an interesting collaboration that I think is just really important to be mindful of and never hubristic. Never “nature always wins” versus “human intentions always win.” We are a part of nature, but there is one big distinction that came to me on a psychedelic trip from a shaman: when you look around this room, everything in your line of sight had a human intention before it was created. Except for you and me, you probably had your mother’s desire to have children, but way less control over the actual formulation of you.

But everything else, this picture frame, this calendar thing, which is hilariously off, is created by a human being. It was: “We want people to know the date and the time and we assume they’ll be responsible enough to change their calendar.” When you go out in nature, okay, I’m looking behind you and I see a beautiful tree that was not created by humans. They decided to plant the tree. The fact that it exists is the product of eons. And it is new for humanity to be surrounded by the products of human intention instead of a much more decentralized system of creation.

I am very mindful of that when I say we are part of nature. Not entirely. There is a huge categorical difference.

Pablos: And I think you have to have both. Our ability to contribute to nature is a very long process. Our ability to contribute to creation is astounding.

Sarah: In some ways it makes things more special because of how intentional they are, whereas nature is the product of natural selection and survival of the fittest, which is very hard to understand. It rewards horrible behavior and wonderful behavior.

Pablos: It’s the thing that we’ve been fucking with the most. There is no survival of the fittest anymore. We’re trying to make sure everyone can survive regardless of their fitness. It’s the right thing to do, but it doesn’t come without a cost. You have to recognize what that’s doing to nature’s plan for evolving the world.

Sarah: We don’t know what nature’s plan is. Nature has created things like anxiety, which was really useful in some senses in the Sahara and now has trade-offs to it. And this is the whole thing behind eugenics, right? We try to get ahead of natural selection and it’s just really hard to know what to select for because we don’t know the future.

Pablos: Anything else that you think we should talk about? Any questions for me?

Sarah: You want to know what I’m interested in. Our mutual friend, Darren Aronofsky, took a big swing last year. He has been absolutely raked over the coals. I’m so sad about it. All of his contemporaries that I can see publicly are just absolutely tearing him a new one. And that makes me really sad. Not surprised. But really sad.

Pablos: They’re upset that he’s using AI to make films or something?

Sarah: And they are incredibly derisive of the work he’s been doing. He had a short film I thought was great about a woman giving birth. It was super trippy and awesome. He did have a series with Time Magazine that I thought was not well done, but the idea was really great.

Pablos: But this is certainly what happened when moving pictures were invented. And the people on the stage were probably pissed off that they were being recorded or that these things were getting attention. And I know by the time we added sound to them, heresy.

Sarah: This is what Singing in the Rain is about: people in uproar about talkies.

That’s around the time color becomes a thing. Storytelling has adapted to every new technology. And it’s not going away. How do we work with it?

Pablos: It’s not just not going away. It’s that you need pioneers to explore these things. If it sucks, then it won’t work in the long run. If it’s useful, it will work out in the long run. Someone like Darren is perfect for it.

Sarah: And they have to know the technology.

Pablos: He has a thick skin. Darren doesn’t need validation from any of his peers. He’s already surpassed them in what he’s created anyway. I don’t think Darren gives a shit what I think about him and he probably doesn’t give a shit what anybody else thinks about him. He’s going to do his own thing. That’s the kind of person you need to be a pioneer to do new things, to actually be creative.

You have to shut out the noise of critics and he’s really good for that. And so I think it’s exciting that he’s taken it on. It may be too early. He may not end up with something recognized as genius but in a hundred years, he’ll be the guy who did the first AI movies.

If you think you’re creative, then these are tools for you—in the same way that a movie camera is, in the same way that a tape recorder is, in the same way that a DJ rig is, or a synthesizer or a saxophone or claymation. Fucking claymation.

Wallace and Gromit is what, 30 years old or something? It still holds up. And you’re going to show your kid, and it’s brand new because it’s just as good. People are having this emotional reaction because of the merry-go-round. They don’t know where it stops. They don’t know where the end is. They’re heavily invested. The incentive structure pushes them that way. We understand that. But I think you’ve got to give them a chance. Last week I was in Bermuda, and they were celebrating their Emancipation Day. And I was reading up on the slave trade.

Sarah: The slave trade in the Caribbean is one of the most horrible histories. The lifespan of the Africans who were taken to the Caribbean is like 20 years or something.

Pablos: I was looking back and ended up reading about the origin of the spice trade, and there was a time when the most expensive shit on earth was spices. Literally salt and pepper—to make your meat that’s rotting taste slightly less gross. Wars fought, civilizations conquered, and people enslaved to put salt on the table. Now, salt is so cheap. We basically have universal basic salt in the world. Anyone can get as much as they want. You don’t even have to pay for it. Come on over. I’ll give you some salt. No one then could have imagined that abundant future of fucking salt and pepper.

Sarah: This used to be a big Jewish Ashkenazi gift: when somebody has a home, you bring them salt. It’s a sign you’ve made it, and we still do that.

Pablos: Bring me salt. I brought you pastries.

Sarah: That’s a much better form of salt.

Pablos: But pastries are a lot harder to come by than salt. In our lifetime the most expensive shit in the world was software. Millions enslaved to make Zoom and Slack and shit. And we’re entering this era now where the marginal cost of software is going to zero. And we’re going to have universal basic software. Everybody’s going to get what you and I have had and paid for by next month.

Sarah: For some innovations, they were not democratically introduced because of barriers to entry. The Industrial Revolution, it’s not like everybody benefited immediately. The owners of the means of production had these efficiencies. What’s crazy about this revolution is that everybody had it. But it’s our own brains that are keeping people from using it. Why on earth are you resistant to using this technology?

Pablos: He’s using the same AI that you and I have. Maybe he’s a month or two ahead. And it’s the most rapidly democratized technology of all time.

Sarah: But it’s not because of polarization.

Pablos: Because people are opting out.

Sarah: It is a matter of time before there is eco-terrorism. They already tried to kill Sam Altman with some really half-assed scheme. I swear to God it’s going to happen. One of these guys that is super hated, there is going to be a firebombing. It is just so upsetting to me. Sometimes I think if I’m just going to be super honest, the left needs something. It’s trans, it’s Palestine, now it’s AI. And I’m really hoping there’s another thing that comes up pretty soon. Genocide somewhere else would be really good. And it just sucks that the hysteria is never “female enfranchisement in the Middle East” or “AIDS in Africa,” though there’s been major gains.

Pablos: It’s whatever they can get the most outrage out of now, whatever we can get the most polarization out of. We didn’t talk about living with a robot, but I think there’s lots of videos of you talking about that.

Sarah: There’s at least one about it and there’s an article. Let’s save that for the second podcast because I do have 30 more things.

Links

Recorded on August 6, 2026