The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #1201 - William von Hippel

00:00:01.000 Alright, here we go.

00:00:03.000 Four, three, two...

00:00:07.000 Hello, Bill.

00:00:08.000 Hi.

00:00:09.000 What's going on, man?

00:00:10.000 I am very excited to be here.

00:00:11.000 I'm excited to have you here.

00:00:12.000 Excellent.

00:00:12.000 The Social Leap.

00:00:14.000 Yes.

00:00:14.000 What's The Social Leap?

00:00:15.000 I'll tell you all about it.

00:00:17.000 Please do.

00:00:18.000 Okay, so the story that I want to tell is basically how we got here, how we became human.

00:00:24.000 And so that story begins about six or seven million years ago when our ancestors left the rainforest.

00:00:31.000 And so the question is why would they leave and how would they survive once they left?

00:00:35.000 And that's what the social leap is.

00:00:37.000 So it takes a second to get it all out there, okay?

00:00:40.000 Yeah.

00:00:40.000 All right.

00:00:41.000 So here's the story.

00:00:43.000 So if you look back about 7 million years, our ancestors and chimps, we had a common ancestor at about that point in time, 6 or 7 million years ago.

00:00:51.000 And that common ancestor, we don't know exactly what it looked like, but from all we can tell, it was awfully close to today's chimps.

00:00:58.000 And so if you look at chimps today, you can get a pretty good sense of what life was like then.

00:01:02.000 And chimps today are really interesting.

00:01:04.000 They're basically at the top of the food chain in the rainforest.

00:01:08.000 They're super fast up in the trees, super athletic, and because they travel in groups, even amazing tree climbers like leopards won't try to attack them in trees.

00:01:17.000 It's just they're too dangerous too fast.

00:01:20.000 But if you look at a chimp on the ground, it can't even lock its knees. 1.00

00:01:23.000 It's this kind of cute little stumbling along thing.

00:01:26.000 And then the question is, why would an animal that runs a show in the canopy leave the rainforest for the savannah?

00:01:31.000 And then how would it survive once it did that?

00:01:33.000 And that's the story of this book and then how that manifests itself to where we are today.

00:01:39.000 So, really my goal, I'm a psychologist, I want to understand why we are the way we are.

00:01:43.000 And so, in trying to figure that out, I said, well, let's take a look back all the way to our common ancestors and see some of the key events and how they might have had an influence on how we are today.

00:01:53.000 So the first question is why would we leave the trees, right?

00:01:56.000 Here we are.

00:01:56.000 We're dominant position.

00:01:58.000 We're food on the ground.

00:02:00.000 Why would we ever take that risk?

00:02:02.000 And the basic story there is the Great African Rift Valley.

00:02:05.000 I'm not sure if you're familiar with it at all, but basically it runs down from up at the Red Sea down to the coast of Mozambique.

00:02:12.000 And you can think of it like a geographic zipper.

00:02:15.000 You know, all the world sits on these tectonic plates, and sometimes they crash into each other, like how India is smashing into Asia and creates the Himalayas. 0.99

00:02:23.000 Sometimes they literally tear apart.

00:02:25.000 And Africa is tearing apart at the Great African Rift Valley.

00:02:27.000 So that plate that has Somali and Ethiopia, Tanzania, Kenya, that's moving off to the lower right.

00:02:33.000 The rest of Africa is moving off to the upper left. 0.86

00:02:37.000 And I got no idea why.

00:02:39.000 It's been going on for quite a while.

00:02:40.000 But one of the consequences of that is that the East Africa is starting to rise up slowly bit by bit.

00:02:45.000 And when it rises up, the rainforests dry out.

00:02:48.000 And so basically what you have is a situation where our ancestors were on the east side of that Rift Valley and it started to dry out.

00:02:54.000 And now they're in a situation where they've got this great lifestyle, their dominant position, but now they're pushed, they're forced out onto the ground increasingly more and more because there's more and more ground and less and less rainforest.

00:03:05.000 And so how do they survive that?

00:03:06.000 What do they do in order to make that work? 0.59

00:03:10.000 And this is a, what period of time is this?

00:03:13.000 How many millions of years ago?

00:03:14.000 Six or seven.

00:03:15.000 Six or seven.

00:03:16.000 Does this coincide with the, when was the jump of the human brain size?

00:03:22.000 Were it doubled?

00:03:22.000 Let's get to that.

00:03:23.000 So it's a super interesting question about why that happened as well.

00:03:26.000 So basically, if you track us across the next three million years, how did our ancestors survive when they're basically chimpanzees on the open savanna?

00:03:34.000 And you can get a hint of how they did it because there's one chimpanzee group that does live on the savanna in Senegal, and they show some differences between themselves and other chimps that travel in slightly larger groups.

00:03:46.000 They share more nicely with each other, which is interesting.

00:03:49.000 That's kind of a human trait as well.

00:03:50.000 And they also avoid open space, like they're just kind of trying to stay near the trees as much as possible.

00:03:57.000 And if you look at other primates that are on the savannah, like savannah baboons, they're only monkeys, so they're not as sharp as chimpanzees are, but they have a similar strategy.

00:04:07.000 Large groups to try to protect themselves and lots of eyes to look out for predators.

00:04:11.000 And they do fine on the savannah.

00:04:13.000 And so what I suspect happened is for the first few million years, basically what you've got is this chimp-like animal that's kind of skirting the edges of the savannah, nowhere near the top dominant position they used to be, and just kind of noodling around. 0.99

00:04:26.000 And that takes, I suspect that takes us for about the first three, three and a half million years.

00:04:30.000 And if you look at who we are then, We're Australopithecus afarensis.

00:04:35.000 So if you looked at one of them, you'd think it belongs in a zoo.

00:04:38.000 It looks almost like a chimpanzee.

00:04:40.000 And so a chimp brain, in answer to the first part of your question, is about 380 grams. 0.94

00:04:45.000 And Australopithecus brain is about 450 grams.

00:04:48.000 So 3 million years of evolution and all we've got for it is 70 grams.

00:04:54.000 Why do we get so smart?

00:04:55.000 Why do we take off in the next few million years?

00:04:57.000 And what is it that Australopithecus did that helped us survive?

00:05:00.000 And why do I call that the social leap?

00:05:02.000 That's all kind of tied together.

00:05:04.000 And the basic story is that by this point, Australopithecus has become bipedal.

00:05:10.000 And we can talk about how that happened if you'd like.

00:05:12.000 And so because they're bipedal, their waist is now stretched out.

00:05:16.000 Their musculature, like if you look at chimpanzee pecs, they aim upward because of course chimps climb in all the time.

00:05:23.000 Australopithecus is more lateral like we are.

00:05:24.000 We're basically completely lateral because things are side to side as far as we're concerned.

00:05:29.000 It's harder to climb a tree, but it's a whole lot easier to do a lot of other things.

00:05:34.000 We have much more limber shoulder.

00:05:36.000 We have much more limber wrist, all that sort of thing.

00:05:38.000 And a lot of that was in place by Australopithecus.

00:05:41.000 So once they became bipedal, they gained a lot of these qualities.

00:05:46.000 And then the question is, why do those qualities matter?

00:05:48.000 Well, if you watch a chimpanzee throw, it's terrible at it.

00:05:52.000 Even though they're stronger than you and I are, pound for pound by a sizable margin, when they throw, they're inept, they can't aim very well, and they typically use two hands, because they're not lined up well to throw.

00:06:02.000 If you watch a really good thrower, like, you know, a gridiron, a football player, a baseball player, or a hunter-gatherer throw, you know, it's a full body motion.

00:06:09.000 You step forward with the other leg, there's this rotation, and the very last minute you bring your wrist through.

00:06:14.000 Well, what that does is it creates an enormous amount of elastic energy across your muscles, tendons, and ligaments.

00:06:20.000 And the end of that throw for a human is like the snapping of a rubber band.

00:06:24.000 So chimps can't do that. 0.97

00:06:26.000 They're not lined up properly.

00:06:28.000 But Australopithecus got to the point where they could probably do that pretty well.

00:06:34.000 And that's purely a byproduct of bipedalism, because it stretched out their whole body, and they're not climbing as much anymore, so their musculature is more lateral, which would have helped them for throwing.

00:06:44.000 So now you get to a point where they have access to the single most important military invention in history, which is the capacity to kill at a distance.

00:06:52.000 So if you and I are running around the savannah and a lion attacks us and we got 50 of our best friends, we could kill it with our bare hands, but a lot of us are going to die in the process, right?

00:07:01.000 You think 50 of us could kill a lion?

00:07:03.000 Let's make it 100. You really think even 100 of us could kill a lion?

00:07:07.000 You know, with a bunch of knives and shit. 1.00

00:07:08.000 If I was a lion, I'd be super confident I'd fuck up 100 people. 0.99

00:07:12.000 You wouldn't worry very much, but... 0.99

00:07:14.000 But even if we could, so we knew what we're doing, we're all armed with knives, whoever goes in first is screwed.

00:07:19.000 Right, right.

00:07:19.000 And so the capacity to kill at a distance, though, allows a larger force of weaker individuals to easily defeat a stronger individual.

00:07:27.000 And so once they gain this capacity to throw, if they were attacked by lions or something like that, whereas in the past they'd have just scattered for the trees, now they could throw stones at it and defend themselves.

00:07:37.000 Now, an Australopithecus throwing rocks at a lion is going to be in the belly of a slightly annoyed lion in about three minutes, right?

00:07:43.000 Right.

00:07:44.000 But 50 Australopithecines throwing rocks at lions is a totally different story.

00:07:48.000 And so the idea here is the throwing hypothesis, that what changed everything was throwing.

00:07:54.000 And the reason it changed everything is that it caused us, it was the first reason why we should have any effective collective action.

00:08:01.000 Because it's not a good strategy when you're on your own, It's not a good strategy if I do it and the rest of the group heads for the trees, but it's a great strategy if we all do it together.

00:08:11.000 And so for the first time in history, the group's goals in our history, in our line, the primate line, the group's goals aligned with the individual goals, which is let's cooperate and work together to try to drive away these predators.

00:08:23.000 I think?

00:08:44.000 And so when the Portuguese went to the Canary Islands to try to subjugate it, they rock up with, you know, armor, guns, crossbows, and this is in the, like, 14-something, and all the locals were armed with was stones.

00:08:58.000 And despite the fact that the Portuguese are there in army, trained, you know, ready to shoot, and in their armor, they were just decimated by the local stone rocks at them.

00:09:07.000 And this story has happened over and over again.

00:09:08.000 And when you read these accounts, they're extraordinary.

00:09:10.000 I can read you some examples from here.

00:09:13.000 It happened in Australia.

00:09:14.000 It happened in the Canary Islands.

00:09:16.000 It happened elsewhere.

00:09:17.000 They just throw rocks incredibly accurately, incredibly hard, and really fast.

00:09:22.000 And there's accounts in Africa basically killing a zebra with one blow of a rock to the head.

00:09:30.000 So like a pitcher, a major league pitcher with a good rock who gets very accurate at it.

00:09:37.000 So do you think they must have practiced?

00:09:40.000 Constantly.

00:09:40.000 And so what I suspect is that we evolved to like to throw rocks.

00:09:44.000 And so if I look at my son as a for example, when he was 18 months old, we would be walking back to the house.

00:09:50.000 If he saw a rock on the street, he'd pick it up and start trying to throw it.

00:09:53.000 And my wife is like, no, no, don't let him throw rocks. 1.00

00:09:55.000 It's only going to cause trouble.

00:09:56.000 First of all, I'm thinking, well, maybe he'll develop a good arm, so I'm going to go ahead and let him anyway.

00:10:00.000 But secondly, he freaking wants to.

00:10:02.000 This is like something inherently fun for him.

00:10:05.000 And I think all humans enjoy throwing.

00:10:07.000 And it's stunning how good you can get it with practice.

00:10:10.000 So...

00:10:12.000 We were at the Ohio State Fair.

00:10:13.000 This was before my son was born.

00:10:15.000 And I was walking by one of these stalls where you can throw in a radar gun.

00:10:19.000 And so I thought, oh, here's...

00:10:20.000 I was just starting to date my wife.

00:10:22.000 And I thought, oh, here's a perfect chance to impress her, right?

00:10:23.000 And how macho I am.

00:10:25.000 So I said, hey, why don't I stop and I'll throw some balls here in this net?

00:10:28.000 Because I had never thrown.

00:10:29.000 I didn't know how fast I could.

00:10:30.000 So she's like, sure.

00:10:31.000 And I was...

00:10:32.000 I played like Little League, right?

00:10:33.000 So I throw the ball and it's like 50 miles an hour.

00:10:36.000 And she's pretty impressed because that sounds fast, right?

00:10:39.000 And then this kid shows up next to me.

00:10:41.000 He's got to be 12 years old, probably weighs 85 pounds, this total gangle, not a muscle in his body.

00:10:47.000 And he just starts freaking throwing ball after ball at like 65 miles an hour. 1.00

00:10:50.000 And I'm like, fuck! 1.00

00:10:52.000 I mean, she's not going to be impressed with this human twig next to me. 1.00

00:10:55.000 He's kicking my ass, right? 0.99

00:10:56.000 And so I pick up the last ball. 0.99

00:10:58.000 I freaking throw it as hard as I can.

00:11:00.000 It hurts my shoulder, flies off at an odd angle, doesn't hit anything, and it's like 57 miles an hour.

00:11:05.000 Now that little guy, who's like literally the size of an Australopithecus, was thrown at 65 and hitting the target every time.

00:11:11.000 And so it's obvious that it's skill, it's practice that would have made you good at this.

00:11:15.000 And if your life depends on it, you're going to do it.

00:11:17.000 Well, that makes sense coming from a martial arts background.

00:11:21.000 Like, coordinated movement, where at the end of it, you snap.

00:11:25.000 Exactly.

00:11:26.000 It just makes sense that this technique is so critical.

00:11:30.000 Even though you're a larger person, someone with better technique would have more of an impact with that.

00:11:34.000 So, the throwing arm, I had read this.

00:11:38.000 That was one of the hypotheses.

00:11:39.000 There's several hypotheses why the human brain doubled over a period of two million years.

00:11:44.000 Another one was cooked meat, right?

00:11:46.000 Yeah.

00:11:46.000 They figured out a way to get more nutrients out of meat by cooking it over fire.

00:11:51.000 Right.

00:11:51.000 So that's a little bit down the road.

00:11:52.000 So here we are three and a half million years ago.

00:11:54.000 And so for the first time, we put some pressure on ourselves to have an advantage to be smarter.

00:11:58.000 So imagine you're a zebra.

00:12:00.000 You know, what the hell good is it to you to be Einstein?

00:12:02.000 You got hooves.

00:12:03.000 What are you going to do with that brain, right?

00:12:04.000 But it's a big cost.

00:12:06.000 Our brains are 20% of our metabolic energy whether we're doing math or watching TV. It's constant drain.

00:12:12.000 And so what are our ancestors?

00:12:14.000 Why would they pay for that drain?

00:12:15.000 Now, just recently there was a paper that came out maybe three months ago now on...

00:12:21.000 A new brain expansion gene they found, or they think that's what it is, called Notch2NL.

00:12:25.000 And it turns out, I don't know, 12, 15 million years ago, there was an accidental duplication of that gene on our genome.

00:12:31.000 But it was ineffective, and it just sat there doing nothing.

00:12:34.000 Now, that's a great way that evolution works, where it accidentally doubles a gene, because then you can mess with it, and the old gene's still doing the job, right?

00:12:41.000 So it sat there for about 9 million years in our line until about 3 million years ago around Australopithecus, and then it duplicated itself and it came online again.

00:12:50.000 And what that gene seems to do is it makes our brain remain as stem cells for longer, which means a lot more duplication before they run away and start becoming neurons.

00:12:59.000 And so...

00:13:01.000 If I had to guess, I'd say that that probably, that gene coming online probably happened many times in the past.

00:13:07.000 And every time it happened in the past, it was more cost than it was worth.

00:13:10.000 And so what's the chimp going to do with a little bit more brain and just means more calories and what does he gain from it? 1.00

00:13:15.000 But now that we're working together, Now that we have collective action, all sorts of things open up.

00:13:20.000 We could devise division of labor.

00:13:22.000 I'll say, hey man, you do this and I'll do that.

00:13:24.000 Because Australopithecus, they've got 70 more grams than a chimp. 0.99

00:13:28.000 They can't do things like that.

00:13:29.000 They can't all throw rocks at the same time.

00:13:31.000 That's not rocket science.

00:13:32.000 But all the kinds of things that came next probably were enabled by that process of us coming together and deciding to work together and cooperate.

00:13:40.000 So if you look at chimpanzees, they don't cooperate very well.

00:13:44.000 For example, one of the activities where they sort of cooperate is when they hunt monkeys.

00:13:48.000 And so they'll all gather around and they'll see some monkeys in the trees and they come in from every angle.

00:13:52.000 It's not very coordinated.

00:13:53.000 It's kind of a wild free-for-all.

00:13:55.000 But what's interesting about it is that when the hunt's over...

00:13:58.000 Let's say you just sat there the whole time and watched, and I'm working my ass off chasing these monkeys.

00:14:02.000 I got one.

00:14:03.000 You come up and bug me for it.

00:14:05.000 And I don't willingly handle it.

00:14:06.000 You keep nudging me until I share, but I'm just as likely to share with you if you helped as if you didn't.

00:14:11.000 I don't make any distinction.

00:14:12.000 And you'll never establish effective groups if you can't reward those who participate compared to those who don't.

00:14:18.000 Even little kids, four-year-old kids, when you give them games to play and they earn stickers, if you didn't play, when you come up and ask, you don't get any.

00:14:26.000 You played, even if you didn't do your job right but you tried, boom, you can have a sticker.

00:14:30.000 So humans immediately get that, that you get rewarded for your activities as part of the group.

00:14:34.000 Chimps don't seem to have that.

00:14:36.000 That's fascinating.

00:14:37.000 Because chimps really do have a sense of fairness, though.

00:14:42.000 And that's one of the issues that happened with the captive chimp that attacked the man who brought the birthday cake. 0.66

00:14:48.000 Do you know that story?

00:14:48.000 I don't know that story.

00:14:49.000 It's an awful story.

00:14:50.000 This couple, they kept a chimp as a pet for a long time, and then as it got older, it got a little violent, and they had to bring it to a sanctuary.

00:14:59.000 And they brought it to a sanctuary and they would go to visit it and the chimp would remember them and they went to visit it and it was on his birthday so they brought him a cake and the other chimps in the sanctuary were furious that they didn't get the cake as well.

00:15:11.000 They didn't think it was fair or they were angry so they figured out somebody had left a gate open and they got out and tore this guy apart.

00:15:18.000 Yeah.

00:15:19.000 Because he didn't give them a cake.

00:15:20.000 Yeah, so the most famous example of that is actually with capuchin monkeys, which aren't nearly as smart as chimps. 0.96

00:15:26.000 And it's this amazing study by Sarah Brosnan and Franz De Waal.

00:15:29.000 And if you want to see it in action, De Waal has it on a TED Talk.

00:15:32.000 It's really quite something to see.

00:15:33.000 And what they do in that study is they teach these capuchin monkeys to... 0.86

00:15:37.000 They give them pebble, and they teach the capuchins to return the pebble, and they give it a cucumber slice.

00:15:42.000 And so it's learned the game for cucumber slices.

00:15:44.000 So if you wanted to ask, does the monkey think that's a fair reward?

00:15:47.000 The answer has to be yes, right?

00:15:49.000 Because it's doing that for cucumber.

00:15:51.000 So now you and I are both monkeys and we're in our cage.

00:15:53.000 I return the pebble, I get a cucumber.

00:15:55.000 Now you return the pebble and they hand you a grape.

00:15:58.000 Capuchins much prefer grapes over cucumbers.

00:16:00.000 And so then what happens next?

00:16:02.000 Well, I've been doing this behavior for cucumbers, but as soon as you get a grape, I'm like, yeah, I'm not playing anymore.

00:16:07.000 And you watch this tape, and the capuchin, they give you a grape, they give me the cucumber, and the thing looks totally pissed.

00:16:14.000 It starts pounding on the ground, it throws the cucumber back at the excriminator.

00:16:17.000 It's amazing, yeah?

00:16:18.000 And so the question is, what does that mean?

00:16:20.000 Why do they care about fairness in that way?

00:16:23.000 And I think the answer to that question is sexual selection.

00:16:27.000 And so the key to sexual selection is it doesn't matter what everybody's getting so long as I'm getting about as much as everybody else.

00:16:35.000 But the second that you're starting to get more than I have, well then whatever female is in our group, she's going to pick you before she picks me. 1.00

00:16:41.000 And so everything is relative.

00:16:43.000 We may think, no, why do you care so much about what other people are doing?

00:16:46.000 Why don't you just be happy with what you got? 0.99

00:16:48.000 But literally, the day you find out that the guy in the next studio over salary is twice yours, your salary sucks. 0.97

00:16:55.000 Right. 0.67

00:16:56.000 And it makes sense because literally she's going to choose him now before she chooses you.

00:17:02.000 Comparison is a thief of joy.

00:17:03.000 Yeah, that's exactly right.

00:17:04.000 It's a really unfortunate fact because sometimes it matters a lot.

00:17:08.000 Like, for example, imagine I invent a drug and I say, here, take a dose and it'll double your IQ. Instantly you're going to feel like a genius.

00:17:14.000 But unbeknownst to you, I gave everybody two doses. 0.99

00:17:17.000 You walk out of there, you're going to feel like a dumbass because people are saying stuff you can't understand, right? 0.99

00:17:21.000 So then it would matter. 0.99

00:17:23.000 Right.

00:17:23.000 But the killer cases are things where it's only just a residue.

00:17:26.000 So, for example, there's this amazing study where they showed that people who are making minimum, just above minimum wage, are the ones who don't want you to raise minimum wage.

00:17:35.000 They're the most against it.

00:17:37.000 Really?

00:17:37.000 Yeah.

00:17:37.000 Now, why would that be?

00:17:38.000 Well, right now they've got a slight advantage over people making minimum wage.

00:17:42.000 The day minimum wage gets raised, now They're not any better off than anybody else.

00:17:47.000 So even though they're the most likely to benefit from it because they may lose that job they have and have to take minimum wage, they're actually against it because it gives them a slight advantage over the guy next door.

00:17:56.000 Is this based on one study?

00:17:58.000 Because I would think that the people that would be most against it would be the people that are hiring folks.

00:18:03.000 All right, fair enough.

00:18:04.000 It's only looking at income.

00:18:06.000 So the boss probably feels even the more negative of all.

00:18:09.000 But if you look at people's income and their feelings about raising minimum wage, the people are making minimum wage want it to go up, the people one notch above do not, and then as the higher you go, they do again.

00:18:18.000 Really?

00:18:19.000 Yeah.

00:18:20.000 Wow.

00:18:20.000 Up until you get to the point where you're employing people.

00:18:23.000 Right.

00:18:23.000 Well, and some employers want to raise it, right?

00:18:25.000 And some don't.

00:18:27.000 There's a huge argument about that.

00:18:28.000 Now, when it comes back to the Capuchin monkeys, does the same effect happen whether it's a female or a male?

00:18:33.000 I don't know.

00:18:34.000 I mean, so the thing is, and people argue like crazy about exactly what this means.

00:18:37.000 I don't think the monkeys have a sense of fairness like you and I have, but I do think they have a sense of, hold on, you're getting more than I am.

00:18:45.000 I can't let this happen. 0.96

00:18:46.000 Otherwise, I'm screwed. 0.99

00:18:47.000 And there's lots of great evidence that if you let that happen, you're screwed. 1.00

00:18:50.000 But do the females have that same sense of competitiveness that they need to have the exact same thing those other bitches are having? 1.00

00:18:56.000 Do they get angry? 0.99

00:18:57.000 Well, here's the thing.

00:18:59.000 It depends on whether your mating system is going to be pair bonding or not.

00:19:04.000 So if you're a frog, or lots of different frogs, not all of them, a laughing tree frog, or if you're an elephant seal or something, will all the females mate with the best male?

00:19:14.000 Because his job is just sex.

00:19:16.000 And so every female can have the best one. 1.00

00:19:19.000 Either in a situation where they've got no choice, like the elephant seals, he controls the rookery, or in a situation where they just listen to all the croaking and then they go, alright, you're the best croaker, you're the dad.

00:19:28.000 But if you're pair bonding like humans or like lots of other animals, birds, etc., then what you need is you've got competition on both sides.

00:19:38.000 So she's always competing to get the best male and he's always competing to get the best female.

00:19:43.000 Now there's reasons why male-male competition is always a bit more intense than female-female competition, but both of them are there.

00:19:49.000 And the more monogamous the system gets, the more both sides compete for each other.

00:19:54.000 Hmm, interesting.

00:19:55.000 So what about in the case of like bonobos, where they're so polyamorous?

00:20:01.000 Bonobos are a super interesting system.

00:20:03.000 So you've got lots of polyamorous animals.

00:20:06.000 Bonobos are interesting.

00:20:07.000 Chimps are also...

00:20:08.000 So if you look at...

00:20:09.000 One of the great ways to look at our ancestors and what their lives were like is you look in your trousers. 0.98

00:20:14.000 And the size of your testicles tells you a lot about what sort of mating system your ancestors had. 0.99

00:20:19.000 So gorillas have tiny little testicles. 0.99

00:20:22.000 And the reason that they have such tiny testicles is they use their huge body to drive away the other males. 0.99

00:20:27.000 And then all the females are in his harem. 1.00

00:20:29.000 So he doesn't need big testicles because he only needs enough sperm in order to inseminate the females he's got. 0.98

00:20:34.000 It doesn't take much sperm to inseminate any one female, and testicles are really expensive tissue to make. 0.90

00:20:40.000 And if you own a pair and you land on them, you know they're uncomfortable too, right? 0.65

00:20:43.000 And so then you look at our testicles, and they're quite a bit bigger than a gorilla's, but they're nowhere near the size of a chimp. 0.99

00:20:50.000 Or bonobo, both. 0.99

00:20:51.000 You know, they're basically, in many ways, almost the same beast.

00:20:54.000 And so, although socially quite different.

00:20:56.000 And they have a system where they basically have to wash out the guy who was there before him. 0.96

00:21:01.000 And so it takes really big testicles to have sperm competition. 1.00

00:21:04.000 So their competition isn't by fighting each other, although there's a degree of that too.

00:21:07.000 They know full well that when she comes into estrus, into heat, there's going to be a line. 0.97

00:21:12.000 And if you're fifth in line and you can wash everybody out before you, you might end up the dad.

00:21:16.000 Wash everybody out is a funny way of putting it.

00:21:18.000 It's not very romantic. 0.99

00:21:21.000 This testicle size is directly proportionate to the number of promiscuous females. 1.00

00:21:26.000 Well, that's right. 0.99

00:21:27.000 The promiscuity of the mating system.

00:21:29.000 And so if you look at our mating system, we clearly evolved to be largely monogamous but not entirely. 0.96

00:21:34.000 Our testicles are unnecessarily large for an entirely monogamous species.

00:21:38.000 And so we're a little bit on the wash the guy out ahead of us. 0.87

00:21:42.000 But there's many people that make arguments that our monogamy is socially reinforced and it's not natural.

00:21:48.000 Look, if you look at hunter-gatherers, and so the best way that we get a sense of, well, what did we evolve to do is to look at the remaining hunter-gatherer societies, particularly if you look at what are called immediate return hunter-gatherers.

00:22:00.000 So there are people who eat today what they killed today.

00:22:03.000 You've got a lot of hunter-gatherers, once they left the equator, they could store food and everything changed for them.

00:22:09.000 And they actually, in many of their behaviors, they look a lot like us.

00:22:11.000 And we can come back to that if you'd like.

00:22:13.000 But if you look at hunter-gatherers around the equator, they're typically immediate return, kill, eat.

00:22:18.000 And so those guys tend to be, there's always, of course, human differences.

00:22:23.000 We're a super variable species.

00:22:25.000 But they tend to be serially monogamous.

00:22:28.000 And so some people pair up for life, lots of people pair up for five, seven years, and then break apart and pair up again.

00:22:34.000 And so you have a sequence of children with a sequence of people.

00:22:37.000 But largely monogamous, not entirely.

00:22:41.000 But monogamous during those time periods.

00:22:43.000 Yeah, largely.

00:22:43.000 Now we know every single animal we've ever described as monogamous, when we do the DNA, we now find they're not entirely.

00:22:49.000 But they're mostly.

00:22:51.000 Interesting.

00:22:52.000 So, have you ever read Sex at Dawn?

00:22:55.000 What did you think of that? 1.00

00:22:57.000 No offense, but I think it's total crap. 1.00

00:22:59.000 Chris Ryan, do you hear that shit? 1.00

00:23:01.000 Everybody's rocking on your book, bro. 1.00

00:23:03.000 What did you think is crap about it? 0.90

00:23:05.000 I just don't think the system works that way. 0.93

00:23:08.000 Explain to people that may not know what we're talking about.

00:23:10.000 I haven't read that book now since it came out, so remind me of the thesis.

00:23:13.000 Do you remember it?

00:23:14.000 The idea is that we evolved in these small tribes of people that essentially shared sexual partners. 1.00

00:23:21.000 Oh yeah, that's bullshit. 0.99

00:23:22.000 And so the thing is that... 1.00

00:23:24.000 What makes you say that so confidently?

00:23:25.000 Well, I don't know.

00:23:27.000 I shouldn't say it quite so confidently.

00:23:28.000 You're absolutely right. 0.99

00:23:29.000 I believe that's bullshit. 0.99

00:23:30.000 How's that? 1.00

00:23:31.000 Okay. 1.00

00:23:31.000 Why do you believe that's bullshit? 1.00

00:23:32.000 Because so human beings have very clear evolved jealousy systems and they're not just a product of the world that we live in today. 0.99

00:23:41.000 You can see jealousy among hunter-gatherers as well.

00:23:45.000 Now, the thing is they get jealous about different things because, of course, men and women have slightly different pressure on them.

00:23:49.000 We're good to go.

00:24:07.000 The woman gets pregnant. 0.99

00:24:08.000 She then starts to sleep with all the other males because she thinks her baby will gain the qualities of all the men that she sleeps with. 1.00

00:24:14.000 So I'm not trying to claim that we're always monogamous because absolutely that's untrue.

00:24:18.000 But I do think that the dominant system is one of serial monogamy.

00:24:22.000 And the reason I think that that's the dominant system is this is kind of the deal that we made whereby the males go out and do the hunting.

00:24:30.000 The females go out and do gathering. 0.82

00:24:31.000 And that's basically universal.

00:24:33.000 She tends to cook for him.

00:24:34.000 And that comes back to the fire point you made, which we can come back to.

00:24:38.000 And so they share resources.

00:24:40.000 And he's happy to share resources and do his best to kinda sorta look out for her kids.

00:24:44.000 I mean, human males aren't, we don't take as much care as human females do of our kids, but we're much better than the other great apes.

00:24:51.000 And so that level of investment he's gonna make tends to be to the degree that he believes that he's the father of the kids.

00:24:57.000 Now you have societies where he doesn't know that really all are polyamorous like that, by all means.

00:25:02.000 I don't know what percentage they are, and it could even be they're more common than I believe.

00:25:07.000 But when that happens, the systems tend to change a little bit, and he's a little bit less willing to look out, try to help out kids, other than to do her a favor unless the kid looks a lot like himself.

00:25:18.000 Now, what about why having a system, a biological system, where jealousy What makes you think that somehow or another negates the idea of polyamorous relationships?

00:25:33.000 Well, it does suggest that they're not our default.

00:25:36.000 Doesn't it more likely suggest that it encourages competition, which is just natural?

00:25:42.000 Well, now you think about envy instead of jealousy.

00:25:44.000 And so if I'm jealous, I'm upset that my wife slept with somebody else last night. 0.97

00:25:49.000 He could be a lowlife.

00:25:50.000 I don't envy a thing about him.

00:25:51.000 I don't want anything he owns.

00:25:53.000 But I'm jealous of her behavior.

00:25:55.000 I'm protective of what she's done.

00:25:57.000 And so there's a wonderful experiment David Buss has run at the University of Texas.

00:26:01.000 Can I stop you there, though?

00:26:01.000 Yeah, of course.

00:26:02.000 Are you jealous of the man?

00:26:03.000 As well, you're not just jealous of her behavior.

00:26:06.000 You're jealous of this other male that gets to have sex with your wife and could not possibly encourage competition and encourage men to be more aggressive or more ingenious or just create encourage creativity encourage Better hunting skills,

00:26:24.000 so you attract more women.

00:26:26.000 I mean, all those things seem to be natural.

00:26:28.000 I would agree with all that, but I'd phrase it a little bit differently.

00:26:30.000 So there's this wonderful study out of the Philippines where they measured a huge number of men's testosterone when they were single.

00:26:37.000 And then they waited a few years and measured it again after they were still single, or now they're married, or now they're married and they have kids.

00:26:44.000 And I'm sure it wasn't a psychology study because we can't afford to do that.

00:26:48.000 It was probably some medical thing.

00:26:49.000 But they used it to answer this interesting psychological question, which was, who's most likely to get the girl by their original testosterone levels, and what happens when you do?

00:26:58.000 Well, the guys who got married in the intervening few years had higher testosterone than the guys who didn't.

00:27:04.000 So yeah, you're absolutely right.

00:27:05.000 We're out there competing with other males in order to get the girl.

00:27:09.000 And there's lots and lots that goes on there, tons of really interesting things.

00:27:12.000 But what's interesting is once we get the girl, our testosterone drops.

00:27:16.000 And so once we partner up and if we're in a monogamous relationship, not polyamorous, but in a monogamous relationship, our testosterone drops and then it drops again if we have kids.

00:27:27.000 And testosterone is a great hormone for getting out there and being competitive with other guys.

00:27:31.000 It's not a great hormone for being nurturant for your children and it's not a great hormone for being faithful to your partner.

00:27:37.000 And so I think that we evolved to compete with other males in order to get into the mating game.

00:27:42.000 So if you look at our ancestral DNA, you know how you can track our male and female ancestry through mitochondrial DNA on the mother side and why?

00:27:49.000 You'll see that we have far more female ancestors than male.

00:27:53.000 Not quite two to one, but I think it's close to that.

00:27:55.000 And so what does that tell us?

00:27:56.000 Well, lots of guys are getting left out of the mating game entirely, and lots of guys are inseminating lots of different women. 0.88

00:28:02.000 So all those things that you said are absolutely true.

00:28:04.000 And all that pushes us for competition.

00:28:06.000 But part of what I believe goes on is part of that competition that we engaged in was in order to get the girl to get into that relationship in the first place.

00:28:14.000 Could I stop you there?

00:28:15.000 Sure.

00:28:15.000 Because I think that if you're going to have a study on testosterone, you have to have a study on lifestyle.

00:28:23.000 I mean, if you get married and you have children, one of the things that happens is you become less active.

00:28:29.000 You don't exercise as much.

00:28:30.000 You don't sleep as much.

00:28:31.000 All those things have a pretty radical effect on hormone production. 0.58

00:28:35.000 Absolutely.

00:28:35.000 And it could well be that, you know, you always have to have a proximal mechanism whereby evolution plays its game, right?

00:28:41.000 So the distal cause is, as an evolved species, Testosterone is super important to get us into the mating game, but it's less useful once we're in it.

00:28:50.000 Well, all you have to do is have a system whereby those things tend to down-regulate testosterone, exactly like you said, because you know those things are going to happen once you get partnered up.

00:28:59.000 But mind you, when our ancestors partnered up, they're still out hunting every day.

00:29:03.000 Right, but we don't have studies on them.

00:29:05.000 We don't.

00:29:06.000 Unfortunately, we don't.

00:29:07.000 The issue that I'm having with this is we have studies on I'm sure you're right.

00:29:41.000 To me, that's a symptom of poor health and fitness.

00:29:45.000 Right, and it's not a symptom our ancestors ever experienced.

00:29:48.000 Right, but this is not necessarily an indication of any sort of evolutionary benefit of having low testosterone, because we've demonstrated for sure that when people don't get sleep and when they don't get exercise, their testosterone drops.

00:30:02.000 Well, those are two things that absolutely happen when you get married and have children.

00:30:05.000 Right.

00:30:05.000 And the only thing I would say is the time span of this study is only over a few years.

00:30:11.000 That's even worse.

00:30:13.000 The thing about having this kind of a study and making these kind of conclusions based on, I mean, we know these mechanisms are in place.

00:30:22.000 We already know that there's natural effects of sedentary lifestyle, lack of sleep, And the effects are your hormone production drops, your body suffers, you become less healthy.

00:30:34.000 And this is not indicating monogamy.

00:30:37.000 This is just indicating poor health.

00:30:40.000 This is not like an evolutionary advantage to having low testosterone because it helps you raise children.

00:30:45.000 You can have high testosterone and still be a good dad and raise children and still have empathy and be a good partner.

00:30:50.000 Of course, all these things are bell curves, right?

00:30:52.000 The higher T you are, the harder it gets.

00:30:55.000 The problem I'm having is drawing conclusions on this one study and stating them as if they're facts.

00:31:01.000 No, you're absolutely right.

00:31:01.000 If I say it's a fact, it's certainly overstated because we only know...

00:31:05.000 The problem with almost all of our studies is the exact one you point out.

00:31:07.000 We've got them on us, right?

00:31:09.000 Right.

00:31:09.000 And so the sex studies are a perfect example.

00:31:13.000 Things like female orgasm, what role does it play? 1.00

00:31:15.000 Well, you need really good data on hunter-gatherers to know the answer to that question.

00:31:19.000 If you look at hunter-gatherers, they don't have dad bod, right?

00:31:22.000 They're all lean, whether they're fathers or not, because they're out there hunting every day or gathering every day.

00:31:27.000 Very physically active.

00:31:28.000 So if I oversold that, my apologies, because you're absolutely right.

00:31:31.000 I suspect, though, that you'd find the same thing.

00:31:33.000 I don't know it.

00:31:34.000 It's all we got right now.

00:31:36.000 Yeah, but how can you suspect it?

00:31:38.000 I mean, it's just, there's no data.

00:31:39.000 Yeah, there is no data.

00:31:41.000 It's just, when you look at these guys, I have a friend of mine who, he was, was it, how do you say the name?

00:31:48.000 Yanomami in Bolivia?

00:31:51.000 Well, they're in Venezuela, Brazil.

00:31:53.000 Yeah, and he spent some time with them and you see these people and the lifestyle they live, they're all barefoot wandering through the jungle.

00:32:00.000 They have these crazy looking feet where their toes splay out because they're just constantly gripping the floor with their toes.

00:32:06.000 I mean, they probably could choke you with their feet, you know?

00:32:08.000 And these people just look so fit and healthy in their 50s and 60s and 70s and they have their shirt off and they're ripped.

00:32:16.000 Yeah, they're super fit.

00:32:17.000 Same holds if you look at the Hadza in Tanzania, any of these groups. 0.99

00:32:20.000 The Yanomama are interesting because they're hunter-horticulturalists, so they're actually doing a little bit of gardening as well.

00:32:25.000 But they're ripped and strong and they don't have obesity problems.

00:32:29.000 And so all I would say is that the same thing holds...

00:32:32.000 The one thing that we found in humans in our modern culture where we have these data is if you're married and have kids, but you're still looking around, your T hasn't gone down as much.

00:32:41.000 You're going to point out quite rightly that, well, maybe that's a different kind of person than the person who marries and isn't looking around.

00:32:47.000 And so it's all confounded.

00:32:49.000 It's super hard to do experiments on these things.

00:32:51.000 And we'll be a lot better off when we've got, you know, we're losing the world's last hunter-gatherers are disappearing.

00:32:56.000 Yeah.

00:32:57.000 And it's not easy to collect these kind of data, but they're doing lots of genetic work with these people right now all over Africa because, you know, we've got tons of genetic data now on European descent and East Asian descent, but almost none on Africans.

00:33:10.000 And so that's a huge project underway.

00:33:12.000 And so for all I know, they're working on hormones and other things as well.

00:33:16.000 Yeah, that's, I mean, the reason why I'm asking about this is you were so readily dismissing, you were so willing to dismiss the Sex of Dawn book.

00:33:28.000 Well, a lot of the facts that are laid out as facts in the book don't really hold up, and I wish I'd read it more recently, and so I could go through the details with you.

00:33:36.000 There's some really good reviews by anthropologists and by people who work in You know, sexual studies and stuff like that, going through the details.

00:33:44.000 We read it as a, we have this evolutionary center, Center for Psychology and Evolution, and we read it and went through it, and we weren't convinced.

00:33:52.000 I'm embarrassed to admit I can't remember the details of it anymore.

00:33:54.000 Chris is a very smart guy, and he's a good friend of mine.

00:33:56.000 It's also a great book.

00:33:57.000 It is a great book.

00:33:58.000 I would love to see him debate one of those folks.

00:34:00.000 I'm sure he probably has.

00:34:01.000 He probably has.

00:34:02.000 And look, I know that all these things that we're talking about are heavily debated, right?

00:34:06.000 Yes.

00:34:07.000 So my colleague Rob Brooks is a wonderful evolutionary biologist in Australia, loves that book. 0.65

00:34:11.000 So the fact that I think it's bullshit is obviously one person's opinion, where I dismiss that argument. 0.96

00:34:17.000 Other people might say, well, look, there's a lot of cultures that do have much more, like the system I told you about, where they have sex with lots of men after they have their baby. 0.99

00:34:25.000 Humans are so flexible.

00:34:26.000 We can do all those things.

00:34:27.000 We just change the nature of how we do things.

00:34:30.000 The social leap that I'm arguing about is not this pair bonding thing.

00:34:34.000 It's about how our groups came together to engage in collective action.

00:34:38.000 So in principle, I'm agnostic on this issue.

00:34:40.000 I just happen to disagree with that.

00:34:41.000 I happen to feel like, no, I think we made these deals.

00:34:44.000 And so to come back to the study that David Buss did that I was starting to tell you about.

00:34:48.000 So Buss has this...

00:34:50.000 When he came along, people thought that the two sexes had similar levels of jealousy for infidelity.

00:34:57.000 And David was like, well, look, insemination's internal.

00:35:00.000 And so men should be a lot more worried about her sleeping with somebody else than women should be. 1.00

00:35:07.000 Because men never know for sure if they're the father.

00:35:09.000 They can't see it happen.

00:35:10.000 Whereas, you know, if you're a salmon, you can say, okay, I'm the dad.

00:35:13.000 I just watched that.

00:35:14.000 But...

00:35:16.000 Females, insemination is eternal, but they know they're the mother. 1.00

00:35:18.000 That's not their concern.

00:35:19.000 They should be more concerned about things like his giving her resources to help her raise the kid and things like that.

00:35:26.000 And so what Buss found is if you ask people this question, what would bother you more? 0.60

00:35:31.000 Imagine your wife having sex with somebody that she just met for the first time, having this great time and doing all these different funky things with them, and then never doing it again.

00:35:39.000 Or your wife develops this, you know, ongoing emotional connection with somebody.

00:35:44.000 She never touches him, he never touches her, but they talk and share their feelings and stare deep in each other's eyes.

00:35:50.000 What would bother you more?

00:35:51.000 And you ask men and women that question.

00:35:53.000 So what would, in your case, what would bother you more?

00:35:55.000 To have your wife to know she had this one-off affair, fling, sex only, didn't care about the guy, or she develops a sort of emotional bond with somebody, never touches him. 0.55

00:36:05.000 That's a good question.

00:36:07.000 I'd really have to think about that.

00:36:08.000 It's not an easy one because nobody likes either of them.

00:36:11.000 No.

00:36:11.000 Yeah, because it's a matter of time before that dude gets in.

00:36:15.000 That's a fox hanging on a chicken coop.

00:36:17.000 No, it's a guarantee.

00:36:17.000 I know, but in this case, it's a guarantee, right?

00:36:19.000 It's a guarantee that they never hook up.

00:36:21.000 Never touch.

00:36:21.000 As long as he doesn't talk shit about me.

00:36:23.000 That's the problem. 1.00

00:36:24.000 Those guys, they have the poison tongue. 0.51

00:36:26.000 Trying to wedge you away, right?

00:36:26.000 Yeah, they said, well, I would do so much better.

00:36:29.000 He doesn't treat you right.

00:36:31.000 Right.

00:36:31.000 Well, here's the thing.

00:36:31.000 Those little weasels.

00:36:32.000 On average, men are more bothered by sex, the one-off sex, and women are more bothered by the emotional connection because that's a bigger threat. 0.56

00:36:41.000 Because emotional connection could lead to him leaving her.

00:36:44.000 Well, also, it's him leaving her, directing his resources elsewhere.

00:36:47.000 Yes, exactly.

00:36:48.000 So, mind you, every time we talk about gender differences, it's super important to keep in mind they're heavily overlapping bell curves.

00:36:54.000 Right.

00:36:55.000 So, it's never 100% this way except, like, do you have this organ or something.

00:36:58.000 Right.

00:36:59.000 But psychologically, it's always overlapping.

00:37:01.000 But this is a big effect.

00:37:03.000 Men, on average, are much more bothered by the one-off sex, and women, on average, are much more bothered by the emotional connection.

00:37:10.000 Yeah, that's fascinating because I was reading something about inappropriate emotional relationships that people have at work.

00:37:16.000 And that this is an issue.

00:37:19.000 With people that work together, they develop these, you know, office friendships that lead to inappropriate emotional relationships.

00:37:28.000 And I was like, whoa, this is a...

00:37:30.000 You know, I've never worked in an office, so I'm listening to this, or reading this, rather, and I'm like, what a strange world that is.

00:37:37.000 I get it, though.

00:37:39.000 I get it.

00:37:40.000 Like, if there's a guy, and he's married, and a gal, and she's married, but they meet at work, and they stare at each other's eyes all day, and...

00:37:46.000 They go to lunch and maybe they even hold hands every now and then.

00:37:51.000 That's where it crosses the line.

00:37:53.000 You're allowed to hug people when you hold hands.

00:37:55.000 That's intense.

00:37:57.000 That's skin to skin.

00:37:58.000 That's serious.

00:38:00.000 It's going to concern you if you're a partner.

00:38:03.000 But what's also going to concern you is the mere fact that you see this kind of thing, this deep conversation happening and all that.

00:38:08.000 Because think about it.

00:38:09.000 If we evolved to basically partner for a while, Then there's always going to be the chance that that next person along is going to be the one who wedges yours away.

00:38:17.000 Serial monogamy.

00:38:18.000 And both males and females gain from not putting all their eggs into the same genetic basket.

00:38:23.000 So if my wife partners up with you for a while, she'll get a certain kind of offspring. 0.99

00:38:27.000 And then maybe that'll be a great thing.

00:38:29.000 But maybe when the situation changes or in tomorrow's world, some smaller or wimpier guy would be handy in some way.

00:38:37.000 And so maybe she's better off partnering with me next. 0.92

00:38:39.000 Interesting.

00:38:40.000 Yeah, it is fascinating when you break it down that it really does become there's a biological reason for these behaviors and the motivation for the jealousy and all these things.

00:38:54.000 There's a history, a biological history to all this stuff.

00:38:57.000 And we don't know what Hunter Gathers, how they would answer that question.

00:39:01.000 So we're only just assuming that the answer we're providing is general.

00:39:05.000 But for me, those kinds of things suggest that we evolved in a lot of long-term monogamous circumstances that may have been serial and that was certainly fooling around. 0.97

00:39:14.000 But if we were polyamorous, like the book says, we'd have bigger balls. 0.99

00:39:19.000 Our balls are so big, though. 0.99

00:39:21.000 Compared to a chimp, they're small. 0.99

00:39:22.000 Yeah, but chimps are...

00:39:24.000 I mean, everything's big with them. 1.00

00:39:26.000 Well, no, our penis is way bigger than theirs. 1.00

00:39:28.000 Right. 1.00

00:39:28.000 They got a tiny little... 1.00

00:39:29.000 They have large balls, smaller penises, but penises are probably getting in the way, right? 1.00

00:39:34.000 Well, no, here's the thing about... 1.00

00:39:35.000 So, human beings copulate for an extraordinarily long period of time.

00:39:39.000 And we also have this cryptic ovulation, you know, where she's not showing you that she's in heat. 0.99

00:39:43.000 So, male chimps aren't interested unless she has that enormous swelling on her vagina. 1.00

00:39:48.000 And then they're like, oh, that's super attractive to me. 1.00

00:39:51.000 Oh, I see.

00:39:51.000 But what about bonobos?

00:39:53.000 Well, they do this funky sex thing all the time, right? 0.75

00:39:55.000 Yeah, they have fun, right? 0.81

00:39:57.000 Yeah, all sorts of funky, orgiastic kinds of things.

00:40:01.000 There's a...

00:40:02.000 When I taught at Ohio State University, the zoo there has a great bonobo exhibit. 0.88

00:40:06.000 And you bring your kids through and there's a serious orgy going on.

00:40:09.000 And the kids are like, hey mom!

00:40:11.000 Yeah, there's a lot of zoos that won't have bonobos because of that, right?

00:40:14.000 Yeah, they're pretty interesting.

00:40:16.000 And so the thing is that...

00:40:17.000 Those kinds of things just show you that it's complicated, right?

00:40:20.000 Any kind of straightforward answer, it's going to have some wrinkles in it.

00:40:24.000 Any absolutes, yes.

00:40:25.000 And I apologize if I gave something earlier.

00:40:27.000 No worries.

00:40:27.000 And so anyway, but back to this issue.

00:40:31.000 So if we had a total bonobo chimp kind of system, I don't think we'd evolve those systems of jealousy because what's to be gained by that? 1.00

00:40:39.000 We're not making these long-term partners.

00:40:41.000 Why would you get these differences?

00:40:42.000 Again, whenever I bring Chris's book up, and I have to defend it because this happened a couple times over the last year, I haven't read it in at least two years.

00:40:50.000 I'd have to go back and go back over it.

00:40:53.000 I read it probably five years ago when it came out.

00:40:54.000 When my friend's wife got a hold of it, my friend got it, and my friend's wife got a hold of it, and she threw her right in the trash. 0.99

00:41:02.000 She read like a paragraph or two, and she's like, fuck this book. 0.99

00:41:06.000 Yeah. 0.99

00:41:06.000 A lot of women react that way, and I can't remember why. 0.99

00:41:10.000 I'm sorry, I just don't have it loaded up.

00:41:12.000 Whatever.

00:41:13.000 So when these chimp-like creatures from millions of years ago slowly started walking upright and started moving into the grasslands and making experiments and traveling away from the jungle, 1.00

00:41:30.000 and this coincided with the development of the throwing arm And this could be because they started walking upright.

00:41:39.000 When did this, when did the cooked meat aspect come along?

00:41:43.000 So they don't control fire.

00:41:45.000 So osteopithes can't do that.

00:41:46.000 So now we go forward.

00:41:47.000 We're now about three and a half million years ago.

00:41:49.000 You've got to now go forward to about a little less than two million years ago to get to Homo erectus.

00:41:54.000 So once we get to Homo erectus, we now got an ancestor that literally, if it went to the zoo, you'd say, well, that's a kind of rough-hewn guy.

00:42:02.000 But you'd think it's a person and not somebody who belongs behind the glass.

00:42:06.000 So a chimp brain is 380, Australopithecus 450, and Homo erectus 960. Whoa. 1.00

00:42:13.000 So you've got doubling your brain size.

00:42:14.000 Now, mind you, it's a bigger being, so it's not quite as big and dramatic of a change as you think.

00:42:19.000 But along with that comes all sorts of capabilities.

00:42:21.000 Now, you write about this book, Catching Fire.

00:42:24.000 Richard Wrangham argued that what enabled that...

00:42:27.000 If you look at the gut of a gorilla or a chimpanzee in their brain, they got a lot of gut for a little bit of brain because it takes a lot of digestion to keep a little bit of brain going.

00:42:35.000 We have a tiny gut for a huge brain.

00:42:38.000 And Rangham argues, and I think quite rightly, that the only way you can achieve that is by releasing more nutrients from your food, and the only way you can release more nutrients from your food is by cooking it.

00:42:46.000 So when he made that argument, he thinks it goes back to the beginning of Homo erectus, and I suspect he's right. 1.00

00:42:51.000 At this point, when he made the argument, it was only back to, I don't remember, half a million years, 300 years, 750,000.

00:42:58.000 It's already back to a million years ago.

00:43:00.000 We found in caves in South Africa evidence of control of fire. 0.92

00:43:03.000 And so it'll probably keep getting pushed back because, you know, that crap's hard to find. 0.97

00:43:07.000 Right. 0.97

00:43:08.000 So this was, did you say a half a million years?

00:43:09.000 No, now it's back to a million years ago.

00:43:11.000 A million years ago.

00:43:11.000 And he made that prediction when it wasn't even that far back.

00:43:14.000 And a million years ago, even though they're not technically, it's not homo sapiens.

00:43:18.000 No, we're still at Homo erectus.

00:43:19.000 And so they started 1.9 or so, 1.7 million years ago.

00:43:24.000 And 1.9, I think.

00:43:26.000 And what Homo erectus could now do...

00:43:28.000 So now, remember, what the argument is, is this social leap.

00:43:31.000 It's this collective action that not only protects us on the savannah, but sets us on this new pathway.

00:43:37.000 It creates this new niche.

00:43:39.000 It's this cognitive niche, although I think of it as a social cognitive niche, because it's the working together that gives you all these potential advantages to getting smarter.

00:43:47.000 And so now when that gene's sitting in our head, if it kicks into gear and starts to work and leads to cranial expansion, those animals who have it will have an advantage because they can coordinate with each other better.

00:43:58.000 And so they can remember, hey man, you helped me out last time, but you weren't so, yeah, I couldn't count on you, so I'm avoiding you and I'm sticking with you.

00:44:05.000 They could do a lot of things with that brain power.

00:44:07.000 And by the time you get to Homo erectus and the brain power is doubled, we see all sorts of super interesting things.

00:44:12.000 So before Homo erectus, when you look at our tools, it's called an oldowan tool and it's basically a barely sharpened rock.

00:44:19.000 And you never find an oldowan tool too very far away from where it was quarried and made.

00:44:24.000 Like, you know, you look at the rock and the chips and not far away is where it's lying on the ground.

00:44:29.000 Homo erectus made a much nicer tool.

00:44:31.000 It's bifacial.

00:44:32.000 It took a lot of energy to make it.

00:44:35.000 When we teach modern anthropologists or grad students or whatever to make them, and you put them in an fMRI magnet where it can measure metabolism in your brain as you go, you see that it takes a lot of frontal lobe functioning in order to make one.

00:44:48.000 Because it's a lot of planning.

00:44:49.000 How am I going to hit it next to make this thing just right?

00:44:51.000 Compared to an older wand tool, to make those doesn't take much frontal function.

00:44:55.000 Ah, just whack it there and it'll be sharp. 0.94

00:44:57.000 And so, first of all, we know Homo erectus invented that tool, this Acheulean tool with this bifacial hand axe. 0.62

00:45:04.000 Second of all, and one of the coolest findings, there's some interesting work in a 1.2 million year old site in India by Kerry Shipton where he finds that the production of these Acheulean tools is separated spatially about the place.

00:45:20.000 So the first step is bashing loose a big piece of rock, and that's done here, and then 10 meters over there, somebody's doing the initial chipping on it, and 10 meters over there, somebody's sharpening up the final touches.

00:45:31.000 Now, if you were making it by yourself, why would you systematically walk around the site as you made it?

00:45:35.000 You almost assuredly wouldn't.

00:45:37.000 But if you've got division of labor, you're the big strong guy, you do the first thing, then you hand it to me and I do the finer sharpening, it makes sense that it would be spatially distributed about the site.

00:45:48.000 There's that evidence for division of labor.

00:45:50.000 There's the evidence that they're bringing down some pretty fast animals like horses and potentially even bringing down elephants, which in those days are like twice the size of an elephant.

00:45:59.000 Were they using spears at that point?

00:46:00.000 We don't know because they didn't survive, right?

00:46:02.000 And nothing wood is still around.

00:46:03.000 There's no sign of hafting anything.

00:46:05.000 So if it was spears, it would have been a wooden point.

00:46:07.000 So I think what they could do...

00:46:09.000 Tafting meaning the end of it cut in half so you could stick a spear tip into it.

00:46:12.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:46:14.000 Strapping it on or any of a variety of ways.

00:46:17.000 And so there's no sign of that yet, but there's no reason why they couldn't have a sharpened spear.

00:46:21.000 In fact, we know that, remember I mentioned the chimps in Senegal that live on the savannah.

00:46:26.000 They're the only chimps on earth who do this. 1.00

00:46:28.000 They'll bite the stick to sharpen it and poke monkeys when they're in the hollow of a tree and stab them.

00:46:33.000 Did you see that recent discovery?

00:46:35.000 And it's really recently.

00:46:36.000 There was an article I read one or two days ago about orangutans.

00:46:39.000 When they gave them wire, they used the wire to fashion it into fish hooks.

00:46:44.000 No, I didn't.

00:46:45.000 That's totally cool.

00:46:46.000 Yeah, they figured out how to make a fish hook independently.

00:46:49.000 Yeah, that's amazing.

00:46:50.000 You've seen them like spearfish, right?

00:46:52.000 Hang over trees.

00:46:54.000 That picture is actually of an orangutan who's watched fishermen do this.

00:46:58.000 He couldn't do it.

00:46:59.000 An orangutan, if it met, you could literally pull your arms off like that.

00:47:03.000 So enormous strength, but to get gearing for that strength, they got very poor motor control.

00:47:08.000 Like you and I can type, they can't do that.

00:47:10.000 And so that orangutan, that famous photo, never could catch anything.

00:47:14.000 We just tried.

00:47:15.000 But it had seen it done and it was trying to see if he could do it, too.

00:47:17.000 Fair enough.

00:47:18.000 It's crazy, though, that he was trying to use a tool like that.

00:47:20.000 I know.

00:47:20.000 But, you know, there's these crows and such, they'll fashion hooks, too.

00:47:25.000 Yeah.

00:47:26.000 So there's a lot of amazing evidence for this sort of animal ingenuity in making tools.

00:47:30.000 Well, you've seen the studies with crows where they use one stick to get a larger stick, to get a larger stick, to get some food.

00:47:35.000 Doesn't that blow your mind?

00:47:36.000 Yeah, it's amazing.

00:47:37.000 Now, the one thing is they can do that and then they fail some super simple tests.

00:47:41.000 So it could be that their brain's tiny, though they are, dedicated to a particular way of solving a particular problem because especially these ones that live in New Caledonia do this in the wild.

00:47:51.000 And so they fashion them out of palm fronds.

00:47:53.000 They tear it off and they reshape it and then they hook insects out of the bark or trees and stuff.

00:47:57.000 And so you could imagine that they've kind of learned a specific way of problem solving, but they can't do something that to you, because you would solve that using some pretty domain general mechanisms, to you looks the same, but to them is totally different.

00:48:09.000 Did you find the thing with the orangutans?

00:48:12.000 It's really crazy.

00:48:14.000 It's just, well, you know, I read something.

00:48:17.000 Here we go.

00:48:18.000 Rangton spontaneously bends straight wires into hooks to fish for food.

00:48:23.000 Which is amazing.

00:48:24.000 Does it have a photo of it, Jamie, if you scroll down a little bit there?

00:48:27.000 What is that photo?

00:48:27.000 It's just...

00:48:28.000 Oh, just him with a stick?

00:48:29.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:48:30.000 Oh.

00:48:31.000 Yeah, that's really, really cool.

00:48:32.000 I had read something a few years back that said that they were agreeing that chimpanzees had officially moved into the Stone Age.

00:48:42.000 Yeah, so chimpanzees will use stones as tools, so they'll crack nuts with them. 0.99

00:48:47.000 But they've never been shown to modify stone tools.

00:48:51.000 And so if you want to say the Stone Age is using stones, by all means.

00:48:54.000 If you want to say it's modifying stones, the oldest evidence that we have of potentially modified is 3.3 million years ago, these lamequi tools.

00:49:02.000 But there's argument about how legit those are.

00:49:04.000 Right.

00:49:04.000 There's argument about a lot of those sites, too, where they believe that they find stone tools that are ancient because it could easily just been shale or things falling off.

00:49:12.000 Yeah, and overwash.

00:49:13.000 It's super complicated to know exactly when it got laid down.

00:49:15.000 Every once in a while you get lucky and the layers are super orderly.

00:49:18.000 And then when you get to that layer, you know exactly what you got.

00:49:21.000 But now, what's the chances of finding what you're after there, right?

00:49:23.000 Yeah.

00:49:24.000 Now, when they say the Stone Age, that's what they mean?

00:49:28.000 Just the idea of consciously using a rock to, like, smash open a clam or something like that?

00:49:32.000 Yeah, I mean, to me, that does.

00:49:33.000 I gotta admit, I'm not quite sure technically what an anthropologist would mean when they say Stone Age.

00:49:38.000 But what we know is that chimps will do that.

00:49:42.000 They'll use rocks to...

00:49:43.000 They're clever enough to have an anvil, basically, like a base stone, put a rock on it, smash.

00:49:49.000 What they're not clever enough to do, so chimps have partial theory of mind.

00:49:54.000 And theory of mind is this idea that I know that the contents of your mind differ from the contents of mine.

00:49:59.000 And all humans get there when they're little, around age four.

00:50:03.000 And you can see the penny drop because they just assume everybody knows the same things and everybody has the same preferences.

00:50:09.000 And that's why when they're really little, their stories can be hard to follow because they assume what's in your head is the same as theirs.

00:50:14.000 They assume you like the same things.

00:50:16.000 And actually, it turns out that the ones who have siblings learn it earlier because like, oh, you like the red jelly beans?

00:50:21.000 I like the green ones.

00:50:22.000 Awesome.

00:50:23.000 This is a beneficial deal for both of us, right?

00:50:25.000 Right.

00:50:26.000 Anyway, chimps can get partial theory of mind.

00:50:28.000 So I could see what you could see.

00:50:30.000 I know what you could see at your angle if I'm a chimp.

00:50:32.000 And I know that it might differ from what I could see.

00:50:35.000 But they can't get to the point of knowing that you could represent beliefs that aren't true, that you could have to believe, etc.

00:50:41.000 Or that maybe I don't like bananas, but he does like bananas.

00:50:44.000 They can't really get there.

00:50:45.000 No.

00:50:46.000 And so what the problem is, without theory of mind, how do you teach somebody?

00:50:49.000 Because if I just assume you know what I know, then when you're doing a crappy job breaking the nut, I'm like, what's wrong with Joe here?

00:50:55.000 Right.

00:50:56.000 And so chimp mothers take years to teach their offspring to break these nuts open. 1.00

00:51:01.000 Ten years on average.

00:51:03.000 Because first of all, they don't get a chance to do it very often.

00:51:05.000 The nut's got to be in season.

00:51:06.000 Second of all, it's easy to break your fingers and that kind of slows you down.

00:51:09.000 But third of all, they'll occasionally make some very specific corrections when the offspring is doing it wrong, but they don't know what the problem is because they don't know what the kid doesn't know.

00:51:20.000 And so when you don't know that, you can't teach.

00:51:22.000 And that's why humans are stunningly effective teachers.

00:51:25.000 That's fascinating.

00:51:27.000 So chimps learn more just by observing?

00:51:31.000 Yeah.

00:51:31.000 And what's amazing about the way chimps observe is that because we have theory of mind, we also do imitate differently.

00:51:37.000 So there's this amazing experiment by Andy Whiten and his colleagues.

00:51:39.000 And what they did is they created this treasure box.

00:51:42.000 And so inside this treasure box, there's something that a chimp or a kid wants, like a little piece of food. 0.99

00:51:47.000 And in one condition, the box is totally opaque, so you can't see how it works.

00:51:52.000 And they'll poke at the top of it, and then they'll poke in the middle and it pops open.

00:51:55.000 And then they give it to the chimp.

00:51:57.000 Close it up, chimp does the exact same thing. 1.00

00:51:59.000 Poke, poke, poke, poke, pops open.

00:52:00.000 Give it to a kid, does the exact same thing.

00:52:02.000 Now they replicate that same experiment, but instead of having the box be opaque, it's translucent.

00:52:09.000 And you can see well and truly that poking the top does nothing.

00:52:12.000 The latch is actually right here.

00:52:13.000 And so that initial poke was a waste of your time.

00:52:16.000 This second one actually is one that opened the box up.

00:52:19.000 When chimps watch that, they skip the first one and boom, they just open the box.

00:52:24.000 Kids, despite being smarter than a chimp, poke it at the top first and then they poke it in the bottom. 1.00

00:52:29.000 And we call this over imitation.

00:52:31.000 They're imitating clearly irrelevant actions.

00:52:34.000 Now, why would anybody imitate clearly irrelevant actions?

00:52:37.000 What advantage would it give you?

00:52:39.000 Well, if you have theory of mind, you say, well, that's Joe's box.

00:52:42.000 He knows something about it.

00:52:44.000 There may be a reason why I can't see, but there may be a reason why he's poking at the top first.

00:52:48.000 And so I better do everything that he does.

00:52:50.000 I better have the highest fidelity copying that I possibly can because it may be valuable.

00:52:56.000 And what you end up with is these systems around the world where people eat these amazing foods that you think, you know, how on earth could they have ever figured that out?

00:53:03.000 Well, it's probably developed step by step, and everybody's always got this super high-fidelity imitation because they're over-imitating.

00:53:09.000 So my favorite example is in New Guinea, they eat the sago palm.

00:53:13.000 I'm not sure if you've ever seen a sago palm, but it does not look like an edible tree. 0.77

00:53:16.000 It just looks like a freaking tree, right?

00:53:18.000 And it turns out that if you chop the tree down, Take the bark off, take like an adze or something similar, grind up the sawdust, have all that sawdust, you then wash it off in warm water, because of course all the water in New Guinea will be nice and warm, and that causes, it's a super high starch tree,

00:53:33.000 that causes the starch molecules to separate from the sawdust, because at that point it's inedible.

00:53:38.000 So then they have these cloths, and the starch molecules have passed through the cloth, the sawdust won't.

00:53:42.000 Now they collect this cloudy water, they put it in these traditional canoes, they let it sit overnight, and all the starch sinks to the bottom.

00:53:48.000 Then they pour the water off the top, and now they've got this flour, but you have to dry it out in the sun really fast or it becomes toxic.

00:53:54.000 So it's like this nine-step process that who on earth could ever come up with it, right?

00:53:58.000 But once it's in place, once they slowly figured it out to make it work, everybody just does it the same way because even though they may understand it, but they don't need to.

00:54:06.000 They just know this is how we do it.

00:54:08.000 Right.

00:54:08.000 Well, that's like that – what is that root that they eat?

00:54:12.000 Cassava?

00:54:12.000 Yeah.

00:54:13.000 Yeah, that if you don't cook it correctly, it's literally cyanide, and they have water from it, and they have to take that water, and they have the buckets of these water that they're using to create this stuff, and they just leave it laying around.

00:54:29.000 And kids are playing around it, and pigs and animals are around it, and if they drank it, they'd be dead.

00:54:35.000 Yeah, I don't know that.

00:54:36.000 I don't know the detoxing of cassava, unfortunately.

00:54:38.000 I'm not familiar with that.

00:54:39.000 But there's a lot of those examples.

00:54:40.000 And you're also right that in those kind of societies, they're super relaxed about things that strike us as really deadly. 0.99

00:54:47.000 That will fucking kill you quick. 0.99

00:54:47.000 Exactly. 0.99

00:54:48.000 But that stuff, it becomes cyanide, right?

00:54:50.000 You could be right.

00:54:51.000 I don't know that one.

00:54:52.000 See if you could find this because it's on an episode of that same show.

00:54:56.000 The show's called Meat Eater.

00:54:58.000 It's my friend Steve Rinella who went and spent some time with them down in the jungle.

00:55:03.000 South America, it's really interesting stuff, just seeing how these people function, and they have this big vat, and they're cooking this stuff, and they're, you know, he's explaining, like, right now, if you ate it, you're dead.

00:55:16.000 You gotta wait a while. 0.98

00:55:17.000 And, like, how the fuck did they figure this out? 0.97

00:55:19.000 Researchers to get through the roof, cassava cyanide. 1.00

00:55:32.000 Yeah, it kills the shit out of you. 0.96

00:55:37.000 But it's weird that that thing is a major staple in their diet. 0.98

00:55:41.000 Well, this is a really good example of, A, the value of human learning and this over-imitation process, right?

00:55:47.000 Because the first guy would go, okay, I'm not going to do that, right?

00:55:49.000 And then this person ate and they did successful.

00:55:51.000 Let's take a look at what they did.

00:55:53.000 So I remember when I was a kid, I was trying to learn to play baseball and pitch the ball.

00:55:57.000 And the person raises their knee almost up to their nipples. 0.74

00:56:00.000 And I'm like, that's the most awkward pitching motion I've ever seen.

00:56:04.000 But it didn't occur to me, I'm not going to do that, right?

00:56:06.000 It occurred to me, well, there must be a reason to do that.

00:56:08.000 So what can I do to try to...

00:56:10.000 Right.

00:56:11.000 Emulate that motion, right?

00:56:12.000 Right, to hold the ball like this and then...

00:56:14.000 The whole nine yards.

00:56:15.000 There's a purpose for every one of those pieces.

00:56:17.000 And as humans, we say, well, you're teaching me how.

00:56:20.000 You've got to have a reason for doing that.

00:56:21.000 And that's the huge difference between us and everybody else.

00:56:24.000 Nobody else can do that theory of mind thing to make that assumption.

00:56:27.000 And that's why the chimps skip the step that they know, at least in that particular experiment, is really actually useless.

00:56:34.000 And kids don't.

00:56:34.000 So your concept is that as these animals that used to be monkeys start evolving and trying out new things, one thing that they learn as they enter into this new climate is that there's a massive benefit to cooperation.

00:56:49.000 Yes.

00:56:50.000 No, I would say apes, not monkeys, because technically speaking...

00:56:53.000 Well, aren't all apes monkeys, but not all monkeys are apes?

00:56:56.000 No.

00:56:57.000 So monkeys and apes are different.

00:56:58.000 They split off...

00:57:00.000 But monkey's not a real word.

00:57:02.000 I mean, it's not a word in terms of scientific designation, right?

00:57:05.000 No, no.

00:57:06.000 Ape and a monkey are two different things.

00:57:07.000 Right, but there's...

00:57:08.000 There's old world monkeys and new world monkeys, but all of them have the genus and species, you know, the Latin.

00:57:13.000 But it's not a scientific name, right?

00:57:15.000 Well, neither is ape.

00:57:16.000 Monkeys, not, right?

00:57:17.000 No, they're primates. 0.82

00:57:18.000 They're all primates.

00:57:19.000 Why did I read that?

00:57:20.000 See if you Google that.

00:57:21.000 There was a whole article that an anthropologist wrote that not all apes are monkeys, but all monkeys...

00:57:27.000 No, not all monkeys are apes, but all apes are monkeys, because monkey is almost a slang term. 0.99

00:57:34.000 Is this bullshit? 0.99

00:57:35.000 I think it's bullshit, but we'll find out. 1.00

00:57:36.000 What I would say is that all apes and monkeys are primates, and they all started from monkey ancestry, right? 0.99

00:57:43.000 Right.

00:57:43.000 But then the apes split off.

00:57:45.000 You've got orangutans.

00:57:46.000 The great apes are orangutans, gorillas, chimps, and us.

00:57:49.000 Right.

00:57:49.000 And then you've got gibbons, which are lesser apes, which split off quite a while ago.

00:57:52.000 And they're very different.

00:57:54.000 They don't have the brain power of the great apes.

00:57:55.000 Do you find anything like that? 0.98

00:57:58.000 I read this a few years ago, it confused the shit out of me.

00:58:01.000 Because I didn't know that monkey wasn't a scientific term. 0.69

00:58:04.000 Well, scientists talk about old world monkeys and new world monkeys.

00:58:06.000 Right, but it's almost a slang term, right?

00:58:08.000 Well, whenever you're, if you're a proper biologist and you have the species, you'll say that, you know, a chimpanzee is...

00:58:16.000 The thing I found isn't like a great source, but it pops up on Google.

00:58:21.000 Okay.

00:58:21.000 It comes up, but it's a longer, there's more to it.

00:58:24.000 Apes are monkeys in the same way that monkeys are primates.

00:58:28.000 Humans are apes, and I am a human.

00:58:30.000 It's called the nested hierarchy.

00:58:31.000 That's right.

00:58:32.000 This is it.

00:58:32.000 It means that all apes are monkeys, but not all monkeys are apes.

00:58:36.000 Just as all humans are apes, but not all apes are humans.

00:58:39.000 Okay.

00:58:40.000 Yeah, zygoma.

00:58:41.000 Click on that link.

00:58:42.000 It's like it's someone's website.

00:58:44.000 It doesn't...

00:58:45.000 Yeah, this is what I read. 1.00

00:58:46.000 Now, is this a bullshit article? 0.99

00:58:49.000 I don't know. 0.99

00:58:49.000 Sorry. 0.99

00:58:50.000 Apes or monkeys?

00:58:51.000 Deal with it, it says.

00:58:52.000 I don't know the term.

00:58:52.000 I don't know the origin of the term monkey.

00:58:53.000 Martin Robbins wrote a fun piece to the lay scientist the other day, the incorrect term of these monkeys describe apes.

00:59:00.000 It triggered an article by Graham Smith for the Daily Mail in Martin's words, a great crime against pedantry is in progress and it's time for someone to draw a line.

00:59:10.000 So as a pedant, how do you say that?

00:59:12.000 Pedant?

00:59:13.000 Pedantic?

00:59:13.000 Yeah, but I never say pedant.

00:59:16.000 With a professional interest in the issue, I'm taking my stand to help ensure that a miscarriage of pedantic justice doesn't occur.

00:59:24.000 The guy likes that word.

00:59:26.000 Nested hierarchies.

00:59:27.000 Apes are monkeys in the same way that monkeys are primates.

00:59:30.000 Humans are apes and I'm a human.

00:59:31.000 It's called a nested hierarchy and he has a primate nested hierarchy set up.

00:59:35.000 He could be right.

00:59:36.000 I just don't know.

00:59:36.000 I don't know the origin of the term.

00:59:38.000 But he cares and he cares enough to put that up. 0.99

00:59:41.000 Yeah, he fucked my head up, dude. 0.99

00:59:43.000 You could be right. 0.99

00:59:44.000 I'm not right.

00:59:46.000 If anybody's right, he's right or you're right.

00:59:48.000 I have no knowledge.

00:59:50.000 But all I mean is that, so the ancestors who moved to the savannah weren't monkeys like baboon monkeys.

00:59:56.000 Right, they're like some kind of chimp. 1.00

00:59:57.000 Yeah, chimpish like guy. 1.00

00:59:58.000 Some kind of ancient chimp. 0.97

00:59:59.000 And so once we get to Homo erectus, they're basically like us, although our brains, they're around 960, we're around 1350. So we literally have a chimp brain added on top of theirs. 0.99

01:00:09.000 Right.

01:00:09.000 So there's a big difference.

01:00:10.000 And you're absolutely right, it's accelerating like crazy.

01:00:13.000 Right.

01:00:13.000 And I'm totally convinced.

01:00:15.000 Well, I believe Wrangham's right.

01:00:17.000 I mean, we don't know for sure, of course, but I believe he's right that it was fire that played a huge role in that.

01:00:21.000 And so what you got is this process where our evolution facilitates a further evolution, right?

01:00:26.000 So you get the cognitive capacities to control fire, and now that allows you to grow your brain even larger.

01:00:31.000 Because we can store fat.

01:00:33.000 We can get more nutrients from the food we eat.

01:00:35.000 We can detoxify other things.

01:00:37.000 Fire is super valuable.

01:00:38.000 Even chimps will eat, if they go through an area where there's a forest fire, you know, speaking of what's going on locally, they'll eat like the roasted nuts first.

01:00:46.000 They really like that.

01:00:47.000 Because, I mean, you know, just you go in your kitchen, you smell a raw steak.

01:00:50.000 It's like...

01:00:51.000 Unpalatable.

01:00:52.000 You smell it when it's cooking.

01:00:53.000 It's delicious, right?

01:00:54.000 Yeah, that is interesting, right?

01:00:55.000 Even with no salt or anything on it.

01:00:57.000 It's our nose telling us that is a great source of food and nutrients.

01:01:01.000 That's not so much.

01:01:02.000 That is interesting.

01:01:03.000 I've never thought about it that way.

01:01:04.000 But yeah, there's a tremendous difference in the way your body reacts to it.

01:01:09.000 And it's not just based on...

01:01:10.000 Your experience eating it.

01:01:11.000 It just smells amazing.

01:01:13.000 Smells amazing.

01:01:14.000 And so Wrangham talks about, he argues that you can't live on a diet of raw food unless you're eating these like super fruits and stuff like that that basically we've horticultured into existence.

01:01:24.000 Because raw food just doesn't give you enough calories.

01:01:27.000 So the example that he uses, which is a great one, is chimps literally spend something like six to eight hours a day chewing.

01:01:34.000 Just to soften up the food enough so that they can swallow it and digest it.

01:01:37.000 You know, if sushi, you hardly, you know, some of the things that we've cooked, and that's raw in that case, but, you know, a cooked steak, a really nice one, you barely chew it at all.

01:01:45.000 Right.

01:01:46.000 It's just down the hatch it goes.

01:01:47.000 Well, that's a great argument for gorillas as well, right? 1.00

01:01:49.000 Because gorillas are just eating roots. 1.00

01:01:51.000 Yeah, fucking celery. 1.00

01:01:52.000 And so literally they have a humongous gut, right? 1.00

01:01:54.000 Just constant chewing.

01:01:55.000 And they've got the sagittal crest right here with the bones so that the muscles attach to it so that they can chew hard enough to get through all that stuff and make it digestible.

01:02:03.000 And still their gut is enormous.

01:02:05.000 Yeah, that is interesting.

01:02:06.000 The chimps have those enormous chewing muscles on their head.

01:02:09.000 And so we lost, that's another example, where somebody along the way lost, I can't remember what that gene was, where our muscles weakened in our jaw, and that would have been a death knell if you're back before cooking.

01:02:19.000 But post-cooking, all that does is free up space, get rid of some unnecessary muscle, free up more cranial space for brains, the inside, not the outside.

01:02:27.000 So is it likely that there was a bunch of different factors, that there was natural selection in play and that there was also the throwing arm and then also cooking and also this cooperative effort that led to people being a little bit more ingenious,

01:02:43.000 a little bit...

01:02:44.000 Smarter in how they hunted and how they tried to get food and then how they protected their fire, how they cultivated fire.

01:02:51.000 And then all these things led to more clever behavior, which led to a natural selection of clever, more clever chimps with larger brains or apes rather with larger brains.

01:03:02.000 Absolutely.

01:03:03.000 And so anytime you got something major happening, it probably doesn't have a single cause.

01:03:07.000 It probably has lots and lots of causes.

01:03:09.000 And so in this case, all these kind of factors came together.

01:03:12.000 Now, if you're standing at the outset, and you're playing God and saying, well, let's see what happens when I dry out the rainforest, I think nine times out of 10, the chimps all end up dead.

01:03:20.000 Right?

01:03:20.000 But somehow we got really lucky and they went down this very particular road and once they got their social act together and they started cooperating, chimps are never going to be very effective in groups because they can't get along, they can't cooperate very well.

01:03:33.000 But once these animals, probably at Australopithecus, but maybe not until later, of course we don't know.

01:03:39.000 All we can look at is what they were capable of.

01:03:41.000 But it fits the storyline that they would have been the ones who developed that.

01:03:44.000 Once that happened, social becomes everything.

01:03:47.000 So we tend to think about...

01:03:49.000 What are the challenges of physical life?

01:03:51.000 Like, you know, that sagopalm.

01:03:53.000 You move into that territory and you've got to freaking figure that out.

01:03:55.000 It seems enormously complicated.

01:03:56.000 But you have to remember that before modern travel was invented, everybody walked everywhere, which meant you spent your entire life basically in territory that you're familiar with.

01:04:05.000 Or the kinds of animals that live there, the kinds of problems that you face.

01:04:08.000 And so cognitively, the terrain is not really a challenge for you.

01:04:12.000 And even making food in those really complicated ways is not a challenge for you once you've got theory of mind and you can learn how to do it.

01:04:18.000 But what is a huge challenge for you is the social interactions with each other.

01:04:22.000 Because as my group gets smarter, if I'm not smarter, first of all, remember we talked about sexual selection.

01:04:26.000 I'm not going to get picked.

01:04:27.000 I'll get left behind.

01:04:29.000 Second of all, we live in a world where there's no law enforcement.

01:04:32.000 And so the day that you decide that I'm more trouble than I'm worth, I go to sleep and I never wake up again.

01:04:36.000 And so I have to be able to manage some very complicated relationships.

01:04:40.000 In my mind, it's like every morning when you wake up, it's to an episode of The Sopranos.

01:04:44.000 How are you going to find a way to get through your day without getting whacked?

01:04:48.000 And if you can't figure it out, that's the end of your line.

01:04:51.000 Have you ever read any Terence McKenna?

01:04:53.000 I know you're familiar with something called the stoned ape theory?

01:04:57.000 No.

01:04:58.000 Sorry I'm not.

01:04:58.000 McKenna, he was an ethnobotanist.

01:05:01.000 He was also a psychedelic adventurer.

01:05:04.000 And he had a theory.

01:05:05.000 And the theory was that what you're talking about, this climate change, that also coincided with the doubling of the human brain size.

01:05:15.000 His theory was that one of the things that was in play was that these apes would experiment with different food sources as they moved into the grasslands.

01:05:23.000 And there was a lot of undulates in these grasslands.

01:05:26.000 And that psilocybin mushrooms, which we know existed back then, would grow in these grasslands.

01:05:31.000 And that these monkeys, these apes rather, started consuming psilocybin mushrooms and it led them to be more creative.

01:05:39.000 And it also led to specific traits like the development of language.

01:05:43.000 That eating mushrooms in low doses increases visual acuity, which would lead them to be better hunters or more perceptive.

01:05:51.000 It also leads them to be hornier, which would most likely involve more breeding, more sexual activity, and possibly select the ones that chose The mushrooms would maybe possibly breed more than the ones that didn't choose the mushrooms because they were more into it and were more social,

01:06:13.000 more sexually active.

01:06:15.000 And he has a series of like...

01:06:19.000 His brother Dennis, who's still alive, detailed it on a podcast.

01:06:23.000 We did the very first podcast we did.

01:06:25.000 His brother is an actual scientist and detailed it in terms of how psilocybin affects the brain and what areas of the brain, what actually takes place when you're under the influence of this and that it could very potentially have led to the development of language.

01:06:45.000 And that all these things in play, the throwing arm, developing these new social networks where you need to communicate with each other, along with the harnessing of fire, along with the consumption of psychedelic mushrooms on a regular basis,

01:07:04.000 because they were incredibly frequent and very edible.

01:07:07.000 That's a total trip.

01:07:08.000 I've never heard of that before.

01:07:09.000 Fascinating.

01:07:10.000 That's a really good example of some random thing.

01:07:12.000 If it really did play that role, how random that is that these freaking things happen to be growing there and that they happen to be attracted to them and ate them.

01:07:19.000 We know that animals like to get high.

01:07:22.000 Elephants will eat these fruit that have...

01:07:24.000 Well, the drunk, in this case, that have over-ripened and have become alcoholic.

01:07:28.000 We know that animals will do that.

01:07:29.000 You've seen jaguars that consume psychedelic plants and they lie on their back and stare at the sky.

01:07:34.000 You've never seen that?

01:07:35.000 No.

01:07:35.000 Oh, it's amazing.

01:07:36.000 Do you know what ayahuasca is?

01:07:38.000 No.

01:07:42.000 It's a way that these people in the rainforest developed untold thousands of years ago of developing an orally active version of dimethyltryptamine.

01:07:54.000 Do you know what dimethyltryptamine is?

01:07:55.000 No, I'm not.

01:07:56.000 Okay.

01:07:57.000 Dimethyltryptamine is the most potent psychedelic known to man.

01:08:00.000 It's an incredibly potent drug.

01:08:01.000 That is just intensely hallucinatory, gives you these insane visions, and it also is...here's a jaguar.

01:08:09.000 It's really crazy.

01:08:11.000 And this is in the Amazon. 0.99

01:08:12.000 These jaguars eat these plants, and these plants are...they have the ingredients of ayahuasca, and these jaguars are known to eat these things and then trip their fucking balls off. 0.98

01:08:24.000 They eat them, and their pupils dilate, and they roll over on their back and stare at the sky. 0.99

01:08:29.000 I mean, they're clearly high.

01:08:30.000 Right.

01:08:31.000 So this is something that you're going to say something?

01:08:33.000 Yeah, this is what I'm going to say.

01:08:34.000 So this is what ayahuasca is, is dimethyltryptamine.

01:08:38.000 It's kind of cool watching this jaguar trip balls.

01:08:42.000 Yeah.

01:08:42.000 They just stare.

01:08:43.000 They see shit that's not there. 0.99

01:08:45.000 I mean, or it is there. 1.00

01:08:46.000 Maybe they're astral traveling.

01:08:48.000 It's amazing.

01:08:48.000 So what ayahuasca is, is there's dimethyltryptamine, which is this incredibly potent psychedelic drug, is produced in the human body.

01:08:57.000 It's produced by the liver.

01:08:59.000 It's produced by the lungs.

01:09:00.000 And they also believe it's produced by the pineal gland, which is literally your third eye.

01:09:05.000 The pineal gland in certain reptiles actually has a retina and a lens.

01:09:09.000 I mean, it's like an eyeball.

01:09:11.000 And the Egyptians called it the seed of the soul, and they think that this is one of the reasons why they have this obsession with this gland in Eastern mysticism is somehow or another they figured out that this is the gland that produces this incredibly potent psychedelic drug.

01:09:29.000 This psychedelic drug dimethyltryptamine also exists in thousands of different plants.

01:09:33.000 The problem is when you consume it orally, your body produces something in your gut called monoamine oxidase.

01:09:40.000 Monoamine oxidase breaks it down.

01:09:42.000 So what these indigenous people figured out is how to combine one plant which contains this psychedelic compound with another plant which contains a natural MAO inhibitor called harmine.

01:09:54.000 So they brew this all together, much like they did with the cassava, which we have no idea how they figured that out.

01:09:59.000 They brew this stuff up together and they create this psychedelic tea called ayahuasca. 0.99

01:10:03.000 And ayahuasca now, they have all these trips where people go down to Peru and take this stuff and trip their fucking balls off. 0.93

01:10:10.000 And the combination of these things leads to this incredibly potent, really transformative experience, which is impossible to describe. 0.97

01:10:24.000 And that this psychedelic drug...

01:10:26.000 Why did I bring that up?

01:10:28.000 Well, we were talking about how maybe chimps or these early ancestors did something similar, which pushed them along this path of starting to communicate with each other.

01:10:36.000 Right, but how did I get to DMT? How did I get to ayahuasca?

01:10:40.000 There are a couple of links in that chain.

01:10:41.000 Maybe it was because of animals that get high.

01:10:43.000 That's what it was.

01:10:44.000 So this is what this...

01:10:46.000 That's exactly what it was.

01:10:47.000 It was the jaguar getting high on DMT. That's what they think the jaguar is doing.

01:10:51.000 The jaguar consuming this stuff, it's making him trip on DMT. And DMT is...

01:10:56.000 I mean, it's fun.

01:10:58.000 It's a really exciting experience.

01:11:00.000 So Robert Trivers is this wonderful biologist who started a lot of the kinds of work that we're talking about going in the 70s, calls these sorts of things a phenotypic indulgence, right?

01:11:09.000 So evolution gave you these pleasure centers in your brain so that you do what's in your genes' best interests and kill the animal or get the girl or whatever, and that makes you feel good.

01:11:18.000 And so we tend to like the things that are good for us and dislike the things that are bad for us.

01:11:22.000 We don't want to eat feces.

01:11:23.000 We do want to eat a steak.

01:11:24.000 Right.

01:11:26.000 There's cases like this where it short-circuits that.

01:11:28.000 It goes right to the pleasure center, even though what it's doing is kind of irrelevant.

01:11:31.000 But this is a case where maybe it wasn't irrelevant.

01:11:34.000 Maybe it actually caused these animals to then change the way that they behave to become more sociable.

01:11:38.000 It's very possible something like that played a role along the way, which is why if you replay the sequence of the vanishing rainforest ten times, only one time does it maybe lead to anything good, and the other nine times it leads to a bunch of dead chimps.

01:11:52.000 Yeah.

01:11:53.000 Well, the process is probably incredibly slow, right?

01:11:55.000 Yeah.

01:11:56.000 Over millions of years, the climate did alter.

01:11:58.000 Well, that's right.

01:11:58.000 So you've got millions of years for the rainforest to disappear.

01:12:01.000 So you've got these animals to slowly, slowly say, I've got no choice.

01:12:03.000 Slowly figure it out.

01:12:04.000 And then I think for three and a half million years, literally, they're just gulking around the edges and they figured nothing out.

01:12:10.000 But there was a pressure on them to walk upright.

01:12:13.000 And nobody knows for sure what that pressure is.

01:12:16.000 One hypothesis that has some – well, there's probably a lot of reasons, right?

01:12:19.000 Any time something big happens, there's probably a lot of causes.

01:12:22.000 So some people have said that you can cover ground more efficiently when you walk upright with fewer calories, and especially this idea of slowly running down animals.

01:12:29.000 You may have heard about this notion.

01:12:31.000 Yes, persistence hunting.

01:12:32.000 Exactly.

01:12:33.000 We talked about that yesterday, actually.

01:12:37.000 But another reason is, so ask yourself, so why would an animal, so if we back up a little bit, remember I talked about how oldowan tools, which are made even later than when we first started walking upright, so they're even after that, oldowan tools are never carried at any great distance from where they're acquired and made.

01:12:55.000 And so what you have is an animal, just like today's chimps, they can't plan for tomorrow.

01:12:59.000 So a chimp can plan for needs that it currently feels. 0.99

01:13:02.000 It can say, oh, I want to go get termites out of that mound.

01:13:07.000 I'll break the stick off, I'll strip the leaves, and then I'll go over there and undo that.

01:13:10.000 But it can't plan for the fact that it might have that need again tomorrow.

01:13:13.000 If it doesn't feel the need, it can't plan for it.

01:13:16.000 And humans can plan for unfelt needs.

01:13:18.000 And the best example of that is the notion of taking a tool with you that you've now used and saying, well, I'll want to use it again tomorrow, right?

01:13:25.000 So, whichever Australopithecus was the first one to start walking upright was almost assuredly incapable of planning for the future, for unfelt needs.

01:13:34.000 But it could plan for felt needs, because a chimp can do that too. 0.98

01:13:37.000 And if you think about how would you feel if you're about to walk across the open savanna and you're kind of small and leopards and lions are way faster than you, I think the primary thing you'd feel is fear. 0.99

01:13:47.000 Oh shit, I'm going to get attacked. 0.88

01:13:48.000 And so I want something in my hands to help me defend myself. 1.00

01:13:51.000 A spear, a club, a stick, something.

01:13:54.000 And so what I suspect is a part of the process is my desire to hold something in my hand as I'm looking around and I'm scared.

01:14:01.000 And a bunch of us are doing that.

01:14:02.000 And so I suspect that that's what played a role in leading to bipedalism.

01:14:06.000 There would have been other factors at play like persistence hunting and stuff.

01:14:09.000 But I suspect that came later.

01:14:11.000 So actually holding a weapon might have led to the beginning of that.

01:14:15.000 Yeah, just because you don't need to be a rocket scientist.

01:14:17.000 You're scared now.

01:14:18.000 You want something to defend yourself.

01:14:20.000 Do we have evidence of them sharpening sticks?

01:14:23.000 Remember, so modern chimps who live on the savannah do sharpen sticks. 0.99

01:14:27.000 Modern chimps do.

01:14:28.000 But do we have evidence of ancient man sharpening sticks?

01:14:31.000 No, we don't even have sticks left over from Homo erectus.

01:14:34.000 We know they must use them because they're making some pretty complicated stones.

01:14:37.000 And so assuredly they were sharpening sticks, but all of it's decayed.

01:14:40.000 So what year did we...

01:14:42.000 So we really don't know when they first started attaching these stone tools to sticks, right?

01:14:47.000 Making axes and spears.

01:14:50.000 We know that that's happening very recently by Homo sapiens.

01:14:53.000 We don't know if it happened before that.

01:14:54.000 Right.

01:14:55.000 If I had to guess, I would say that Homo erectus did that, if you look at the quality of other things that they've done.

01:15:00.000 So, for example, there's this amazing site off the Sea of Galilee.

01:15:04.000 It's about 700,000 years old.

01:15:05.000 So remember, Homo sapiens, let's call it 300,000 years.

01:15:08.000 Mm-hmm.

01:15:08.000 So now we're 700,000 or so years ago, and there's this elephant skull that's been turned over so that they can get access to the brains.

01:15:16.000 That thing is unwieldy.

01:15:18.000 It's heavy as anything.

01:15:19.000 You've got to have people working together to turn that thing over.

01:15:21.000 There's even a log underneath it that might have been used as a lever to kind of help plop the thing over.

01:15:26.000 So what you got is people are quite capable of working together.

01:15:29.000 They know what they're trying to achieve.

01:15:30.000 They know how to access those things.

01:15:32.000 I suspect that they knew that they could sharpen a stick or maybe even have to put a stone to make it even better.

01:15:37.000 It's just that we can't find any evidence for that, at least not yet.

01:15:41.000 Wasn't there some...

01:15:43.000 Certain really ancient evidence of cannibalism too because of the scrape marks inside of skulls and they think they were scooping out brain matter.

01:15:51.000 That's possible.

01:15:52.000 I haven't seen those data but absolutely you can see where they've used those tools on like the legs of animals and things like that so you'd see it inside a skull as well, a human skull.

01:16:00.000 I'm sure you're aware of that little person that was discovered just a few years ago.

01:16:06.000 I think it was like a decade or so ago.

01:16:09.000 On Indonesia?

01:16:10.000 Yeah.

01:16:12.000 They think that little person type thing used stone tools, right?

01:16:17.000 Yes, those guys.

01:16:18.000 So what happened about, I don't know, 1.x million years ago, we'll call it 1.7.

01:16:23.000 I don't remember exactly.

01:16:24.000 Homo erectus leaves Africa, but they also stay.

01:16:26.000 So you've got Homo erectus basically colonizing all of Africa, and you've got Homo erectus colonizing almost all of Europe, all of Southern Asia.

01:16:33.000 And so they don't go beyond that, at least not to our knowledge.

01:16:37.000 Maybe they did.

01:16:38.000 But they certainly covered all that ground.

01:16:41.000 And outside of, so now you've got Homo erectus in Africa and Homo erectus outside of Africa.

01:16:46.000 And of course, then over time, both of them are going to evolve and change.

01:16:49.000 The ones outside of Africa end up as Neanderthals.

01:16:52.000 Those are the most recent instantiation of them.

01:16:54.000 The ones inside of Africa end up as us. 0.79

01:16:56.000 And so when we leave Africa, the first thing we encounter is Neanderthals in Arabia, because that's the first point of entry out of Africa. 0.90

01:17:03.000 And so we probably started copulating with them there.

01:17:05.000 We know we started copulating with them soon afterward.

01:17:07.000 So as we left, they had evolved somewhere else.

01:17:10.000 They had evolved in Europe?

01:17:11.000 In Asia, yeah.

01:17:11.000 Yeah, absolutely.

01:17:12.000 And so they evolved from some other type of...

01:17:14.000 Well, the same ancestors.

01:17:16.000 So our great uncle left and our great grandpa stayed, right?

01:17:19.000 And so the ones who left, some of them evolved into those people on Flores, into those tiny little people.

01:17:25.000 Some of them, we know this Denisovan from a pinky bone, you know, in a cave in Siberia.

01:17:29.000 And we have got, we know that we interbred with Neanderthals and that's where a lot of our genes that we currently have for light skin and blue eyes and things like that come from.

01:17:39.000 And they think we interbred with Denisovans as well, right?

01:17:42.000 Well, not all of us.

01:17:43.000 So there's evidence for Melanesians, if I remember right, having Denisovan blood.

01:17:47.000 Our DNA, I don't know about us.

01:17:49.000 It may turn out that we did.

01:17:52.000 I don't think so, though.

01:17:53.000 But there's no evidence that humans interbred with folks from Flores, right?

01:17:58.000 Not that I know of.

01:17:59.000 I've never seen that.

01:17:59.000 They're tiny.

01:18:00.000 Yeah, they're very small.

01:18:01.000 They're like hobbit-like. 0.64

01:18:02.000 Now, that doesn't mean that if...

01:18:04.000 Well, no, we would have...

01:18:07.000 It's possible.

01:18:08.000 That we could have overlapped with them.

01:18:10.000 Somebody would do it.

01:18:11.000 Yeah.

01:18:11.000 So, like, we hit Australia by 65,000 years ago.

01:18:15.000 And I don't remember when the Flores people... 0.63

01:18:17.000 We hit Australia 65,000 years ago?

01:18:19.000 Wow.

01:18:20.000 And that was through some sort of boat traveling.

01:18:23.000 Yeah.

01:18:24.000 Remember, so 65,000 years ago, it would have still been ice age, and so we would have had a lot less water.

01:18:29.000 And so if you look at topographical maps, then when you look at what the Pacific Islanders did and stuff, it seems ballsy as hell, but it's a little less ballsy when you can keep seeing the next piece of land not as far away compared to now where the sea is much higher and you can't see the land. 0.69

01:18:42.000 Oh, okay.

01:18:43.000 So when the Pacific Islanders, like, traveled to Hawaii, you think they could see things from the water? 0.94

01:18:48.000 Yeah, they could see a lot better.

01:18:48.000 Now, the most recent, the very last place the Pacific Islanders settled is New Zealand.

01:18:53.000 That's only 700 years ago.

01:18:54.000 So that's the same as today.

01:18:56.000 Right.

01:18:56.000 But a lot of that discovery was done at a time where the sea was a lot lower.

01:19:01.000 And so there'd be a lot more islands sticking up that we don't currently have.

01:19:04.000 So 700 years ago, they had much more sophisticated boats.

01:19:07.000 Yeah, they had those awesome outriggers and all that.

01:19:09.000 Right.

01:19:10.000 Yeah.

01:19:10.000 It is crazy when you think about it.

01:19:12.000 We're like little rats with the way we've scattered across this globe.

01:19:16.000 Yeah, and if you think about it, it seems like it's all ballsy exploration, but I actually suspect a bigger part of it is running away from the guy behind you who's causing problems.

01:19:26.000 And so my favorite example of that is if you look at the cliff dwellings, like in the American Southwest, and you go there and you're thinking, who the hell would live like this?

01:19:33.000 I mean, you know, when Junior walks out, phew!

01:19:35.000 Right.

01:19:36.000 But if the people down the valley are scarier than the risk of falling outside your cave, you're going to live up in a cave dwelling.

01:19:42.000 Right, where they're going to climb up to get you.

01:19:44.000 Yeah.

01:19:44.000 And that's part of the...

01:19:45.000 Remember we talked about sexual selection as a source of people don't like unfairness.

01:19:49.000 Well, people also don't like unfairness between groups.

01:19:52.000 Because if you and I make a deal, and I'm from Ohio and you're from California, and the Californians benefit more than the Ohioans, even though I benefit, you benefit more, and now I'm at risk.

01:20:02.000 Because maybe your group, ancestrally, is going to cause my group problems.

01:20:05.000 Interesting.

01:20:07.000 So when you're studying all this stuff, how does that make you feel as a person?

01:20:12.000 Do you ever internalize all this stuff when you're thinking about all the weird ape-like creatures that turned into people and all the thousands and thousands of years of evolution and how it could have gone left and it did go right?

01:20:29.000 Does that freak you out when you really get deep into the study of all this stuff?

01:20:32.000 First of all, I do this all the time, right?

01:20:34.000 So it does freak me out, but it's what I like.

01:20:36.000 And it also, we can talk about all the ways that you can predict things about our modern selves based on knowing these things in the past, right?

01:20:42.000 But secondarily, what freaks me out the most probably is the enormous role of random chance in all this, right?

01:20:48.000 And so if you think about the, I mean, just think about our own backgrounds.

01:20:51.000 The random chance that our mom and dad got amorous the night that they did that made you and me.

01:20:56.000 Yeah.

01:20:56.000 If they did a different position, maybe your brother's talking to my brother, right?

01:21:00.000 Yeah.

01:21:00.000 And so it's really which sperm wins that race is so unlikely to be us.

01:21:04.000 Right.

01:21:04.000 And so every roll of the dice has to go your way, right?

01:21:08.000 And so the role of chance and all this kind of freaks you out if you think about that.

01:21:12.000 Yeah.

01:21:12.000 But at the same time, your brother's probably a lot like you.

01:21:14.000 My brother's probably a lot like me or my sister or whatever.

01:21:17.000 And so...

01:21:18.000 You have one child or you have more?

01:21:20.000 I've got a boy and a girl.

01:21:21.000 Okay.

01:21:21.000 Okay, yeah.

01:21:22.000 Well, you know then that they're so different right out of the box.

01:21:25.000 Yeah, they are totally.

01:21:26.000 Which is really weird.

01:21:27.000 It is weird.

01:21:27.000 So I don't know if you saw this book that Plowman just wrote called Blueprint.

01:21:31.000 Robert Plowman, he's a behavioral geneticist.

01:21:34.000 I haven't seen that.

01:21:35.000 Oh, it's a lovely book.

01:21:35.000 It just came out.

01:21:36.000 Just out like really recently?

01:21:38.000 Yeah, like a month or two at the most.

01:21:40.000 How do you say his name?

01:21:41.000 P-L-O-M-I-N, Robert Plumman.

01:21:45.000 And he's a wonderful behavioral geneticist over in the UK. And this book, Blueprint, talks about the role of genes in all this.

01:21:54.000 And he basically is one of these people who's been in the field almost since it got started.

01:21:59.000 And what they kept thinking is that the environment was going to play a huge role, that parents were going to play a huge role.

01:22:05.000 But of course, what they keep finding over and over again, there you go.

01:22:08.000 It is how DNA makes us who we are.

01:22:11.000 And what they find over and over again, and this is what's so disconcerting, is first of all, on average, most things are about 50% genetic.

01:22:18.000 But the bummer is that the other half isn't what's happening in your house and the way you're brought up by your folks.

01:22:24.000 It's the random other stuff.

01:22:26.000 Like the first, we don't even know what it is.

01:22:28.000 It's what we call unshared environment.

01:22:30.000 Maybe that first girlfriend you had, maybe you biked into a tree and you unimproved your face.

01:22:34.000 You know, a million different things that specifically happened to you that didn't happen to everybody else in your family.

01:22:39.000 Right.

01:22:39.000 And also the way you address those things that happened.

01:22:43.000 Yeah.

01:22:43.000 And that could be a factor in how you were raised and how you were taught to deal with stress, how you were taught to deal with situations and character development.

01:22:53.000 But all the data suggests not.

01:22:54.000 It suggests parents just don't matter.

01:22:56.000 How you were taught doesn't seem to play a role because when we parse up all the different traits about you, there's a few that your parents actually have a big influence on.

01:23:03.000 What religion you're in, for example, but not how religious you are.

01:23:07.000 So the biggest role that your parents play seems to be when sperm met egg.

01:23:11.000 So a friend of mine, the analogy they made when I had my first kid, he says, here's what you're going to find out.

01:23:16.000 That you're handed, when the baby's born, you're handed a negative.

01:23:19.000 The picture's already been taken.

01:23:21.000 You can screw it up by being in the darkroom a little bit wrong, or you can help it a little bit by being in the darkroom a little bit right, but the photograph is already there.

01:23:29.000 And my son and my daughter are wildly different in some ways.

01:23:32.000 In some ways they're quite similar.

01:23:33.000 But I feel like I'm along for the ride more than I feel like I'm shaping them to make them who they are.

01:23:38.000 But don't you think you're shaping them somewhat?

01:23:40.000 I'm trying.

01:23:41.000 Look, that's what we do, right?

01:23:42.000 But the data say no.

01:23:44.000 But how would the data know?

01:23:46.000 So here's how we do it.

01:23:47.000 You would have to study so many different human beings.

01:23:50.000 You have to take into account all the variables that took place during all the developmental periods of their life.

01:23:56.000 Well, to do it right, you need to do all that.

01:23:58.000 And we can't do that yet.

01:23:59.000 And to do it right, what you want is actually to have the actual genetic markers, not just to know the genes are there.

01:24:05.000 And that's all starting now.

01:24:07.000 But we don't know yet.

01:24:08.000 What they do do is they'll say, well, we got a bunch.

01:24:10.000 There's two ways to go about this.

01:24:12.000 Employment was at the front of both of them.

01:24:13.000 One, you look at adoptive studies versus kids who were adopted into a family versus biological.

01:24:18.000 And you can compare the parents of the adopted kids, the biological parents versus the home parents.

01:24:24.000 And it turns out that the biological parents predict a whole lot more about the adopted child than the parents who raised them.

01:24:31.000 The parents who raised them predict almost nothing.

01:24:33.000 Whoa.

01:24:34.000 I know.

01:24:34.000 And then the second thing you can do is you can look at fraternal versus monozagotic identical twins.

01:24:40.000 And you find that they all share the same environment.

01:24:45.000 They're all brought up by you and me, right?

01:24:46.000 We're the parents of these kids.

01:24:49.000 But there's a lot of unshared environment, and that's when they differ.

01:24:53.000 It's not because of you and me.

01:24:55.000 We can't find any evidence that you and I made any difference.

01:24:58.000 All we can find is evidence that other things in their life made a difference.

01:25:01.000 Now, to say that means what we really don't know is, well, what is that unshared environment?

01:25:05.000 All we know is it's not something about your household, because that would cause fraternal and identical twins to both be more similar to each other, and it doesn't.

01:25:13.000 Well, and obviously there's not a lot of data in terms of when you're measuring someone's entire life from birth to death, but there's enough that people are starting to draw conclusions.

01:25:25.000 One of the more interesting ones is when you see identical twins that were raised in different households without any knowledge of each other, and then they run into each other 30 years later, and they find out they have disturbing similarities.

01:25:38.000 That's exactly another example.

01:25:40.000 And what's also interesting about it, which Plowman talks about in Blueprint, is that your genes become more powerful as you age.

01:25:47.000 So the heritability of things like IQ goes up as you get older.

01:25:51.000 And so the argument is that your genes seem to be causing you to select out environments.

01:25:55.000 So you gave the example, well, maybe the way that you discipline them or tell them to be resilient or whatever you do as a parent causes them to shape their environment.

01:26:04.000 Doesn't seem to be the case, but it does seem to be the case that the genes that you give them cause them to select their environments in certain ways.

01:26:10.000 Because remember, kids choose their friends, right?

01:26:13.000 You want them to play with Timmy, but they want to play with Johnny.

01:26:16.000 That's the unshared environment.

01:26:18.000 They're making those choices every day.

01:26:20.000 It's also the case that their peers matter a whole lot more than their parents do once they get to a certain age.

01:26:25.000 You know, I'm chopped liver as soon as my kids are a bit older, but when I'm young, I'm their hero.

01:26:28.000 Right, right, right.

01:26:29.000 When they're young.

01:26:30.000 Yes.

01:26:31.000 Now, when you say that your genes become more powerful as you get older, what do you mean by that, though?

01:26:36.000 Well, they are more predictive of the outcome.

01:26:38.000 And so if you look at the heritability of IQ, when you're a kid, it's lower than when you're an adult, and it's lower still than when you're an older adult.

01:26:45.000 And so what seems to be happening to a lot of our traits, probably almost...

01:26:49.000 Are you saying that, like, if you have children as an older person, it's more heritable?

01:26:54.000 No, no, no.

01:26:54.000 What do you mean?

01:26:54.000 As the kids get older, sorry.

01:26:56.000 Okay.

01:26:56.000 So if you look at the heritability of IQ when kids are 2, 4, 8, 10, 20, 60, you find that identical twins come more and more together as they age, whether they're aging in the same household or not.

01:27:09.000 Hmm.

01:27:09.000 And so it's something about selecting your environment.

01:27:12.000 So like here's one kid who loves to think and do puzzles and his identical twin loves to do the same and they kind of get smarter their whole lives.

01:27:18.000 Here's another kid who's not interested in that.

01:27:20.000 They have other interests and they go in a different direction.

01:27:22.000 But when you're the parent, you can be busily pushing them to do the things you want them to do.

01:27:27.000 And so their heritability is less strong.

01:27:29.000 And there's lots of cool examples.

01:27:31.000 It's like when totalitarian governments are eliminated and the school system becomes more fair, heritability of intelligence goes up in those societies.

01:27:38.000 Because kids are now more capable of selecting the schools they want to go to, the environments that they want to be part of.

01:27:43.000 Wow.

01:27:44.000 We're so flexible.

01:27:46.000 It's so weird when you think about all the various styles of civilization that human beings exist in and thrive in.

01:27:54.000 Right.

01:27:54.000 And for me, that's the key.

01:27:55.000 So when a lot of people hear about this, it sounds like genetic determinism, that your genes are forcing you to be a certain way.

01:28:02.000 But for me, it's not genetic determinism.

01:28:05.000 You can think of about it as a genetic nudge.

01:28:06.000 Part of your nudge is going to come from the DNA you inherited, but part of it's going to come from the environment, and part of it's going to come from your own personal decisions.

01:28:13.000 Yes.

01:28:13.000 So in my mind, we talk about it in terms of your mind because that's psychology, but an easier example is your muscles.

01:28:20.000 Some people inherit genes that if they lift one weight once, they're buff.

01:28:25.000 Other people's genes, they have to work out a lot if they want to gain anything.

01:28:28.000 But you can still decide, I'm going to work out a lot or I'm not.

01:28:30.000 I'm going to eat these nutrients or a lot of protein or not.

01:28:34.000 You can choose a lifestyle that leads you to be more muscular or less.

01:28:37.000 So it's partially choice.

01:28:39.000 It's partially environment.

01:28:40.000 It's partially that interaction between your genes and environment.

01:28:43.000 Which would make sense if you think about how flexible that we are.

01:28:46.000 Absolutely.

01:28:47.000 It has to be.

01:28:47.000 How adaptive that we are.

01:28:48.000 It has to be because human beings have to learn how to survive in every environment on this planet.

01:28:52.000 If we were meerkats or something, well, we got a certain way of doing things and your genes can basically tell you what to do.

01:28:57.000 And with meerkats, there's some really interesting experiments where you can show your genes cause you to listen to one signal and just follow that.

01:29:03.000 But as human beings, your genes had no choice but to give up control once we went down this cognitive pathway that emphasizes learning over inborn instincts.

01:29:12.000 You know, you've had little ones, you know they're worthless when they're babies, right?

01:29:15.000 Baby wildebeest gets up and off it can go.

01:29:17.000 They run away from a lion.

01:29:18.000 Yeah.

01:29:19.000 It's just so fantastically complicated, the developmental process from birth to adulthood, and that this is taking place simultaneously amongst hundreds and hundreds of millions of people, and with varying results and all sorts of different...

01:29:37.000 Levels of creativity and ingenuity and mathematical prowess and literature and all these different things that are being created by all these different weird little ape creatures everywhere. 1.00

01:29:48.000 And there's so many different factors that determine what this ape creature becomes. 0.99

01:29:52.000 Right, and that's one of the best things in my mind about being a person. 0.97

01:29:56.000 So if you're a dung beetle, you've got one job in life, push a ball of poo. 0.98

01:30:00.000 And if you can't push a ball of poo that's three times your body weight, well that's the end of the line for you, right? 0.98

01:30:05.000 But if you're a human, maybe you're big and strong, maybe you're not.

01:30:07.000 Maybe you're really smart, maybe you're not.

01:30:09.000 Maybe you're really creative.

01:30:10.000 There's a million ways to skin that cat. 0.99

01:30:12.000 And the great thing about being a human is that if you're good at any of those things, there's a niche for you.

01:30:17.000 You will be beneficial.

01:30:19.000 And because we evolved to all work together, there'll be value in you.

01:30:22.000 You're my favorite barista.

01:30:23.000 You're my favorite whatever.

01:30:24.000 Whatever you're good at, everybody's good at something.

01:30:27.000 And so the thing is that...

01:30:29.000 People worry about this sort of upcoming genetic revolution that it's going to be, well, there's going to be the good and everybody else.

01:30:34.000 And that's just not going to happen.

01:30:36.000 Because one of the things that we know, and you'll see this if you look at Blueprint, is that you have a gazillion genes underlie every trait.

01:30:42.000 There aren't five smart genes.

01:30:44.000 There's like a thousand of them.

01:30:45.000 And furthermore, each one of them only accounts for a tiny, tiny bit, and they do lots of other things too.

01:30:50.000 So you can't make a designer baby that has all these qualities because all you do is noodle around with five or six genes.

01:30:56.000 There's a couple of disorders that work that way.

01:30:58.000 But our personalities, our abilities, our proclivities are all heavily determined by large numbers of genes that do lots and lots of different things.

01:31:05.000 But we're talking about our understanding of genetics currently, right?

01:31:09.000 Yes.

01:31:09.000 And when you talk about things like genetic manipulation or the use of CRISPR or any of these maybe new tools that they're working on right now, they've already updated CRISPR. They were CRISPR.2, right?

01:31:20.000 Yeah.

01:31:20.000 When this continues to evolve and more and more innovation takes place in that world, don't you think they're going to get to a point where they're going to understand all the various factors in genetics and they're going to be able to create...

01:31:36.000 A person who looks like Thor?

01:31:38.000 Yes and no.

01:31:39.000 So in principle, yes.

01:31:40.000 So you've got like, I don't know, 3 billion base pairs in your DNA. And most of those, we all share all the same ones.

01:31:46.000 So screw the ones that are shared.

01:31:47.000 We don't care about those. 0.86

01:31:48.000 All we can do is noodle around with the ones that aren't.

01:31:51.000 What makes it complicated is that most of the ones that differ between people are actually in what we now call the regulatory region we used to think of as junk DNA. But now we know, well, think about a company.

01:32:02.000 A company that makes widgets doesn't just make widgets.

01:32:04.000 It has to have sales.

01:32:05.000 It has to have marketing.

01:32:06.000 It has to have management.

01:32:07.000 And now we know, well, sure enough, a lot of the DNA that's not coding for proteins is working with the other DNA to turn things on and turn things off.

01:32:14.000 And there's three billion base pairs.

01:32:16.000 So the level of complexity there is outrageous, right?

01:32:18.000 Right.

01:32:19.000 So, but let's still, someday we'll get it, right?

01:32:21.000 Just now, you and I won't see it.

01:32:23.000 And what we now know from these studies, GWAS studies, genome-wide association studies, is that you can look at all the base pairs that vary, and you can say, all right, which one of these things are correlated with my outcome of interest?

01:32:36.000 And so you say, oh, education.

01:32:38.000 And they create what's called a polygenic score.

01:32:40.000 And you say, let's predict how many years of education you're going to get.

01:32:43.000 And sure enough, The richer you are, on average, the higher your polygenic score is.

01:32:49.000 If you're born into a rich family, you probably have a higher polygenic score.

01:32:51.000 But if your polygenic score for education is lower than the average for your thing, you probably get poorer across your life. 0.58

01:32:58.000 If it's higher, you probably get richer.

01:33:00.000 Is it a gene for being smart, for sitting there and doing what you're told, for self-control, like it could be...

01:33:06.000 And there's a thousand things in there, and each one of them accounts for one-tenth of one percent of the variance.

01:33:11.000 But what makes it complicated is that whole set of genes also predicts how artistic you are, but in a different combination.

01:33:17.000 And it predicts how friendly you are in a different combination.

01:33:19.000 And so the genes that do one set of things almost always do lots of things, and we have very few traits that don't have lots and lots of genes that each play a tiny role underneath them.

01:33:30.000 The example Plowman gives in his book, which I think is great, is he says, we started out looking for gold nuggets, and we now realize we're looking for gold dust.

01:33:37.000 It's just lots of tiny stuff out there.

01:33:40.000 So in many ways, when you talk about the human genome and our genetic code, we're really similar to computer programs in that there's millions and millions of lines of code in computer programs.

01:33:55.000 But we know how to make computer programs.

01:33:57.000 So we know what these...

01:33:58.000 Well, we don't.

01:33:59.000 I don't know if you do.

01:33:59.000 I don't either.

01:34:00.000 But somebody smarter than both of us knows how to make these incredible codes that lead to operating systems and But now we're writing codes that we don't understand.

01:34:09.000 So if you look at neural networks, there'll be input levels and there'll be output levels, and the freaking computer decides how to mix those things together, and we don't even know what all it's done.

01:34:17.000 And two of them that are learning the same thing might get there via different mechanisms.

01:34:20.000 So by that idea, or through that idea, wouldn't you think that artificial intelligence could lead to the mapping out of the human genome, or rather the altering of the human genome and mapping out a different type of human?

01:34:33.000 Look, in principle it could, and...

01:34:35.000 And it may.

01:34:36.000 And all I would say is that what we thought, though, is that there'd be five smart genes that really matter and the rest are trivial.

01:34:44.000 And so turn on those five smart ones.

01:34:45.000 Everybody's going to want that.

01:34:46.000 And there'll be five funny genes and we'll turn those on, etc.

01:34:49.000 But there's not.

01:34:50.000 And so what that means is I've got to decide.

01:34:52.000 Imagine this future world where I'm about to have a baby and I can CRISPR the whole thing.

01:34:56.000 And I have to decide what genes.

01:34:57.000 I'll say, well, I can make him smarter, but then he's not going to be very friendly.

01:35:00.000 Or whatever, right?

01:35:02.000 They all trade off against each other.

01:35:03.000 Right. 0.99

01:35:04.000 You could get the big dick gene, but it doesn't see as good. 1.00

01:35:07.000 Exactly. 1.00

01:35:08.000 Give him glasses.

01:35:10.000 Exactly.

01:35:11.000 And so the thing is that it makes it so, yeah, we will get rid of these single gene disorders that are awful, right?

01:35:16.000 Right, right, right.

01:35:17.000 But we're not going to...

01:35:18.000 I suspect we're not going to noodle around with our smarts and our personality because every single change we make is going to have a commensurate change somewhere else.

01:35:25.000 Oh, I can make him smarter, but then he's going to be depressed.

01:35:28.000 And he's, you know, like that.

01:35:29.000 Yeah.

01:35:30.000 That is a...

01:35:32.000 Boy...

01:35:33.000 The idea of playing God like that, that's really...

01:35:37.000 We are playing creator.

01:35:39.000 I don't even necessarily think we should use the word God in that respect because it's something that's already been created.

01:35:44.000 But we're taking this life form and radically altering it.

01:35:48.000 And we can already do that and people will start doing it soon.

01:35:52.000 Like when I was a kid, when we were kids, IVF is playing God.

01:35:56.000 Now it's a triviality, right?

01:35:57.000 It's nothing.

01:35:58.000 Yeah, that is crazy.

01:36:02.000 You don't think that this is going to take place in our lifetime, that maybe Russia or China is going to make some super person?

01:36:07.000 There's too many genes that play too small of a role.

01:36:10.000 And so the thing is that it's too hard to mess around with.

01:36:16.000 It's too hard to create these things.

01:36:18.000 There's no reason you'd be a lot better off if you just did selective breeding.

01:36:21.000 And the reality is you don't even need to.

01:36:23.000 People already assortatively mate. 0.80

01:36:25.000 They already...

01:36:26.000 Choose partners who are similar to themselves.

01:36:28.000 If they value education, the other person does too.

01:36:30.000 If they value athletics, the other person does too.

01:36:32.000 That works so much better than anything that we're capable of doing right now.

01:36:36.000 And when you do these GWAS studies with these polygenic scores, and you say, oh, look, You're born into a social class that's suggested it would probably be high, and yours is kind of low, and sure enough, you get poorer across your life.

01:36:46.000 You're literally accounting for 3% of the variance.

01:36:49.000 You're barely explaining anything, because even though when we look at the behavioral genetic studies, we can say, wow, intelligence is 50% genetic.

01:36:57.000 We can't come close to finding the genes that actually do that.

01:37:00.000 And part of the reason we don't know But part of the reason may be that, first of all, its course is 50% environmental, and what those random things are, we don't know.

01:37:08.000 And second, think about how you, with three billion base pairs, how many things, maybe when those two are in place and that one isn't, and the third, you know, there could be interactions at really, really complicated levels where you're almost at infinite.

01:37:19.000 And so that's why I don't think it happens when you and I are around to see it.

01:37:23.000 I think you're probably right, but then I just realized that things like CRISPR, which were invented by accident, came out of nowhere less than a decade ago.

01:37:32.000 I believe it was less than a decade ago, right?

01:37:35.000 It's super recent.

01:37:36.000 It's outside, yeah, I don't know.

01:37:37.000 And then if you really stop and think about even the mapping of the human genome, it used to be an unbelievably difficult thing.

01:37:45.000 Yeah.

01:37:45.000 And then, you know, checking your genetics was preposterously expensive.

01:37:50.000 Now you just spit into a little tube and send it to 23andMe and they tell you, hey, bro, you know, someone in your family is from Europe and this guy's from Asia.

01:37:59.000 Yep.

01:38:00.000 And so I could easily be wrong that you and I will see it and it's only 10 years away because computationally it seems so hard right now, but things that were computationally impossible when I was in grad school, you know, the simple analyses we did with our data in grad school, it's just like a phone could do that so easily now and we waited 24 hours for the mainframe to give it back to us.

01:38:17.000 Well, Kurzweil talks about that, that we really don't see things in terms of the exponential increase in technology.

01:38:25.000 You know, Kurzweil believes all this is going to happen plus more.

01:38:28.000 He thinks you're going to be able to download your brain into a computer and, you know, and he's smarter.

01:38:33.000 Cyborg ourselves and all that.

01:38:33.000 He's smarter than me.

01:38:34.000 I don't know if he's smarter than you.

01:38:35.000 He's definitely smarter than me.

01:38:36.000 No, he's an awfully smart guy.

01:38:37.000 And his idea is, researchers just turned on the world's most powerful supercomputer designed to mimic a human brain.

01:38:42.000 Whoa.

01:38:43.000 Is that the thing I was telling you about a week last week?

01:38:44.000 That sounds pretty scary.

01:38:46.000 Neuromorphic computer.

01:38:48.000 Neuromorphic computer just got a big boost with a million-core supercomputer that took over a decade to build.

01:38:55.000 Mother.

01:38:55.000 Yeah, this is the beginning of a movie, right?

01:38:58.000 Right.

01:38:58.000 It doesn't go well.

01:38:59.000 But here's the thing, right? 0.93

01:39:00.000 This movie, in this movie, this is a whole room full of computers, just like the Apollo missions used a room full of computers that can't fuck with your phone. 0.98

01:39:09.000 I know. 0.96

01:39:09.000 This was really crazy. 0.96

01:39:10.000 I know, it is.

01:39:11.000 That's 1965, 66, 67, right?

01:39:15.000 They had a room. 1.00

01:39:16.000 This iPhone buries that room full of fucking shitty-ass computers. 1.00

01:39:20.000 Plus, it takes pictures. 1.00

01:39:22.000 Yeah.

01:39:22.000 Do you remember when we were kids and everybody said, everyone will have their own phone?

01:39:25.000 Right.

01:39:26.000 And I remember thinking, who the hell wants a phone?

01:39:27.000 Like, my mom will just reach me wherever I go.

01:39:29.000 But you didn't know what a phone could do in those days.

01:39:31.000 I used to have a bit.

01:39:32.000 And this is only from 2005, from a Netflix special I did in 2005. Which, you know, it's 13 years ago, but it doesn't seem like that long ago.

01:39:41.000 But I was making fun of people texting.

01:39:44.000 Uh-huh.

01:39:45.000 Because I was like, hey, bro, why are you making me read?

01:39:49.000 Call me.

01:39:50.000 I go, you're sending me texts from a phone. 1.00

01:39:52.000 I go, fucking call me. 1.00

01:39:53.000 It takes you four presses to get an S. I know, I know. 0.99

01:39:56.000 That was back when you had to use the numbers.

01:39:58.000 Yeah, those little flip phones, yeah.

01:39:59.000 Yeah.

01:39:59.000 And then that was also back when people thought it was cool to have those walkie-talkies, those Nextel phones.

01:40:05.000 Do you remember that?

01:40:06.000 Yes, I do.

01:40:07.000 That was like a big deal to have a walkie-talkie on a phone.

01:40:09.000 That died out, thankfully.

01:40:11.000 But this whole...

01:40:13.000 It's a change in the way we view technology.

01:40:16.000 From 2005 to 2018, the world is a radically different place.

01:40:22.000 And the funny thing is that you and I both make a living by observing the human condition, right?

01:40:26.000 That's our job.

01:40:27.000 And we both get it wrong constantly, right?

01:40:29.000 Every day.

01:40:29.000 So you got the texting, what the hell is that?

01:40:31.000 I remember my sister showed me Facebook because she was in an NGO and they're using it to keep track of each other. 0.99

01:40:36.000 I was like, yeah, people don't want to do that shit. 0.99

01:40:38.000 Exactly. 0.99

01:40:38.000 I'm wrong every time. 0.99

01:40:40.000 Every single time I'm wrong. 0.99

01:40:41.000 Dude, I follow quite a few people on Facebook that are nuts.

01:40:45.000 And I go to their pages just to see what kind of arguments they're getting into, like as a sociological experiment. 0.66

01:40:53.000 And there are people that are on Facebook arguing about Trump or abortion or Islam or, you know, fill in the blank, environmental concerns, fracking. 0.98

01:41:04.000 And they just fucking argue all day. 0.99

01:41:07.000 Day long. 0.99

01:41:09.000 It's fascinating. 0.99

01:41:09.000 You look at their timeline, you look at the entries, and you're like, oh my god, there's like 10 hours of this shit in a day. 0.99

01:41:16.000 And they just do it all day long. 0.99

01:41:18.000 And you just picture this sweaty person sitting in front of a computer arguing with the world.

01:41:24.000 I never would have thought that, that there would be people sitting in front of their desk arguing with people that they can't see all throughout the world.

01:41:32.000 Who thought that?

01:41:34.000 Right.

01:41:34.000 Who thought that would be fun?

01:41:35.000 I don't think it is fun.

01:41:37.000 I think it's an impulsive, obsessive thing that people get sucked into.

01:41:41.000 And I think they're vastly healthier and happier when they're not engaged in it.

01:41:44.000 Yeah.

01:41:45.000 Well, I mean, the truth of the matter is, and this comes back to the past again.

01:41:47.000 So we talked about all these differences.

01:41:49.000 So one of the really lovely things that you can do is look for the past and then say, well, how does that manifest itself today?

01:41:54.000 And one of my favorite examples is the whites to your eyes.

01:41:57.000 So chimpanzees have brown eyes, the sclera around the cornea, and ours are white.

01:42:02.000 Why would you do that?

01:42:03.000 Well, it advertises the direction of your gaze.

01:42:06.000 Why would you advertise the direction of your gaze?

01:42:08.000 Because what that says is that on average, as a human, when I look over there and see something, I want you to know that I saw it.

01:42:14.000 You and I are probably going to cooperate to help us achieve whatever the goal is that I just encountered.

01:42:18.000 A chimp wants to hide it from its fellow chimps because it's competitive, right?

01:42:23.000 On average, whatever the hell's over there, you're not going to help me get it, right?

01:42:26.000 Yeah, exactly.

01:42:27.000 You're going to make it harder for me to get it.

01:42:29.000 Yeah, do chimps ever do that?

01:42:30.000 Hmm...

01:42:34.000 Amazingly, groupers and octopi hunt together and they do that.

01:42:37.000 Wow, groupers and octopi.

01:42:39.000 They work together.

01:42:40.000 So the grouper will be over the Great Barrier Reef and the fish has gone in and he goes to the octopus and he goes right there.

01:42:46.000 No way. 0.89

01:42:46.000 And the reason he doesn't give a shit about the octopus, of course, but if the octopus goes to get it and doesn't get it, it's going to come out and the groupers got it. 0.89

01:42:53.000 Cooperation always works better than working on your own, right? 0.98

01:42:56.000 Wow.

01:42:56.000 So is there real evidence that shows that the whites of our eyes developed in order to indicate which way we're looking?

01:43:02.000 Well, in all these cases, all we can do is say, let's do a little phylogenetic analysis.

01:43:06.000 Who's got it and who doesn't?

01:43:07.000 We're the only great ape with whites to their eyes.

01:43:10.000 Here we go.

01:43:10.000 We're going to look at this.

01:43:12.000 Here's an octopus.

01:43:14.000 That's chilling.

01:43:15.000 Is that a grouper?

01:43:16.000 No.

01:43:17.000 It's a weird looking grouper.

01:43:18.000 Yeah, it's a spotted, I guess.

01:43:19.000 I don't know fish very well.

01:43:19.000 It's beautiful.

01:43:20.000 Look how pretty that is.

01:43:21.000 It looks like a coral trout to me.

01:43:22.000 Oh, man.

01:43:23.000 But what do I know?

01:43:23.000 Look how pretty that octopus is, too.

01:43:25.000 Yeah, they're really something. 0.98

01:43:26.000 I fucking love octopi. 0.98

01:43:27.000 And they can change colors like that. 0.99

01:43:29.000 I know.

01:43:29.000 Yeah, we've gone down massive rabbit holes with these things for hours at a time.

01:43:34.000 Look at this.

01:43:34.000 It's changing right now as we're watching them.

01:43:36.000 So he's sitting there waiting, and the fish tries to get out, and the group is like, bitch, got you. 1.00

01:43:45.000 That's fascinating. 0.98

01:43:45.000 And so it's really cool the way they have the good sense to work together. 0.98

01:43:48.000 Look, the octopus is mad.

01:43:49.000 He's getting dark.

01:43:51.000 Look how cool his skin is, how it just changes and morphs as you're looking at it.

01:43:56.000 That is so bizarre.

01:43:58.000 I didn't know that they could do this until my friend Remy Warren came on the podcast and he had a television show called Apex Predator and on the show they would study the various ways these animals would hunt and the way they would, you know,

01:44:14.000 all their different adaptations to their environment, all the different ways that they would use the environment and he would try to mimic those different ways and one of the things they studied was Octopus and what's that other fish that's like it?

01:44:29.000 The cuttlefish, which is also...

01:44:31.000 They can do the same thing.

01:44:32.000 What is this?

01:44:33.000 Octopus is using a clamshell.

01:44:35.000 What is he doing?

01:44:37.000 He's lounging?

01:44:38.000 Yeah, he found it.

01:44:38.000 He picked it up and he's using it to hide.

01:44:40.000 Oh my god.

01:44:40.000 There's a BBC. No.

01:44:42.000 This is crazy.

01:44:44.000 Oh my god.

01:44:45.000 The octopus is climbing inside a clamshell and then he closes it.

01:44:50.000 That is bananas.

01:44:52.000 There's a BBC Blue Planet where it shows the octopus picking up all that random shrapnel when there's a shark coming after it and it covers itself like a big ball and the shark keeps going.

01:45:01.000 Wow.

01:45:02.000 They're super smart, octopi.

01:45:04.000 Well, they eat sharks.

01:45:05.000 You ever see that one?

01:45:06.000 There was a video where they found...

01:45:08.000 This aquarium was having an issue where sharks were disappearing.

01:45:11.000 They couldn't figure out what was going on.

01:45:12.000 And they put a camera inside the aquarium, and it turned out that the octopus was waiting, just chilling on the rocks until the sharks came by, and they would snatch them and eat them.

01:45:23.000 Watch this.

01:45:23.000 It's really cool to watch.

01:45:25.000 He's like, do-do-do-do.

01:45:26.000 Who me?

01:45:27.000 Don't bother with me.

01:45:27.000 I'm just a piece of coral.

01:45:29.000 I'm just hanging out here being coral, bitch! 1.00

01:45:31.000 I got you! 0.99

01:45:33.000 Because he looks exactly, even in texture, like the coral, which is so fascinating.

01:45:39.000 But when they found this, they were stunned.

01:45:42.000 They had no idea that octopus could do that.

01:45:45.000 Not only that they could do that, but that they would eat a shark.

01:45:49.000 Yeah, that's a big fight. 1.00

01:45:50.000 Fuck, man. 1.00

01:45:51.000 It's not, though. 1.00

01:45:51.000 You want to squeeze the thing's mouth shut first. 1.00

01:45:54.000 But it's an easy fight.

01:45:55.000 The thing about octopus, though, too, they could sacrifice a tentacle and it just grows back.

01:46:00.000 It's really no big deal.

01:46:02.000 It's annoying, but yeah.

01:46:03.000 I don't even know if it's annoying.

01:46:04.000 I mean, we're just guessing, right?

01:46:06.000 It's a fascinating animal. 1.00

01:46:08.000 Look at that shit. 1.00

01:46:10.000 Look at him twisting him up. 1.00

01:46:12.000 There's an amazing case in Australia where a Coulomb Brown, who's a biologist, had cuttlefish in his tank.

01:46:17.000 And they can signal, like an octopus, they can do whatever color.

01:46:21.000 And in this tank, he's got a bunch of females on one side, a bunch of males on the other. 1.00

01:46:24.000 So a male goes in between them, and he signals two different sides of his body.

01:46:28.000 He shows the females he's male, but he shows the males that he's female. 0.81

01:46:31.000 So they won't attack him for sidling up to the females.

01:46:33.000 Yeah.

01:46:34.000 I mean, how smart is that?

01:46:35.000 It's weird.

01:46:36.000 It's weird that they split off from us hundreds of millions of years ago, right?

01:46:41.000 They're as closely related as celery, basically.

01:46:43.000 It's crazy.

01:46:44.000 But they're so smart.

01:46:45.000 And their eyes are similar to ours.

01:46:47.000 And like, in the development...

01:46:50.000 Actually, it's the opposite.

01:46:51.000 So our eyes are poorly designed.

01:46:52.000 Those are very well designed.

01:46:53.000 So our eyes have all the detecting stuff...

01:46:56.000 It's in its own way.

01:46:57.000 It's backwards.

01:46:58.000 And so the light comes in and has to pass all the cellular bodies before it can get picked up by the detectors. 0.98

01:47:03.000 Theirs aim in the proper direction so that the shit isn't in the way. 1.00

01:47:06.000 And we have this blind spot because the big thing, the nerve connection, they don't. 0.99

01:47:11.000 Theirs comes in from the back where it belongs.

01:47:13.000 So what that tells you is that, yeah, we both started out with some kind of random light sensitive spot.

01:47:18.000 And theirs happened to work much better if you want to turn it into an eyeball than ours did.

01:47:22.000 Because evolution can always, it only can start with what you've got.

01:47:25.000 Right.

01:47:25.000 But does theirs work better because they can see in water?

01:47:29.000 I mean, is that a factor?

01:47:29.000 Well, no.

01:47:30.000 I mean, I think it's purely random that they don't...

01:47:32.000 We do a great job of getting rid of the cellular bodies that are in our way.

01:47:35.000 So what your eye does is it wiggles all the time.

01:47:37.000 And so if anything's retinal stationary, it's wiggling equally with your eyeball, you ignore it.

01:47:42.000 And so you don't even know you have your own blind spot.

01:47:44.000 You fill it in.

01:47:45.000 Your brain does amazing things to fix the problem.

01:47:47.000 So like if you have a piece of lint on your eye or something like that?

01:47:50.000 Yeah, if it were literally attached, eventually it would disappear.

01:47:52.000 Mm-hmm.

01:47:53.000 Because your brain says, oh, that's irrelevant.

01:47:55.000 And so you can't see your own blind spot unless you close one eye and then you sit there with a neutral background.

01:48:00.000 You move your thumb across and literally your thumbnail disappears.

01:48:03.000 Because that spot is just being filled in by whatever the background is.

01:48:07.000 And what happens with the octopus?

01:48:09.000 It doesn't have that problem because our nerve ending creates the blind spot by being on the wrong side.

01:48:13.000 Theirs comes in from the back and so the whole thing works beautifully.

01:48:16.000 They don't have to deal with the blind spot.

01:48:18.000 Would that be as effective though in the world that we live in of air?

01:48:22.000 Yeah, it's water-air irrelevant.

01:48:23.000 It's purely a happenstance that the light-sensitive pit that they had started to get innervated properly from the back and ours didn't.

01:48:31.000 And then as ours evolved into an eye, I mean, of course we don't know.

01:48:34.000 This is just...

01:48:34.000 But as ours evolved to an eye, we just had to find ways around the problem that all the fancy structures that we now need in front of it are in the way.

01:48:40.000 Does anything have an eye like an octopus that lives on land?

01:48:44.000 Great question.

01:48:45.000 I don't know.

01:48:45.000 I don't think so.

01:48:46.000 See, I've read something about eyes that they think that... 0.99

01:48:49.000 I've got shit information and a bad memory. 0.99

01:48:52.000 You have an amazing memory. 0.99

01:48:53.000 All these shows that you still throw away?

01:48:56.000 There's too many shows, man.

01:48:57.000 I don't have any memory anymore.

01:48:59.000 It's all full.

01:49:00.000 Yeah, I'm like a hoarder. 0.99

01:49:01.000 My house is filled with boxes of shit that I don't need. 0.99

01:49:05.000 Yeah, that's how brains work, I'm afraid. 1.00

01:49:07.000 It is how brains work, right?

01:49:08.000 I mean, it must be.

01:49:09.000 Because I know that there's a lot of stuff in there that didn't used to be in there before, but I also know it's like random people that I should remember that I don't remember.

01:49:18.000 Yeah, well, the funny thing about brains is we may never forget anything, but we just lose our capacity to access it.

01:49:24.000 Right.

01:49:24.000 But the data suggests that it may still guide our behavior.

01:49:26.000 Right.

01:49:27.000 And so every single experience you ever had may still be in there, and it guides your behavior, but it's annoying for you to recall it because it gets in the way of what you want.

01:49:34.000 And so when we talk about forgetting, what we're actually talking about is being able to actually retrieve it and talk about it, not to have it guide our action.

01:49:41.000 Well, also, I can retrieve things far better if I get access to the file by someone else's memory.

01:49:49.000 So like if you and I had an experience like 10 years ago, we went on a camping trip or something like that, and I forgot something that happened, and you said, do you remember what happened by the creek when Mike hurt his foot?

01:49:59.000 I'm like, oh yes!

01:50:00.000 Exactly.

01:50:01.000 Oh my god, I forgot about that.

01:50:02.000 And then next thing you know, you have this memory.

01:50:05.000 Right.

01:50:05.000 And so what we've done is you've broken the access in.

01:50:07.000 But you could literally find the sneakers wearing and go, holy crap, Mike was wearing this.

01:50:13.000 And so that's how our brain is designed.

01:50:15.000 It's annoying to retrieve when you're looking for one thing to retrieve everything.

01:50:18.000 You don't want that.

01:50:20.000 If it's important or happened recently, it probably should be retrieved.

01:50:23.000 If it's not, let it sit away and it'll still guide your behavior.

01:50:26.000 You won't put your foot in that same hole when you and Mike go on the camping trip the next time, but you won't even remember why.

01:50:31.000 Right.

01:50:32.000 And likely significant lessons are important because they're seared in your memory of this is a significant point where you figured something out that you didn't know before and it changed the way you looked at the world.

01:50:43.000 So this is seared in your memory.

01:50:45.000 Yeah.

01:50:45.000 And so when emotions get involved, it's much more easily retrieved later on because your brain is saying, yeah, evolution or whatever you want to call it, is telling you that's important.

01:50:54.000 That should be retrievable.

01:50:56.000 Right.

01:50:56.000 And what you had yesterday for lunch, I can never retrieve that.

01:50:59.000 Right.

01:50:59.000 I don't know.

01:51:00.000 That's one of the reasons why epidemiology studies on diet are so difficult because people don't remember what the fuck they ate unless they eat the same thing every day.

01:51:09.000 The human mind is so fascinating and it varies so much and there's so many different factors involved in whatever it becomes.

01:51:17.000 Cultural factors, environmental factors, dietary factors.

01:51:22.000 And that's all that flexibility that we evolved to put us in that special place that we are.

01:51:27.000 And so we made a deal, right?

01:51:28.000 So we said, all right, we're going to start going down this cognitive pathway.

01:51:31.000 But that means that there's very little inborn knowledge.

01:51:34.000 And that means that we're going to have to learn from people older than us and people with experience there.

01:51:38.000 And the best way to learn from them is high fidelity copying.

01:51:42.000 And so if you happen to go off in a direction where they use chopsticks, well, that's how you eat.

01:51:46.000 You happen to go in a fork direction, that's how you eat.

01:51:48.000 There's a million ways to do things.

01:51:49.000 And so we started with this sort of argument about, well, was it monogamy or not, right? 0.96

01:51:53.000 And I'm arguing that by and large it was monogamy because you've got these systems in place that our testicles aren't big enough. 1.00

01:52:00.000 We've got cryptic ovulation, which means that we can't tell when she's fertile, which means that we have to be sexually interested and available all the time so we can make sure we're the father.

01:52:10.000 And so that allows her to pair bond with us.

01:52:12.000 And there's some evidence that orgasm is a pair bonding experience, certainly for females, probably for males.

01:52:18.000 It works in lots of animals via oxytocin and some vasopressin, all that kind of stuff, right?

01:52:22.000 So all that suggests that probably on average that we evolved to do it this way.

01:52:27.000 But we're so super duper flexible that when another society says, well, hey, this works for us, off we go and we find a way to make that work.

01:52:33.000 Are there studies that compare testicle size of different civilizations and different cultures?

01:52:39.000 Yeah, so there's a lot of argument about this. 0.91

01:52:41.000 And the problem is that the...

01:52:43.000 That it's racist.

01:52:44.000 It's racist, right?

01:52:45.000 That's what underlies a lot of it.

01:52:46.000 People get scared.

01:52:47.000 So the thing is that the genetics that explain why one animal or one species would have large testicles and another would have small testicles are not the genetics that would explain why two different individuals in the same species would be that way.

01:53:01.000 Because the only way to make that latter one work is you have to inherit a constellation of traits.

01:53:05.000 So if I'm going to inherit the genes for big balls and for impulsiveness and for having lots of kids and not caring much about them and all the things that supposedly go with that, that do when you look between species, there's no way for that constellation of traits to be inherited together.

01:53:20.000 Because remember I was talking about how polygenic everything is.

01:53:23.000 And so they'd all literally need to sit next to each other on the chromosome if they've got any chance of being passed on as a package, and they don't.

01:53:30.000 And you also get all this shifting around during meiosis.

01:53:33.000 I can't even remember the term for it off the top of my head, but where the pieces of genetic material move around.

01:53:39.000 And that virtually guarantees that you're not going to inherit this huge constellation of traits within a species.

01:53:44.000 Between species is dead easy.

01:53:46.000 You know, your species inherits big testicles, it inherits impulsiveness, it inherits, you know, whatever, in our strategy, just reproduce a ton and ignore them.

01:53:54.000 You know, all that kind of stuff is dead easy. 0.97

01:53:56.000 And so chimp fathers don't pay any attention to chimp babies to speak of, because, well, that's their mating system, right? 1.00

01:54:02.000 Whereas you've got pair-bonded gibbons and things, and now parents start to play a much bigger, even male parents start to play a bigger role. 0.93

01:54:09.000 But there's no studies that show that human beings with larger testicles tend to ignore their children.

01:54:14.000 Well, so this is just it.

01:54:15.000 People have tried to show that.

01:54:16.000 But here's the problem.

01:54:17.000 They've tried to show that in studies?

01:54:18.000 Yeah.

01:54:19.000 So lots of people make that argument.

01:54:21.000 And it's called life history strategies, where you say, well, you're going to develop one life history strategy in these circumstances and another in these other circumstances.

01:54:28.000 The problem is that you end up with ethnic differences in testicle size, which we know exist.

01:54:33.000 And you also have ethnic differences in the kinds of lives that people currently lead.

01:54:38.000 The difficult thing is it's super easy to look at the world we are in right now.

01:54:42.000 And this is what tripped me up earlier as well.

01:54:43.000 You look at the world that we are in right now and assume, well, that's the way things have always been.

01:54:47.000 And they haven't.

01:54:51.000 Mathematics used to, for a while there, the best math in the world was taking place in the Arabic world. 1.00

01:54:55.000 Now it's not anymore.

01:54:56.000 And so if you don't know that past, you'd say, well, look, people in the Arabic world aren't as good at mathematics, and they have these qualities, and then you'd make an inference. 0.95

01:55:04.000 Right now, the ethnic differences in testicles, I believe, but I can't promise you that some different West African groups happen to have the largest testicle size. 0.79

01:55:15.000 Those West African groups tend to be poorer right now. 0.94

01:55:18.000 There's lots of things about life that go with being poorer that look like an R strategy, having lots of kids and paying less attention to them.

01:55:25.000 But what you're probably looking at is a coincidental association between some biology and some Some way that your people happen to live that didn't exist a while ago and that won't exist a while from now.

01:55:37.000 And so it's really easy to try to use this research, which people have, to say, well, you've got some primitive people who have big testicles and low parental effort, and you've got some more sophisticated people with smaller testicles and high parental effort.

01:55:49.000 But that's genetically super naive.

01:55:52.000 One of the things that I learned when I was in Rome, we took a tour of the Vatican by this guy who was a professor.

01:55:57.000 It was really interesting.

01:55:58.000 It was cool to have a really enthusiastic guide who could explain a lot of things to you.

01:56:06.000 He was really excited that me and my family were very curious about these things too. 0.98

01:56:10.000 But one of the things that he said that was really interesting, I said, okay, I go, why do all the dudes have little dicks? 0.98

01:56:16.000 Like, what's going on with that? 0.99

01:56:17.000 And he said that they believed... 1.00

01:56:20.000 That if you had a large penis, that large penises were a symbol of barbaric behavior, and that these were cruder people, and that to be thought to be a sophisticated person, you wanted a smaller penis. 0.99

01:56:36.000 So they actually accentuated smaller penises in their gods and smaller penises in their statues. 0.99

01:56:42.000 Man, that's funny. 0.96

01:56:43.000 I mean, you can see these kinds of things all the time.

01:56:45.000 So early pre-Western contact, if you look at Japanese women, they're painted with their eyes as narrow of a slit as possible. 1.00

01:56:52.000 Post-Western contact, now the women want more almond-shaped eyes, and so they start painting them with the beautiful women have bigger eyes. 0.99

01:56:58.000 These things can change all over the map. 0.99

01:57:00.000 I personally suspect that large penis size is also a product of sexual selection. 0.99

01:57:05.000 So it's more fun for her. 0.98

01:57:06.000 If he's got a larger penis, they're having sex for longer and more regularly because ovulation is hidden. 0.96

01:57:10.000 So he has to be available all the time.

01:57:12.000 So she has to be available all the time or the system doesn't work. 1.00

01:57:15.000 And that's what creates pair bonding. 0.96

01:57:17.000 So humans copulate for a very long period of time if you compare us to the other primates, with the single exception of bonobos. 0.96

01:57:23.000 And we have way bigger penises than any of the other great apes. 0.87

01:57:27.000 And I suspect that that's something that is female. 1.00

01:57:29.000 I mean, women always say, why are men so obsessed with their penis size? 0.96

01:57:32.000 But I suspect that they're the creator of it, and that's why we're so obsessed with it. 0.99

01:57:35.000 Women who say that are playing games. 1.00

01:57:37.000 They know. 1.00

01:57:39.000 That's ridiculous. 0.97

01:57:40.000 I don't know. 0.94

01:57:42.000 They're definitely playing games.

01:57:44.000 That's like men who are saying, why are women so obsessed with big breasts? 0.76

01:57:48.000 We don't even care.

01:57:49.000 I've never met a guy who said that. 1.00

01:57:51.000 Some asshole out there that's playing games. 1.00

01:57:54.000 Okay, possibly you're right. 0.99

01:57:56.000 Yeah, it is fascinating when you think about all these different things that lead to natural selection and the fact that there's so many variables that are in place and that we're trying to find out what is better and what is not.

01:58:09.000 And if you have a study and the study finds genetic differences and ethnic genetic differences, there's a lot of blowback and a lot of pushback against that.

01:58:18.000 Yeah, there will be.

01:58:18.000 And one of the interesting things that we do know is if you think about how Homo sapiens evolved in Africa, And a small percentage of us left, which means the majority of us didn't, right?

01:58:29.000 I mean, there's few randoms who lived up in the top right-hand corner were available to go, which means that all the rest of the earth comes out of a few small percentage of the population that could have left.

01:58:38.000 And so we now know there's enormous...

01:58:41.000 Genetic variation within Africa, way more genetic variation within Africa than outside of Africa or than between any two people, like a Chinese person and a Norwegian person, are much more closely related to each other genetically than an African guy who lives in the next village over.

01:58:57.000 Because most of the genetic variability never left the continent.

01:59:00.000 And so we have this idea of race as if it has genetic meaning and it doesn't.

01:59:05.000 But ethnicity does have genetic meaning, right?

01:59:08.000 So an ethnic group evolved in a very certain spot to deal with very certain problems.

01:59:13.000 And their body shape will vary.

01:59:14.000 And you've got these West Africans who are really jacked with these big, a lot of quick musculature. 1.00

01:59:19.000 You don't see that over on East Africa very much.

01:59:22.000 You've got tall people in Denmark.

01:59:24.000 You don't see that in other parts of Europe, etc.

01:59:28.000 Or the adaptation of the Inuit to deal with the cold climates.

01:59:31.000 Exactly.

01:59:31.000 And lots of that's adaptation, and a lot of that's just random genetic drift to founder population, other causes that aren't evolved, but nonetheless have a big impact on what the population ends up looking like.

01:59:41.000 It's just so amazing to consider that this entire species, essentially, except for the times that we interacted with, interbred with Neanderthals, came from one part of Africa.

01:59:51.000 You know, that's one of the reasons why racism is so preposterous, because we're essentially all African.

01:59:57.000 All of us who are out have a little bit of other stuff in us, but just a tiny bit.

02:00:01.000 We're so weird, though.

02:00:02.000 We're so much like dogs.

02:00:04.000 A Great Dane can breed with a poodle, and they don't look anything like each other.

02:00:08.000 If you were from another planet, you'd go, well, that's definitely two different things.

02:00:12.000 That's not going to happen.

02:00:13.000 It's like if you looked at LeBron James and, you know, Tracy Lords, right?

02:00:19.000 They look like two different things.

02:00:20.000 They really do.

02:00:21.000 And I suspect that when we ran into Neanderthals, we're like, oh, she's kind of interesting looking, sort of hot, sort of different. 0.94

02:00:27.000 And so, you know, first of all, we know humans will copulate with almost anything that holds still, right?

02:00:31.000 And things that aren't even alive.

02:00:34.000 Yeah, things that aren't alive, things that they probably shouldn't be, etc.

02:00:38.000 But the Neanderthal ones are interesting because really they are cousins. 0.83

02:00:41.000 They're cousins separated by a million years and some change.

02:00:44.000 And we don't know too much about them either, which is really weird.

02:00:48.000 We know they had larger brains than us, but we don't really know how smart they were.

02:00:51.000 No, and why did we replace them?

02:00:54.000 Yeah.

02:00:55.000 Was it diseases we carried that wiped them all out?

02:00:58.000 We were better organized, so we got rid of them.

02:01:00.000 We out-competed them. 0.99

02:01:01.000 We killed them on purpose.

02:01:02.000 You know, there's a million branch species.

02:01:04.000 We happen to know a lot about Neanderthals because they existed until very recently.

02:01:08.000 But there's all sorts of branching that took place early on.

02:01:12.000 Lots of different osteolipithecines, etc.

02:01:14.000 Almost all of those are dead ends. 0.93

02:01:16.000 And, you know, the fact that we're the only one that comes out of that could mean, well, we got lucky, or we're mean as shit, and we took care of all of our cousins who didn't, you know, we wanted what they had. 0.95

02:01:26.000 I think the latter. 0.89

02:01:27.000 Yeah, probably a bit of both, right?

02:01:28.000 We're so mean. 0.98

02:01:29.000 I mean, doesn't it make sense that we were mean as shit a million years ago? 0.99

02:01:33.000 Exactly. 0.91

02:01:34.000 And what's so interesting is, you know, this is something that coming back to the point I was making earlier about us cooperating.

02:01:39.000 So we evolved to cooperate with each other.

02:01:41.000 But the key is we did not evolve to cooperate across different groups.

02:01:44.000 So once you get to Homo erectus, and now you've got division of labor, and you've got the capacity to plan for unfelt needs, right, where they're carrying these Acheulean tools with them over great distances, etc.

02:01:54.000 Well, now, who's your most effective predator?

02:01:57.000 You know, the occasional mammoth or saber-toothed tiger will have killed the occasional one of us.

02:02:01.000 But they can't possibly take us on in the same way we can take them on.

02:02:04.000 There's only one other thing on the planet that can take us on, and that's ourselves.

02:02:07.000 So other groups of Homo erectus would have probably been a major threat.

02:02:12.000 Certainly by the time we're Homo sapiens, other groups would have been our only major threat. 0.94

02:02:16.000 And so we evolved to be kind to each other within our group, but we did not evolve to be kind outside our group.

02:02:21.000 That doesn't mean we evolved to be mean.

02:02:23.000 We evolved to be neutral.

02:02:24.000 So let's see if you're going to be friend or foe.

02:02:26.000 And that neutrality is super important.

02:02:29.000 It has the potential for cooperation across group boundaries.

02:02:31.000 We can change.

02:02:33.000 Women and men can mingle so we don't interbreed too much amongst ourselves.

02:02:36.000 We can trade with each other.

02:02:37.000 Lots of good things can happen. 0.99

02:02:39.000 But the second you guys get a little bit aggro with us, now we're in a position to just go all out and try to exterminate you.

02:02:46.000 And so Wrangham has these great data.

02:02:47.000 Richard Wrangham, same catching fire guy, shows that if you look at the rates of violence within human groups compared to chimps, they're like 500 times more violent, physically aggressive than we are. 0.98

02:02:57.000 You look at the rates between human groups, equal.

02:03:00.000 They're the one-to-one ratio.

02:03:03.000 So we tend to think about, well, how could it be that we're both so nice and so mean?

02:03:06.000 But we have to remember that we evolved to cooperate and to be nice to each other to be more effective killers.

02:03:11.000 It wasn't because let's make a hippie paradise. 1.00

02:03:14.000 It's like, shit, these lions are going to eat us. 1.00

02:03:16.000 You and I got to have to get together to sort out these guys. 1.00

02:03:19.000 And so our cooperative nature is literally the flip side of the coin of our competitive, violent, killing nature.

02:03:25.000 Also, the undeniable history of unbelievably ruthless tribal warfare would indicate that we have a long history of fighting against others that are like us that we don't know.

02:03:36.000 Absolutely.

02:03:36.000 When hunter-gatherers meet each other and they do come into conflict, which is a huge percentage of the time, they literally fight to the death.

02:03:43.000 Because if you capture me, you're going to torture me to death.

02:03:46.000 If I'm female, you're going to incorporate me into your system and then it's going to be okay. 0.95

02:03:50.000 Not great, but okay. 0.98

02:03:51.000 But if I'm male, I'm going to die. 0.99

02:03:52.000 So I might as well die fighting you now because I'm going to die unpleasantly later. 0.96

02:03:55.000 And that's super common. 0.95

02:03:57.000 That's everywhere we see it.

02:03:58.000 And there's tons and tons of bodies that are healthily perforated that are clearly the consequences of this kind of warfare.

02:04:05.000 It's crazy that that is thought to be, even in 2018, an inevitable part of being a human being.

02:04:12.000 I mean, warfare, even to this day, is thought to be inevitable because there's no – I mean, we would all love that one day there would be no warfare, but there's no indication whatsoever that We're not almost there.

02:04:23.000 And I actually, I think Pinker's got the best answer to this question, which is basically, well, what structures do you need to put in place to make the world a safer and less violent place?

02:04:32.000 And I don't know if you've talked to him about his book, Better Angels of Our Nature.

02:04:36.000 I know you've talked to him about more recent ones.

02:04:37.000 Yes.

02:04:38.000 Better Angels is a great example.

02:04:40.000 It's a great book.

02:04:41.000 It's a great example of how we become less and less violent, and even over our lifetimes.

02:04:45.000 And part of that is undoubtedly better governance structure and all that.

02:04:49.000 But part of that, I think, is cycles on itself.

02:04:52.000 So when I was a little kid, and this kind of thing probably happened to you, when I was in kindergarten, the guy who drove our carpool was a cop.

02:05:00.000 So this cop is driving me home in the back of his car.

02:05:02.000 Now he's got no seatbelts because this is 1969 and cars don't have seatbelts, right?

02:05:06.000 Big bench seat in a Buick or something.

02:05:08.000 And we come around a corner and they all slide up against me to the edge of the car seat.

02:05:12.000 And I'm trying to push back, but I'm this little guy, right?

02:05:14.000 And I can't and I must have hit the elbow against the door and it flies open and I roll out of the car.

02:05:19.000 Oh, my God.

02:05:20.000 And I go bouncing across the street, right?

02:05:21.000 So he's, you know, he's not going to arrive home empty-handed.

02:05:24.000 So, of course, he goes and retrieves me from the ditch.

02:05:26.000 And he brings me home and shows my mom.

02:05:27.000 And I'm bleeding and bruised and torn shirt and, you know, like you'd expect from bouncing out of a car.

02:05:32.000 And my mom, who's a pediatrician, so she could tell I wasn't badly damaged, looks me over and says, ah, he looks fine.

02:05:37.000 Don't worry about it. 0.88

02:05:38.000 Can you imagine if somebody brought your kid home and said, hey man, really sorry Joe, your daughter fell out of the car and bounced across the freaking street? 0.70

02:05:45.000 You'd a-throttle them and be freaked out.

02:05:47.000 And that's not that long ago either.

02:05:49.000 No, this is 1969 when you and I are both on this planet.

02:05:52.000 And so what I think is part of what Pinker is documenting is as the world gets safer, we start getting used to a no-mayhem world. 0.99

02:05:59.000 And these mayhem events stand out in our minds.

02:06:03.000 And so it actually self-perpetuates.

02:06:05.000 Where the safer it gets, the safer we need it to be.

02:06:07.000 Because every little thing that goes wrong stands out in sharper relief.

02:06:10.000 Ah, that's a very fascinating way of looking at it.

02:06:14.000 You know, what's interesting to me about Pinker's work is how much pushback he gets, and particularly about the world being a safer place.

02:06:21.000 Like, people want to keep pointing towards violent episodes and racism and crime and all these different things, different factors, as if it's some sort of evidence against what he's saying.

02:06:34.000 When he's incorporating those current events into this large...

02:06:41.000 And he's saying, yes, we don't live in utopia, but the world is vastly safer and better now than it was a thousand years ago or 10,000 years ago or even a hundred years ago.

02:06:51.000 But why is there so much pushback against this?

02:06:54.000 Well, so the thing is, I think what's going on is that people worry that it doesn't look like a problem to be solved anymore. 0.99

02:06:59.000 So when you and I were kids, we both had lots of gay friends, but we didn't know it because they're not telling anybody because someone's going to kick their ass if they knew that they were gay. 0.98

02:07:08.000 Now, yes, gay people are still discriminated against, but it's so much better than it was then. 0.98

02:07:12.000 What I think people or advocates don't want to say is, well, there's no problem anymore.

02:07:16.000 Because then you can allow them to still run into troubles in various circumstances, even though the trouble they run into today is a thousand times less than the trouble they ran into in very little.

02:07:25.000 Same thing holds for racism.

02:07:27.000 Same thing holds for sexism.

02:07:28.000 They've all gotten so much better.

02:07:30.000 But...

02:07:31.000 And sexual violence is a perfect example.

02:07:33.000 This is in Pinker's book.

02:07:35.000 If you set rape and homicide to, you call it both of them, whatever level they are in 1972, 100. And then you track them through to the early 2000s.

02:07:44.000 Homicide is in the U.S. Homicides drop down to like 50. Rapes drop down to like 25. But if you listen to women's advocacy groups about campus sexual assault and stuff, you'd never know that. 0.98

02:07:55.000 And the reason you wouldn't know it is because people worry, well, if you think the problem's getting better on its own, then you won't keep doing anything to help fix it.

02:08:03.000 And that's a really unfortunate part of our psychology because it makes people feel like there's been no progress.

02:08:08.000 And when you feel like there's no progress, then you think, well, maybe we need to completely overturn the whole system and try something new.

02:08:13.000 And that's, of course, the point of Pinker's newest book, Enlightenment Now.

02:08:16.000 No, things are going freaking great.

02:08:18.000 Anarchy and all those things are really bad ideas.

02:08:21.000 Voting for somebody like Trump is a really bad idea because things are actually running along really nicely.

02:08:25.000 It's just that we tend to forget it because every advocacy group who's all worried about whatever their particular issue is doesn't want the word to get out that things are a lot better than they used to be because I think at some fundamental level they think, well...

02:08:37.000 25 rapes a year isn't bad enough.

02:08:38.000 We better say that there's 100. I'm not saying they do this consciously.

02:08:42.000 But of course, 25 rapes a year, whatever the number is, is bad enough, right?

02:08:45.000 It doesn't have to be the numbers that it used to be when I was a child to be a problem.

02:08:50.000 It all has to be is a number above zero.

02:08:53.000 Well, people develop this vested interest in promoting an idea, and they want to exaggerate that idea, whatever it is, whether it's the idea that the world is a safer place than it actually is, or whether it's the world is an idea of a more dangerous place than it really is.

02:09:08.000 And for whatever reason, once we have it in our mind, That this is the thing we're married to.

02:09:14.000 We're married to this concept of polyamorous life and that this is a natural way to live.

02:09:19.000 Or that violence is inevitable and this is just a part of who we are.

02:09:22.000 We tend to promote that and we tend to have massive confirmation bias.

02:09:28.000 I think it's because we personally associate ourselves with ideas.

02:09:33.000 We don't look at ideas as being a thing.

02:09:35.000 Like, if you think that something is one way and then you're pointed towards evidence that you're incorrect, you feel like personally you've been slighted or somehow you're being diminished by your lack of being correct,

02:09:50.000 by your incorrect assumptions and notions.

02:09:53.000 You're absolutely right.

02:09:54.000 That is a weird part of being a person.

02:09:56.000 It's a very weird part of being a person.

02:09:57.000 It's the hardest part about being a scientist because every good scientist is wrong all the time.

02:10:02.000 I've been wrong already on your show, right?

02:10:04.000 And so it's super hard to admit it because by human nature, you just want my immediate reaction to fight against it and not say, well, hold on.

02:10:10.000 What's Joe saying?

02:10:11.000 No, he's right.

02:10:12.000 I overstated that.

02:10:13.000 Let's back off, right?

02:10:14.000 And so there's this really lovely paper that came out in 2011 by Mercier and Dan Sperber.

02:10:19.000 And what they argued is, I think they nailed it.

02:10:21.000 And they said, here's what it is.

02:10:23.000 Our brain actually, we evolved our logical processing abilities not to find out the truth of the world, but to convince you of my point of view.

02:10:31.000 And so our logical abilities evolved in service of persuasion, not in service of seeking out the truth.

02:10:37.000 Because, of course, if I can persuade you that the world is the way it would, in a way that benefits Bill, That the world is, you know, something about the way Bill wants the world to be is true, then the world's going to be a little kinder to me, it'll fit my worldview, and others will give me the things I want.

02:10:52.000 And so I go through life trying to persuade you of my worldview rather than trying to find out what's actually out there.

02:10:57.000 And so that's why you think, oh, well, smart people aren't going to fall for that.

02:11:00.000 No, smart, it doesn't matter how smart you are.

02:11:02.000 You're using whatever brainpower you have not to find the truth, but rather to find evidence for your particular point of view.

02:11:08.000 Well, I think it's also a byproduct of ignorance because for the longest time you could tell me something and there was very little way that I could find out whether or not you're right or not.

02:11:18.000 I really couldn't know you're correct unless I went and started doing research and read some books.

02:11:23.000 Whereas now I could just pull up my phone and say, hey, Bill just said this.

02:11:28.000 Is that right?

02:11:29.000 And then the phone will go, no, there's been a hundred different studies that show that. 1.00

02:11:32.000 And you go, oh, look, motherfucker. 1.00

02:11:33.000 I got the stats. 1.00

02:11:34.000 I googled this shit. 0.99

02:11:35.000 That's true and that definitely matters a lot. 0.99

02:11:38.000 It's this awesome democratization of knowledge.

02:11:41.000 But if that really were all that it was, then everybody would agree on their politics.

02:11:46.000 Everybody would agree that the fake news was fake and the real news was real.

02:11:49.000 Well, not necessarily because this is a fairly recent invention.

02:11:51.000 But what I'm getting at is that I think that the ability to be deceptive… Was perhaps there was an evolutionary advantage.

02:11:59.000 Oh, absolutely.

02:11:59.000 So that's one of the very first things that happens when you have theory of mind.

02:12:03.000 Because as soon as I realize the contents of your mind differ from the contents of my own, I say, oh, I can plant something in Joe's mind that'll help me that ain't true, but if he believes it is, life will be better for me.

02:12:13.000 And so as soon as kids learn theory of mind at age four, they start to lie.

02:12:17.000 And prior to theory of mind, they tell the truth when it's like, where are you?

02:12:20.000 You know, playing hindsight.

02:12:21.000 I'm right here, Dad.

02:12:22.000 Right, right, right.

02:12:23.000 You're supposed to keep it quiet.

02:12:24.000 But they can't because they don't understand that you don't know the same things they know.

02:12:27.000 Right, yeah.

02:12:28.000 And they also understand that they could perhaps change the way you feel about them by manipulating the truth.

02:12:34.000 Manipulating information.

02:12:35.000 Yeah.

02:12:35.000 What's weird is having kids and seeing kids that grow up in troubled homes.

02:12:41.000 One thing you see almost universally is that those kids lie a lot.

02:12:46.000 Because you're in a no-choice condition, right?

02:12:48.000 Yeah, you're in a bad spot.

02:12:49.000 And one of my daughter's little friends is constantly lying. 0.99

02:12:53.000 She has a broken home, and the situation's not good.

02:12:59.000 It's unfortunate, but this little kid is...

02:13:01.000 Tormented because of it.

02:13:03.000 She's always making stuff up. 0.98

02:13:04.000 And all the other little girls roll their eyes and they know she's a liar and it's sad. 0.53

02:13:09.000 But the ability to be deceptive, I feel like that, you know, there's some sort of idea that we cling to that if you can deceive someone about certain particular aspects of your mind or your past or what you've accomplished or what you're capable of doing,

02:13:27.000 that you will have a better place in the social chain.

02:13:31.000 No, that's absolutely right.

02:13:32.000 And so the way I think about it is think about the difference between conspecific conflicts, conflicts between members of the same species, and conflicts between predator and prey.

02:13:41.000 So every time predator and prey interact, eventually one of them is going to die.

02:13:45.000 Predator is going to starve, prey is going to get eaten, right?

02:13:47.000 But when conspecifics, members of the same species, interact and we're competing over something, even if it's a very subtle level of competition, we don't want to come to blows.

02:13:55.000 Because if I'm trying to size you up, be it physical blows or mental blows, there's suffering on both sides if we have to duke it out.

02:14:02.000 And so I want to sell myself as being a little more than I really am.

02:14:06.000 I want to be Bill plus 20%.

02:14:07.000 And you want to sell yourself as a little more than you really are because we know that we're not fully going to test each other because there's negative consequences for testing.

02:14:15.000 And whenever there's negative consequences, even for the winter, for testing, there's a lot of posturing that's going to go on.

02:14:20.000 And that posturing is something that's literally built into our psyche.

02:14:23.000 And we go through life trying to self-inflate, on average, not everybody does this, but on average, trying to self-inflate as much as we can in order to gain the things in life that we might not get if we're brutally honest about what our capabilities actually are.

02:14:36.000 That is so fascinating that we cling to all of these ancient structures that are in place when it comes to the way we interact with each other and how important it is, like the social exchanges that we have.

02:14:47.000 And I think this is one of the reasons why we cling to ideas so much, that these ideas, if you can push an idea through, you've got some sort of points on the board.

02:14:56.000 Yep.

02:14:56.000 You've got points on the board and probably your ideas on average are going to benefit you and my ideas on average are going to benefit me.

02:15:03.000 And so if I'm happily married in a monogamous relationship and I'm not looking around, well then monogamy is a great thing and sleeping around is a sin.

02:15:11.000 But if I'm single and I've got opportunities, well then I probably hold alternative views.

02:15:16.000 So on average our views, not perfectly, but on average our views serve as well.

02:15:20.000 And if I can plant my views in your mind, then I've benefited.

02:15:23.000 Yeah, I saw that a lot.

02:15:25.000 I mean, God, you see that a lot with everything.

02:15:28.000 But I guess when we're talking about people that don't want to admit, like when it comes to like Pinker's data, about the world being a better place because they have almost a vested interest in stirring up fear.

02:15:41.000 They're committed, in their mind, they're committed to constantly studying the wrongs of the world and the evil of the world, and that any sort of diminishing of that is actually going to...

02:15:55.000 I think they have a good – in their mind, there's good intention.

02:16:00.000 I totally agree.

02:16:01.000 And the data are consistent with their strategies because on average, fear appeals and anger appeals work a whole lot better than, hey, man, things are great.

02:16:08.000 Donate to this cause and we'll keep them great.

02:16:09.000 That doesn't work at all.

02:16:10.000 That doesn't work at all.

02:16:11.000 And so when Viagra was invented in 1989, my little brother and I were chatting about it and we thought, you know, this will save some animals because there's a lot of animals that are consumed for their presumed potency effects by like traditional Chinese medicine consumers and things like that.

02:16:27.000 And so we thought, boy, Viagra actually works.

02:16:29.000 Prior to Viagra, nothing is out there that works.

02:16:31.000 I'll bet this will have an impact. 0.96

02:16:32.000 And so we wrote this little letter off, sent it to a journal, and said, you know, that this is going to save certain animals like seals, which they could be harvested to eat their penises. 0.81

02:16:41.000 Canadian seals. 0.80

02:16:42.000 I know.

02:16:42.000 Wait a minute.

02:16:43.000 What?

02:16:43.000 I know.

02:16:44.000 You're allowed to kill a certain number.

02:16:46.000 You can't kill seals in America.

02:16:47.000 They're protected.

02:16:48.000 But in Canada, US. But in Canada, you can.

02:16:50.000 There's a hood seal allotment and a harp seal allotment.

02:16:54.000 And so people are killing up to their allotments and selling. 0.99

02:16:57.000 You could do it solely for the penis and sell the penis for enough money to make your money back. 0.99

02:17:01.000 Now, what purpose does a seal's penis have beyond the seal's original purpose? 1.00

02:17:05.000 The zilch, right? 0.99

02:17:05.000 But they eat it because it's supposed to make you more potent. 0.99

02:17:08.000 Well, the saddest one is a rhino horn, right?

02:17:10.000 Rhino horn is an example that's used for lots of different things, so it's less likely to be helped.

02:17:14.000 But the seal penis is only, you know, people basically only using it for its potency.

02:17:18.000 And then when Viagra comes along, like literally you're shopping in the supermarket, what are you going to buy? 0.97

02:17:22.000 I'll have some seal penis or I'll take a Viagra. 1.00

02:17:25.000 Well, we just said people are going to switch. 1.00

02:17:26.000 If you're greedy, you throw both of them together.

02:17:28.000 Try them both.

02:17:29.000 And people did, actually.

02:17:30.000 But we made this argument, and we literally were attacked by the World Wildlife Fund. 0.93

02:17:35.000 Government looking at a plan to revive seal penis sales. 0.97

02:17:38.000 How funny is that? 0.99

02:17:39.000 What? 1.00

02:17:40.000 Hold the fuck on. 1.00

02:17:42.000 Is this recent? 0.99

02:17:43.000 It was published in 2015, but it was updated this May.

02:17:47.000 What?

02:17:48.000 The government is looking at a plan.

02:17:50.000 Go back up. 0.99

02:17:52.000 To revive seal penis sales. 0.99

02:17:56.000 Okay, this must be a plan was brought to the government. 0.99

02:18:00.000 This must not be the worst way of looking at that headline is that the government's thinking, man, we got to fucking revive these penis sales. 1.00

02:18:07.000 No one's buying seal dicks. 0.99

02:18:08.000 Well, they may because they actually may be thinking that because you've got some relatively impoverished people who are hunting for them and no one's buying them anymore.

02:18:15.000 What?

02:18:15.000 Is that real?

02:18:18.000 The report drafted by the Fur Institute of Canada is aimed at creating new markets to support an earlier proposal to kill 140,000 gray seals over five years in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence.

02:18:33.000 70% of gray seals that frequent the area.

02:18:36.000 So what they want to do is they want to diminish the...

02:18:39.000 Okay, here's what it is.

02:18:40.000 They have long complained that the growing population of gray seals is to blame for eating too many commercially viable fish, which has resulted in repeated calls for a cull.

02:18:49.000 Okay, so they want to kill the seals... 0.96

02:18:51.000 To save the fish market, so they're going to get people to buy dicks. 1.00

02:18:54.000 Right, so they make it financially viable.

02:18:56.000 Look at this.

02:18:56.000 This is racist.

02:18:57.000 The penises of juvenile adult animals may be dried and sold as sexual enhancement products, particularly to Asian buyers. 1.00

02:19:04.000 Wow. 0.99

02:19:05.000 It's not meant to be racist. 0.86

02:19:06.000 It's because in traditional Chinese medicine, the seal penis was used as a potency product.

02:19:10.000 I understand. 1.00

02:19:11.000 But to target those Asians, those poor fools. 1.00

02:19:14.000 Well, they're not poor fools anymore because you know what? 1.00

02:19:15.000 They switched. 0.95

02:19:16.000 So we write this paper and literally the World Wildlife Fund attacks us.

02:19:19.000 And I did not see that coming, right?

02:19:21.000 I thought, boy, the World Wildlife Fund is going to be psyched because here's some good news for a change.

02:19:26.000 But they don't want good news.

02:19:27.000 They only want bad news because people pay.

02:19:30.000 And they do what they can to fix things when it's bad news.

02:19:32.000 And they forget that you've got to have some good news along the way or people give up.

02:19:36.000 Look at this.

02:19:37.000 Look at what it says here.

02:19:38.000 Asian consumers, particularly athletes, also consume a beverage called, how do you say that, Dalachan? 0.94

02:19:44.000 Oral liquid that is made from sealed penis and testicles, which they believe to be energizing and performance enhancing. 1.00

02:19:51.000 How about some studies, motherfucker, before you start eating sealed dicks? 1.00

02:19:55.000 You want to get any and try it? 1.00

02:19:57.000 No, I'm good, bro.

02:19:58.000 I don't need that.

02:19:59.000 Just check it. 1.00

02:19:59.000 Why would you take that when you can get fucking Viagra? 1.00

02:20:02.000 Exactly. 1.00

02:20:02.000 I guarantee you Viagra's better. 1.00

02:20:04.000 It is.

02:20:04.000 I mean, if it's not better, it's good enough.

02:20:07.000 Like, what are you trying to do?

02:20:08.000 So we actually, because we got attacked by the World Wildlife Fund, we sent one of my, I had a graduate student from Hong Kong, we had to send him to go back to Hong Kong for the holidays.

02:20:18.000 They attacked you?

02:20:19.000 Well, the World Wildlife Fund, because they said that we're wrong.

02:20:21.000 People won't switch.

02:20:23.000 How did they phrase it?

02:20:25.000 Well, they wrote an article.

02:20:26.000 They rebutted us.

02:20:27.000 And they said, no, no, no.

02:20:28.000 Our data show, when we tried to get people to switch from rhino and tiger horn to aspirin, they wouldn't.

02:20:33.000 Aspirin?

02:20:34.000 Yeah.

02:20:34.000 So they won't switch to Viagra.

02:20:35.000 And I'm like, look, I think Viagra is different from aspirin.

02:20:37.000 I got a headache.

02:20:38.000 I take an aspirin.

02:20:39.000 I say, yeah, I think my headache got better faster than it would have otherwise.

02:20:42.000 A little bit vague. 0.92

02:20:43.000 You need a Viagra, you take it, you're like, yep, that sucker worked, right? 0.97

02:20:46.000 There's visual evidence. 0.81

02:20:47.000 And so we argue that it's different.

02:20:49.000 And so we actually went into these clinics and we asked people in traditional Chinese clinics in Hong Kong, what do you take for headache?

02:20:56.000 What do you take for gout?

02:20:57.000 What do you take for erectile dysfunction?

02:20:59.000 And that was the one case where they'd switched.

02:21:01.000 So consumers all over the world, they know when a better product comes along.

02:21:05.000 They know when they've got no options. 0.99

02:21:06.000 Like, well, you might as well eat a seal's penis because that's as good as anything. 0.99

02:21:09.000 Or, because nothing works. 0.99

02:21:11.000 Maybe you'll get a little bit of a placebo effect.

02:21:12.000 Or you know, oh, hey, look, there's something that actually works.

02:21:15.000 That's what I'm going to buy.

02:21:16.000 What I read about one of the issues with rhino horn with some Asian buyers is that also it's a signal of affluence.

02:21:24.000 That's exactly right.

02:21:25.000 Yeah.

02:21:25.000 It's prestige purchase.

02:21:26.000 That's so sad.

02:21:28.000 It is super sad. 1.00

02:21:28.000 That is the saddest shit ever. 1.00

02:21:31.000 Crazy animal. 1.00

02:21:33.000 Bizarre creature that almost seems like a living dinosaur. 1.00

02:21:36.000 And we're losing them left and right because people are killing them for their fucking horn, which is basically just collagen, right? 0.99

02:21:43.000 I know. 0.99

02:21:44.000 It's fingernail.

02:21:44.000 Yeah, it's bananas.

02:21:46.000 It just doesn't make any sense to me that they haven't realized that there's no value in it, that there's no physical value. 0.69

02:21:54.000 It doesn't really give you erections.

02:21:56.000 What else is it supposed to do?

02:21:57.000 Fever.

02:21:58.000 It's got a long list, unfortunately.

02:22:01.000 And they're still buying it.

02:22:02.000 And they're buying it again for affluence.

02:22:05.000 They get a kick out of it.

02:22:06.000 Exactly.

02:22:06.000 It's like buying a Maserati.

02:22:07.000 Wow.

02:22:08.000 That's so crazy.

02:22:10.000 That's so sad.

02:22:11.000 Oh, my daughter's outside the door.

02:22:13.000 Hi.

02:22:13.000 Get out of here.

02:22:14.000 You're bothering us.

02:22:17.000 Yeah, it's so strange to me that there are these specific cases, right?

02:22:22.000 It's not like people are looking for giraffe horns.

02:22:25.000 Yeah, it is funny, isn't it?

02:22:26.000 They're looking for rhino horn. 0.98

02:22:28.000 Do you think that they made an association, like, damn, if I was jacked like a rhino, those chicks would like me. 1.00

02:22:33.000 I need to get that horn and eat it, and my dick would get hard. 0.99

02:22:36.000 I do think so, because if you look at the long list of products, they look pretty phallic. 0.99

02:22:40.000 And mostly people eat phallic things in order to gain potency. 0.93

02:22:43.000 Is there something crazy about seal dicks?

02:22:46.000 They're decently sized. 0.83

02:22:47.000 Decent's a good word for that.

02:22:49.000 I like that. 0.98

02:22:51.000 And so, you know, you think, oh, I eat that sucker, I'll get big too. 0.98

02:22:54.000 Right. 0.97

02:22:55.000 We're so weird.

02:22:56.000 But it's so weird that in the face of new evidence that people haven't adopted, you know, this new evidence and they still cling, at least some people cling to those old ideas.

02:23:04.000 They do, but here's the thing.

02:23:05.000 So our pre-modern ancestors didn't understand germs at all, right?

02:23:09.000 There was no way they could have.

02:23:10.000 It's such a bizarre idea that something that small could kill you.

02:23:12.000 But they did know that if I touched you when you were sick, I might end up sick too.

02:23:16.000 And that seems almost like a magical transference.

02:23:19.000 And if you accept this, and they all know that, like they'll shy away.

02:23:23.000 We all evolve.

02:23:24.000 Chimpanzees will shy away from disgusting stuff and open sores. 1.00

02:23:27.000 Will they? 0.97

02:23:28.000 Really?

02:23:28.000 Yeah, absolutely.

02:23:29.000 If you get the right kinds of illness that manifests that you're seriously outwardly sick and contagious, people find it disgusting.

02:23:36.000 And so that kind of magical contagion, it's super easy to see. 0.99

02:23:40.000 Well, then it'll make you think that, well, Rhino Warren will make my dick bigger too. 0.99

02:23:43.000 Yeah, I guess. 0.98

02:23:45.000 I mean, are there any instances where that stuff is real, where it does actually work that way?

02:23:50.000 Not that I know.

02:23:51.000 I can't think of any.

02:23:52.000 But it is the case that you being sick will make me sick.

02:23:56.000 Right, right, right.

02:23:56.000 No question.

02:23:57.000 But nothing that, like, you eat an animal's thing, you consume.

02:24:00.000 No, but if it is the case, imagine that, like, after you and I chat, you say, hey, Bill, here, have my jacket.

02:24:06.000 And now I go out with your jacket on, and people go, oh, man, he's got Joe Rogan's jacket.

02:24:09.000 He's cool.

02:24:09.000 And now I've got a little bit of your cool, and now the girls are like me, too.

02:24:13.000 And that does happen.

02:24:14.000 Like when Hercules put that lion's head on?

02:24:16.000 Yeah, yeah.

02:24:16.000 Like he had the head over and the lion's thing on his body.

02:24:20.000 It's a sign that you kicked some ass to have that thing. 0.99

02:24:23.000 That's true. 0.99

02:24:24.000 Yeah.

02:24:24.000 Yeah, I guess.

02:24:25.000 You know, it's just...

02:24:27.000 We're so weird.

02:24:30.000 You know, just the human animal itself is just such a strange thing.

02:24:34.000 And the more you study it, the more you go deeper and deeper into the layers of weirdness that we are.

02:24:39.000 Yeah, and psychology is pretty good about finding out our average weirdnesses.

02:24:43.000 We're not so good at finding out the really unusual weirdnesses because we can't predict that one out of a thousand behavior very well.

02:24:48.000 We can predict what people tend to do when the bell curves tend to split.

02:24:52.000 We can't say what some random psycho or genius or artist or whatever will do under those circumstances because that's not what our models are designed for.

02:24:59.000 Yeah.

02:25:00.000 It's so interesting when you think about our interactions also with all the various animals that we've come across all throughout our life as human beings and that people have chosen some to cherish and some to...

02:25:20.000 Some to take on as food sources and some to worship.

02:25:23.000 Right.

02:25:24.000 And often it makes good sense.

02:25:26.000 Like, so dogs are great because we have great vision, but our noses and ears don't work very well.

02:25:30.000 If we could have somebody around who could hear and smell well and is on our side, that's a huge plus, right?

02:25:35.000 It's worth feeding that thing or at least tolerating it and it eats the scraps. 0.85

02:25:38.000 And some of them, cats, you know, they're annoying.

02:25:40.000 They don't like you, but they're good at killing rats and other vermin that would have, once we were agriculturalists, those kind of vermin would have been a real problem.

02:25:47.000 They'd have been largely irrelevant when we're still hunter-gatherers.

02:25:50.000 So we had dogs.

02:25:51.000 We domesticated those while we were hunter-gatherers.

02:25:53.000 But cats, the best I know, is like ancient Egypt and these societies that are now storing grain and things like that.

02:25:59.000 So those ancient systems make good sense.

02:26:01.000 You're making a deal with an animal that can achieve something that you can't achieve.

02:26:05.000 And, of course, you're living in a world without chemicals and machines and all that kind of stuff.

02:26:09.000 But tons of them are just totally random.

02:26:11.000 And in this culture, that thing is worshipped.

02:26:13.000 And in this culture, it's eaten and, you know.

02:26:15.000 And that sort of stuff is super hard to predict.

02:26:18.000 Now, in studying all this stuff and writing this book, how much has this changed the way you just see humans, like as you're just going to the mall?

02:26:26.000 Right.

02:26:26.000 It does change it, right?

02:26:28.000 So you see, like, I remember being proud of my son when he told a lie.

02:26:32.000 Because I was like, oh, good on you, mate.

02:26:34.000 And so we're in the playground, and this little boy is playing with him, and my son doesn't have a lunchbox at all.

02:26:40.000 He doesn't own one.

02:26:41.000 And the little boy says, I got a Spider-Man lunchbox.

02:26:44.000 And my son is like four, four and a half, and he looks at the kid, and he doesn't know who Spider-Man is because he hasn't seen the show yet.

02:26:49.000 But he knows the kid's bragging.

02:26:51.000 It's obviously something good.

02:26:52.000 And he goes, yeah, I got a Grassman and a Leafman lunchbox.

02:26:55.000 Wow.

02:26:57.000 Nobody. 1.00

02:26:57.000 He just made the shit up, right? 1.00

02:26:59.000 Because spiders, right? 1.00

02:27:00.000 The Spider-Man.

02:27:01.000 There's a Grass-Man. 0.99

02:27:02.000 He's looking around for other things.

02:27:03.000 And so I was actually proud of him because it showed A, he's got Theory of Mind down.

02:27:07.000 He knows what the kid can and can't know.

02:27:09.000 And B, he knows that telling these stories are going to be important for his place in the social hierarchy.

02:27:14.000 So the kid looks at me and I'm like trying not to laugh, right?

02:27:17.000 Because I got to support my son.

02:27:18.000 And he's like, really?

02:27:19.000 And I'm like... 0.97

02:27:20.000 Damn right, kid. 0.90

02:27:22.000 And so you can imagine that without this background, you might say, look, we should discourage this kind of line. 0.94

02:27:28.000 But it gives you a little bit of a different perspective on it.

02:27:31.000 It's also probably weird because your kid realizes, yeah, my dad's got my back.

02:27:35.000 Well, that's good, too.

02:27:36.000 Thanks, bro.

02:27:39.000 Exactly.

02:27:39.000 And then you should always have your kid's back.

02:27:41.000 Yeah, but Grassman and Leafman, you've got to pull them aside like, dude, you've got to come up with an animal that's like a thing.

02:27:47.000 Right, try to do something that's got— Like a wolfman.

02:27:49.000 What could Grassman actually do besides photosynthesize?

02:27:52.000 And get eaten by cows.

02:27:53.000 Exactly.

02:27:54.000 But he was on the spur of the moment, and he's only four, so I decided it was good enough.

02:27:58.000 Yeah.

02:27:58.000 And then also cattle worshipping is very fascinating, too.

02:28:03.000 Like the Hindus and all these different tribes and different cultures that worshipped cattle where other people just thought of them as food sources.

02:28:11.000 Right.

02:28:11.000 And so, again, I don't know the origins of that, but you can imagine a system whereby, well, if you keep cattle and you benefit from them rather than eating them, you're going to get some gains from that.

02:28:20.000 And we do know when you shift from being a hunter-gatherer to basically killing and eating stuff to being a pastoralist, so you have cattle or sheep or whatever, or to being a A farmer, you suddenly have to start taking on the long game.

02:28:31.000 So humans are perfectly capable of envisioning unfelt needs no matter what kind of society they're in.

02:28:36.000 But hunter-gatherers are living for today. 1.00

02:28:38.000 And so it's kill it, hunt it, share it out amongst all of us, and then we eat it, and then we'll worry about tomorrow when it comes along.

02:28:45.000 Well, once you shift to having herds or having land, that psychology doesn't work anymore.

02:28:51.000 And so what's super interesting is it took literally like 10 or 20,000 years.

02:28:55.000 We've got the implements in place to be agriculturalists, but we're not planting.

02:28:59.000 And we're just grinding stuff that we gather.

02:29:02.000 And why did it take so long to plant?

02:29:03.000 Well, maybe it was weather.

02:29:04.000 Maybe it was a bunch of things.

02:29:05.000 But part of it is you have to shift your psychology over and say, all right, I've got to stop thinking about eating, killing it, eating it today.

02:29:11.000 I've got to say, well, all right, well...

02:29:13.000 Would it be beneficial to me to keep this beast around and have it for tomorrow and drink its blood or its milk or whatever?

02:29:19.000 And one way to get there might have been, well, let's create a religion that says we can't eat them today because that will solve it immediately, right?

02:29:26.000 That's one way to look at it, but have you ever looked into some of the other hypothesis on the origin of cattle worship?

02:29:32.000 I think it, again, has to do with psilocybin because the- Oh, that could be too.

02:29:35.000 That'd be totally cool, right? 1.00

02:29:37.000 Psilocybin mushrooms grow on cow shit. 0.99

02:29:38.000 And that'd be totally cool, and not only that, but because it has benefits. 0.99

02:29:41.000 So, like, societies can do anything they want, right?

02:29:43.000 And there's some crazy systems that they do, and a lot of those are really bad ideas.

02:29:47.000 They're sources of infection and disease and death.

02:29:49.000 Right.

02:29:50.000 Right.

02:30:12.000 Okay, I'd rather eat them, but fine.

02:30:14.000 It's hard to imagine being persuaded.

02:30:16.000 But it's easy to imagine growing up in that system over-imitating.

02:30:19.000 We talked about that.

02:30:20.000 You automatically just copy.

02:30:22.000 Dad worships cows.

02:30:23.000 Things are working out well for him.

02:30:24.000 I'll do the same.

02:30:25.000 And that's a good thing for your society because you can drink its blood or its milk or whichever.

02:30:30.000 You're lactose tolerant, whatever you do.

02:30:32.000 And then that allows your society to grow.

02:30:34.000 Was there anything surprising to you in writing this book and researching it and putting it together?

02:30:40.000 Was there anything that really just had made you step back and go, wow, I didn't see that one coming?

02:30:46.000 Look, there's a lot of things that I didn't see coming and a lot of times where I thought I had an idea of how it all worked and then I thought I would read a lot of more papers and I go, oh, that's not even possible.

02:30:54.000 They didn't have that capability or whatever.

02:30:56.000 What surprised me was that a big part of where this book comes from is that then colleagues would say, they would know I'm working on this, and they'd say, well, come give a talk at my conference on leadership.

02:31:06.000 And I'd say, well, I don't know anything about leadership.

02:31:08.000 And they'd go, well, surely it must have implications for that.

02:31:11.000 And every time they asked me to do that, I'd say, okay, I'll give it a try.

02:31:15.000 And then literally you sit down and you think about it, and you realize, wow, there are important implications for leadership or innovation or happiness or sociality, and I never saw them coming.

02:31:23.000 And so it was literally friends of mine kind of forced...

02:31:25.000 I had one goal, which is to just understand social intelligence and how do we become so socially intelligent.

02:31:31.000 And that was where I started.

02:31:34.000 And friends just kept asking me to look at other things.

02:31:36.000 And every time I did, there was an answer.

02:31:38.000 Sometimes there was an answer that was easier to find and sometimes harder to find, but it was always there.

02:31:42.000 And what that tells me is that there's really a lot of value in taking the anthropology and the biology and putting them together and saying, all right, where do we come from?

02:31:50.000 And now what can that tell us about who we are today?

02:31:52.000 That's an interesting sort of intellectual exercise too, right?

02:31:57.000 A different perspective on the material that you're going over is somebody forces you into a little box.

02:32:03.000 Like, tell me, you know, what's the influence on or the impact on creativity?

02:32:09.000 Yeah.

02:32:09.000 Or what's the impact on leadership or all these different things?

02:32:12.000 Yeah, yeah.

02:32:13.000 Just to give you a different view.

02:32:15.000 Let's look at it from the left.

02:32:16.000 Let's look at it from the top.

02:32:17.000 Let's look at it from below.

02:32:18.000 And that's what's so fun about science is you can say, all right, well, let's see if it tells us anything that either we already know is true and now we could get new things that we would know about it, or if it tells us something that we don't even know but that might explain the way the world is.

02:32:29.000 And both of those are valuable because then you can run off and try to test them and a lot of dead ends.

02:32:34.000 I mean, that's what science is all about. 0.88

02:32:35.000 But some of them will hopefully not be dead ends and you'll run off and test them and say, holy shit, now I understand innovation. 0.97

02:32:40.000 Now I understand whatever.

02:32:41.000 What's interesting about this kind of material is that it gives you, me, as an individual, gives me insight in my own behavior.

02:32:49.000 And I think it would do a lot of people, do all of us, some real good if we had a better understanding of what our motivations are and how we got to this point in civilization, what we actually are.

02:33:03.000 You know, I mean, maybe it will or won't change your behavior, but at least it'll give you some insight into...

02:33:08.000 Oh, I totally agree.

02:33:09.000 And the thing is that when I find myself getting upset because you disagree with me about something trivial or even important like politics or something, and it takes a second you've got to stop and say, hold on, I don't have any privilege access to the right way to do things, right?

02:33:22.000 And so the fact that you care more about X and I care more about Y doesn't mean that you're like an evil person and must be overcome.

02:33:28.000 It means that probably we ought to be talking to each other and trying to find a compromise solution that makes things work best.

02:33:34.000 But there's this automatic instinct to think that you are evil because you disagree with me.

02:33:39.000 And so the beauty of this kind of, the more you know about this stuff in the past and our evolutionary origins, the more you know that literally we've evolved to do that because if we didn't do that, we were screwed.

02:33:47.000 But now we don't need to anymore.

02:33:49.000 And so now we can say, well, hold on.

02:33:50.000 I'm a lefty and you're, you know, in my example, you're a righty and we disagree about this particular president, but fine.

02:33:56.000 Let's see if we can both agree on a goal that will make both of us happy rather than, no, you're evil and all I have to do is overcome you.

02:34:02.000 One of the things that I've really tried very hard from doing this podcast is to not be attached to ideas and to do that as an exercise.

02:34:10.000 And I think over the course of the years I've been doing this, I've gotten way, way better at that.

02:34:14.000 But it's just so fascinating when I encounter it in the raw form.

02:34:19.000 Like when I go to a party and I just run into some guy who's a dad and he brings something up and I tell him, well, that's not totally true because of this.

02:34:26.000 And then you see this, like, the blood starts pumping.

02:34:29.000 And the heart starts beating and they're trying to look at some way you're wrong.

02:34:33.000 It becomes a personal thing.

02:34:35.000 It gets very, very heated.

02:34:37.000 And it's easy for all of us to do that.

02:34:38.000 And my job and your job is the same.

02:34:41.000 It's to say, okay, is it time to abandon this idea?

02:34:43.000 Is there a time to defend it?

02:34:44.000 And when I was young and an academic, there was no way I was abandoning.

02:34:48.000 That was loss.

02:34:49.000 All I was going to do was defend.

02:34:50.000 So you attack me and I marshal everything I can and I try to attack you back.

02:34:54.000 And it was some of my colleagues were like, hey man, you know, When you're wrong, it's cool.

02:34:58.000 That's what science is.

02:34:59.000 And I'm like, you're right, you're right.

02:35:00.000 I've got to start.

02:35:01.000 And so now, even though I love the give and take of academics and I love to argue about stuff, I try really, really hard to keep in my mind, well, what if what you're saying right now is right?

02:35:10.000 Rather than trying to just attack it, which is my automatic instinct.

02:35:13.000 To say, well, what if it that you're saying now might be a value that I should actually be incorporating and not trying to stomp on?

02:35:19.000 Yeah, and also just the ideas aren't you.

02:35:23.000 Exactly.

02:35:23.000 You're you, and these ideas are just something that you're tossing around like a beach ball.

02:35:27.000 Yeah, exactly right, and that's super hard to keep in mind because everything that we come to own, we get attached to.

02:35:33.000 And if I tend to have my ideas because they tend to make the world a more hospitable place to build, then in a way I kind of do need to defend them.

02:35:41.000 Because if you convince me, no, the way the world should work is whoever's strongest gets everything, well, I'm stuffed.

02:35:46.000 And so I need to try to fight against a lot of alternative views.

02:35:49.000 And I have to overcome that in my effort to find what the right answer is as well.

02:35:53.000 So it makes good sense that our ideas are like possessions, that we have attitudes toward our ideas just like we have toward the objects that we own that mean something to us, to our family, to our group, etc.

02:36:02.000 That all makes really good sense.

02:36:04.000 And the other side of that coin is if we, talking about the way things used to be, in a pre-medical world, the chances of you carrying different pathogens than I carry is reasonably high.

02:36:15.000 And if you infect me, I'm screwed.

02:36:16.000 Now if you do things differently than I do things, so you eat this food and I eat that food, Well, different could actually be wrong from my perspective because if I do what you've done, I might get myself sick because you've adapted to that thing.

02:36:29.000 And so we literally, probably for good evolutionary reasons, came to view cultural ways of doing things that are different as if they're wrong because that saved us.

02:36:37.000 That protected us from the kind of pathogen vectors that you've gotten adapted to but that I haven't.

02:36:41.000 That's fascinating.

02:36:42.000 So this is almost like ingrained in us.

02:36:45.000 Well, we've evolved to be this way.

02:36:47.000 And so it's hard to undo that.

02:36:50.000 Do you think that with the access to information that we're currently enjoying, that because there's so much information now and it's so easy to get to, that perhaps there'll be more instances of people not becoming attached to their ideas and recognizing that they are separate.

02:37:08.000 That you are just a thinking organism and what the facts are and what reality is, is just something that's happening.

02:37:14.000 And you don't have to be personally attached to it.

02:37:17.000 It's not a part of your identity.

02:37:18.000 I hope so.

02:37:19.000 Because in an ideal world, we could have the things that we're attached to that don't really matter.

02:37:24.000 I'm an iPhone guy and you're an Android guy.

02:37:26.000 Who cares, right? 0.51

02:37:27.000 We could argue about it and be silly and have a good time. 0.93

02:37:29.000 Exactly.

02:37:29.000 We could still be friends and all that.

02:37:31.000 And then we could, when there's something that mattered, and no, this political strategy will make everyone poorer or sicker or whatever, then we could be willing to change our minds.

02:37:40.000 Because in the end, I think we've got this evolved desire to latch on to these things, these ideas and values and...

02:37:48.000 And products, even.

02:37:49.000 And all that.

02:37:50.000 And so it'd be nice if we could do it with the trivial and let the stuff that really matters guide us by its accuracy.

02:37:57.000 Well, it'd be also nice if the stuff that we do with trivial, it stays actually trivial.

02:38:02.000 Yeah.

02:38:02.000 Because there's so many people.

02:38:03.000 Well, I guess it goes with sports teams.

02:38:06.000 But it also goes with, like, brands of cars.

02:38:09.000 Like, I've heard people say, I've always been a Ford guy.

02:38:12.000 I love Fords.

02:38:12.000 Like, okay.

02:38:13.000 Yeah.

02:38:13.000 It probably reminds you of the Ford your dad drove or whatever.

02:38:16.000 I guess, but I would never buy a Chevy.

02:38:19.000 All right.

02:38:19.000 I know.

02:38:20.000 Really?

02:38:21.000 Never?

02:38:22.000 It's funny, isn't it? 0.99

02:38:22.000 What if the best fucking car ever is a Chevy and you have the opportunity to buy it? 0.99

02:38:26.000 You're like, no, no, I'm a Ford guy. 0.99

02:38:28.000 What benefits you?

02:38:30.000 It's some strange reason.

02:38:32.000 There's some weird motivation to stick to your initial statements.

02:38:37.000 Yeah, so I think it's like Oliver Wendell Holmes or someone who said, a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin to small minds, right?

02:38:43.000 But we all have these foolish consistencies because part of the problem is if I move around with the wind, you look at me as I'm a nothing. 0.97

02:38:49.000 Right, you're a flip-flopper. 0.88

02:38:50.000 Yeah, if I can't stand by what I believe in, then you have no respect for me.

02:38:54.000 But what if what you believe in is incorrect?

02:38:59.000 Are you supposed to claim to that?

02:39:01.000 I mean, that's where it gets real weird, right?

02:39:03.000 And so what you ideally want is, here's my value structure and it's unchangeable and unnegotiable.

02:39:09.000 And yet, when you show me that my attitudes are impeding my own goals, then I'm willing to change them to achieve that value structure.

02:39:16.000 And I think the best politicians and scientists and artists and comedians and all the rest are the ones who can do that.

02:39:23.000 Yeah, I like what you said.

02:39:24.000 Like, here's my value structure.

02:39:26.000 These are my ethics.

02:39:27.000 These are my morals.

02:39:28.000 This is how I treat people.

02:39:29.000 This is who I am.

02:39:30.000 But all that other stuff is just information.

02:39:33.000 Yeah.

02:39:33.000 It's all means to an end.

02:39:35.000 And so some people care a lot about loyalty.

02:39:37.000 Other people care a lot about fairness.

02:39:39.000 Other people care a lot about sanctity and purity, right?

02:39:42.000 There's different values that are important in all of the world.

02:39:44.000 We all care about them.

02:39:45.000 But some people weight one set more than another set.

02:39:48.000 John Hyde, I don't know if you've had him on your show.

02:39:51.000 No, I haven't.

02:39:51.000 He does this work and he's one of the first people who pushed these ideas.

02:39:54.000 And you can predict them by people's politics and stuff like that.

02:39:57.000 And so if we all agree they all matter, but the problem is then we get into an argument where you tell me loyalty is more important than I tell you fairness or harm is more important.

02:40:06.000 And then we're never going to see eye to eye in all probability.

02:40:10.000 You know, with two humans that are healthy, that's an interesting discussion because why do you think fairness is more important and why do I think Discipline is more important than fairness, or education is more, or whatever it is.

02:40:21.000 I think that when someone clings to this idea that this is the most significant aspect of human civilization, that's always weird, too.

02:40:29.000 Yeah, and it's hard when they can't acknowledge other possibilities, right?

02:40:32.000 And again, all these things are, I hate to say it, but they're like 50% genetic, right?

02:40:36.000 Some of us are more open-minded, and some of us are more closed-minded.

02:40:40.000 And there's probably good reasons to be that way that made your That made you successful under one set of circumstances versus another because, you know, extroversion, for example, almost all people prefer extroverts over introverts.

02:40:52.000 But extroverts are all sorts of risk for disease because they're constantly up in everyone's face.

02:40:56.000 And so in ancestral environments, it was probably pretty costly to be extroverted and you paid a price that introverts didn't have to pay when you got sick.

02:41:03.000 But it's also like we gained so much creativity and insight from introverts.

02:41:07.000 Of course.

02:41:07.000 No, but at a social level, extroverts benefit.

02:41:10.000 Introverts might benefit by then running Microsoft and being the greatest artist and all that.

02:41:14.000 And that's, again, we talked about this earlier, the beauty about being human is how many different ways you can achieve the same goal.

02:41:20.000 Yeah.

02:41:20.000 What are your thoughts on the influence of epigenetics?

02:41:23.000 Look, it's super interesting.

02:41:25.000 So I know little about it, very little about it.

02:41:28.000 My behavioral genetics colleague insists that there's no good evidence among humans for multi-generational epigenetic effects.

02:41:35.000 We know that they exist now in some animals.

02:41:37.000 You can do the experiments pretty easily to get these multi-generational epigenetic effects.

02:41:42.000 Can you explain to people what we're talking about?

02:41:44.000 Yeah, so epigenetics is basically you can turn genes on and off in the simplest sense.

02:41:49.000 And so environmental factors will matter.

02:41:51.000 Like maybe when you're in utero, there's a famine.

02:41:53.000 And that's a common thing that's looked at.

02:41:55.000 We'll look at that in rats, for example.

02:41:57.000 We'll underfeed the mother when the baby's in there. 1.00

02:42:00.000 And that causes the baby's Methylation of some of the genes, I don't understand the science of it at all, but it turns some genes on and some genes off, and so a baby of a mother rat who was raised, who was in utero when the mother was underfed, will mature more rapidly,

02:42:16.000 it'll eat everything that's not nailed down, and it'll have sex with lots more rats than a regular, than a rat that didn't have its mother starved. 0.98

02:42:23.000 And the key thing is, that makes good sense because it's a way to respond to times of famine.

02:42:27.000 Grow as fast as you can, reproduce as quickly as you can, because, you know, reproduction is a currency of evolution.

02:42:32.000 The fact that you exist and live is trivial.

02:42:34.000 The fact that you passed on your genes, that's what evolution works with.

02:42:39.000 It's a great way to change with the local environment.

02:42:42.000 And there's some very interesting evidence that then those effects are even in the next generation.

02:42:45.000 So the child of a rat that was in a mother who was underfed will also have some of these strategies.

02:42:52.000 I don't believe they find that in humans as well, people that have suffered from famine.

02:42:55.000 That's the argument.

02:42:56.000 But none of the data, my behavioral genetics colleague says none of those data are robust enough.

02:43:00.000 It's sort of like some of the criticisms you made of what I've said.

02:43:02.000 And you're right.

02:43:03.000 The data suggests things that might be, but there's lots of alternative explanations.

02:43:07.000 So we don't yet know.

02:43:08.000 What I've read is about longevity and that there was some sort of evidence that points to the descendants of people who survived famine.

02:43:17.000 They live longer.

02:43:19.000 Right.

02:43:19.000 And so the question might be why.

02:43:22.000 So we know, for example, that if you're in utero during famine, males are more likely to be aborted than females when it gets really bad.

02:43:31.000 Female fetuses are probably more robust. 0.90

02:43:33.000 But if you ignore that gender effect, in all probability, those fetuses that could survive in a mother during famine might just be the more robust specimens, right?

02:43:41.000 And so you might just be calling out the people who wouldn't have lived as long.

02:43:44.000 And so it's super hard.

02:43:46.000 You know, you don't do experiments on these things in humans.

02:43:48.000 You can do experiments on mice and rats and try to find these things out.

02:43:52.000 The downside is, you know, if you've read about a million cancer drugs that are really going to help us and they disappear, it's because it works in a mouse and it doesn't work in us.

02:44:01.000 And the downside of these things is even mice and rats differ from each other.

02:44:04.000 And we're a long way from either of them.

02:44:07.000 And so the epigenetic effects that they show, there may be good reason why we don't.

02:44:11.000 Yeah.

02:44:12.000 There's some real ethical questions in regard to running studies like that on human beings.

02:44:18.000 Of course.

02:44:18.000 Exactly.

02:44:19.000 We're going to have to develop headless humans in a lab that have no soul that we could do tests on.

02:44:25.000 Well, we could.

02:44:26.000 But I actually think that what we'll get really good at is the issue you raised earlier.

02:44:30.000 And that is, I don't know everything that's ever happened to you.

02:44:33.000 But someday, it'll be possible to know a ton of that stuff.

02:44:36.000 Yeah.

02:44:36.000 And I'll be able to rule out all sorts of alternative causes.

02:44:39.000 And diet is a perfect example.

02:44:40.000 You guys talk about that a lot on this show.

02:44:42.000 Well, how do we know that this particular collection of foods will actually do you any good?

02:44:46.000 How do we know how well people are sticking to it?

02:44:48.000 And a big part of those effects are actually the psychological effects.

02:44:51.000 So protein is a really good example.

02:44:53.000 That, you know, Steve Simpson argued in the early 90s that if you – he started with locusts – that animals are motivated to eat as a function of how much protein that they've consumed.

02:45:02.000 And so the Atkins diet was the right idea but a misunderstanding of the cause.

02:45:06.000 It's just that protein – we evolved to feel full when you get protein.

02:45:09.000 We didn't evolve to feel full from carbohydrates.

02:45:11.000 And there's a host of reasons for that.

02:45:12.000 And there's a host of other effects that are going on at the same time.

02:45:15.000 But the consequence of that is then when people's diets move around, you say, oh, look, this diet has this effect and that one doesn't.

02:45:21.000 But you don't actually know what they've been doing because some diets are harder to maintain and they're cheating more or whatever.

02:45:26.000 Someday we'll have much better evidence than all that.

02:45:29.000 You'll be wearing a device.

02:45:30.000 I'll know what you consumed.

02:45:31.000 I'll know an accelerometer.

02:45:33.000 I'll know everything that happened to you.

02:45:35.000 Well, that's another interesting aspect of genetics, right?

02:45:37.000 There's one thing that we absolutely know is that some people respond differently to diets than other people do.

02:45:42.000 And, you know, for some person, a particular type of diet is, like, beneficial and perfect and just locks in.

02:45:48.000 And the other person, it would be horrible.

02:45:49.000 Yeah, absolutely.

02:45:50.000 That's weird, you know, across the species.

02:45:53.000 I know.

02:45:54.000 You don't find that with dogs or...

02:45:55.000 But at an ethnic level, it makes perfect sense because the people who've been eating different foods for a long period of time have to adapt to that, right?

02:46:01.000 And of course, agriculture is only 12,000 years old total, although we've been eating cereals before that.

02:46:08.000 And lots of societies didn't have it at all or only had it very recently.

02:46:11.000 And so it's super hard for some people to eat grains compared to other people to eat grains because they haven't adapted either diabetes-wise or all the other kinds of things that can cause it to go wrong.

02:46:22.000 Certainly with alcohol, that's a giant factor.

02:46:23.000 Yeah, exactly.

02:46:24.000 And alcohol gets invented every time someone invents agriculture because all you do is you accidentally leave it there too long and it ferments, right?

02:46:30.000 And there's an argument that we actually evolved to have a tolerance for beer rather than a distaste for it because once we're in early agricultural settlements, for the first time ever, we're crapping where we're drinking.

02:46:42.000 We're not moving on.

02:46:43.000 And so we foul our own drinking water so beer is literally safer to drink than water.

02:46:47.000 Beer and wine, low-grade alcohol.

02:46:49.000 And so what the data said What people argue is that we evolved to actually have a taste for it but a tolerance to it rather than a distaste for it, which makes sense evolutionarily because getting drunk with hippos running around can't be a good idea.

02:47:02.000 Also, if you think about wine or any booze, the first time you drink it, it's disgusting.

02:47:07.000 Yeah, it's hard to drink.

02:47:08.000 You develop a taste for it.

02:47:09.000 That's exactly right.

02:47:10.000 And lots of things are that way.

02:47:12.000 Tabasco, you know, lots of these spices have antibacterial effects.

02:47:15.000 And so the mothers are giving it to the kids where, like, my mouth would be on fire if I ate what some six-year-old can eat in India or something like that. 0.91

02:47:20.000 Wasn't that initially why they added wasabi to sushi?

02:47:23.000 That's what a lot of people argue.

02:47:25.000 And in fact, as you work your way from the poles to the equator, you get more and more spices.

02:47:29.000 Because, of course, in Sweden, there's six pathogens, and you've got salt and pepper.

02:47:32.000 In the jungle.

02:47:33.000 And in the jungle, and in Africa, you've got a gazillion spices to do.

02:47:36.000 Garlic, all these things are super powerful antibacterials.

02:47:39.000 Oh, that is a really interesting way of looking at it.

02:47:42.000 Yeah.

02:47:42.000 I'm sure, right?

02:47:43.000 Like Mexico, very hot, spicy food, warm climate.

02:47:48.000 Totally makes sense.

02:47:49.000 Yeah, exactly.

02:47:50.000 And the same thing happens with the profusion of religions and languages.

02:47:53.000 The closer you get to the equator, the more languages you have and the more religions you have.

02:47:57.000 Because people start saying, you know, on the other side of the valley, literally, you could have a pathogen that makes me sick.

02:48:01.000 And so I'm going to stay away from you.

02:48:03.000 And by staying away from you over time, we develop different languages, different religions. 0.99

02:48:06.000 Again, back to Sweden, whatever you got, I got.

02:48:09.000 There's three things to have, right?

02:48:10.000 And so you're not a risk to me.

02:48:12.000 And we share the same language.

02:48:13.000 We intermingle much more readily.

02:48:14.000 And there's more ethnocentrism as you go close to the equator.

02:48:17.000 Wow.

02:48:18.000 Keeping apart makes good evolutionary sense under those circumstances.

02:48:22.000 But we live in a world where no one's keeping apart.

02:48:25.000 Exactly.

02:48:25.000 Now we live in a world where it makes it much, much more difficult.

02:48:27.000 And you don't necessarily, at least in our blessed industrialized democracies where we've got good medicines, at least for now, they still work.

02:48:34.000 You don't need to anymore.

02:48:35.000 Right.

02:48:35.000 But we also have these crazy factory farming setups that lead to the Kind of horrible superbugs that could kill a million people.

02:48:46.000 Yeah, we do.

02:48:47.000 I remember when I first found that out, that most of the major flus, like avian flu, swine flu, I didn't know why they were calling it the swine flu.

02:48:55.000 And then I found out, no, it's from domesticated pigs, and it somehow morphs and jumps to humans.

02:49:00.000 Like, what?

02:49:01.000 And that was the cost we paid with agriculture.

02:49:03.000 For the first time, we were starting to get...

02:49:05.000 We're cheek by jowl with a bunch of animals.

02:49:07.000 And agriculture, I mean, hunter-gatherers eat them. 0.87

02:49:09.000 The animal never lives long enough to give you the flu, right?

02:49:12.000 Right.

02:49:13.000 Wow.

02:49:13.000 So everything, you know, there's always pluses and minuses when you change how you do things.

02:49:18.000 And we, you and I, are really lucky.

02:49:20.000 We live in a time where all these great medicines exist and they haven't become worthless yet.

02:49:24.000 And now it's really a race against the evolution of the bacteria and us devising new medicines that can continue to defeat them.

02:49:31.000 Because everything is becoming treatment resistant, right?

02:49:34.000 That's how evolution works.

02:49:35.000 And that's just starting to happen.

02:49:37.000 And so now scientists have to work double time to keep inventing new drugs to stay ahead of the game.

02:49:42.000 With the exception of some things that just, for whatever reason, bacteria don't seem to be able to evolve resistances to them.

02:49:48.000 Well, what's fascinating to me is not just scientists creating these vaccines and all these different medicines to deal with these diseases, but the potential of shutting off genes, the potential of altering the human genome and using things like whatever the future version of CRISPR is going to be.

02:50:05.000 I mean, they've already figured out a way to stop certain diseases.

02:50:10.000 Right.

02:50:10.000 So those single gene things are great.

02:50:12.000 Remember, with everything being so polygenic, you don't just want to shut shit down willy-nilly. 0.82

02:50:16.000 And so then really what you're at, the advantage is the point you made earlier. 0.70

02:50:20.000 So my diet should be 60% protein and yours should be 15% or mine should have more leafy vegetables than yours, whatever.

02:50:27.000 And we'll be able to know that.

02:50:29.000 We'll know how my gut's going to respond to it and how your gut will respond to it.

02:50:32.000 Well, that's one of the things that 23andMe actually does.

02:50:35.000 They do show what foods you'd be more likely to be allergic to and what things you'd be most likely to be attracted to.

02:50:42.000 And that's a great start, but what we really need is the polygenic scores that tell you how do you process leafy vegetables, how do you process fats, how do you process all that stuff.

02:50:49.000 Yeah.

02:50:50.000 And so because, you know, genes account for most of our weight.

02:50:54.000 That's most of the variance in whether we're obese or not.

02:50:56.000 But nobody was obese when you and I were kids.

02:50:59.000 Right.

02:51:00.000 And tons of people are obese now.

02:51:01.000 So what those genes really are is genes to sensitivity to something changing in our environment, either activity levels or the foods we're eating or how processed they are.

02:51:09.000 Or how much carbs?

02:51:10.000 Whatever.

02:51:11.000 We don't know.

02:51:11.000 But that's what we're actually genetically sensitive to.

02:51:14.000 Because all of us have the same underlying problem that evolution didn't really worry about obesity because the problem was the opposite, starving.

02:51:20.000 And so we're not really good at telling when we're full.

02:51:23.000 And there's interesting evidence that suggests some really lovely studies that show that really one of the key guides of appetite was variety.

02:51:30.000 When you eat a lot less variety, that's when your stomach tells you you're full, really, much more reliably.

02:51:35.000 But as you add variety to your diet, which everybody on Earth can do now, well, everybody who's got any money on Earth can do now, that actually you short-circuit the best mechanism we had to tell us to stop eating.

02:51:44.000 Yeah, that's interesting, and that was an argument that people who are experts on nutrition are making about one of the more recent diet plans that people are using, the carnivore diet, is that just eating only meat.

02:51:59.000 And there's a lot of people that are doing that, and they're finding that they're having all of these...

02:52:04.000 Really rapid decreases in autoimmune diseases and rapid recoveries from eczema and seborrhea and psoriasis.

02:52:15.000 A lot of people are saying, oh, it's the meat.

02:52:18.000 Meat's great for you.

02:52:21.000 Some nutrition experts are saying, more likely you're at a calorie deficit.

02:52:29.000 And by putting your body into a calorie deficit, you're almost in a state of fasting.

02:52:34.000 And you're decreasing your body weight, because almost universally all these people that are talking about the positive benefits of these diets, these elimination diets, and just eating one thing, one of the things that they're showing is they lose a shitload of weight.

02:52:46.000 Right.

02:52:46.000 And so the thing is that I suspect you're right, that either they're cutting out what for them is the perpetrator and who would ever know out of the 4,000 things you eat, right?

02:52:53.000 Or it's literally the losing weight and then hopefully they're taking multivitamins to make up for all the stuff that they're not getting, right?

02:52:59.000 Yeah, I don't think they are.

02:53:00.000 A lot of them are not doing that.

02:53:02.000 It's really interesting.

02:53:03.000 I've been following it pretty closely and I've had quite a few people on the podcast including really intelligent guys like Jordan Peterson is on this and all he does is eat meat.

02:53:12.000 Right.

02:53:13.000 And for me, that wouldn't work, although I eat meat and fruit, basically, and then very little else.

02:53:18.000 What about leafy green vegetables?

02:53:20.000 Well, I know I should, but I don't like them.

02:53:22.000 Really?

02:53:22.000 You don't like them?

02:53:23.000 No, I don't like them, so I tend to avoid them.

02:53:25.000 You don't like broccoli?

02:53:28.000 I know I should, so my wife makes them and I'll eat a little bit of it.

02:53:31.000 You're like a little kid.

02:53:32.000 I know, I know.

02:53:33.000 That's the arguments I have with my 8-year-old.

02:53:35.000 I know, I know.

02:53:36.000 And your 8-year-old's right.

02:53:38.000 Now, by the way, it turns out there are genes that make people find broccoli more disgusting and more bitter versus less bitter.

02:53:44.000 Really?

02:53:44.000 So some people really have, their tongue says no broccoli is really nasty.

02:53:47.000 It's called the being a little baby gene.

02:53:49.000 But the one thing I would say, there's this really lovely study done with amnesics, and what they did is they fed people a couple different foods, and you try a few, and then you eat one until you're full.

02:53:59.000 And then when you come back to, I don't know if you know this work like Paul Rosen started with amnesics.

02:54:03.000 If you're densely amnesic, so...

02:54:05.000 I talk to you.

02:54:06.000 I leave the room.

02:54:06.000 I come back five minutes later.

02:54:07.000 You don't know who I am because you got brain damage. 0.68

02:54:09.000 When I come back with lunch, literally you'll eat a second lunch. 0.95

02:54:13.000 We have such poor mechanism that tells us we're full.

02:54:15.000 We think we do.

02:54:15.000 We think we go, God, I've had a great dinner.

02:54:17.000 I'm really full.

02:54:17.000 What we don't realize is that's really driven a lot by the knowledge that we just ate.

02:54:21.000 Wow.

02:54:22.000 And so what Rosen found when he went back into, he had, eat lunch till you're full.

02:54:25.000 He goes back in and says, oh, time for lunch.

02:54:27.000 And literally they all eat it again.

02:54:28.000 Wow.

02:54:29.000 And so what's amazing about these studies is then this follow-up study, what they did is they served amnesics or control people, foods that they sampled and food that they ate till they're full.

02:54:38.000 So you sample potato chips and then you eat a tuna sandwich.

02:54:41.000 And now I come back to you and say, if you're a normal and I say, do you want to eat a potato chip?

02:54:46.000 Do you want to eat a tuna sandwich?

02:54:47.000 If you're normal, you say, well, I just had lunch.

02:54:49.000 I'm not really that keen to eat either of them anymore.

02:54:51.000 If you're amnesic, you say, I don't want a tuna sandwich, but yeah, I'll have some potato chips.

02:54:56.000 And so you don't even need to know you ate it.

02:54:59.000 And so your hunger mechanism is still there.

02:55:00.000 But the fact is, you've had a lot of tuna sandwich, and that's controlling your appetite.

02:55:04.000 It's making you feel like you don't want to eat it anymore.

02:55:06.000 And so in the same sense, you go to a steakhouse, you think, wow, I love this, my favorite steak, I could eat it forever.

02:55:11.000 And then you finish it or not.

02:55:13.000 And then you think, oh, I'm stuffed.

02:55:14.000 And somebody goes, dessert?

02:55:16.000 Actually, yeah, that does sound good, right?

02:55:18.000 Because now you're shifting and you're eating something else.

02:55:20.000 And so I suspect that what guided our ancestors was the fact they had no variety.

02:55:25.000 What's for dinner was not a question you ever asked when whatever dad killed and whatever mom dug up.

02:55:29.000 Like, there's two things there, right?

02:55:30.000 And so you're going to gorge on the meat.

02:55:32.000 There's not a vegetarian hunt to gather on the planet.

02:55:34.000 When you're hungry every day, everybody loves meat.

02:55:37.000 It's not only eat whatever you can, everybody loves it.

02:55:39.000 In every hunter-gatherer society, meat is a big deal.

02:55:42.000 Someone comes home with a big kill, it's a big deal.

02:55:45.000 When you can afford to be very well fed, suddenly you can start to think differently and even have different preferences, but you don't if you're a hunter-gatherer.

02:55:51.000 And so literally, if dad killed a giraffe, you're just stuffing as much giraffe meat down the pipe as you can.

02:55:56.000 And it makes sense that you would have then evolved, okay, you're going to get nothing new out of the giraffe you eat other than you're going to poo it out the back end. 0.81

02:56:03.000 It's time to shut this dinner down, right?

02:56:04.000 But if you told me, oh, look, we've got this other thing, that's all.

02:56:08.000 Well, there's nutrients in that I don't already have.

02:56:10.000 And so you could imagine getting hungry again.

02:56:12.000 That's what the data suggests.

02:56:13.000 Well, it's interesting because that's kind of the argument that these carnivore diet people use is that that is the most beneficial food because that's the food that you look forward to the most.

02:56:22.000 It's the protein.

02:56:23.000 They're right.

02:56:23.000 But don't forget, you only need to do this within every meal.

02:56:26.000 So if you sit down for your favorite lobster dinner, just have lobster.

02:56:29.000 And then that doesn't mean you have to eat it for lunch or for breakfast tomorrow.

02:56:32.000 Now you can have pancakes, whatever it is.

02:56:34.000 The key is within every meal, minimize your variety.

02:56:37.000 Because that's where the effect is having itself.

02:56:39.000 It doesn't have to carry over time.

02:56:41.000 It doesn't mean you eat lobster every single meal.

02:56:43.000 You know, it's interesting.

02:56:44.000 That's actually the Gracie diet. 0.93

02:56:46.000 There's a jiu-jitsu family called the Gracie's that started the UFC and world-famous Brazilian jiu-jitsu family, but just a family full of killers.

02:56:55.000 And one of the founders, I believe it was Carlos Gracie, invented this.

02:57:00.000 He invented a diet that was basically, you shouldn't mix foods together.

02:57:04.000 If you're eating fruits, you should eat fruits by themselves.

02:57:07.000 If you eat meat, you should eat that by itself.

02:57:09.000 And that in combining all these things together, your body produces a variety of different enzymes so you don't get as much nutritional absorption.

02:57:16.000 Now that may be, I have no idea.

02:57:18.000 I don't know either.

02:57:18.000 I don't understand the underlying bioscience, but what I do know, the psychology suggests that you'll stop eating sooner if within any one meal you have less variety.

02:57:27.000 So purely at a psychological level, we appear to have evolved to not want that anymore when we've had enough of that, be it a tarot root our mom dug up or a giraffe our dad shot.

02:57:37.000 So these sort of evolutionary traits that are inside of our bodies, they would sort of encourage us to eat much more if we have a variety of different foods.

02:57:49.000 Like if you're eating at a buffet in Vegas versus if you're just eating chicken.

02:57:54.000 That's exactly right.

02:57:55.000 You'll eat as much chicken as really you need and then you'll stop.

02:57:58.000 And then you'll go, ugh, I don't want any more chicken.

02:58:00.000 But if there's chicken and mashed potatoes and corn and the cob.

02:58:02.000 You'll keep going.

02:58:03.000 And then coleslaw.

02:58:04.000 And our ancestors never faced that problem, so we don't know how to deal with it.

02:58:07.000 Right.

02:58:08.000 And the other side of that coin, so what Steve Simpson did, this guy who did the early study on protein in locusts, he took his biology students on field trips and he would doctor the food to increase the protein in the food or decrease it in the food.

02:58:19.000 But it's the exact same foods.

02:58:20.000 Like you're eating the same rolls and the same sushi, but he's, you know, increasing the levels of protein in those foods.

02:58:26.000 And then it's a buffet, and all he does is weigh the food when it starts and when it finishes across all the students eating it.

02:58:32.000 And he found that as the protein levels go up, the amount of food that people eat at the buffet goes down.

02:58:37.000 Wow.

02:58:37.000 So there's these two parallel mechanisms.

02:58:39.000 One, we're made of protein.

02:58:40.000 And so that seems...

02:58:41.000 Carbs do drive appetite, but not nearly as strongly as proteins do.

02:58:45.000 So the tolerance in how much carbs you eat is huge.

02:58:48.000 The tolerance in how much proteins you eat is very narrow.

02:58:50.000 That makes sense.

02:58:51.000 Of course.

02:58:52.000 And he finds that in crickets, and now he finds it in humans.

02:58:54.000 And then I think the other side of that coin is this variety.

02:58:57.000 And the bad luck for us right now is we live in a world where, especially if you're poor, proteins are expensive and hard to get.

02:59:03.000 So you're going to have these high-carb diets.

02:59:04.000 And then everybody can have variety, and variety is probably a really bad thing.

02:59:08.000 That is so fascinating.

02:59:10.000 Is that our good fortune?

02:59:12.000 Yeah.

02:59:12.000 Is our demise.

02:59:13.000 Yeah, exactly.

02:59:13.000 In so many ways.

02:59:15.000 I mean, you know, we evolved to seek out fat, sugar, and salt because they're in short supply.

02:59:18.000 And now they're everywhere!

02:59:19.000 And now if you eat them every time you see them, you're stuffed, right?

02:59:22.000 They're everywhere, man.

02:59:23.000 I mean, everything you eat is fat, sugar, and salt.

02:59:26.000 Yeah, exactly.

02:59:26.000 And it's not just what you eat.

02:59:28.000 We also evolved, so if there's a novel...

02:59:31.000 Person of the opposite sex who comes along. 0.97

02:59:33.000 Boy, what a rare event that was. 0.82

02:59:34.000 They are fat, sugar, and salt.

02:59:35.000 Exactly.

02:59:36.000 You should jump on that train, right?

02:59:37.000 Because that will give you new genetic opportunities.

02:59:39.000 But you look out the door, there's novelty everywhere.

02:59:42.000 It's super hard.

02:59:42.000 It's harder to stay married in the city than it is in the country.

02:59:45.000 It's harder to stay married if you're a celebrity than if you're a nobody.

02:59:48.000 Because those people just have novelty constantly.

02:59:50.000 They have variety constantly.

02:59:52.000 And the rest of us, well, you know, there may be variety out there, but they're not interested in me, so it's kind of irrelevant anyway.

02:59:57.000 Right.

02:59:58.000 Bill, thank you so much.

03:00:00.000 Totally my pleasure.

03:00:00.000 I can't wait to read your book.

03:00:02.000 Excellent.

03:00:02.000 Let me hold it up for everybody.

03:00:04.000 It's available right now.

03:00:05.000 As of today.

03:00:06.000 The Social Leap. 1.00

03:00:08.000 Go get it, you fucks. 1.00

03:00:10.000 This is awesome. 0.99

03:00:10.000 Thank you so much. 0.99

03:00:11.000 Thank you.

03:00:11.000 A lot of fun.

03:00:12.000 Thank you.

03:00:13.000 Bye, everybody.

The Joe Rogan Experience - November 13, 2018

Joe Rogan Experience #1201 - William von Hippel

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