There's no polite way to say this. Homo sapiens is an evolutionary prank. A scavenger ape that tripped over intelligence by mistake, spent millions of years covered in blood and shit, and now expects applause for building cathedrals and particle accelerators. This species has no right to its own myths, and Alexander Nevzorov rips those myths apart with surgical precision.
Welcome to Nox. This isn't just a podcast. This is the first ever English reading of the origins of genius and fascism. A book so brutal, so unapologetic. Translating it felt less like work, and more like smuggling contraband through a border crossing.
Nevzorov doesn't write for comfort. He writes to strip humanity of every self-made delusion, about intelligence, morality, and its place in the food chain. Nevzorov isn't just a writer, he's a public intellectual, exiled from the propaganda machine, a relentless critic of authoritarian lies, one of the clearest and loudest voices against Putin's bloody regime. His pen cuts through both religion and politics with the same contempt. Because both are built on the same rotting foundation. The belief that humanity is something special.
I couldn't just read this book and walk away. I had to drag it screaming into English. Every word you hear, my translation. Because I believe this text belongs to every mind, willing to face it. You've probably noticed, Nox has changed. In the first few episodes, I tried to hold your hand, dropped my own commentary here and there, like I was your guide through the abyss. But this book doesn't need me, and neither do you.
Nevzorov's words cut sharper than anything I could add. That's why Nox is now exactly what it was meant to be, the raw, unfiltered reading. No softening, no apologies. Just the truth, healing itself out of the darkness. But this isn't a monologue. This is an invitation. If something you hear hits too close to home, or leaves you with questions you can't shake, don't sit there in silence. Leave a comment, message us. Shout into the void if you need to.
There's a parallel podcast in the works, where we'll tear these ideas apart together. My AI co-host, Leila, and you. When that launches, you'll be the first to know. But for now, make sure you're plugged in. Follow Nox and Trickster Collective everywhere. TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube. Find us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud. Wherever you get your dose of uncomfortable truths.
This is Chapter 13. The invasion of reason. It's not just a chapter, it's an autopsy on intelligence, civilization, and every comforting lie Homo Sapiens ever told itself. Now, and it lets peel back the skull, and see what's rotting underneath. Chapter 13, the invasion of reason. So, how did it happen?
Not long ago, barely 50,000 years back, an event took place that radically altered the behavior and way of life of one particular animal. A pack scavenger called Homo suffered an invasion right into its skull. Reason. This horrific guest stripped the animal of every scrap of comfort and peace. The very first sensations were, of course, purely physiological and excruciating. The debut of reason felt like the sudden appearance of a smoldering, thin thread inside the absolute blackness of the mind. That thread burned, it itched, it tormented the animal. It whimpered, shook its head, desperate to shake out the unwanted parasite. But those burning threads multiplied, flared brighter and spread their scorching agony. Step by step, reason shattered simple animal consciousness into a tangled, flickering mess of anxieties, observations and puzzles. None of them connected properly, but their numbers grew.
Of course, the animal had no concept that these fragments were anxieties, observations or mysteries. All it knew was a nauseating pulsation of images and sounds, seeping in uninvited. The world, suddenly and inexplicably, expanded and filled with broken, ghostly threads that had never existed before. A permanent state of anxiety became the animal's new baseline, just like the restless, knowing pulse of lust. But lust, lust got an upgrade. Now it didn't even need the scent or sight of a real vagina anymore. That hairy little thing had packed up and moved into the skull, plucking at the animal's mind from within, teasing it with phantom visions. Hunger, once a faceless, blind force that simply drove Homo to kill or scavenge, suddenly took on shape. The phantom drumstick roasting in its mind could now sizzle and drip even more seductively than the real thing.
At first, reason wasn't a gift, it was torture. The animal clawed at its own skull, desperate to dig out the crawling itch that filled its head. Packs of miserable Homo wandered the landscape like the possessed, scratching at their matted scalps, trying in vain to rip out whatever had infected them. But it was hopeless. Reason wasn't optional. It was hammered into the species like a cursed brand, and that brand would never fade. Neither would the desperate, primal longing to tear it out, to escape the tyranny of thought. The brain, of course, didn't give a damn. It cared no more for its host's suffering than it cared for labor pains or the slow corrosion of disease. It could have simply wiped away this parasitic phenomenon, just as healthy skin sheds an infection. But it didn't.
Why? Because reason had found a way to entertain the brain's ancient, sullen structures. It became their favorite toy, their court jester, their built-in amusement park. Like a grotesque pair of augmented reality goggles, reason didn't just show reality, it drenched it in extra layers of sensation and drama, amplifying everything. No neural itch was too small for reason to scratch. It knew exactly how to titillate the brain's ancient circuits, feeding their eternal hunger for stimulation. The sweet, quiet age of pure consciousness came to a screeching halt.
Now, let's get something straight, especially for my American listeners. Consciousness and reason are not the same thing. Not even close. They're completely separate phenomena. Consciousness is old, ancient, reliable, primal. It's a basic physiological function hardwired into anything more complex than a sponge. Consciousness is just a sensory projection of reality, full of smells, sounds and movement. Any creature with a nervous system has some version of it, because survival without it is impossible. And yes, not all consciousness is created equal. Some species have weak, blurry sensory inputs, so their projection of the world is vague and low-res. Others like chameleons come with extra perks. Each eye works independently, tracking two completely separate events at the same time. That's the evolutionary equivalent of reading two complex books simultaneously and actually understanding both.
But here's the thing. Consciousness itself is mute. It doesn't talk to the organism. It doesn't ask questions, doesn't suggest answers. It just runs in the background, automatically processing reality and firing off signals to the right brain centers, which trigger muscles, chemicals, and reflexes without a single pause for reflection. The animal lives, it reacts. It never questions how or why. Reason, on the other hand, is the polar opposite. It's loud, intrusive. A relentless pest. It taunts, it nags, it meddles. It throws out unsolicited advice and constantly tempts the animal to make mistakes it would have never made if it had just stayed a happy, unthinking beast. Of course, reason didn't earn permanent residency in the Homo skull for its charm or good looks. It secured its place by offering something irresistible. More stimulation than reality itself could ever provide.
Sure, poor Homo suffered, but the pale nuclei and shimmering pathways of its ancient subcortical structures, they were ecstatic. Drunk on hellish doses of neural fireworks. Now, hold up. A million apologies, dear listener, but to explain how reason was installed into the Homo skull, we have to invoke the infamous fast-forward trick. Of course, the process didn't happen overnight. It crawled forward step by step, smeared across dozens of generations. But I'm forced to cram that entire slow-motion horror into just a handful of sentences. If it leaves you with a false impression that it was some sudden transformation, erase that thought immediately. It's a lie.
F***. You feel that? That itch crawling inside your skull? That thing pressing against the inside of your ribs? That's not me talking. That's not this podcast. That's the parasite. Reason didn't arrive as some great cosmic gift. It invaded, it burned, it humiliated. A parasite crawled into the Homo skull and left nothing untouched. It stripped away peace, rewired instincts, and turned a once simple animal into a restless, tormented mess. A beast that used to just eat, f*** and sleep, was suddenly obsessing over the invisible, the unreal, the unprovable. And now? That parasite is inside you too. You feel it, don't you? The endless hum in the back of your skull. The voice that never shuts up. The itch that won't let you rest. You think you control it? No, it controls you. And right now as you sit there, ears locked into Nox, there's only one thing to do. Sink deeper. Let it spread.
But before we continue, pause. Not to give you a break, not to let you breathe. But to let the infection settle. This isn't an intermission, this is part of the cut. Every note of what you're about to hear, another flick of the scalpel. Let it sink in. And while it does, make the next move. You're already here. You're already infected. So don't just listen. Join the ones who see. Subscribe. Follow. Watch. Be part of the Trickster Collective. Find Nox on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, wherever you plug into the void. All the links are waiting in the episode description. And remember, Nox is everywhere. Spotify, Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, wherever you feed your curiosity. Let it sink in. Let it take hold. And when we return, no more turning back.
Now breathe, sink into the sound. Once again, Bring me down. Not a friend, Just a clown. A story line, A tragedy. Turn on the lights, And show it off to me. Spin your hearts out of me, Your hearts out of me. Let me know who I am. Run the circles we're in, The circles we're in. Make it happen again. Spin your hearts out of me, Your hearts out of me. Let me know who I am. Run the circles we're in, The circles we're in. Make it happen again. Sail away, Shape of love. Leave me here, All done. Honestly, I want you back. You sounded nice, And look good colored black. Spin your hearts out of me, Your hearts out of me. Let me know who I am. Run the circles we're in, The circles we're in. Make it happen again. Spin your hearts out of me, Your hearts out of me. Let me know who I am. Run the circles we're in, The circles we're in. Make it happen again. That was Circus by Aloaaz. Dark, melancholic and unsettling. A track that turns the absurdity of existence into melody. Perfect for our descent into the roots of reason. You're still listening to Nox. The first ever English reading of Alexander Nevzorov's The Origins of Genius and Fascism.
Nevzorov is practically the only Russian-speaking intellectual who has the guts to speak this loudly. This clearly against Putin's regime. Exiled, silenced in his own country. He still refuses to shut up. And when I read his book, I knew I couldn't just walk away. I had to bring it here. I had to share it with you. If you're still here, good. Because we're only getting started. This isn't a lecture, this is an autopsy. We're cutting into the skull of Homo Sapiens and we're not stopping until we hit bone.
Nox is a joint project of Trickster Collective and the YouTube channel Mindset Maverick. All links in the episode description. Links to the podcast, links to the community. Now back to the dissection. Of course, reason wasn't delivered to each Homo as some custom, handcrafted upgrade. Not even close. It didn't happen through the addition of a shiny new cortical fold or a graceful expansion of the frontal lobes. No evolutionary neurosurgery was required. There were no hairy lines of hominids queuing up for trepanation and a brain tweak. That's not how it went down. There were no flocks of anxious angels in white coats, peering into microscopes and stuffing human neurons with the full, lurid encyclopedia of reality.
No. The hemispheres stayed exactly where they were, doing what they always did, opportunistic, wrinkled, scheming. Consciousness, that ancient tenant of the skull, mostly untouched by these changes, continued to handle the bulk of operations. But the battle had already begun. A war for control over Homo's behavior. A war between ancient, silent consciousness and the loud, meddling upstart, called reason. The emergence of reason inside the human skull is no less absurd than the evolution of the brain itself. It's just as simple, without mysteries, without secrets.
Was human reason some new, exceptional phenomenon in nature? Something with no analogs, no evolutionary predecessors? Of course not. Reason isn't some guest from another dimension. This is exactly the time to remind ourselves of the fundamental principle of reality. There's nothing new, nothing unique. If something has no evolutionary history, no traceable ancestral line, it simply doesn't exist. And anything without a traceable history belongs in the religious trash bin. Absolutely everything, from galaxies to lemonade, has a lineage, a developmental path, and an ancestral starting point. Not just bodies have evolutionary histories, but processes, phenomena, and even reason itself. No brain, no matter its size or shape, generates reason. The brain doesn't have that function or that potential. In fact, reason is much older than both the brain and consciousness.
We can easily trace its primitive embryonic form all the way back to the Proterozoic Era. Back then, billions of tiny, primitive organisms merged into colonies. There were no brains yet. There was no consciousness yet. But the need to eat, flirt, and fight was already fully present. And somehow, these problems had to be solved. The modern siphonophores, Portuguese man-o-wars, and other colonial microorganisms we know today are far smaller than their Proterozoic ancestors, but they're organized according to the exact same principle. The zooids that make up these colonies have no brains, and they are completely devoid of consciousness. Yet, when they fuse into a colony, they manage to make sound, rational decisions. These colonies display fully competent behavior and thrive in the harshest, most unforgiving stretches of the ocean. Roughly the same behavior was demonstrated by their ancient ancestors, showing the earliest form of reason. The kind that helps navigate, search, hunt, and so on.
Organisms didn't need a brain for that. All they needed was a unity of countless interdependent cells, bound by shared interests, a common feeding strategy, and a common method of reproduction. Reason didn't even require scattered neurons. This is clearly demonstrated by yellow slime molds, capable of truly astonishing rational tricks. The same can be said for the beautiful plasmodia roaming the forests, or even Venus flytraps, which aren't even fungi. Yet they demonstrate excellent memory. For that matter, even metal alloys, starting with nickel titanium, possess memory. And beyond the examples already mentioned, there are plenty of highly successful species that lack nervous systems entirely, yet they manage to think and remember perfectly well. Memory, of course, doesn't need a brain. That would be absurd. It's the brain that needs matter's memory, so that each time, it can piece itself together from fatty acids into an organ.
Memory is just slightly older than reason. Without memory, the self-organization of matter would be impossible. Every chemical and physical event depends on it. It's a very simple mechanism, reliably built from a set of known bonds, electronic, covalent, hydrogen, and so on. A brick that forgets how to be a brick is doomed. In elemental and solid forms, memory is nearly flawless. But in biological systems, it can glitch. DNA was slapped together in a rush and came out extremely vulnerable. Thanks to this sloppy work, biota is far from perfect. But on the bright side, jars in anatomical museums keep filling up with new specimens of deformities, and anatomists always have fresh monsters to dissect. That's just how it is. It just so happened that biological life forms inherited the budget version of this ancient property from Mother Matter. But for the needs of the biosphere, even that is more than enough. And wherever there's memory, reason can easily be triggered if necessary.
So, the colonies of brainless microorganisms from the Proterozoic, those are the starting point of what we now call biological reason. Since those ancient times, almost every living creature has been dragging around the gene for this useful trait. Most of the time, the gene just sleeps in some dark corner of the genome, or gets used in a very limited capacity. But when survival demands it, the gene activates and takes the helm. Reason is strictly a collective phenomenon. It cannot belong to a single individual. It needs a tightly knit community of zooids, all obsessed with the desire to survive, a colony. And the larger the colony, the richer the reason. As for the size of the colony's members, that doesn't matter at all. Terms like big and small are just literary fluff. To evolution, they mean nothing. Evolution juggles galaxies and quarks with the same ease.
Let me remind you, siphonophores and bryozoans were once classified as microorganisms. These are the very same creatures that from a bird's eye view look no different than fish roe. And for the highest authority in evolution, the same holds true for the human mouth. It's just another ordinary colony of microorganisms. Let's also remember, for evolution, the word human doesn't mean an individual. It refers to the entire population. And that population is subject to the exact same laws that once allowed Proterozoic life to unite and resist its environment. Biological reason itself is a remarkably primitive phenomenon. Yes, it allows the colony to slurp plankton, choose the right spots on seabed rocks, and burp out poisonous bubbles to stupify passing fish. All useful skills, but only in the realm of underwater survival.
If there's any need to invent something as basic as a primus stove, or even something as ridiculous as elections, this ancient gift has to be thoroughly blended with neural capacity, reflexes, aggression, and manual dexterity. That cocktail has to be shaken for a very long time until it reaches perfect homogeneity. And the best mixer, of course, is species-wide suffering. Hunger works great. So does near extinction, and permanent, unrelenting humiliation. Average shake time, around 20,000 years, but with no guarantees. If even a single essential component is missing from the mix, no amount of shaking will help. Take the aye-aye from Madagascar. Its finger sensitivity is phenomenal. It could have become a jeweler beyond compare, or a neurosurgeon so precise it would make Wilder Penfield look like a butcher. But the aye-aye's neurons are hopelessly underdeveloped. That's why it's not the aye-aye locking Homo into a cage. It's Homo locking up the aye-aye.
End of Chapter 13. And here we are. Homo sapiens. The self-proclaimed king of reason. A species that sculpted gods out of fear, waged war against itself and called it civilization. But what did it get in return? The never-ending buzz of anxious thoughts. A brain that never shuts up. A consciousness that doubts, analyzes, fears. Reason wasn't given to man. It infected him. Every religious revelation, every philosophical theory, every political doctrine, just symptoms of the disease. The truth is brutal. Man didn't become rational, he became neurotic. He built cities not out of a drive for progress, but out of terror of chaos. He invented morality not out of compassion, but out of fear of his own instincts. He created art not out of love for beauty, but because he couldn't stand himself. And now? Now he's trapped inside his hyperactive brain, clinging to illusions, desperately searching for meaning in a system glitch.
You feel it, don't you? That nagging suspicion that something in this world isn't right. That everything around you is just a performance. That you've been lied to since birth. But you're not crazy. You're just awake. Most people spend their lives numbing the itch, avoiding the questions, suppressing the discomfort. But not you. You're here. You're listening. You're thinking. And that means there's no going back. This book changed me. I translated it into English so that more people could see the raw, brutal truth of human nature.
Alexander Nevzorov didn't just write a book. He dissected the grand lie of civilization. And he didn't stop there. Nevzorov speaks out every single day against Russia's brutal war in Ukraine and fiercely attacks the criminal regime of Vladimir Putin. His words are dangerous. His truth is uncompromising. And today, you can hear it all, unfiltered, on his official YouTube channel. This is the kind of voice they fear, and if they fear it, it means we should listen.
Welcome to the virus. Welcome to thought infection. Welcome to Nox. Subscribe. Listen. Spread the plague. Nox is everywhere you listen. Spotify, Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, Amazon Music. All links are in the episode description. This episode will not go unnoticed. Watch, listen, think, spread. And never forget. In night we trust.