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Wondery Plus subscribers can listen

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free right now. Join Wondery Plus

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in the Wondery app or on

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Apple Podcasts. Or you can listen

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for free wherever you get your

0:13

podcast. Welcome, welcome, welcome

0:15

to armchair expert. I'm

0:18

Hermann Permian. I'm joining by my

0:20

mom. Hi mom. Hi son. You're not

0:22

going to believe this Miss Monica.

0:24

Tell me. Good friend of mine's

0:26

here. Who? Herman Ponser. How

0:29

man did you make him up? No, that's

0:31

really our guess. Herman Ponser. Wow.

0:33

Herman Ponser. Herman Ponser. Maybe

0:35

my favorite name we've had for a

0:38

guest. Really good name. A really cool

0:40

guy. Incredibly cool. Professor of

0:42

Evolutionary Anthropology and Global Health

0:44

at Duke University. He's an

0:47

internationally recognized researcher in human,

0:49

energetics and evolution. His previous

0:51

book, which is great, is

0:54

called Burn, some shocking ways

0:56

we consume calories. We talked

0:58

about it, and it was

1:00

really interesting. Yeah, we did a

1:02

little section on Burn, and then his

1:05

new book, Adaptable, How Your Unique Body,

1:07

Really Works, and Why Our Biology

1:09

Unites Us. This was so fun.

1:11

It was. Evolutionary biology is one

1:14

of my favorite things to think

1:16

about. An anthropologyology. Yeah, like, what

1:18

was they just... Oh my God,

1:20

we were just discussing what could

1:22

have been the cause of you

1:24

and I. I know. You were

1:26

saying women, oh women want to

1:28

get something of their boyfriends to

1:30

smell. Yes. Like a t-shirts. I

1:32

mean, it's a very common desire.

1:34

And for a woman to want. Yeah.

1:36

And I never met a guy who tried

1:38

to get a shirt from a girl. Something's

1:41

there. I know. I wonder if when there's

1:43

a quantum computer that can model the future

1:45

and all that if it can go backwards

1:47

in time and somehow we would get answers

1:49

to these things. Well in the meantime Hermann's

1:51

working on it. Hermann Rock, this is

1:53

a really really interesting episode. I'm usually

1:56

threatened by other anthropology majors because they

1:58

actually know all this stuff and I...

2:00

I'm mostly ill-informed because we find out

2:03

a few times in this episode. I'm

2:05

glad that you allowed it. We

2:07

all got to learn. Please enjoy.

2:09

Herman Potter. We are supported by

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today. Dax

4:51

is getting a new tattoo and Rob

4:53

is matching. So like when you hug each other

4:55

it forms a full... Yes, yes, but only our wives

4:57

will see it. So you're from Pennsylvania? Mm-hmm. Whereabout? I'm

5:00

a Michigander. Okay. Did you ever see Groundhog Day? Yes,

5:02

Poxawani, what is it? Punctatani. Punctatani. Punctatani. So we played

5:04

Punctatani in high school ball. They were that close. Oh,

5:06

yeah, I guess. They kind of nailed it in high

5:08

school ball. Oh, yeah, I guess. Yeah. Yeah, I guess.

5:11

They kind of nailed it in high school ball. Oh,

5:13

they were that. They were that. They were that close.

5:15

Oh, they were that, they were that, they were that,

5:17

they were that, they were that, they were that, they

5:20

were that, they were that, they were that, they were,

5:22

they were, they were, they were, they were, they were,

5:24

they were, they were, they were, they were, they were,

5:26

they were, they were, they were, they were, they, they,

5:28

they, they, they, cars there are and I was like

5:31

oh there's more people on this train than there are

5:33

the hometown I grew up in. Wow! So 800 people

5:35

in my hometown of Curzy Pennsylvania. And what did mom

5:37

and dad do? High school teachers. Okay, in Curzy. Curzy

5:39

is not big enough to have a high school. So

5:42

the town next door, St. Mary, is they were there.

5:44

We were out to high school, too. How many acres

5:46

did you grow up on? It's kind of long story,

5:48

but so the Ponser family was one of the first

5:50

families to move into that area. It was not super

5:53

densely settled ever. Even the Native American folks were like,

5:55

this is a junky land. We don't want to spend a

5:57

lot to spend a lot of time on a lot of

5:59

time here. So my extended family owns hundreds

6:01

of acres of forest. Oh wow! And

6:03

could you get lost in there as

6:05

a kid and explore? Yeah, yeah. I

6:08

lived at the end of a dirt

6:10

road in a house that my dad

6:12

built physically with his hands and his

6:14

buddy Dean. It was wonderful. I grew

6:16

up riding motorcycles and hiking and hiking.

6:18

It was wonderful. I grew up riding

6:20

motorcycles and hiking around and hunting. It

6:22

was kind of an amazing way to

6:25

grow up. Yeah, would you be out

6:27

trumping around with a BB gun when

6:29

you know? That's not a background that

6:31

you see very often. Exactly. It's kind

6:33

of looked down upon. Oh, completely. Well,

6:35

this is a whole other avenue, but

6:37

we talk about diversity in the

6:39

university, and everybody is for that, but

6:42

it means different things to different people.

6:44

Yes, yeah. It would be interesting to

6:46

me to see diversity of backgrounds that

6:49

way. You don't see a lot of

6:51

folks from rural America in the Ivory

6:53

Tower. No, no. And also maybe a

6:55

little more socioeconomic thrust. Because we've divided

6:58

up into these lines that are pretty

7:00

comical in ways. Is some of it,

7:02

though, do we think chicken or the

7:04

egg a little bit? At this point,

7:07

I think if you're in certain parts

7:09

of the country, you don't want to

7:11

be associated with liberal elite institutions. We've

7:13

created it as like us, them. I think

7:15

about the folks I grew up with, one of

7:17

my best friends growing up, he's a union electrician,

7:19

still lives back in Curzy, and he's got a

7:21

great life. That was an avenue that is a

7:23

wonderful way to go, but he would never have

7:25

considered doing what I'm doing. Yeah, this wasn't even

7:27

on the radar, who knows what his kid's gonna

7:29

do, but it is really kind of dichotomized that

7:31

way. It is. Where'd you go to undergrad? Penn

7:33

State. And then you did graduate school

7:35

Harvard? That's right. And when did you

7:37

get in the anthro trajectory? Do you

7:39

do any reading about me? I also

7:41

was going to tell you that I'm

7:43

actually here from UCLA. You know, the

7:46

anxiety dream where you have the class

7:48

that you never finished and they tell

7:50

you have an exam. I have with

7:52

me here. Oh, we're here to do

7:54

this with you. Okay, wonderful. This is

7:56

great. Twenty five years out. Let's see

7:58

how I do how I do. I

8:00

think I'll be three standard deviations

8:02

above what most people do. So

8:04

how about that? Some humility and

8:06

Samaritan. Yes. I've retained, I think,

8:08

more than your average bear, but

8:10

I'm probably wrong about what. Were

8:13

you excited about the physical enthrow,

8:15

the cultural enthrow, where you like

8:17

floor field? How did you do

8:19

it? Yeah, so I deeply regret

8:21

what I did, which is I

8:23

was enamored and intoxicated with the

8:25

excitement of cultural anthropology and learning

8:28

the kind of fiqueur. modern primitive

8:30

that was exciting but as I got

8:32

into it I was like oh no

8:34

no I'm way more interested in physical

8:36

anthros specifically evolutionary biology I found that

8:38

I left with I need to know

8:40

more how we ended up as a

8:42

species before I study what the species

8:44

then did culturally yes what was your

8:46

route I went to Penn State not

8:48

having any real idea what I

8:51

wanted to do. I took a

8:53

seminar in human evolution that was

8:55

co-taught by a cultural guy and

8:57

a sociobiologist, bio-anthro guy, and the

8:59

cultural guy, the post-modern stuff, it

9:01

kind of passed him by, and

9:03

he was not into that. And

9:06

so he was a good foil

9:08

for the evolutionary guy because they

9:10

both kind of saw things sort

9:12

of the same way. Cultural anthro

9:14

and bioan can be very at

9:16

odds. trajectory, you can't talk to

9:18

the physical answer. I don't even actually

9:21

want you speaking to them. Yes. So

9:23

there's a lot of that kind of

9:25

schism still now, but luckily for me,

9:27

these guys complimented each other well, and

9:29

that class just lit my hair on

9:32

fire. Yeah. I mean, it was amazing.

9:34

My parents were both high school teachers.

9:36

It was a home where we talked

9:38

a lot about ideas and had arguments

9:40

that were good arguments. It was really

9:43

fun. Yeah. But there's such good

9:45

training looking. and this evolutionary deep time perspective.

9:47

And all these quirks and weird things about

9:49

you think, oh, but actually there's a reason

9:51

for those. That's what was illuminating to me.

9:53

First, I'll say even before, Anthony was a

9:56

Western SIF class, learning how did we get

9:58

to where I woke up in. for

10:00

Michigan 1925 and I was prescribed

10:02

all these things. How arbitrary are

10:04

they? Where do they come from?

10:06

That was like, oh wow, there's

10:08

an actual explanation for why we're

10:10

doing everything the way we're doing.

10:12

And then you reverse from there.

10:14

It's like, oh, and there's an

10:16

even greater explanation. And then the

10:18

physical part is the grand explanation.

10:20

Just in your intro, I'm really

10:22

glad at how you lay this

10:24

out because one of my great

10:26

interests was always these differences and

10:28

populations. from Asia because they have a

10:31

distanciser and only Asians have a distanciser

10:33

and soda native. That's a really cool

10:35

hard bit of evidence clue. I like

10:37

that. And for people to know the

10:40

history of anthropology, there was a field

10:42

called anthropometry. which studied specifically differences between

10:44

people and was heavily weaponized and used

10:47

during the Nazi era. Oh, completely. Fed

10:49

completely into the whole eugenics, the big

10:51

push was that. So that kind of

10:53

went away with good reason. It was

10:56

being terribly exploited for the wrong reasons.

10:58

But my interest was always not from

11:00

any place of superiority, just a deep

11:02

curiosity of how we could have these

11:05

variations within the same species. Right. And

11:07

you begin talking about the ways that...

11:10

Populations differ, or even just

11:12

more fundamentally how people differ. And

11:14

because of that really dark history,

11:16

people get nervous right away. Yeah.

11:18

The sort of superpower that an

11:20

anthropology background gives you is you

11:22

spend four years in college, in

11:24

college, in college, in college, in

11:26

college, talking about this, trying to

11:28

dissect, people are different. Yeah. That's

11:30

a good thing. How and why?

11:32

How is it adaptive to where

11:34

they live? Yes. And how much

11:36

of its noise and how much

11:38

of its... and debunking racism. Yeah, and

11:40

I think right now, when I look at social

11:42

media world, which has gotten even weirder

11:44

recently, the only people who want to

11:46

talk about difference that way are the

11:49

race realist. That's a new word for eugenics.

11:51

What do they call it? Race realism.

11:53

Race realists, this kind of thing. We

11:55

understand that there's differences between

11:57

races. Like they're telling the

11:59

truth about. Exactly, yes, I doubt

12:01

they are. Exactly, it's really kind

12:04

of scary. And so you don't

12:06

have anybody with any real background

12:08

in how this works talking about

12:10

it because everybody's afraid to. So then

12:13

they get to come to the surface

12:15

so then they get to come to

12:17

the surface. So let's talk about it.

12:19

So then they get to come to

12:21

the surface. So let's talk about it

12:23

in a way that's evidence-based, that's on

12:25

packet. I think you have to start

12:28

with how the body works, right. your

12:30

physique is ever than yours or mine. How

12:32

does skin color work? Now we can understand

12:34

why skin colors differ. And it's not a

12:36

scary thing. This is the biology of it.

12:39

That's how we talk about it. Yeah, so

12:41

the book, Adaptable, aims to educate you on

12:43

how your body works. But instead of it

12:45

just being a straight. biology textbook, there's

12:48

going to be exploration of the lifestyle

12:50

of the people, the landscape, the local

12:52

adaptations. So it's a very fun lens

12:54

to look at it. So I guess,

12:57

let's just start with the history of

12:59

us as humans. Oh yeah, well, we're

13:01

part of the Great A Family Tree.

13:03

Our lineage kind of busts out about

13:06

seven million years ago, breaks away from

13:08

the lineage that becomes chimps and bonobos.

13:10

But the first 5 million years, I

13:12

think of it, is basically the Ewok

13:15

chapter of human evolution. You're walking on

13:17

two legs, but you're furry and kind

13:19

of ape-like. Are you fully bipedal? Well,

13:21

the people argue, let's just say yes.

13:24

Okay. earliest ones probably have a grasping

13:26

foot. We see that in a couple

13:28

of these, like Artipithicus. That's changed since

13:31

you left. Yeah, I know A. A.

13:33

F. Hrenzis. Oh, so I was nine

13:35

years out. Yeah, I don't know. There

13:37

you go. He's walking on two legs.

13:40

He's the first one to walk on

13:42

two legs. So as far as we can tell,

13:44

the earliest, earliest ones, even before that one,

13:46

are walking on two legs. The evidence for

13:48

that is, if you look at the skull

13:50

of one of the earliest fossils we have,

13:52

you can figure out the orientation of the

13:54

spinal column. And if it comes straight down

13:57

out of the head, vertical, then it's probably

13:59

on two legs. and if it comes towards out

14:01

of the back, then it's probably in question.

14:03

So that's kind of the kind of ways

14:05

they put these things together. Isn't it neat?

14:07

I love that stuff. The osteology class was

14:09

my favorite one in all of physical after

14:12

all. So austral of pithocene is no longer

14:14

the earliest one. Now you're already two million

14:16

years. This is humiliating. Can I just add

14:18

my favorite one was gigantic? Yeah, but that's

14:20

like our long-lost Asian cousin. Right, that was

14:22

in Asia. That was a giant bipet. Still

14:24

is the biggest ape ever. Wow, how big?

14:26

Wait, wait, wait, twice the size of a

14:28

gorilla or something crazy like that. They're really,

14:31

really big. Think Bigfoot. Some of these

14:33

people are really grasping for Bigfoot to

14:35

be real. Yeah, they like the Jacobists.

14:37

Yes. There's a wonderful story of a

14:39

professor, I think he's in Idaho, who

14:42

did his whole PhD on very normal

14:44

anatomy and questions in anthropology. And then

14:46

once he had tenure, he was like,

14:48

yes. Let's party. And that was like

14:51

all about Bigfoot. I was like, I

14:53

have respect for that. How tall was

14:55

the... Shaky in them. Yeah, see. We

14:57

can fact check it. This is

14:59

the fun stuff. Carillas aren't that

15:01

tall. No, but they're 450 pounds.

15:03

Right. I don't know, six feet

15:05

tall. Let's go six feet tall.

15:07

I had a guess. I'm not

15:09

sure how much full skeletons of

15:11

it either we have. We have

15:14

mostly cranial dental stuff, heads and

15:16

teeth. 9.8 feet. 9.8 feet, let's

15:18

go! You want the source? I

15:20

can see it on your face.

15:22

I do. I do. Britannica? Yeah.

15:24

Oh, you just should have Britannica.

15:26

They got their other sponsor. Wikipedia says

15:28

12 feet. Wow. No, no, no, no.

15:30

Yeah. Okay, so I sidetracked you. Okay,

15:33

so seven million years ago. That's right.

15:35

And so you got these bipeds, they're

15:37

walking on two legs, but they've got

15:39

grasping feet for at least for the

15:42

first couple million years. Then you get

15:44

Lucy, and Alshlepithicus Aphorensis, and that's another

15:46

very successful chapter. Not everyone knows about

15:48

Lucy. Okay. She came out of the riff valley, right? Yeah, so

15:50

she's one of the earliest, let's say full skeleton that we ever

15:53

found. So it's not just a head, and it's not just a

15:55

head, and it's not just a head, and it's not just a

15:57

tooth. You can kind of just a tooth. You can kind of

15:59

a tooth. It was a really big deal

16:01

and it's just been 50 years since

16:04

that discovery actually. And it was named

16:06

after his wife? It was named after

16:08

Lucy and the Skyla Diamond which was

16:10

playing on the radio as they were.

16:13

Louis sleepy? Is that who found it?

16:15

No no no this is an up

16:17

in Ethiopia and they named Lucy after

16:20

this song. The Beatles song. Wow wonderful.

16:22

Yeah yeah yeah. Anthropology is a cool.

16:24

Very. Yeah the name and after drug

16:26

songs and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. So specifically.

16:29

I'm Lucy. But again, I mean,

16:31

it's still very ape-like. As far

16:33

as we can tell in terms

16:35

of diet and stuff, eating almost

16:37

all plants, there's some interesting ideas

16:40

these days that they might have

16:42

had some very simple tools maybe,

16:44

but things don't really shift away

16:46

from like an ape-like kind of

16:48

way of like an ape-like kind

16:51

of way of life until you

16:53

get hunting and gathering, and that

16:55

changes everything because, I mean, just

16:57

think about... what it means to have

16:59

a species that does two different things.

17:01

No other species does that. There are

17:04

species that kind of generalize any individual

17:06

bear, for example. We'll eat fruits and

17:08

we'll hunt a little bit. And so

17:10

they're generalists. But there's no other species

17:12

that half of the group. Does one

17:15

thing? Acts like a carnivore. The other

17:17

half acts like an herbivore and gets

17:19

plant foods. And then so you get

17:21

the advantages of both. Then you have

17:24

to share it? Yeah. Animals don't like

17:26

to share, right? Very rarely. And in

17:28

fact, even apes don't share much. Well,

17:30

for sex trade, they do. Yeah. Very

17:33

specific context. And very little in terms

17:35

of total amounts. No one throws it

17:37

into a big pot, other than lions,

17:39

maybe. Yeah, social carnivores. That's the best.

17:41

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That has permeated everything.

17:44

So I come in here and I don't

17:46

know you guys, but you don't kill me.

17:48

That's crazy. That is nuts. And then

17:50

you offer me food. Wow. Think about

17:52

that. And any time you have a

17:55

celebration, you're sharing food. That's the fabric

17:57

of what humans are all about. And

17:59

then. What's fun about that is it's

18:01

just the snowball of social complexity,

18:04

intellectual complexity, all of a

18:06

sudden brains are not just figuring out

18:08

where the food is, and not just

18:10

figuring out maybe who to mate with,

18:12

but they're doing all these calculations about

18:14

who's in my group, who's a friend,

18:16

who's an ally, who I can trust,

18:18

who I can't trust. Then you have

18:20

all the forging stuff on top of

18:23

that, and the complexity just snowballs. And

18:25

you see the tools develop with that,

18:27

so over the past two million

18:29

years. to more complex to multi-piece

18:31

tools to iPhones. It wraps it

18:33

up quickly. Yes. Do we have

18:35

any sense? Could you determine this

18:37

from the archaeological record? When does

18:40

mate selection shift from a game

18:42

of size to perhaps a game

18:44

of savvy and aptitude and hunting,

18:46

aptitude and gathering? The easiest way

18:48

to track that would be size

18:51

dimorphism. So in a gorilla, for

18:53

example. Males are twice as big

18:55

as females and it's because they

18:57

basically just fight over who has access

18:59

to the group of females. And they're

19:01

going to just increasingly get bigger and

19:04

bigger and bigger at infinitum because the

19:06

biggest one will have access and pass

19:08

on its big genes and just keeps

19:10

going up. Male lions just keep getting

19:12

bigger than female lions. Yeah, so that's

19:14

a funny piece about human sexual biology

19:16

is that... there is less sexual dimorphism

19:18

than even in Lucy. So Lucy is

19:20

still pretty significant sexual dimorphism. She's tiny,

19:22

the males are not tiny. Right. And

19:25

so there's a probably a lot of

19:27

male male competition. That's what you'd have

19:29

to infer. And you get to our

19:31

genus, the genus Homo, and that all

19:33

of the sudden isomorphism that we see

19:35

today. Is it only 5 to 10%?

19:37

It depends on the metric. So in

19:39

terms of height, probably about 10% in

19:41

terms of strength, in terms of strength,

19:44

In humans males are just competing against

19:46

males for mates females are competing as

19:48

females for mates. That's another obvious piece

19:50

that's very different. I'm sure that there's

19:52

some kind of interesting female competition happening

19:54

within chimps for example, but it's subtle.

19:56

It's mostly inherited status. So females in

19:58

chimpanzees they leave so they can't. inherit status

20:00

for mom because mom's not there. They

20:03

grow up in a community when they

20:05

hit puberty they go to the other

20:07

community. So females are always new, males

20:09

stay, and the males are duking it

20:11

out for where they are in the

20:13

hierarchy. And there's friendships too,

20:15

it's not all mean. So man bonobos

20:18

for example, it's a bit different. Female

20:20

groups are dominant to males in

20:22

bonobos. A males rank has everything

20:24

to do with mom and his

20:26

best female friends. So matriarchy. We

20:28

do see that dimorphism start to shrink.

20:30

You can call that a move

20:33

away from pure physical competition to

20:35

more intellectual competition. Okay, so we're

20:37

super unique in the fact that

20:39

we have split up the food

20:41

gathering. What else is unique? Obviously,

20:43

the way we rear young. The

20:45

intellectual complexity that kind of

20:47

runs away and becomes these huge brains

20:49

that are three times the size of

20:51

a chimpanzee brain. You end up having

20:53

to learn so much to be a successful

20:55

adult. that childhood gets strung out.

20:57

So there's this 15-year, 20-year gap

20:59

between being born and being a

21:02

capable human. No other species is

21:04

like that. You were saying your

21:06

daughter's seventh birthday party, all the

21:08

seven-year-olds there, if they were any

21:10

other animal, would be grandparents at

21:12

that age. Oh my God. Yeah,

21:14

that's so wild. Isn't that fun? That's a great

21:16

way to think about it. It is. And our frontal

21:19

lobes aren't even developed until 25, so it

21:21

takes us 25 years. So there's this long

21:23

period where adults are working harder than they have

21:25

to to feed themselves because they have to bring

21:27

enough food home not just to share with everybody,

21:29

but if you were just sharing with other adults

21:31

that we're all... It's kind of a one-to-one.

21:33

Yeah, but because you're also trying

21:36

to feed all the young ones,

21:38

now you've got to get even

21:40

more than you had to get

21:42

before, so it changes the whole

21:44

economics of all the calorie gathering,

21:46

basically the food gathering, and we

21:48

have these extended childhoods, because of

21:50

how much there is to learn,

21:52

because of how much there is

21:54

to learn, because of how complex

21:57

we get. And as people, I

21:59

think, get... wrong about it is to

22:01

understand how the human brain works. We are

22:03

born unfinished and you have to be born

22:05

unfinished because there's so much to learn that

22:07

your brain's job is to learn how to

22:09

work in its culture today. Can't be hardwired

22:11

because it's going to change so quickly that

22:14

if you'd sort of genetically encoded what you're

22:16

supposed to learn that wouldn't work because it

22:18

won't work next generation. It won't be adaptive.

22:20

That's right. So your brain comes in completely

22:22

unfinished. And you spend 15 years literally constructing

22:25

your brain, because every time you make a

22:27

new memory, you're plugging neurons together, you're taking

22:29

other ones apart. Building this neural network. Yeah.

22:31

We measure something like IQ, and we think,

22:33

oh, that's something inherited about the brain. It

22:35

can be, if it's a really controlled setting,

22:37

you could begin to understand how well a

22:40

brain builds or doesn't build those connections. But

22:42

pretty much if you compare across people

22:44

or across cultures. What you're measuring is the

22:46

content that got built in there. It's a

22:48

content measure. It's not a ability measure. And

22:50

then you factor in nutrition too. We were

22:53

with Bill Gates in India and one of

22:55

his main thrusts is these gaps. As much

22:57

as like 30% of your intelligence can be

22:59

missed if you're not hitting your nutritional goals

23:01

in certain windows of your life. Like it's

23:03

pretty dramatic the impact of nutrition. The brain

23:06

is the most expensive organ in the body.

23:08

And when you are five years old is

23:10

at its peak. Need something like half

23:12

of your resting energy expenditure the

23:14

calories burning minute by minute as

23:16

you just rest there as a

23:18

kid are going to your brain.

23:20

Well, yeah, proportionally, you look at

23:22

a baby's head, it's a third

23:24

of its fucking bean. Yes. And

23:26

inside what's going on is even

23:28

more active than it would be

23:30

as an adult. Right. Because of

23:32

all the connections that are being

23:34

sold. organ. It's a ass off.

23:37

Yeah, that's right. To this baseline

23:39

knowledge. It's so cute. And when

23:41

they're cranky, it's like, of course,

23:43

they're going to try to shield

23:45

your brain. But there's only so

23:47

much you can do. Okay, so

23:49

are you leaning towards... In 2000,

23:52

the two most promising explanations for

23:54

our explosion intelligence was one is

23:56

our groups are growing in size

23:58

in the complex. of the group

24:00

and the facial recognition, all these different

24:03

things, and knowing where you're at, hierarchically,

24:05

was going to predict your mating success,

24:07

and that was driving it. And then

24:09

there's this other kind of fruit-based, I

24:12

never loved that one, were we, are

24:14

still, are still, kind of fruit-based. I

24:16

never loved that one, were we? Are

24:19

those still the two, still the two

24:21

debates? Are we, are those, still the

24:23

two, still the two debates? Are we,

24:25

are, are, are you going to be

24:28

good at tech? Yeah, that's right. That's

24:30

working out pretty well for a lot of

24:32

them actually. Because they're good at the other

24:34

part of it, which is the foraging piece.

24:37

Today's foraging is getting a job that you

24:39

can bring home resources, right? Right. So you

24:41

got to be able to do both. If

24:43

you look across all primates, the biggest brain

24:45

species are the ones that have the hardest

24:48

job to do figuring out how to go

24:50

get food. It's not the ones of the

24:52

biggest social groups. Oh right, because like homodrised

24:54

baboons have bigger groups than... Exactly, but that

24:57

doesn't mean that in any one case, it's

24:59

not a combination of things. You get

25:01

these big trends and then the one-off

25:03

cases like humans are the extreme one-off

25:06

case. There's nothing else like us. Right.

25:08

So there's no silver bullet explanation. It's

25:10

just perhaps some combination of different... Yeah,

25:12

and speaking of tech, I'll say that

25:15

in my line of work, you get

25:17

emails regularly, dear Dr. Here's how it

25:19

all works together. And here's the silver

25:21

bullet thing that nobody's thought of, and

25:24

it's just the one thing, and the

25:26

proportion of those emails from engineers and

25:28

retired doctors is disproportionate to their numbers,

25:30

to their numbers, to their numbers, on

25:33

their numbers, on their numbers, and their

25:35

numbers on the grade. Yeah. And I

25:37

give them credit for spending time thinking

25:39

about this stuff. It's fun to think

25:41

about this stuff. It's fun to think

25:44

it's fun to think about it must

25:46

just be. This one thing and it's

25:48

never one thing is it? Yeah, right.

25:50

Yes, it's very comforting that there would

25:53

be a single explanation and it would

25:55

be definitive Yeah, right. Okay. So our

25:57

intelligence starts taking a leap. How is

26:00

that graft, is it totally linear or

26:02

is it more of a hockey stick?

26:04

Like when we go from homeoy rectus

26:06

to, I know Neanderthals have a 1650

26:08

CC brain, it was enormous, bigger than

26:10

ours. How gradual is that? The hockey

26:12

stick inflection point is when you start

26:14

hunting and gathering. And then from there

26:16

on out, it's been just a climb.

26:18

The way that we're figuring this out

26:21

is we're going to the field, we're

26:23

digging up fossils, we're measuring the skull

26:25

sizes, I've had a chance to do

26:27

some of that, that's really fun work.

26:29

It's like putting the frames of a

26:31

movie back together, only it's a two

26:33

million year long movie, even if you

26:36

had a two million year long movie,

26:38

even if you had a hundred frames,

26:40

that's not enough. Now, and also part

26:42

of your work was, you learned on

26:45

the biological side. There's a fun story

26:47

there that the first project I did

26:49

with them. was measuring energy expenditures, metabolic

26:51

rates, how many calories you burn? For

26:53

your book burn? It ended up in

26:56

burn, that's exactly right. This is fascinating,

26:58

because I think we would all assume

27:00

this group that is walking all

27:02

day long, they're averaging 19,000 steps

27:04

for the dudes and 16,000 steps,

27:06

and then they're busy all day

27:08

long. They don't domesticate any animals,

27:10

any plants, they're doing it. Right,

27:12

right. You think of yourself as

27:14

burning a couple thousand calories a

27:16

day or something? I don't know enough about

27:19

these types of things, but yeah, I think that

27:21

would be a very natural common guess. They're

27:23

five times as active as me. Yeah, I

27:25

would imagine double. That's right. Yeah, yeah. But

27:27

nobody had measured it. Lots of estimations about

27:29

what that would look like. It kind of

27:31

feeds into questions about what that would look

27:34

like. It kind of feeds into questions. It's

27:36

right. Yeah, yeah. But nobody measured it. Lots

27:38

of estimations about what that would look like.

27:40

It kind of feeds into. It kind of,

27:42

like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like,

27:44

like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like,

27:46

like, like, like, like, Nothing. It's just estimates, you

27:48

know, like, you don't really know any of this stuff.

27:51

Let's go see. And so a couple of collaborators and

27:53

I went. One of the guys I work with is

27:55

Brian Wood. He's at UCLA now. You're all my mom.

27:57

Okay, great. He must be a genius. Yes, of course.

27:59

He spent more. nights in a hodza camp

28:01

in the past 10 years or

28:03

20 years, then he's probably spent

28:05

at home. He's there a lot.

28:07

We go and we do this

28:09

project and we're measuring energy expenditures.

28:12

We're measuring how many calories you

28:15

burn every day over about a week,

28:17

week and a half. And we use

28:19

this isotope tracking technique. It's the best,

28:22

coolest way to do it. It's the

28:24

best, coolest way to do it. We

28:26

use this isotope tracking technique. You drink

28:28

a half glass full of water, so

28:31

water is H2O. Some of the Hs

28:33

are different, some of the O's are

28:35

different, they're different versions of

28:37

those elements. And you can track

28:40

that if you took a water

28:42

sample and put it in a

28:44

mass spectrometer. That's a machine that

28:46

would measure how much of those

28:48

different elements were there. You can

28:50

use it like tracers, basically. You

28:52

drink some of that water, and

28:54

over time, you're going to flush

28:56

as H2O. But it turns out you also lose

28:59

oxygen that you drink. It gets mixed up

29:01

with all the oxygen and carbon dioxide that you're

29:03

making in your body. And you end up breathing

29:05

out those oxygens as CO2 as well. So

29:07

those oxygen elements, oxygen isotopes get lost two ways.

29:09

The hydrogenized stub only gets lost one way.

29:11

If you look at the difference and rate of

29:14

loss, you can figure out how much carbon

29:16

dioxide the body's making. That's calories

29:18

today. Wow. That is cool. Carbon dioxide is the exhaust.

29:20

That's exactly right. Of metabolic activity. You cannot burn calories without

29:22

making CO2. You cannot make CO2 without burning calories. It's the

29:24

measure. It's not a whoop or a fitbed. Yes, we're not

29:27

estimating at all. This is a real measure. Yes, we're not

29:29

estimating at all. This is a real measure. Yes, we're not

29:31

estimating at all. This is a real measure. We're not estimating

29:33

at all. This is a real. This is a real. We're

29:35

not estimating at all. Yes, we're estimating at all. We're estimating

29:37

at all. This is at all. We're estimating at all. You

29:40

have. Yeah, you have. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. We're

29:42

estimating at estimating at estimating at all. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

29:44

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We're estimating. Yeah. We're estimating.

29:46

Yeah. Yeah. We're estimating. Yeah. We're estimating. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah

29:48

But I wasn't running as well. So you probably

29:50

more like 3,000 a day. Typical American male burns

29:53

3,000 calories a day. Typical American woman is going

29:55

to burn 2,400 calories a day. Yes, because you're

29:57

lazy. If I had a guess, that's what you're

29:59

burning. I know the real answer.

30:01

What's the real answer? The only

30:04

real relation hardcore is your non-fat

30:06

mass. So your muscle and your

30:08

organs, as you plot that and

30:10

you plot calorie consumption, it's spot

30:12

on. When we're observing the difference

30:15

between males and females, all we're

30:17

really observing is the difference in

30:19

our body composition. That men have

30:21

X amount, well in this case

30:23

24 divided by 3,000. That's probably

30:26

the exact difference in non-fat body

30:28

mass. That's right. So we go

30:30

there, we do this study, we live

30:32

in hods of land for a summer,

30:34

basically it's a big camping trip with

30:36

scientific equipment, doing these measurements, hanging out,

30:39

going on, hunts, going on, gathering, outings,

30:41

it's really amazing. Yeah, is it fun?

30:43

It's so fun. And the people are

30:45

just generous wonderful folks. Bow and arrow,

30:48

and what are they getting? Gazels and

30:50

stuff? Picture, National Geographic, Savannah, that's it,

30:52

Zebra. Draft. Did you eat some zebra?

30:54

I've had different animal foods, whatever they

30:56

would bring home. I've had zebra. Do

30:59

you have a favorite? None of it

31:01

tastes as good as a cow, huh?

31:03

Pots of cuisine is not really a

31:05

thing. It's not fatty any of those

31:08

animals. A and B, it's just the

31:10

meat, it's just the meat. There's no

31:12

seasoning, any of those animals. A, and

31:14

B, it's just the meat, in one

31:17

day. A, and B, it's just just

31:19

the meat, strips and the hang here

31:21

from the trees. A camp is about

31:23

12 or 20. Sometimes it's even smaller,

31:26

but let's say a dozen grass houses

31:28

in a nice part of the savanna

31:30

and the whole camp just kind of smells

31:32

like a butcher shop for a week. Wow.

31:34

Wow. Do they have any elevated rates? Probably

31:37

less of animal born bacteria. It isn't rampant.

31:39

Any of these subsistence groups, if you look

31:41

at hunter gathers, you look at farmers. Paracites

31:43

are like a part of life, and so

31:46

I'm sure they have them more than I

31:48

hope us three have them I don't know

31:50

yeah, but no it doesn't affect their day

31:52

to day. I read this result and I

31:54

found it quite depressing. Oh, right, so we

31:57

haven't got the result yet. We take the

31:59

samples home. They get analyzed at a

32:01

lab at Baylor. The internationally leading guy

32:03

in this technique sends me the data

32:05

back. And I'm just so excited about

32:07

it because we're going to find out

32:10

the burning double the calories. It's going

32:12

to be so cool to see. And

32:14

nope, it's the same. So they as

32:16

getting more activity in a day than

32:18

typical American gets in a week are burning the same

32:20

number of calories every day as the American. Total shocker, right? That's the

32:23

best. Yeah. And so I went back to the guy, Bill Wong is

32:25

the one who did it. I said, Bill, did we screw it up?

32:27

Yeah, this can't be right. And he said, no, no, the data, yeah,

32:29

because there's internal checks they can do it. They look great. And I

32:31

said, then what's going on? And he goes, well, we see this sometimes.

32:33

And I go, we see this sometimes. They're more efficient. And I go,

32:35

well, we see this sometimes. They're more efficient sometimes. They're more efficient. They're

32:37

more efficient. And I go. They're more efficient. They're more efficient. And I

32:40

go. They're more efficient. They're more efficient. They're more efficient. And I go.

32:42

They're more efficient. They're more efficient. And I go. They're more efficient. They're

32:44

more efficient. They're more efficient. And I go. They're more efficient. They're more

32:46

efficient. And I go. They're more efficient. They're Like, well, that's not an

32:48

explanation. And so that's been the last 15 years of my

32:50

career. A big part of it

32:52

has been trying to understand this

32:54

phenomenon because it's not just them,

32:56

we've done this in other cultures,

32:58

we've done this in other species,

33:00

and activity doesn't sort of link

33:02

up with your daily expenditure, a

33:05

little simple way that people think

33:07

it does. Stay tuned for more

33:09

armchair expert, if you dare. But

33:18

it doesn't reject the hard fast rules calories

33:20

and calories out. Not at all. You're embracing

33:22

that like if you eat 2,000 calories and

33:24

you only burn a thousand you will have

33:26

a surplus turned into fat. 100% vice versa

33:29

the other way. So how do you make

33:31

it jive within that system? I think what

33:33

it does is it helps explain why people

33:35

have such trouble doing the calories and calories

33:37

out thing. First of all, it's hard to

33:40

know how many calories you're eating. And then

33:42

secondly. it's very hard to know how many

33:44

calories you're burning because it isn't just how

33:46

active you are right it turns out yeah

33:48

okay now it's like well yeah it's calories and calories

33:51

out but good luck tracking either of those things it

33:53

sort of sends you back to square one of like

33:55

how do I find a way to do this if

33:57

I'm really worried about diet and diet's the best way

34:00

to handle your weight, which is true.

34:02

Then, okay, then how do I find

34:04

a way to do that? Is

34:06

it because they are expending so

34:08

much energy that the body is

34:10

figuring out a way to conserve

34:12

the oxygen? It's figuring out a

34:14

way to conserve the oxygen. It's

34:16

figuring out a way to conserve

34:18

energy. It's figuring out a way

34:20

to conserve energy. It's figuring out

34:22

a way to conserve energy. It's

34:24

figuring out a way to conserve.

34:26

calories on the activity, there's no

34:28

secrets there. The fact that the

34:30

total number of calories a day

34:32

is no different than everybody else

34:34

means there has to be something

34:36

else going on in the all the other things

34:38

that your body's doing, saving energy here, there,

34:41

squirling it away, and that's interesting. So an

34:43

analogy to that would be really physically active

34:45

people here in the States versus inactive people. Right.

34:47

When we look at them, what we notice is

34:49

people who are really physically active, they have less

34:51

inflammation, but what's that your immune

34:54

system isn't as active. Oh, okay,

34:56

so we're saving some calories there

34:58

maybe. Your reproductive hormones aren't as

35:00

sky high. They're actually really high

35:02

in the sedentary Americans versus like

35:04

the hodge, for example. Or this

35:06

is why you have Olympic athletes that

35:08

don't get their period for years.

35:10

Yes, that's true. But on the

35:12

way there, there's a very healthy point

35:14

where your estrogen levels might not

35:16

be as high as somebody who's

35:18

sedentary, and maybe that's a good

35:20

thing. All signs point to that is

35:22

a good thing. Your heart rate's going to

35:25

go up, but less. You're going to have

35:27

the smaller stress response. And if you measure

35:29

how much cortisol you make all day or

35:32

how much epinephrine your body makes all day,

35:34

it's less if you are physically active. Yeah.

35:36

Now, have we gotten good at monitoring how

35:38

many calories the brain is consuming while intensely

35:41

active? I have to imagine if you're crunching

35:43

numbers and computing, that activity is going to

35:45

burn more calories than watching TV. It's kind

35:47

of a disappointing amount. They do these tests

35:50

where they have people play like chess against

35:52

a... a game that's tuned just to be just a

35:54

little bit better than them. So they're working their asses

35:56

off and they're struggling, they lose anyway, must be very

35:58

frustrating. And he's like four counts. calories an hour

36:01

is nothing. It's like a couple M&M's. So

36:03

it's not like you could say this brain

36:05

economy is a kind of one-to-one to this

36:07

physical activity. Probably not. Probably the brain is

36:10

one of the pieces that's not getting touched.

36:12

You can't really mess with it. And that's

36:14

because most of what your brain is doing

36:16

is completely off of your radar.

36:18

It's all the organizational stuff. Housekeeping

36:20

stuff. What you found is that

36:23

there is a pretty narrow margin

36:25

that the body wants to operate

36:27

in metabolically. Yeah, it's working to

36:29

keep you within an arrow range.

36:31

Sometimes it gets misinterpreted like, oh,

36:33

there's no effective exercise at all.

36:36

No, there's no effective exercise at

36:38

all. No, there can be. Sometimes

36:40

there can be some interpreted like,

36:42

oh, there's no effective exercise at

36:44

all. No, there can be. Sometimes

36:46

you can be sometimes exercise. One

36:48

would expect. and the extra calories

36:51

that you expect to burn. And

36:53

the body hasn't found its way

36:55

to homeostasis yet. But if you're

36:57

doing a lot of weight training,

37:00

we get into this non-fat body

37:02

mass, or we are gonna see

37:04

a direct result to your metabolism.

37:06

Yeah, so when we say no

37:09

more calories than somebody else, when

37:11

we say no more calories than

37:13

somebody else, those are all sort

37:15

of size adjusted for size. So

37:18

that's right, if you build more.

37:20

Muscle for example, yeah, you'll burn

37:22

more calories just because you are

37:24

big. Your body can only just

37:27

so much like these body billers

37:29

are walking around 300 pounds of

37:31

lean muscle. Their body's not going

37:34

to hit a homeyostasis where they

37:36

only consume 3,000 calories a day.

37:38

They'll go up. So that's a

37:40

fun one. The other challenge to

37:43

this idea is like, well, what

37:45

about the torto france? You're burning

37:47

8,000 calories a day. 8,000 calories.

37:49

three weeks. That would be 75

37:52

days of normal caloric output in

37:54

21 days. The body can't adjust

37:56

to that, right? It's gonna need

37:58

those 9,000 calories. there are periods

38:00

of the body that can at least for

38:02

some short-term time really crank it up.

38:05

You see that with those guys and we

38:07

see it with pregnancy interestingly. Yeah so that's

38:09

the fun thing. The ceiling kind of comes

38:11

down and it's analogous to you can sprint

38:14

for 10 seconds or you can sprint for

38:16

10 seconds or you can jog for an

38:18

hour. The sprint for an hour. The sprint

38:21

for 10 seconds or you can jog for

38:23

nine months is pregnancy. We call it a

38:25

metabolic ceiling to how many calories your body

38:27

can possibly burn. is higher for a short-term

38:29

thing, but gets regressively lower and kind of

38:32

squeezes down to about two and a half

38:34

times your base metabolic rate. I guess I'm

38:36

just curious how much it goes up during

38:38

pregnancy. It goes up maybe 20-30% but that's

38:40

because of the size change. It's all proportional.

38:42

That's right. It remains proportional. So that's kind

38:45

of fun to think about. So when your

38:47

heart rates above 150, there's no hacking

38:49

there. Your body's never going to adjust

38:51

to that. Not in the moment, surely,

38:53

no. You're burning those calories right then.

38:55

Yeah, so even if you do it

38:57

for a prolonged period of time, your

38:59

body's never going to be at 150

39:01

beats per minute and only burning the

39:04

amount of calories one would burn it.

39:06

80 beats. That's right. The adjustment seems

39:08

to be happening in the other times.

39:10

The non-exercise moments. Yes, exactly. Do you

39:12

think you can feel that? The stress

39:14

response, for example, I think you can

39:16

feel that. who knows how that's affecting

39:18

the brain exactly, but I think the

39:20

mood impacts. You're seeing that regulation that's

39:23

happening from exercise touches everything. Yeah, we

39:25

know it's directly related, but we've never

39:27

had a great explanation for why. Yeah.

39:29

My explanation was always like, oh, we

39:31

were designed to go to physical activity

39:33

and get a serotonin reward. And in

39:36

the absence of any of that physical

39:38

activity, the brain's like, I'm not giving

39:40

you that. So that was always my

39:42

explanation, but this one's interesting and compelling

39:44

and compelling as well. in a different

39:46

way. It's not just about putting your foot

39:49

on the gas pedal and raising the calories

39:51

burn. It can do that in a short

39:53

term and your body's going to adjust and

39:55

juggle the calories. Don't worry so much about

39:57

the calories. What the exercise is doing is

39:59

re-regulating how all the other systems work, because

40:01

they're all linked. So if

40:03

I start exercising more, I'm going

40:05

to affect all my other systems

40:07

in good ways. Yeah, you say

40:10

it kind of like calibrates and

40:12

puts in harmony all these different

40:14

systems. Yeah, it's like the rhythm

40:16

section. But if, okay, so instead

40:18

of working out, you could just

40:21

get scared a lot. Oh yeah, you

40:23

could pay someone to have the same

40:25

output. You need to drink the isotope,

40:27

though, so we know exactly. I actually

40:29

brought with me, now wouldn't that be

40:31

amazing if you could get like a

40:33

can of DLW, crack it open, isotope

40:35

water? Yeah, oh my god, that'd be

40:37

great. Wait, so people who have high

40:39

anxiety or panic stress and stuff, do

40:42

they burn more calories, just being anxious?

40:44

Yes. That's wild. Fun set of

40:46

studies done in the 90s. Yeah, somebody

40:48

just kind of hang out and

40:50

relax. The best part is, you

40:52

don't even have to scare them.

40:55

You get them when everybody thinks

40:57

that they're relaxed. Right. But then

40:59

you have them through the survey

41:01

afterwards, whatever the scale is, about

41:03

how anxious you are in general,

41:05

and people who are pinned out

41:08

on being anxious, have higher expenditures,

41:10

just resting, their body is just,

41:12

you have a higher resting, their

41:14

body is just, you have a

41:16

higher resting, their body is just,

41:18

you know, like, a higher resting heart

41:20

rate, and cortisol, and meat. It was

41:23

a low carb, high protein diet, and

41:25

this is people's religion. But what did

41:27

you find with the hodza? They don't

41:29

eat a paleo diet, which is hilarious,

41:31

because they're actually hunting a gathering. There

41:33

is no single one diet that hunter-gatherers.

41:36

If you look across the globe, you'll

41:38

find people on any mix of animal

41:40

and plant foods across time, across space,

41:42

you see anything. The real paleo diet

41:44

would be whatever is there. 100% fish

41:46

in some cases. So the hods have actually

41:49

quite a lot of carbs in their diet.

41:51

We see that again and again and again.

41:53

This idea that the only way to be

41:55

paleo or the true paleo is low carb.

41:57

Sorry, that's not really true. Yeah, these tubers

41:59

are very starchy. And when it's not

42:01

tubers, it's berries, and when it's not

42:03

tubers and berries, it's honey. There we

42:05

go. Yeah, you said 10 to 20%

42:08

of their calories are straight honey. Fucking

42:10

water and sugar. Yeah. People think that

42:12

honey is magical and it is kind

42:14

of wonderful, but it's just sugar and

42:17

water, man. Yeah. Hate to break it,

42:19

yeah. It is sugar and water. Tell

42:21

us about what is unique about

42:23

us, humans, heart and air supply.

42:25

Oh, that's fun. Oh. mammal set up

42:28

for hearts and lungs. We have a

42:30

four-chambered heart, all mammals got that. Our

42:32

lungs are driven by a diaphragm, the

42:34

muscle below your lungs that kind of

42:36

pushes them out and brings air in

42:39

and pushes air out, that's all the

42:41

same. But what we've done is we've

42:43

taken your larynx, that's the little voice

42:45

box, a little cartilage cup that you

42:47

can feel in your throat, and we've

42:49

brought it down in our necks low,

42:51

and that's because of the way that

42:53

we've been adapted to speak. appropriate

42:56

discussion for this. All this right here,

42:58

where I'm making air sound waves at

43:00

you, that means something to you. That's

43:02

crazy, first of all. Right. Transfering what's

43:04

in your brain to my brain with

43:06

air waves. But to get this range

43:08

of sounds, and particularly the vowel range.

43:10

you need to have a vocal track

43:13

that has kind of two components a

43:15

vertical part that comes up out of

43:17

your throat and then a horizontal component

43:19

that comes out of your mouth and

43:21

you shape those different things separately to

43:23

make different sounds by taking your larynx

43:25

and putting it down here in your larynx

43:27

and putting it down here in your throat

43:29

now you can choke that's dumb okay so

43:31

that's a new yes so a chimpanzee other

43:34

primates they have it up high their larynx

43:36

is up almost kind of behind their nose

43:38

is up kind of behind their nose God,

43:40

I experience is almost daily. I mean, I

43:42

take a deep breath for some reason, I

43:44

suck some food in there, and then I'm

43:46

dealing with it for 30 minutes. And even

43:48

cooler, deeper history, which is that, have you

43:50

ever wondered why food and air go in

43:52

the same place? Yeah, it's a bad design.

43:54

Yeah, it's a bad design. But you know what

43:56

it is, because when we were fish, there was

43:58

little air pouch called. a swim bladder that

44:01

helps fish stay buoyant. You ever

44:03

wonder how they stay upright and

44:05

know how deep or shallow to

44:08

be? Yeah. Because they can adjust

44:10

how much air is in this

44:12

swim bladder. And for them, it's

44:14

not lungs, it's just a little

44:17

pouch. But then as vertebrates move

44:19

on to land, that becomes lunging.

44:21

But then as vertebrates move on

44:23

to land, that becomes lungs. That's

44:26

the structure that gets all

44:28

vascularized. And that's your lungs. Wow. And

44:30

it all connects up to your mouth. And

44:32

now we want to have this vocal communication.

44:35

And there's been such strong selection

44:37

on that, that even though thousands of people

44:39

die in the United States alone, die every

44:41

year from choking. Yeah. It's a big cost.

44:43

Sure. That's a problem. But this is so

44:46

valuable. that evolution said, yeah, the net result

44:48

was still more kids having this, even with

44:50

the risk of dying. Isn't that crazy? Yeah.

44:52

The body's full of these wonderful things. So

44:55

it had nothing to do with our uprightness,

44:57

because I could also imagine when your quadrupedal,

44:59

your orientation is all different. So that ties

45:02

into when you run, you can run and

45:04

talk, and you can run and kind of

45:06

breathing different schedules. If you ever have some

45:08

fun with this, you can take a breath in

45:10

every two steps, not every two steps, or in

45:13

every step, and out every step, and out every

45:15

step, or in every three, depending on your pace.

45:17

You can change that up. A quadruped that's sprinting

45:19

can't do that, because every time its front feet

45:21

hit the ground, its gut slosh forward. push the

45:24

air out of his lungs. And then

45:26

every time it stretches back out, the

45:28

slushes back and the player back in.

45:31

So there's this idea that's actually my

45:33

PhD advisor built on this idea, it's

45:35

an old idea that goes back to

45:38

the 80s, that being bipedle made it

45:40

easier for us to become endurance runners that

45:42

could run down game. Because there are some

45:44

cultures even to today that will run an

45:46

animal to exhaustion. That's how they hunt. Like

45:48

wolves. Yeah, exactly. You know, we can kind

45:50

of run all these different speeds and still

45:52

be able to breathe fine. Whereas if you

45:54

are a quarterped, the range of speeds that

45:57

you're able to maintain and still be able

45:59

to breathe effect. is much more limited. And

46:01

so you can kind of push these, anyway,

46:03

that's the idea. Now, are there differences within

46:05

populations or no? About what? Or supplying our

46:07

heart. You don't see it in the vocal

46:09

track and that kind of thing, but what

46:11

you see is there's a bit player in

46:13

this whole system, which is the spleen. Monica,

46:15

do you know what the spleen does? Most

46:17

people don't. No, I just know it can explode

46:19

if you have mono. Yes. So it's mostly

46:21

like an immune system organ organ. It

46:23

tracks what's going on immunism-wise, but right, it

46:25

kind of seems expendable, maybe even get it

46:27

removed, it's not a big deal. It also

46:30

acts as a reserve tank for red blood

46:32

cells. And so there are people who live

46:34

at altitude and are always kind of oxygen

46:36

starved, their supplains get a little bit bigger

46:38

because it becomes this extra reserve red blood

46:40

cell thing for their blood to, you're red

46:42

blood cells, are the ones that carry oxygen.

46:44

Exactly. Exactly. And then there's this amazing case,

46:47

it's kind of documented. 2010 or so. There's

46:49

a population of folks called the Sama. You

46:51

can hear them written about it as the

46:53

Bajao as well, but they call themselves

46:55

the Sama. And they are basically hunter-gathers.

46:57

in the ocean. They spend their lives on

46:59

the ocean. This is South Pacific. So

47:01

Southeast Asia, the Philippines and islands up

47:03

in Indonesia now, they forage underwater so

47:05

they just kind of free dive. There's

47:07

no scuba or anything like that. They're

47:10

holding their breath. And you can imagine

47:12

in that very particular population there was

47:14

strong selection for can you hold your

47:16

breath a little bit longer? Are you

47:18

less likely to drown because you push

47:20

it too far? Yeah, yeah. And in

47:22

those folks, the gene variants that build

47:24

a bigger spleen have been favored, and

47:26

now they have bigger spleins, on average.

47:28

On what order? 30% bigger or?

47:30

Yeah, it's something like that's not

47:32

double, but it's just enough, right?

47:34

And the evolution's always working on

47:36

the margins like that. Yeah. Isn't

47:39

that so enough? Right. And the

47:41

evolution is always working on the

47:43

margins like that. Yeah. Usually the

47:45

selection pressures are kind of the

47:47

same like a heart and lungs.

47:49

It's kind of the same for

47:51

everybody and it's only in these

47:53

really small particular cases like underwater

47:55

foraging like living at altitude because think

47:57

what has to happen you have to have

47:59

selection pressures be stable for long

48:02

enough and relocalized that evolution will

48:04

say yes these particular gene variants now

48:06

are an advantage and stably so yeah

48:08

so that now things change most of

48:11

what we see when we look across

48:13

populations is kind of just slush and

48:15

slop and noise right and maybe not

48:18

even consistent long enough yes exactly exactly

48:20

okay what about how we eat we're

48:22

kind of talking about it already people

48:25

are really good eating whatever's around you

48:27

can tell from our teeth and our

48:29

guts, broadly speaking that we're ready for

48:31

a high quality diet. We don't have

48:34

to spend hours chewing grass, obviously, right?

48:36

We're good at stuff that's energy dense.

48:38

Cooking has actually changed our bodies completely.

48:40

A common argument from vegetarians is like,

48:42

look at our mouth. It doesn't resemble

48:44

a true omnivore's mouth. They're leaving out

48:46

that that's because we cook. Yes. That

48:48

makes energy in the food easier to

48:51

get easier to get at, easier to

48:53

chew in all these things. This is

48:55

a fun one too. We talked about

48:57

how once cultural complexity gets out of

48:59

hand and kind of snowballs, now the

49:01

brain is playing catch-up. You're born, trying

49:03

to fill the brain with all things that

49:05

you learn. You see this cultural inheritance, in

49:07

other words, you call it the dual inheritance

49:09

sometimes. You've got your DNA inheritance. We've also

49:12

got this cultural inheritance that's just as important.

49:14

And those things have to link up. Case

49:16

in point with cooking. There's no gene for

49:18

fire. There's no genetic varying for

49:20

fire, but our bodies need cooked

49:22

food. So the biological inheritance is

49:24

a digestive tract that requires cooked

49:27

food actually. Raw foodists have a

49:29

hard time even today with the weird amazingly

49:31

easy to adjust foods you get in the

49:33

supermarket. You could never be a raw foodist

49:35

on wild foods. It wouldn't work. So our

49:37

bodies need. cooked food and how to cook

49:39

and how to make fire is completely culturally

49:41

inherited. You don't come out knowing how to

49:43

start a fire. That's right. And so if

49:46

you don't put those things together, you're done.

49:48

Isn't that fun? I want to remark this

49:50

for the very end, get off book a

49:52

little bit. But yes, this is like, I

49:54

read behave, I don't know if you read

49:56

Sapolsky, I read Parsi, yeah, yeah. But that

49:58

one does a really great. job of

50:00

the nature-nurture debate is really a false

50:02

dichotomy. You can look so many times

50:05

where there's so interwoven you can't really

50:07

even make some distinction between which is

50:09

which, which weirdly and fondly and kind

50:11

of brings back Lamarcky and biology a

50:13

little bit. Mmm, but let's earmark that's

50:15

not necessarily about the book, but it's

50:18

a fascinating thing to think about now.

50:20

Totally. How about muscle and bone? And

50:22

there's nothing that's more kind of plastic

50:24

and adaptable than... You can change sizes

50:26

and even change kind of fiber types

50:29

if you're slow switch or fast switch

50:31

power or endurance. That's a really flexible

50:33

system. And I think it's another case

50:35

where if all humans were just born

50:37

to be just one kind of athlete, just

50:40

an endurance or just a power kind of

50:42

thing, it wouldn't work because cultures change the

50:44

jobs you have to do change too quickly.

50:46

So evolution has to solve that problem.

50:49

by creating flexibility and creating adaptability. So

50:51

over the course of a lifetime,

50:53

if you grow up some place

50:55

you're doing a lot of running,

50:57

you'll get good at that. You

50:59

grow up somewhere where you're working

51:01

with your upper body. farming or

51:03

canoeing, you'll get good at that.

51:05

Like you see examples of all

51:07

these things. The Olympics is the

51:09

best place to observe. I love

51:11

it. You're like, look at a

51:13

power lifter, look at the ultramarathoner,

51:15

look at the sprinter, every sprinter

51:17

looks the same, every volleyballist looks the

51:20

same, every volleyballist looks the same. And

51:22

they're all the same species with 99.9%

51:24

of the same DNA. within people and

51:26

you find all of it everywhere. And

51:28

I think that is true. Humans are

51:30

kind of inherently more variable. I think

51:32

that also gets back to this issue

51:34

of every lion has to be the

51:36

best lion it can be and there's

51:39

a narrow prescripted way of how that's

51:41

going to work for them to be a successful

51:43

adult. In a human society, even a hunting

51:45

and gathering society, where the career options are

51:47

more limited, then maybe here, you're still going

51:49

to see a variety of ways that are

51:51

successful to be an adult. And so I

51:53

think there's sort of more breadth of possibility

51:56

there than another species. I want to go

51:58

straight to environmental protection. I would imagine... Many

52:00

people don't even know why some people are white

52:02

and some people are black. I think that's

52:04

probably true. I mean, I think they've observed that,

52:06

but I don't know if they would necessarily

52:08

know. So the molecule that makes it skin dark

52:10

is a molecule called melanin. You've got

52:13

these really cool cells that start off

52:15

in this very special part of the

52:17

embryo that migrate into your skin. And

52:19

those cells make melanin. That's their job.

52:21

And the more they make the darker

52:23

egoir. And so we all make it.

52:25

Less. We're melanin challenged. We're lazy melanin.

52:27

Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. But even the

52:29

baseline is variable, right? That's right. So

52:31

if we were an African species, that's

52:33

we know that 300,000 years ago, that's

52:36

where we all were. Meloninin is this

52:38

natural sunblock. You see more melanin, darker

52:40

skin in populations that have more ultraviolet

52:42

light exposure. And it's because ultraviolet light.

52:44

is good because it helps you make

52:47

vitamin D, but it's bad because it

52:49

blows up this molecule called folate,

52:51

which you need to make DNA. You

52:53

are making two miles of DNA every

52:55

second or something like that. It's crazy.

52:58

If you're salsa dividing it. And so

53:00

if you don't make that right, that's

53:02

a problem. There's all mitosis or there's

53:04

cancers, or if you are pregnant and

53:06

you are building a fetus, there's a

53:08

lot of DNA being made there. And

53:10

if that doesn't work out, that's not

53:12

work out, that's not good, that's not

53:14

good, that's not good, obviously. you want

53:17

to protect your DNA. And that balance

53:19

is why if you're at a high

53:21

sunlight area, you're going to be inherently

53:23

adapted to be darker. Populations farther away

53:25

are going to be adapted to be

53:27

lighter and get more of that UV,

53:29

because that's the other part of the

53:31

seasaw. Yeah. So just to remind people

53:33

about the geology, so Africa is on

53:35

the equator or where most of the

53:37

humans come from. So the sun is

53:39

always in the same spot in the

53:41

sky. There's less UV. there's less opportunity

53:43

to make vitamin D and then the

53:45

skin gets lighter. Yeah, so there's like

53:47

a hundred and some genes that work

53:49

together to kind of figure out how

53:51

much melon you're gonna make. You can

53:53

imagine there's variants of those. We all have

53:56

those 150 genes but your versions might be

53:58

different than mine and so the versions... that

54:00

helped make more melanin, those are

54:02

gonna be successful in high UV places

54:04

like Africa. As you move north,

54:06

the variants that make you a little

54:08

bit lighter. all of a sudden that's an

54:10

advantage. And we see those variants get

54:12

selected for to be lighter and then

54:14

people move back into more tropical areas

54:17

with higher sunlight intensity and we see

54:19

the darker skin variance come back. Well

54:21

that's where it gets one marking. So

54:23

my question to you is do we

54:25

have every ingredient at the disposal and

54:27

we are turning on and turning off

54:29

certain things? That's where this weird interplay

54:31

between how we've thought of Darwinian evolution.

54:33

And now we're starting to see, well,

54:35

no, we kind of have a lot

54:38

of genes that are just not activated.

54:40

In my mind, that says that you,

54:42

Dax, could be black. Be black. Right,

54:44

I can't. No. But in our population,

54:47

pick any population, you will find all

54:49

the variants available. That's one of the

54:51

big discoveries of modern genetics, is that

54:53

those variants, the same variants that make

54:55

some people darker, some people darker, some

54:57

people lighter, they're all there in the

55:00

population. Even if no one's black, potentially

55:02

so, because no one's black, potentially so,

55:04

because what will happen is, they'll just

55:06

be much lower frequency. So maybe only

55:08

five percent of people have the variant

55:11

that would make you darker, that would

55:13

make you darker that helps, that all.

55:15

together give you darker skin. But now,

55:17

let's make selection favor darker skin. Well,

55:19

now, by a bit, you kind of

55:21

reassemble the frequencies to make those alleles

55:23

more frequent. Yeah, the two darker kids

55:25

of the 100 kids survived, and they

55:27

made it, and one had a third

55:29

of this recipe and another had a

55:31

third, and now are two thirds of

55:33

the way there. Yeah, so Lamarck would

55:35

say. anybody in their own lifetime can

55:38

achieve that change. That's not right. Right.

55:40

What is right is that any population

55:42

over enough time could end up going

55:44

back and forth on these traits. I

55:46

might be misunderstanding, but I guess what

55:48

Darwin was missing was the epigenome. He

55:50

also had no idea about genes and

55:52

he thought that traits mixed like paints

55:54

mix. Right, right, right, right, right. And

55:56

if you do that, then he just

55:58

get blah. Recessive and Dominic. didn't have

56:00

any idea about that. So he was out to

56:02

lunch on how any of genetics works. But the

56:04

epigenome, which is hovering above your DNA and deciding

56:07

what RNA is gonna send out. That's a big

56:09

factor too. This is where I get into the

56:11

recipe thing, right? Yeah. There's enormous amount of detailed

56:13

data for the epigenome to choose to use or

56:15

not use. And there's a lot going on there.

56:17

Whatever genes you've inherited from mom and dad, they're

56:20

not all turned on all the time. This is

56:22

where nature and nurtures are really mingling, right? Yes,

56:24

and this has been a big breakthrough in the

56:26

last 15, 20 years of just how this works.

56:28

The moment you're born, and maybe even before you're

56:30

born, which is crazy, before you're born, and maybe

56:32

even before you're born, which is crazy, which is

56:35

crazy, and maybe just how this works. The moment

56:37

you're born, and maybe even before you're born, you're

56:39

born, and maybe even before you're born, before you're

56:41

born, and maybe even before you're born, before you're

56:43

born, or born, and maybe even before you're born,

56:45

and maybe even before you're born, and maybe even

56:48

before you're born, and maybe even before you're born,

56:50

and maybe even before you're born, prowess and obvious.

56:52

Yeah, I like to think so. Is male pattern

56:54

baldness an adaptation to receive more vitamin D from

56:56

the top of your head? I doubt it and

56:58

here's why. That extra little patch isn't doing

57:01

a whole lot of good first of

57:03

all. But if you operate all day.

57:05

Yeah, but you're also not wearing as

57:07

many clothes all day probably and you're

57:09

outside the entire day. You probably get

57:11

plenty of exposure anyhow. Here's who really

57:13

needs the vitamin D. is mom. So

57:15

why is her hair not fall now?

57:17

Exactly. Okay. How do we explain male

57:19

pattern boldness though? Is there an armchair

57:21

of theory on it? So this is

57:23

where I would push back and say

57:25

let's be sure that we're looking at

57:27

an adaptation and not just a tolerated

57:29

bit of noise. A small shape is

57:31

a great example of this. Back in

57:33

the bad old eugenics days, people are

57:35

measuring the skull shapes of Eastern Europeans,

57:37

all these things, right? And they're trying

57:39

to figure out who's a good person,

57:41

who's a bad person. Who's a bad

57:43

person? Yeah. And it was all really

57:46

ugly. Guess who was great? Aryan. Exactly.

57:48

And you do the analysis today and

57:50

you say, well, what if rather than assuming

57:52

that I'm looking at selection favoring that

57:54

skull shape here and this skull shape

57:56

there, what if my model is? Well,

57:59

evolution doesn't. how many babies you

58:01

have. Right, there's no real force acting

58:03

on this. Yeah. So what if the

58:05

model is, well, it's just noise, and

58:07

we know what noise should look like.

58:09

Noise should look like gray screen noise,

58:12

right? It's just no real pattern to

58:14

it. There's a very clear mathematical test

58:16

you can make for that. And sure

58:18

enough, if you look at skull shapes

58:20

across the globe, it's noise. They don't

58:23

mean anything. So, let's put a real

58:25

fine point on this, because what I

58:27

learned. Very very weak in that the

58:29

example that was given to me in

58:31

anthros There are populations within Africa that

58:33

have more genetic similarity with populations in

58:35

Ireland than they do with a neighboring

58:37

tribe Yep. So why on earth would

58:39

you categorize these people by this thing

58:41

that is the least telling and least

58:43

dynamic and everything this is like as

58:45

you said 150 alleles or something that

58:47

means nothing in the grand scope of

58:49

things if you really want to categorize

58:51

and group people We just know that

58:53

would be about the worst way to

58:55

do it to get any consistency That's

58:57

exactly right. And the reason why do

59:00

we do it is because we seem

59:02

to be inherently built to like to

59:04

have in-groups out groups. And we're visual

59:06

primates, man. Yeah. So we pick something

59:08

visual. I think it's kind of inherent

59:10

in the way that our brains are

59:12

built to go that way. So it's

59:14

not a surprise, but that doesn't make

59:17

it right. It's a pretty crap way

59:19

to do it. It just means nothing

59:21

if you were looking at scientifically. Yeah,

59:23

but what's crazy to me. Yeah. Doctors

59:25

will still do this race-based view. That's

59:27

how they're trained. You come into

59:29

the doctor's office, you get a

59:31

medical test. And how I interpret

59:33

that test is through a lens

59:36

of if you're black, if you're

59:38

white, if you're Asian. You give

59:40

the exact examples in the book,

59:42

because I was like, oh, this

59:44

is fast. There's a thing called

59:46

an E.GFR, estimated glomular filtrace, how your

59:48

kidneys are doing. It's a blood test.

59:51

I get a blood test. It all depends.

59:53

If I'm a doctor and I'm interpreting

59:55

that number, I ask, is the patient

59:57

black or is the patient white? That's

59:59

fucking. crazy because their kidney function has

1:00:01

nothing to do with that. Okay, but

1:00:04

let me attempt to push back and

1:00:06

maybe you'll correct me in this. So

1:00:08

one thing I learned along the way,

1:00:11

which I found very fascinating, is that

1:00:13

African Americans, not black people across the

1:00:15

globe, but African Americans. have a very

1:00:17

elevated rate of hypertension. And so the

1:00:20

question is how they get this rate

1:00:22

of hypertension and what people have figured

1:00:24

out is that when the people in

1:00:26

Africa were kidnapped, they were first marched

1:00:29

to West Africa, most of them, to

1:00:31

get put on boats to be brought

1:00:33

to America. Half of those people died

1:00:35

of dehydration on that walk. So the

1:00:38

people that made it to the boat

1:00:40

had a really high salinity count or

1:00:42

an asymmetrical salinity count, they were able

1:00:44

to hold onto the salt in their

1:00:47

body. Then they put them on boats,

1:00:49

half those people died of dehydration. So

1:00:51

the people that landed here had this

1:00:53

extreme force case of natural selection where

1:00:56

a high salinity rate was beneficial to

1:00:58

survival. We assumed for half a second

1:01:00

that was true. Yeah. And I'm a

1:01:03

doctor and I measure the salinity count

1:01:05

of someone's body. And I see that

1:01:07

it's elevated. Well, what I'm really trying

1:01:09

to do is. decide, is it elevated

1:01:12

relative to his peers or her peers

1:01:14

or her in group because that's really

1:01:16

what's gonna be significant? Is this person

1:01:18

running an outside risk even given their

1:01:21

elevated disposition? That would be relevant now?

1:01:23

Again, at least it's a plausible mechanism

1:01:25

there. To push back specifically on that

1:01:27

one, if that were true, if that

1:01:30

bottleneck with the slave trade were what

1:01:32

was happening, we would see that. in

1:01:34

the genes that we know are related

1:01:36

to hypertension risk. And we don't see

1:01:39

that. You don't. No. There is no

1:01:41

evidence. And also, you can take black

1:01:43

families who are not descendants of the

1:01:46

slave trade. But they grow up in

1:01:48

America where there is racism. They have

1:01:50

the effects of that. So race becomes

1:01:52

biological. Meaning if someone flew from Nigeria

1:01:55

here tomorrow, within some time they would

1:01:57

have the predictable. Yes, that's right. So

1:01:59

yeah. extremely plausible to me. People dying

1:02:01

of dehydration, I'm certain they weren't handing

1:02:04

out water. Let's do more of the

1:02:06

heart rate thing. So through the 80s

1:02:08

and 90s it was thought that black

1:02:10

folks in America were just genetically predisposed

1:02:13

to heart disease. This is how it

1:02:15

is. Accept it. Move on. And now

1:02:17

we know, okay well actually if you

1:02:19

study folks that are black and even

1:02:22

if they're descendants of the slave trade

1:02:24

but they aren't in... the United States

1:02:26

exposed to structural racism, they actually don't

1:02:28

have hypertension. That isn't a thing that

1:02:31

all the folks have downstream. It's a

1:02:33

stress thing. It's a stress thing. Yeah.

1:02:35

Wow. Another great example, Native Americans in

1:02:38

this country have, for all sorts of

1:02:40

reasons, they also have hypertension and other

1:02:42

sorts of bad heart outcomes. Over-index and

1:02:44

diabetes. Is that because they're predisposed to

1:02:47

it? Well, actually, if you also look

1:02:49

at Native American groups in Bolivia, it's

1:02:51

the same diaspora that came down. but

1:02:53

they aren't living in a world that

1:02:56

has oppressed them. And so guess what?

1:02:58

Healthiest hearts in the world in Bolivia.

1:03:00

No signs of diabetes. So it's true

1:03:02

that in this environment that gets triggered,

1:03:05

that set of sequences, but what we're

1:03:07

looking at is environmental. We're not looking

1:03:09

at some inherent biological predisposition. And what

1:03:11

gets dangerous is if you say, well,

1:03:14

that's just how those folks are. What

1:03:16

can we do? Throw up your hands.

1:03:18

That's a very different response. And you

1:03:20

say, holy shit, this group does have

1:03:23

an issue. We got to fix it.

1:03:25

We can fix it. Yeah. That's right.

1:03:27

So the way that you understand how

1:03:30

the body works ends up with big

1:03:32

consequences for how you think about society,

1:03:34

how we deal with all these problems.

1:03:36

If you dare. Here's a fun one.

1:03:39

My mother-in-law just had a Texas scan

1:03:41

done. She had her bone density checked

1:03:43

and they gave you a bone density

1:03:45

score. How mineralized your bones are. And

1:03:47

then I was reading the report with

1:03:50

her because she wanted some inputs and

1:03:52

they had this thing at the end.

1:03:54

FRAX likelihood, FRAX is this sort of

1:03:56

algorithm they run the data through. Likelihood

1:03:58

of major fracture in the next 10

1:04:00

years is X. And I thought, oh,

1:04:03

that's interesting. So I looked that up

1:04:05

online. I'd heard about this. I wanted

1:04:07

to look into it. You can go

1:04:09

to the FRAX website. Any doctor would

1:04:11

use this. They heard doctor use this.

1:04:14

You put in the bone mineral density.

1:04:16

You put in your BMI. Are you.

1:04:18

Are you black? Are you Asian or

1:04:20

are you Caucasian? And I played with

1:04:22

it. She grew up in China. She's

1:04:24

Asian. If you put an Asian versus

1:04:27

African American, you could change your risk

1:04:29

by double or half. So that's 4X

1:04:31

from the ceiling to the floor. Yes.

1:04:33

And it's totally bullshit. I mean, there's

1:04:35

no way that's right. And the training

1:04:38

set that they must have used this

1:04:40

on was capturing something about the environment

1:04:42

of folks. and that's affecting your likelihood.

1:04:44

I wonder how this menopause data, because

1:04:46

we had a menopause expert on. Yeah.

1:04:49

She's saying Southeast Asians go through menopause

1:04:51

on average like six years earlier. Like

1:04:53

around 47 or 48, which is earlier

1:04:55

than. Maybe it wasn't six, but it

1:04:57

was several years. I don't know. I

1:04:59

wonder if that's a. nature nurtures it.

1:05:02

I would be interesting. Yeah, I don't

1:05:04

think we have a great answer. We

1:05:06

know why menopause happens mechanistically, but we

1:05:08

don't really know what triggers the exact

1:05:10

timing like why it's 47 versus 49.

1:05:13

I don't think we have a great

1:05:15

handle on eggs. And the body starts

1:05:17

ratcheting up. So why do you run

1:05:19

out eggs earlier? And why this time

1:05:21

versus that time? Five years difference is

1:05:24

a big difference. Why who's early and

1:05:26

who's later? I don't know. So the

1:05:28

idea that your doctor. is looking at

1:05:30

the census box that you ticked and

1:05:32

making real decisions. It's like, take your

1:05:34

car to the mechanic, they say, well,

1:05:37

we checked the timing bell, we checked

1:05:39

the brakes, and we think your car

1:05:41

is going to be okay because it's

1:05:43

blue. Like, well, what? Well, hold on.

1:05:45

We did this a diagnostic test, and

1:05:48

here's the numbers, but then it looks

1:05:50

pretty bad. But the goodness is you've

1:05:52

got a blue car. Well, what the

1:05:54

hell are you talking about? Well, we

1:05:56

shouldn't. If they come in. If they

1:05:59

come in, and there's a rod. at

1:06:01

100,000 miles and it's an American car,

1:06:03

all systems go, this is what we

1:06:05

expected. If you bring a Toyota in

1:06:07

that's got a Rodnock at 100,000, something's

1:06:09

really weird. Because we do know a

1:06:12

Toyota will go 300,000 miles and the

1:06:14

American car is going to go 150s.

1:06:16

But that has to do with how

1:06:18

that actually is built. Two Tarotas, one's

1:06:20

broad-nock, one's black and one's white. You

1:06:23

one, you one. You're going to win

1:06:25

all of these, but I'm going to

1:06:27

keep going for it. Let's talk about

1:06:29

dying, because here's my great curiosity. Your

1:06:31

cells go through mitosis. They make an

1:06:34

identical copy to themselves. So there's this

1:06:36

great mystery. If they're making identical copies,

1:06:38

how does aging even really happen? So

1:06:40

clearly something... turns on or off and

1:06:42

it starts making the cells differently, which

1:06:44

is its own mystery, kind of how

1:06:47

it's making identical but not identical copies.

1:06:49

My question is, why hasn't there ever

1:06:51

been a mutation that just didn't turn

1:06:53

that on? What would govern against that?

1:06:55

Why couldn't that be a mutation that

1:06:58

would have happened by now? Well, first

1:07:00

of all, some species are getting pretty

1:07:02

close. So you've got bristlecone pine trees

1:07:04

that live 5,000 years. And aren't there

1:07:06

some sharks that are like, go to

1:07:09

600 years, I think? 600. I want

1:07:11

to lift at 600? Yeah. There's a

1:07:13

wonderful story. It may be apocryphal about

1:07:15

the guy who discovered the oldest living

1:07:17

organism. You guys ever heard of this

1:07:19

story? No. That was lovely. Maybe apocryphal.

1:07:22

But you guys ever heard of this

1:07:24

story? No. That was lovely. Maybe apocryphal.

1:07:26

But it's a lovely living organism. No.

1:07:28

That was lovely. Maybe apocryphal. sample of

1:07:30

the tree, look at the rings. He

1:07:33

started his research and he gets up

1:07:35

there into the forests, probably somewhere out

1:07:37

here in the US, and he starts

1:07:39

drilling into a brusole cone pine, gets

1:07:41

the thing stuck. And he's like, ah,

1:07:43

I can't finish my dissertation, I'm in

1:07:46

real trouble. So he goes to the

1:07:48

ranger station and says, this is what

1:07:50

happened, I'm so sorry, can I cut

1:07:52

that one tree down please to get

1:07:54

my core thing out? And the guy's

1:07:57

like, yeah, fine. So he cuts it.

1:07:59

Oh my god. It is a good

1:08:01

scientist about it and saves a section

1:08:03

of it and counts the rings later on and

1:08:05

goes, oh my god, I just killed the oldest

1:08:08

thing on the planet. That's risky. It

1:08:10

was a 5,000 year old tree or

1:08:12

something. It was a 5,000 year old

1:08:14

tree. I love when you go to

1:08:16

mere woods and they've got the cross

1:08:18

section. And then fucking Jesus is on

1:08:20

one of the rings. Yeah. Oh, it's

1:08:22

incredible. When people argue for like a

1:08:24

6,000 year old history of the earth.

1:08:26

The really serious anti-evolutionist, I think, now

1:08:28

we've got tree ring data older than

1:08:30

that. You know, like, we're sure it's

1:08:32

older, but anyway. Yeah, how do we

1:08:34

age? What's unique about how we age?

1:08:36

Obviously, we live quite long for... We're

1:08:38

the oldest living primate for sure, and

1:08:40

we do a better job not sinescing.

1:08:42

So there's been selection there to push

1:08:45

that process off. The standard story is

1:08:47

that whatever the kind of damage that

1:08:49

accumulates over time as we get older

1:08:51

as we get older. but that takes

1:08:54

energy. Everything's a trade-off. So if my

1:08:56

body's spending energy keeping myself alive, well

1:08:58

then I'm not spending those calories on

1:09:00

reproduction. And that's the balance of that. And

1:09:02

really the reproduction part is what evolution really

1:09:04

cares about. How many copies of your genes

1:09:06

do you get in the next generation? So

1:09:08

if you spent all of your energy on

1:09:10

maintenance, then maybe you could live a lot

1:09:12

longer. but that's not a great strategy because...

1:09:15

Those genes won't make it to anybody. Exactly.

1:09:17

So that's the standard story about why this

1:09:19

doesn't happen. The mechanism will be exactly what's

1:09:21

happening at the cellular level, what's breaking down

1:09:23

why that still is, I think, up in

1:09:25

the air. The stuff I find convincing too

1:09:27

is that it's kind of entropy. the wild

1:09:29

number of chemical interactions that actually become at

1:09:31

that scale physical interactions of molecules bouncing against

1:09:33

molecules things get wrecked and broken you have

1:09:36

to put them back together the idea would

1:09:38

be that that's why calorie restriction for example

1:09:40

I don't know if you want to do

1:09:42

it but that's been the one thing shown

1:09:44

in every species ever looked at. But even

1:09:46

in like lab settings and mice, if you

1:09:48

cut their calories by 20% they live a

1:09:50

lot longer. Because your money starts eating all

1:09:53

the junk that's accumulated. It kind of cleans

1:09:55

up the scrap and uses it. Yeah. And

1:09:57

it just creates less exhaust, less byproduct, and

1:09:59

less entropy. Okay, so what do we need

1:10:01

to know about living and how to live longer?

1:10:03

You gotta play two games to try to live

1:10:05

forever. One, we know the rules too, and we

1:10:08

can do something about, which is make sure you're

1:10:10

exercising, eating a healthy diet. We can talk a

1:10:12

lot of time about what that would look like.

1:10:14

Don't smoke. Don't do things that we know lead

1:10:16

to early drinking. I hate to say anything drinking

1:10:18

to that. All these things that we know how

1:10:21

to do. And that can push you through the

1:10:23

kind of typical falling off the cliff that happens

1:10:25

to a lot of us as we get older.

1:10:27

But once you push into the kind of the

1:10:29

80s-90s, then you got a hope you got good jeans.

1:10:31

Who's the guy who's trying to live forever is Brian

1:10:33

Johnson or something else? Yes, yes, yes, yes. And I

1:10:36

don't know him and I wish him the best. Did

1:10:38

you watch the dog? The last thing I saw with

1:10:40

him with him was him on him on him on

1:10:42

Bill Mars. pod talk with him. Oh, okay. Yeah. I

1:10:44

haven't watched the doc. I kind of keep up a

1:10:46

little bit on social media because I think it's interesting.

1:10:48

Yeah. I am aware of the routine, at least some

1:10:50

of it. He'll have a really good chance of winning

1:10:52

the first game. He's not going to die of heart

1:10:54

disease. That seems unlikely. He's going to beat the four

1:10:56

horsemen as the Tia would call them. The preventable cancers,

1:10:58

metabolic disorders. Yes, he's going to do great. He's going to get

1:11:00

to be 80 or 80 or 80 or 80 if I were to be 80

1:11:02

or 80 if I were to be 80 if I were to be 80 if I

1:11:04

were to be 80 or 90 if I were to be 80 or 90 if I were to

1:11:06

be 80 or 90 if I were to be 80 or 90 if I were to be

1:11:09

80. how mom and dad did in the

1:11:11

genes category. This is where I'm very discouraged.

1:11:13

Yeah, so I don't know. The idea that

1:11:15

you could have a life that's twice as

1:11:18

long is in my mind the same as

1:11:20

saying that I'm gonna have a human that's

1:11:22

twice as tall. Right. There are thousands

1:11:24

of genes that all work together

1:11:26

to make a human-sized human. If

1:11:28

you want to make a double-sized

1:11:30

human, imagine all the things you'd

1:11:33

have to change. It wouldn't just

1:11:35

be make sure you'd make sure

1:11:37

you'd have to change. Just like that.

1:11:39

So what I think we're seeing now

1:11:41

is there's enough good nutrition around the

1:11:43

world, enough good medicine around the world,

1:11:45

please get vaccinated, take your antibiotics, take

1:11:47

the medicine you need to take. We

1:11:50

can get you to 80-90 relatively. That

1:11:52

happens for a lot of folks. That's

1:11:54

wonderful. And even over 100. But then

1:11:56

you start hitting the genetic limits of

1:11:58

what's possible. Yeah. Right. read it and

1:12:00

I'll be happy to be wrong. Do

1:12:02

two minutes on vaccines? Well as the

1:12:05

measles outbreak right now in Texas it

1:12:07

lets us know they're an important public

1:12:09

health thing to do. The vaccination schedule

1:12:11

is critically important to keep. There's a

1:12:13

reason all those are in there. Those

1:12:15

are all diseases that really harm kids

1:12:17

and have lifetime effects and sometimes death

1:12:20

but I mean these are really nasty

1:12:22

things. Vaccination is one of the greatest

1:12:24

medical discoveries. It goes back to the

1:12:26

1700s, George Washington was vaccinating his troops

1:12:28

against smallpox. It has saved more lives

1:12:30

than any medical discovery ever by

1:12:33

a landslide. That's exactly right. That

1:12:35

and clean water, and you basically

1:12:37

have the modern world. Yeah. And without

1:12:40

those things, you don't. And what's really

1:12:42

troubling for vaccines is they are a

1:12:44

victim of their success. Yeah. And that's

1:12:46

a real bummer. For the people who

1:12:48

did not grow up around polio, as

1:12:51

my grandfather did, The notion you wouldn't

1:12:53

get a polio vaccine for your kid

1:12:55

is outrageous to me. But a modern

1:12:57

person hasn't seen a generation of kids

1:13:00

in wheelchairs and on crutches. And the

1:13:02

way they work is this really clever

1:13:04

thing that your immune system has cells

1:13:06

that are listening, looking for infection, and

1:13:09

they learn how to identify it and

1:13:11

kill it and make antibodies to it.

1:13:13

and you are evolved to have this

1:13:15

adaptive response that vaccines kind of take

1:13:18

advantage of. The idea that's sort of

1:13:20

unnatural is bullshit. It's completely using this

1:13:22

natural system that your body has evolved.

1:13:24

And then the other thing that people

1:13:27

always want to tie it to our

1:13:29

developmental issues and autism of course and

1:13:31

all that's going to be completely using

1:13:34

this natural system that your body has

1:13:36

evolved. And then the other thing that

1:13:38

people always want to tie it to

1:13:41

our developmental. It is the same part

1:13:43

of your brain that makes us

1:13:45

all very susceptible to religion

1:13:47

that's being hijacked because it's

1:13:50

driven by a notion of

1:13:52

purity in the natural world

1:13:54

because there's been these studies

1:13:56

where if you plot on a US

1:13:58

map the lowest rates vaccinations, they

1:14:01

correlate perfectly with where

1:14:03

Whole Foods are. I believe it.

1:14:06

That's really troubling because people are

1:14:08

shopping. Whole Foods are also more

1:14:10

often college educated, they're upper socioeconomically.

1:14:12

Yes. It's a great example of

1:14:15

this thing that's become associated with

1:14:17

the political rights since code, but

1:14:19

actually before that was very much

1:14:22

on the political left. Yes. Well

1:14:24

this is where the circle meets.

1:14:26

Exactly. The sense of purity, the

1:14:28

sense of nature, natural. There's a

1:14:30

thing about everything being natural and

1:14:32

non-toxic. to be that way first

1:14:34

of all. So just because polio

1:14:36

exists in the natural world, it

1:14:39

doesn't mean that we ought to just say

1:14:41

yes, let's have it. Yeah. You naturally

1:14:43

can't see at a certain age and

1:14:45

we go get glasses. People are very

1:14:47

all-a-card about what they want to accept

1:14:49

and what they've done. But a lot

1:14:51

of people really think that it causes

1:14:53

the person to change. I know someone

1:14:55

who is an antivaxor and they were

1:14:58

describing... seeing someone get vaccinated and

1:15:00

the way they were describing it,

1:15:02

they were like, I saw a

1:15:04

shift in their eyes. Yeah. It's

1:15:06

because they're rejected against COVID, they

1:15:08

were happy. Yeah, exactly. They were

1:15:10

smiling. No, it was wild. And I

1:15:13

believe that that's what they saw in

1:15:15

their head. That's fair. I don't know

1:15:17

how to tell someone like, no, you

1:15:19

didn't. Yeah. Well, back to anthropology and

1:15:22

cultural anthropology and cultural

1:15:24

relativity. I grant people

1:15:26

their reality. Yeah, I know. But

1:15:28

there has to be a place where we say

1:15:30

we appreciate your beliefs and everybody has

1:15:32

their own perspective, but that we are

1:15:35

going to pay attention to the numbers.

1:15:37

There has to be some agreement about

1:15:39

an evidence. based where they get decisions.

1:15:41

But when it starts impacting other people's realities,

1:15:43

that's where I think we have to say

1:15:45

no. We wouldn't even have an issue if

1:15:47

it didn't actually pertain to children, because that's

1:15:50

what it's all about. I don't give a

1:15:52

fuck if someone doesn't want to get vaccinated.

1:15:54

If they're going to die of measles and

1:15:56

you chose it, it's on you. In the

1:15:58

most literal sense, you have decided. for your

1:16:00

kid they'll have the same position as

1:16:02

you will and it'd be like branding

1:16:04

them your religion when you're born or

1:16:06

branding them your political identity that's the

1:16:08

bummer about it is they've inherited their

1:16:10

parents position on something which is probably

1:16:12

not fair. 100% and they're not old

1:16:14

enough the age of consent is there

1:16:17

for a reason right and they're all

1:16:19

ill that they're powerless to voice a

1:16:21

different view and yeah we're seeing outbreaks

1:16:23

that are preposterous that we would see

1:16:25

in this time 25 so that's really

1:16:27

worrisome I mean it's well yeah if

1:16:29

we want to get into this but we're

1:16:31

watching right now in real time maybe the

1:16:33

dismantling of one of the most amazing medical

1:16:36

research is that there ever has been

1:16:38

and it's starting with the way that

1:16:40

HHS is potentially being led by somebody

1:16:42

who's really skeptical about vaccines. That's scary.

1:16:45

Yeah, Kennedy. Yeah, all the way down

1:16:47

through there changing the way that NIH

1:16:49

is going to run, international science foundation

1:16:51

is going to run. I don't think

1:16:53

people appreciate just how radical this is. I

1:16:56

mean this is the world I live in,

1:16:58

university research. People are really afraid about what

1:17:00

the next year is going to look like.

1:17:03

Are we going to be... the next discovery

1:17:05

for the next vaccine? Is it going to

1:17:07

be the next discovery for the next medicine

1:17:09

or the next treatment? Because maybe it's going

1:17:12

to be very different. Maybe not. But it's

1:17:14

much harder to fix things than it is

1:17:16

to break them. Yes. So the timeline when

1:17:18

we say in two years, gosh, where's the

1:17:21

pipeline for new drugs? It's not going to

1:17:23

be six months to put it back together.

1:17:25

Like six months to take it down. Right. So

1:17:27

that worries me a little bit. Well, Dr. This

1:17:29

is a little bit. Look at that. I've met

1:17:32

other monicas. Yeah, it's a great name. It's

1:17:34

trusted. Very trusted brand. We've got a

1:17:36

lot of monicas we like. But we

1:17:38

have a character on the show though

1:17:40

that is Hermium Permium. Hermium. Hermium. Hermium.

1:17:42

Hermium. Hermium. Hermium. Hermium. Hermium. Hermium.

1:17:45

So that's close. That's close. But that's

1:17:47

close. That's close, but that's close. Herm,

1:17:49

but that's close, but that's close. Herm-

1:17:51

Herm- Herm- Herm- Herm- Herm- Herm- Herm-

1:17:53

That's close- Herm- Herm- Herm- Herm- Herm-

1:17:55

Herm- Herm- Herm- Herm- Herm- Herm- Herm-

1:17:57

Herm- Herm- Herm- Herm- Herm- Herm- Herm-

1:17:59

Herm- Herm- Herm-m- is interested in

1:18:01

the human evolution of

1:18:03

biology, like I am

1:18:05

adaptable, how your unique

1:18:07

body really works, and

1:18:09

why our biology unites

1:18:11

us as a beautiful

1:18:13

message, and it's rooted

1:18:15

in our story, which

1:18:17

I find endlessly fascinating.

1:18:19

So thank you so

1:18:21

much for coming. Thanks

1:18:24

for having me. It's

1:18:26

really fun. Do you

1:18:28

want me to bore you with

1:18:30

some mechanical stuff? Oh boy. We're

1:18:32

already so tired, but sure. Okay.

1:18:34

We are both drowsing. I know.

1:18:36

What's your explanation? Well, yours is

1:18:39

the weather. I guess I don't

1:18:41

even need to have. But yesterday,

1:18:43

the weather was top tier, gorgeous,

1:18:45

and I was exhausted. Yeah, so

1:18:47

my explanation is I flew. 7am

1:18:49

flight on Friday to Nashville. So

1:18:52

that's up at 4am to get

1:18:54

in the car at 445 or

1:18:56

whatever. Received my pontoon boat. Oh

1:18:58

wow. I don't deserve it. It's

1:19:00

too nice of an item for

1:19:02

me. I was just like, I

1:19:04

don't deserve this. It's so nice.

1:19:07

I hit a button and the

1:19:09

whole canopy goes up. The sound

1:19:11

system is insane. It's the best

1:19:13

sound system that I've ever heard.

1:19:15

So many creature comforts. I love

1:19:17

it. I did put up the

1:19:20

bimini and crank the music and

1:19:22

walked around the deck for a

1:19:24

while. I just pretended I was

1:19:26

kind of hanging out. My friend

1:19:28

Tyler made the funniest joke. I

1:19:30

bet it's big in the boating

1:19:32

world, but I had never heard

1:19:35

it. He said, it's the most

1:19:37

fun you can have on a

1:19:39

floating patio. And I

1:19:41

was like, that is what a

1:19:43

pontoon boat is. It's a floating

1:19:45

patio. It's just a perfect rectangle.

1:19:47

Okay, board. And then, and then

1:19:49

a lot of busy work, readying

1:19:51

stuff to depart, whatever, then I

1:19:53

drove. Also, my nose blowing back

1:19:55

a bit because my nose was

1:19:57

so full. on day two of

1:19:59

the motor home drive back. So

1:20:01

clogged, really clogged. Well, maybe you

1:20:03

have a bug. No, I think

1:20:05

I might have a bug. I

1:20:07

think I have a bug. Yeah,

1:20:09

it's probably a bug. So, yeah,

1:20:11

I then drove 2,000 miles and

1:20:13

got home and got at it.

1:20:16

Yeah, and just a bit exhausted.

1:20:18

Okay, so as you were dying

1:20:20

to know, what mechanical things happened

1:20:22

on the bus. Oh, that wasn't

1:20:24

it? No, nothing's happened so far.

1:20:26

Oh, I thought just the mention

1:20:28

of the boat was mechanical. Was

1:20:30

enough about the bus. All in

1:20:32

all, the best, least amount of

1:20:34

shit broke that ever has. Inside

1:20:36

of the front door, all of

1:20:38

the molding, which is a big

1:20:40

chunk, because it's got a power

1:20:42

shade in it, that thing came

1:20:44

off. So that was flopping, then

1:20:46

it broke, still not bad. Rear

1:20:48

toilet, my bathroom toilet, no power.

1:20:50

took the switch out of the

1:20:52

middle bathroom, plugged it into the

1:20:54

back one, okay, it's not the

1:20:56

switch. Get home, start reaching out

1:20:58

to the dudes I know that

1:21:00

build the bus. Okay, this is

1:21:02

a gratitude and a grievance. Okay.

1:21:04

So grateful, they talk to me,

1:21:06

and they help me every time.

1:21:08

So grateful. But I'm talking with

1:21:10

a newer guy, and I don't,

1:21:12

I feel like he underestimated my

1:21:14

mechanical ability. Okay. So I'm like,

1:21:17

where does this plug-in to? Maybe

1:21:19

the module's bad, blah, blah, blah.

1:21:21

He's like, oh, no, there's a

1:21:23

fused panel under the bed. And

1:21:25

I go, okay. I look under

1:21:27

the bed, there's no fused panel

1:21:29

visible. So now I'm going under

1:21:31

the bed, and it's an electric

1:21:33

bed, so I can't remove the

1:21:35

mattress and look under it. It's

1:21:37

all bolted down with this huge

1:21:39

heavy frame. two and a half

1:21:41

hours yesterday to get under the

1:21:43

bed and get all the little

1:21:45

plates off of things to find

1:21:47

these fuses. Finally, I'm like, I

1:21:49

film it. I'm like, there's no

1:21:51

fuse panel under here. But I

1:21:53

think he thinks I just can't

1:21:55

find it. Then I start showing

1:21:57

him videos like, I've taken apart

1:21:59

everything. Oh, wow. So he's like,

1:22:01

huh? That's interesting. The only other

1:22:03

place it could be is X,

1:22:05

Y, and Z. Go there this

1:22:07

morning. Look, no. Then there's this

1:22:09

huge panel with all these other

1:22:11

fuses on it. And I send

1:22:13

a picture and say, before I

1:22:15

take this off, do you think

1:22:18

it could be behind here? They

1:22:20

say, no, absolutely not. I take

1:22:22

it off anyways. It's in there.

1:22:24

I've three days of searching for

1:22:26

this fuse panel. I found it

1:22:28

buried in a wall behind this

1:22:30

other huge panel. Plugged it in.

1:22:32

I have power in power in

1:22:34

the power in the back. Flushed

1:22:36

it, it popped the fuse. TPD,

1:22:38

more to come. Wow, okay. Can't

1:22:40

wait. I know. While I'm boring,

1:22:42

you, let me bore you a

1:22:44

little, because I didn't get to

1:22:46

a couple things last fact. But

1:22:48

I want to talk about my

1:22:50

toilet. Oh, okay. Tell me about

1:22:52

your toilet before I move off

1:22:54

the toilet topic. So my plumber

1:22:56

is at my house doing some

1:22:58

repairs. Now, I had to leave.

1:23:00

In the middle. And of course,

1:23:02

I'm... That's a tricky sitch. It's

1:23:04

a tricky sitch. What do you

1:23:06

think about that? I mean, I

1:23:08

think you just had to do

1:23:10

what you had to do, which

1:23:12

is go to work. Exactly. There's

1:23:14

really nothing to think about. Is

1:23:16

it ideal? No. It's not ideal,

1:23:19

right? It's not ideal. And I

1:23:21

mean, I... But I think he's

1:23:23

gonna steal from you. Either do

1:23:25

I. He's too obvious of a

1:23:27

suspect. Either do I, and he's

1:23:29

a very nice of a very

1:23:31

nice of a very nice suspect.

1:23:33

No, he's come over before. He's

1:23:35

like the building plumber. Okay, then

1:23:37

I'm not too worried. I'm not

1:23:39

too worried. I just, you know,

1:23:41

it is weird to leave your

1:23:43

apartment or house and leave some,

1:23:45

leave a stranger in there. Yeah.

1:23:47

I don't think I'd recommend it,

1:23:49

but it is what I did,

1:23:51

and I do feel a little

1:23:53

uneasy about it. It's fine. What

1:23:55

do you think could happen? He'll

1:23:57

look through your stuff. Weird. A

1:23:59

little. I'll tell it quickly.

1:24:01

You told that I

1:24:03

can tell you. I have

1:24:06

anxiety today. Yeah,

1:24:08

I'm premature death

1:24:10

anxiety. Yeah, I heard a

1:24:13

very sad story. Yeah. I'll

1:24:15

tell it. I'll tell it

1:24:17

quickly. You told

1:24:19

that I can tell

1:24:21

this. Well, mine didn't

1:24:23

make you sad, did it?

1:24:26

Sad that I had to

1:24:28

listen to it. Okay, so

1:24:30

yeah, there's a makeup influencer that

1:24:32

I follow that I really like

1:24:35

that she had a new makeup

1:24:37

video, so I clicked it and

1:24:39

it wasn't a makeup video, it

1:24:41

was a very sad story about

1:24:43

someone passing away and her

1:24:46

family suddenly and unexpectedly. Very

1:24:48

sad. So then... I just

1:24:50

started, this is how my

1:24:53

brain works, right? Like sometimes

1:24:55

something will happen. It's not

1:24:57

every time. Sometimes I'll hear

1:25:00

a story or something will

1:25:02

happen sort of in the zeitgeist

1:25:04

or in the news that

1:25:07

will spark like a spell

1:25:09

of anxiety for me. Right.

1:25:11

It's just like everything comes

1:25:13

to the service of all

1:25:15

the bad stories I've ever

1:25:17

heard the scary stories the

1:25:19

unexpected so it's just rumination

1:25:22

on scary stories like the way

1:25:24

life is so scary and unfair

1:25:26

God I'm sorry you have that

1:25:28

thank you me too yeah so my brain

1:25:30

is filled with a lot of bad

1:25:33

stories right now and then I try

1:25:35

to tell myself like This is

1:25:37

what happened. You heard this

1:25:39

story and it's why you're

1:25:41

feeling like this and it's

1:25:43

okay But I'm also like I'm

1:25:46

pretty smart So when I say it's

1:25:48

okay. Yeah, you start poking holes

1:25:50

in it You know when people

1:25:53

have angel and devil on

1:25:55

their shoulder mine's like I have

1:25:57

a stupid mouse and a smart

1:25:59

mouse is those smart mouse wearing

1:26:01

glasses? Yeah, obviously. And a graduation

1:26:04

gown? And holding a little pet,

1:26:06

like a quill. Yeah, yeah, right.

1:26:08

Really studious. Yeah. And the stupid

1:26:11

mouse is just wearing undies. Sure,

1:26:13

that are inside out. Yeah. And

1:26:15

she says, the stupid mouse is

1:26:18

like, it's Monica, it's fine, it's

1:26:20

gonna be okay. And then the

1:26:22

smart mouse is like. What makes

1:26:24

you think it's going to be

1:26:27

okay? It's not okay. This is

1:26:29

life. This is what happens And

1:26:31

then the stupid mouse is like

1:26:34

I guess that's true, but also

1:26:36

you just have to accept it

1:26:38

And then the smart mouse is

1:26:41

like well, that's not helping the

1:26:43

acceptance isn't helping me feel better

1:26:45

See, I would reverse those two

1:26:48

mice. I think it's the dumb

1:26:50

mouse. Don't they say that about

1:26:52

the quill girl. Listen, it's the

1:26:55

dumb mouse who is saying, you

1:26:57

need to be afraid of dying

1:26:59

and you need to be afraid

1:27:02

the people you love are going

1:27:04

to die. And then the smart

1:27:06

mouse goes, you're ignoring the odds.

1:27:08

You're just refusing to look at

1:27:11

the odds, which is like one

1:27:13

in a million you're going to

1:27:15

know somebody who dies of an

1:27:18

an aneurism. Yeah, but it's actually

1:27:20

not, it's not as pointed as

1:27:22

that. It's not like, well, it

1:27:25

does obviously start morphing into like

1:27:27

my life and people and being

1:27:29

scared, but it's actually more like

1:27:32

the weight of the world that

1:27:34

the world has very upsetting things

1:27:36

happening all the time. And I

1:27:39

can walk through life ignoring that

1:27:41

most of the time. But then

1:27:43

when it's like shoved in my

1:27:46

face, I am forced to remember

1:27:48

that that that's. part of it.

1:27:50

Yeah. And that's what's happening. It's

1:27:53

like just overwhelm. But even I

1:27:55

hear you, but even that if

1:27:57

you took your 37 times 300

1:27:59

65 days you've been alive. What

1:28:02

if I just did was doing

1:28:04

this the whole just gently knocking

1:28:06

the whole time as you heard

1:28:09

this. But I can't do that.

1:28:11

You've hit the limits of my

1:28:13

fast. I mean, I could, but

1:28:16

it would take me five minutes.

1:28:18

But suffice to say, over 37

1:28:20

years, that's 37,000. 37,000. It's over

1:28:23

150,000 days that no one you

1:28:25

love is dying. That's not true.

1:28:27

Oh, your grandpa died. Well, no

1:28:30

one day. I know people who've

1:28:32

died of 100. This isn't this

1:28:34

isn't helpful. Like, it's not helpful.

1:28:37

I just think the smart mouse

1:28:39

should be the one that points

1:28:41

out the actual odds in the

1:28:44

data you've accumulated so far. That's

1:28:46

not how emotions work. Right. The

1:28:48

emotions are for the dumb mouse.

1:28:50

I'm just asking you to flip

1:28:53

the rolls of the mice. I

1:28:55

know. I know. I know what

1:28:57

you want me to do. See

1:29:00

scary stuff in the news and

1:29:02

gets really scared Because they saw

1:29:04

it and then the smart mouse

1:29:07

goes yeah, but it's because you're

1:29:09

seeing things from all over the

1:29:11

world There's seven billion of us.

1:29:14

You're seeing It's very misleading, but

1:29:16

it's it's not misleading that the

1:29:18

world has pain in it No,

1:29:21

that's true. The world is saying

1:29:23

like yeah, so there's mouse is

1:29:25

Buddhist well obviously the smart mouse

1:29:28

is is is like Yes, this

1:29:30

world has so much pain and

1:29:32

suffering and it's part of it.

1:29:34

Yeah. And that's hard, that's overwhelming

1:29:37

for me. Even though I know

1:29:39

it's true. And I know you

1:29:41

can't think your way out of

1:29:44

it. I get that, but also

1:29:46

another angle I would, a framing

1:29:48

is yes, life is scary. It

1:29:51

has moments of heartache and pain.

1:29:53

when you're not in those, they're

1:29:55

coming. That's, yeah. They're coming. And

1:29:58

on that day, you get to

1:30:00

experience what that is. But to

1:30:02

waste any of the days that

1:30:05

aren't those days is a little

1:30:07

dishonoring to the days where there

1:30:09

isn't any suffering. Yeah. No, that

1:30:12

doesn't help. It doesn't really help.

1:30:14

It's okay. Sometimes you have anxiety.

1:30:16

That's right. Some things I saw

1:30:19

and thought of on my trip.

1:30:21

Okay. I was at an in

1:30:23

and out. in Barstow and I

1:30:25

was in the bus parking and

1:30:28

so other buses were arriving with

1:30:30

people that were on tours and

1:30:32

there was a German group on

1:30:35

a tour of conceivably the USA

1:30:37

and they were stopping it in

1:30:39

and out and the organizer of

1:30:42

the trip was wearing it in

1:30:44

and out paper hat. Cute. Yes.

1:30:46

And one of the German women

1:30:49

had a shirt on that said

1:30:51

New York Dreams, Brooklyn vibes. Wow,

1:30:53

so they had already gone to

1:30:56

New York. Clearly. Uh-huh. And I

1:30:58

don't know what that means. Brooklyn

1:31:00

Vibes is like... Your chill? Yeah,

1:31:03

it's more hipster... In New York

1:31:05

Dreams? You want to be on

1:31:07

Broadway? Or finance? Big City Dreams.

1:31:10

Backwater vibes. Yeah, I don't know

1:31:12

about backwater, but like... Like, it's

1:31:14

like saying Hollywood dreams, Los Feels

1:31:16

Vibes. Yeah, I don't know if

1:31:19

I would have that. Sure. Well,

1:31:21

they wanted it. Okay. I was

1:31:23

watching Turning Point, which I was

1:31:26

trying to tell you about in

1:31:28

the last fact check, the history

1:31:30

of the Cold War. No, you're

1:31:33

gonna like this one. Okay. This

1:31:35

is about the power of media.

1:31:37

Okay. Okay. So Ronald Reagan was

1:31:40

ratcheting up. The nuclear arms race,

1:31:42

really dramatically. He really wanted to

1:31:44

get leverage over Russia. He was

1:31:47

war hawking. I've talked about this

1:31:49

before. There's the only thing my

1:31:51

mother never. let me see in

1:31:54

my whole childhood, the day after.

1:31:56

Yeah, it was a movie. It

1:31:58

was a movie about what the

1:32:00

day after a nuclear Holocaust would

1:32:03

look like. Yeah. And 100 million

1:32:05

Americans watched it. Wow. It still

1:32:07

has the record of the most

1:32:10

viewed TV movie ever made. Wow.

1:32:12

100 million Americans watched it. Ronald

1:32:14

Reagan watched it. He was profoundly

1:32:17

moved. And he changed his course.

1:32:19

Really? Yes. And he backed off?

1:32:21

He did. And so began. Holy

1:32:24

shit. A more collaborative approach to

1:32:26

nuclear disarmament. And I was like,

1:32:28

we want to talk about the

1:32:31

power of fucking movies and media?

1:32:33

I know. 100 million people see

1:32:35

this thing and then the president

1:32:38