0:00 Charles Darwin spent his entire life studying the evolution of species. He rewrote the way humanity understands life on Earth, and when it came time to write the last book of his life, he didn't choose birds or fossils or distant islands. He chose to write about the earthworm, the common earthworm, the same one in your backyard right now. The book came out in 1881, a year before he died. It was the last thing he ever wrote. In its first year, it out sold on the origin of species, a best seller about earthworms. Inside it, Darwin made
0:31 a claim that the science of his time thought was absurd. He said the earthworm is the most important animal in the history of the world, that without it, agriculture as we know it would simply be impossible. People laughed at him. 145 years later, soil science proved he was right. And it proved even more than that. It proved he had been modest. But there's a part of this story almost nobody tells. Darwin described how to draw earthworms into dead soil, a method that doesn't use anything you need to buy, that works in soil that's hard, packed, poor, and
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