0:00

What have you found about the

0:02

way we structure language and the

0:04

way our brains work? I have

0:06

found that memory appears to be

0:08

greater in hunter-gatherers who only have

0:10

oral language and not written language.

0:13

There are studies that show that

0:15

reading Mandarin uses parts of the

0:17

brain, that reading Latin-based scripts, alphabetic

0:19

scripts, doesn't. I've also seen studies

0:21

say if you speak Mandarin and

0:23

you read in Mandarin versus if

0:26

you speak a Latin language, you

0:28

see meaningful changes. in networks across

0:30

the brain. What if everything you

0:32

thought you knew about language was

0:34

wrong? Try to prove me wrong.

0:37

For decades, linguists believed in universal

0:39

grammar a built-in blueprint for how

0:41

all humans speak. Creating explanatory theories

0:43

that extend so vastly far beyond

0:45

any evidence that's available. Language. and

0:48

the existence of universal grammar continued

0:50

to be tested and explored in

0:52

the evolving field of linguistics. But

0:54

one man, deep in the Amazon,

0:57

uncovered something that changed everything. Daniel

0:59

Everett, linguist, explorer, disruptor. His discoveries

1:01

shattered the foundations of modern linguistics.

1:03

He lived with an uncontacted Amazonian

1:06

tribe for seven years, unlocking a

1:08

language with no numbers, no recursion,

1:10

no past tense. A language so

1:12

unique, it rewrote the rules of

1:14

human communication. Now he's taking us

1:17

beyond language. to the roots of

1:19

thought, culture, and human cognition itself.

1:21

I'll define communication as the transfer

1:23

of information. What makes us human?

1:26

How do words shape reality? And

1:28

if language isn't universal, what else

1:30

isn't? Do you think it's

1:32

possible that psychedelics drove the

1:34

evolution of language, the drunk

1:36

eighth theory? You're listening to

1:39

the human upgrade with Dave

1:41

Asbury. How did language even begin

1:43

in humans? There are so many

1:45

theories about language that look at

1:48

it from the perspective of

1:50

the development of the brain, from

1:52

the development of our genetic heritage,

1:55

but really for me the threshold

1:57

for language is when humans adapt.

1:59

the signs that all animals use.

2:02

So every animal has to use

2:04

certain kinds of signs to interpret

2:06

the world's smells and sights and

2:08

things. But when humans began to

2:11

create open-ended symbol systems, That to

2:13

me was the prerequisite for language,

2:15

when we could, you know, words

2:18

are kinds of symbols, gestures are

2:20

symbols. These are kinds of signs

2:22

that are created by convention, by

2:24

cultures, where they agree that we'll

2:27

call that a dog, and that's

2:29

a symbol, and we've created that,

2:31

and somebody comes up with another,

2:33

well, what are we going to

2:36

call that? And so we call

2:38

that a cat. Once we got

2:40

the ability to start creating symbols,

2:43

language became possible for the first

2:45

time. And in my research and

2:47

working with different archaeologists, I believe

2:49

that this ability emerged with Homo

2:52

erectus about 1.5 to 2 million

2:54

years ago. Wow. That seems to

2:56

be a little bit further back

2:58

than some people think mankind goes.

3:01

Do you ever get critics going

3:03

that can't be? Oh yeah, there

3:05

are a lot of people who

3:08

say that can't be, but, and

3:10

they have good reasons for saying

3:12

that, but most of it has

3:14

to do with the fact that

3:17

they don't believe that erectus, they're

3:19

a couple of reasons. They don't

3:21

believe that erectus was smart enough

3:23

to do this, and they don't

3:26

believe that we have any evidence

3:28

that erectus did this. But I

3:30

would, I've argued against both of

3:33

those counter arguments. in my book

3:35

How Language Began and also an

3:37

archaeologist from the University of Liverpool

3:39

who specializes on Homo erectus. In

3:42

fact, he's been in the news

3:44

recently because he found a 500,000-year-old

3:46

wooden structure constructed by Homo erectus.

3:48

So they did so many things.

3:51

Homo erectus was able to do

3:53

so many things and we find

3:55

evidence of symbolism in their very...

3:58

tools, stone tools that last for

4:00

two million years. So I feel

4:02

fairly confident that Homo erectus had

4:04

developed some sort of language and

4:07

there are basically three types of

4:09

language they could have had, any

4:11

one of which would have been

4:13

fine for us and we actually

4:16

find all three in the world

4:18

today spoken by different groups of

4:20

people. It doesn't mean they're primitive,

4:23

it just simply means that... They're

4:25

complicated in ways that English is

4:27

not, and they're simple in ways

4:29

that English is not. So they

4:32

distribute complexity in different ways. But

4:34

the creation of symbols is extremely

4:36

complex, requires a large brain, and

4:38

has a lot of consequences that

4:41

I think we find in the

4:43

archaeological record with Homo erectus. I

4:45

love that you're willing to go

4:48

out on that. Just go out

4:50

there and say it like you

4:52

see it to be. I've had

4:54

Graham Hancock on the show who

4:57

has some other perspectives about how

4:59

maybe even longer back we went.

5:01

It just feels to me like

5:03

we've been very conservative in our

5:06

belief that primitive people did nothing

5:08

in spring out of nothing and

5:10

your studying language supports that. Yeah,

5:13

when you look at Homo erectus

5:15

and how the ocean was not

5:17

a barrier for them ever. There's

5:19

a lot of evidence that they

5:22

built boats. In fact, there's an

5:24

archaeologist in Australia. Robert Bednarik who

5:26

has used the tools that they

5:28

had to construct the kinds of

5:31

boats they would have needed to

5:33

go to the places they went

5:35

and he has He has experimented

5:38

with these boats and He and

5:40

other linguists actually have all argued

5:42

that you can't build a boat

5:44

without a basic linguistic ability. You're

5:47

not going to find others building

5:49

boats. It's a group project and

5:51

the group needs to be able

5:53

to communicate and that communication has

5:56

to go beyond signs. Even stone

5:58

tools of the type that Homo

6:00

erectus made. In the laboratory, there

6:03

are many archaeological schools that have

6:05

laboratories where they teach graduate students

6:07

how to make stone tools, and

6:09

they find that simply showing them

6:12

is not enough. In every case,

6:14

PhD students take hundreds of hours

6:16

to learn how to make these

6:18

stone tools and they need verbal

6:21

instruction. And so I think that

6:23

if... Modern day homo sapiens PhD

6:25

students need verbal instruction. It's highly

6:28

unlikely that Homo erectus didn't need

6:30

verbal instruction. You make a pretty

6:32

convincing case. I've been studying cognitive

6:34

function and cognitive structures wrote a

6:37

major book about it. And I'm

6:39

familiar with the fact that different

6:41

languages restructure the entire brain. What

6:43

have you found about the way

6:46

we structure language and the way

6:48

our brains work? Well, there are

6:50

a couple of things there. One

6:53

thing is that there's a lot

6:55

of evidence. It's controversial. Everything's controversial

6:57

when you're talking about the brain.

6:59

There's a lot of evidence that

7:02

speaking multiple languages is cognitive valuable

7:04

and it increases our cognitive flexibility.

7:06

It provides a number of cognitive

7:08

benefits to us. But there is

7:11

research done by a good friend

7:13

of mine at MIT's Brain and

7:15

Cognitive Sciences Department, Evelina Federinko, in

7:18

which she has identified a language-specific

7:20

network in the brain that isn't

7:22

in just one part of the

7:24

brain. It's sort of distributed in

7:27

different parts of the brain. And

7:29

in fact, she put me in

7:31

an FMRI scanner for about three

7:33

hours testing me on the different

7:36

languages I speak. to one determine

7:38

how well I spoke each of

7:40

them, she can actually tell this

7:43

from the images because it shows

7:45

how much effort was put into

7:47

it and how well that section

7:49

of the... So if you don't

7:52

speak a language really well... That

7:54

language network part of the brain

7:56

doesn't light up very well because

7:58

it's not in control. If you

8:01

are tested on your native language,

8:03

it's lit up really well. And

8:05

if you speak another language really

8:08

well, it lights up in a

8:10

very similar fashion. And then she

8:12

was able to see how much

8:14

cognitive effort I was putting into

8:17

it based on electrical impulses and

8:19

I think blood flow, I'm not

8:21

sure. But that was really interesting.

8:23

And she's done these experiments on

8:26

dozens of languages for many different

8:28

language families. This part of the

8:30

brain is not used for music,

8:33

it's not used for mathematics, it's

8:35

used for language, and that's all

8:37

it's used for. And she's found

8:39

this in language after language. Again,

8:42

it's controversial, but she's been extremely

8:44

successful in defending her position. She

8:46

has a large lab at MIT

8:48

and they're doing experiments all the

8:51

time following up on stuff. So

8:53

on the one hand, our language,

8:55

our brain is adapted for language.

8:58

We've evolved to speak. But on

9:00

the other hand, learning multiple languages

9:02

just seems to make us smarter

9:04

in some way, just in overall,

9:07

there are no downsides and only

9:09

upsides to learning multiple languages. That's

9:11

one reason that my kids speak

9:13

more than one language and I

9:16

don't particularly well, a little bit

9:18

of Spanish. That's great. It's a

9:20

great gift from a parent to

9:23

a child. I've also seen studies

9:25

say if you... speak Mandarin and

9:27

you read in Mandarin versus if

9:29

you speak a Latin language, that

9:32

you see meaningful changes in networks

9:34

across the brain. Have you compared

9:36

those to some of the other

9:38

more unusual languages, you know? Well,

9:41

I haven't done this research myself,

9:43

but reading Mandarin is very different

9:45

from reading Latin-based languages because the

9:48

writing system is based on a

9:50

very different kind of principle. There

9:52

are ways in which Mandarin is

9:54

much more difficult to learn to

9:57

read. But there are other ways

9:59

in which if you know how

10:01

to read Mandarin, I don't unfortunately,

10:03

you could really translate any language

10:06

into that writing system. So it's

10:08

an extremely accommodating writing system. And

10:10

there are studies that show that

10:13

reading Mandarin uses parts of the

10:15

brain, that reading Latin-based scripts, alphabetic

10:17

scripts, doesn't. But once again, whenever

10:19

we're talking about the brain, there

10:22

will be studies. in conflict. Your

10:24

work on probably the most unusual

10:26

language in the world kind of

10:28

blew some minds. Can you tell

10:31

me a little bit about that

10:33

language and how it works and

10:35

why it's so different? Yes. In

10:38

1977, I was sent to a

10:40

group of people in the Amazon,

10:42

I was 26, called the Pidaha.

10:44

They actually called themselves the Hiyakhe,

10:47

which means the straight ones. and

10:49

we are away which means the

10:51

crooked ones the bent ones so

10:53

they're very ethnocentric and they have

10:56

a very high opinion of themselves

10:58

as most of us do and

11:00

and so I was sent there

11:03

because I had done well in

11:05

my linguistics classes training to be

11:07

a missionary I'm certainly not a

11:09

missionary anymore. I'm an atheist these

11:12

days, but I went there because

11:14

I had done well in linguistics

11:16

and their language had not been

11:19

able to be understood by anybody

11:21

else. And my wife and I

11:23

and our three small children went

11:25

there. We started learning the language

11:28

and indeed it blew my mind

11:30

because although we were learning to

11:32

speak it, I still couldn't believe

11:34

that it had some of the

11:37

things it had and that it

11:39

didn't have some of the things

11:41

I expected it to have. And

11:44

so the thing that has made

11:46

it so controversial is my claim.

11:48

that they don't have a property

11:50

called recursion in the language. And

11:53

recursion simply means one thing recurring

11:55

inside another of the same type.

11:57

So to give you an example,

11:59

I can take a noun, say

12:02

truck, and I can put another

12:04

noun in it and get truck

12:06

driver. So drivers are noun, trucks

12:09

are noun, and I get the

12:11

two together, I got truck driver,

12:13

that's recursion. If I have John

12:15

saw Bill, that's a simple sentence,

12:18

but if I put it inside

12:20

another sentence, Bill said that John

12:22

saw Bill. then that's recursion or

12:24

at least many linguists would claim

12:27

that it is. Technically it's not

12:29

fully recursion but the simplest way

12:31

to describe it is as recursion.

12:34

So I've argued that Piedahad doesn't

12:36

have things like that. It just

12:38

doesn't. And when I first made

12:40

that claim and then, you know,

12:43

which was exactly 20 years ago

12:45

this year, it provoked a torrent

12:47

of criticism and attacks on me

12:49

because Noem Chomsky had just said...

12:52

This is the crucial ingredient to

12:54

language. Recursion is what makes language

12:56

as possible. So if there's a

12:59

language that doesn't have it, it

13:01

clearly isn't necessary for language. Just

13:03

one language out of 8,000 shows

13:05

that. But since then, other languages

13:08

have been shown to appear to

13:10

lack recursion. So how would the

13:12

Pinahas say John said that Bill

13:14

saw Mary? They would say John

13:17

spoke. Bill saw Mary and you

13:19

can interpret that as together Or

13:21

you can interpret them as two

13:24

separate events It's possible for John

13:26

to speak and that has nothing

13:28

to do with Bill saw Mary

13:30

and then separately you say Bill

13:33

saw Mary It's also possible that

13:35

Bill saw Mary is what John

13:37

spoke But that's a matter of

13:39

interpretation. It's not part of the

13:42

grammar and when the claim was

13:44

made about recursion. It was specifically

13:46

claimed to be for the grammar

13:49

and for the grammar of sentences

13:51

And so the peanut hot simply

13:53

don't have that. And it's been

13:55

tested. Now, I don't know how

13:58

many times by people going down

14:00

there, collecting data, running experiments, you

14:02

know, a group at MIT, went

14:04

down, did experiments, collected data, came

14:07

back, ran it through all sorts

14:09

of checks on their own, leaving

14:11

me out of it. In fact,

14:14

I gave them a lot of

14:16

texts. by the PETA Ha stories

14:18

that were not collected by me,

14:20

that were collected by a missionary

14:23

before I got there, so that

14:25

there could be no claim that

14:27

I had doctored these in any

14:29

way. And so they went through

14:32

all of them. My text, the

14:34

other missionaries text, they went through

14:36

all of this. They found no

14:39

evidence whatsoever for recursion. And it

14:41

should have appeared if it was

14:43

there. And since then other linguists,

14:45

recently MIT. brain and cognitive science.

14:48

The funny thing about MIT is

14:50

that I'm not liked at all

14:52

in the linguistics department. But I

14:54

am liked in the brain and

14:57

cognitive sciences department and they had

14:59

a conference in my honor in

15:01

2023, in June of 2023. And

15:04

a couple of those papers had

15:06

to do with the lack of

15:08

recursion and evidence from other languages.

15:10

Wow. So outside of academia, most

15:13

people would never know about this

15:15

debate. I got to ask this.

15:17

Of all the criticism that you

15:19

received, in what language was the

15:22

best criticism? Oh, that's a great

15:24

question. I would have, I mean,

15:26

there's been criticism and lots and

15:29

lots of languages. I've gotten, I've

15:31

gotten emails from all over the

15:33

world, literally, from linguists trying to

15:35

second guess me, or criticizing me.

15:38

Did you think of this? Did

15:40

you point, did you investigate this?

15:42

Those are good questions. And I

15:44

answered them all to the best

15:47

that I could. The criticisms that

15:49

most bothered me were all in

15:51

English and it's not because they

15:54

were good criticisms, it was because

15:56

instead of saying that he should

15:58

have looked at this, you know,

16:00

we've done more research and we

16:03

found this. They said, he's got

16:05

to be a liar. He doesn't

16:07

know what he's talking about. And

16:09

William James had something to say

16:12

about this over 150 years ago.

16:14

He said when a new idea

16:16

is presented or a contradiction to

16:19

a theory, the first reaction is

16:21

he's lying. And the third reaction

16:23

is we already knew that. I'm

16:25

still fascinated by the ways that

16:28

we could possibly use all of

16:30

these. These are very common criticisms

16:32

that I have. That really summarizes

16:34

all the criticisms. It seems like

16:37

all of the things the longevity

16:39

movement's been through that. You can't

16:41

extend human life. Well, actually we're

16:43

doing it. It just happens. I'm

16:45

still fascinated by the ways that

16:48

we could possibly use language to

16:50

transform or improve. our cognitive

16:52

function. And one of the things you

16:54

might say is, well, let's just learn a

16:56

language as an adult. How do adults

16:58

learn language quickly? Well, I do demonstrations,

17:00

and I've done them all over the

17:03

place, called monolingual demonstrations. You can find

17:05

me doing these, for example, for the

17:07

Linguistic Society of America at the University

17:09

of Michigan about 10 years ago on

17:11

the internet, on YouTube. And what I

17:13

do is I have a speaker come

17:16

out who speaks, I don't know what

17:18

the language is. I make sure they

17:20

don't tell me what the language is.

17:22

And I have a bunch of props

17:24

in front of me, things from nature.

17:26

I don't use manufactured things

17:29

because sometimes those can be borrowed

17:31

words. They're not native words. But usually

17:33

if you have rocks and water and

17:35

sticks and leaves, things like this, you're

17:37

going to get or fruits from that

17:39

region. It doesn't help to have an

17:41

orange if it's not where their language

17:43

is spoken. So then, to make sure

17:45

there's no language in common, I switch

17:47

to Pida Ha. And I start speaking

17:49

to them in Pida Ha. They, of course,

17:51

have no idea what I'm talking about. But

17:53

I get them to give me the names

17:55

for objects, and then I start doing things

17:57

with the objects and get them to describe

17:59

the actions. And then I might sit

18:01

down and stand up. I might take

18:03

a stick and hit myself and then

18:06

take the stick and pretend like I'm

18:08

hitting them and get descriptions of all

18:10

of this. So what that demonstration is

18:12

supposed to show is that within 25

18:15

minutes, speaking no language in common, I

18:17

can figure out more or less the

18:19

broad principles of the grammar, how it

18:21

works. I can identify those words. I

18:24

can tell you a lot about the

18:26

sound system of the language. And you

18:28

know, if you keep this up. And

18:30

so I only do it for 25

18:33

minutes, then I turn and talk to

18:35

the audience for about 30 minutes. And

18:37

when you do this for a group

18:39

of linguists, most of them are following

18:42

what you're doing. But it's more fun

18:44

to do it with people who aren't

18:46

linguists, because it almost seems like magic.

18:48

But it's not really that hard, once

18:51

you get the basic principles. And I

18:53

think that the key ingredient is to

18:55

make sure you're around the speakers of

18:57

that language, that you put yourself. You

19:00

immerse yourself in this language, if possible.

19:02

You can learn a lot from books

19:04

and tapes and videos and things. There's

19:06

so many more tools available today than

19:09

there used to be. And I met

19:11

a girl on the streets in Brazil

19:13

one time in Porto Valleu, and she

19:15

came up to me, and I don't

19:18

look very Brazilian, even though my Portuguese

19:20

I think is about as good as

19:22

my English. I don't look very much.

19:25

So she came up to me and

19:27

started speaking in perfect English. And I

19:29

said, wow, where did you learn your

19:31

English? And she said, well, I just

19:34

take a course down the street here

19:36

and I read a lot in English.

19:38

And that's okay for being able to

19:40

read English, but she spoke it so

19:43

well and her pronunciation was so good

19:45

that I was really amazed. So she

19:47

had never been around that many English

19:49

speakers and she mastered the language really

19:52

well. Although I think it's desirable to

19:54

be around native speakers, I can't forget

19:56

that young woman in this city in

19:58

Brazil who had never been around native

20:01

speakers and was speaking the language. really

20:03

well. So you need to want to

20:05

do it. You need to, if possible,

20:07

be around speakers. You can't simply go

20:10

to bed at night listening to a

20:12

tape and wake up in the morning

20:14

speaking the language. But human creativity is

20:16

an amazing thing and I would never

20:19

tell people what can't be done because

20:21

any time you do that you're in

20:23

very dangerous ground because everything that... That

20:25

can't be done at one time is

20:28

done fine now So yeah, it's a

20:30

pretty dangerous thing to say you can't

20:32

do something in my world That just

20:34

means you haven't figured out how to

20:37

do it yet, right? It's so important

20:39

to get enough protein in your

20:41

diet But finding a clean and

20:44

pure source of protein you can

20:46

trust is just as important. That's

20:48

why I choose pw one way

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protein powder from puree If you

20:53

haven't heard yet, the Clean Label

20:55

Project recently released a study where

20:57

they tested 160 of the top-selling

20:59

protein powders on the market, they

21:02

found that 47% of those tested

21:04

exceeded the California Prop 65 safety

21:06

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subscription. I'm remembering a story from

21:54

my childhood. My father worked for

21:56

one of the five national ural,

21:59

puri.com/D-A-V-E. That's P-U-R-I-D-com slash D-A-V-E. I'm

22:01

remembering a story from my childhood.

22:03

My father worked for one of

22:06

the five national laboratories funded by

22:08

the government doing deep research stuff.

22:10

One of his colleagues was a

22:12

Jesuit priest who spoke nine languages.

22:15

And he came in for the

22:17

interview to be a computer programmer.

22:19

And they said, do you know,

22:21

do you know the computer language?

22:24

And he said, no, but I

22:26

know nine languages, how hard could

22:28

it be? So he went home

22:31

and read the book on it,

22:33

came back the next day and

22:35

wrote out all the code on

22:37

paper the way you would back

22:40

then with punch cards and all

22:42

that. And they gave him the

22:44

job and he was a very

22:47

good developer because language had taught

22:49

him how to structure his thinking

22:51

so much that he's like, this

22:53

is a really easy language because

22:56

it follows consistent rules and no

22:58

other language I speak has rules

23:00

that you don't break. Do you

23:02

find that your thoughts are different

23:05

because you can do this? I

23:07

think they are. There are a

23:09

number of reasons why I think

23:12

they would be. First, you do

23:14

structure your thoughts differently when you're

23:16

speaking in another language. You use

23:18

different words. You have to be

23:21

careful when you say that words

23:23

affect the way you think. There

23:25

are experiments that actually show they

23:28

do. So when you do speak

23:30

in other language, if you're in

23:32

an experimental situation when you have

23:34

to think fast, people from different

23:37

languages perform differently. If you give

23:39

people plenty of time to think.

23:41

that effect starts to diminish. But

23:43

if you speak more than one

23:46

language, you have different resources you're

23:48

calling upon. You have different words,

23:50

you have different structures, you have

23:53

different cultural meaning, because to learn

23:55

another language is also to learn

23:57

something about that culture and to

23:59

learn. culture has its own way

24:02

of understanding and solving the same

24:04

problems. This is one of the

24:06

exciting things about learning other cultures

24:09

and learning other languages, that you

24:11

learn new solutions to the same

24:13

problems and also to new problems.

24:15

You increase your versatility. It's like

24:18

a musician that knows how to

24:20

play several different instruments. They can

24:22

be much more effective as a

24:24

studio musician, for example, than somebody

24:27

who just plays one instrument. But

24:29

it's a marvelous effect. There's something

24:31

called the Wharfion effect, which is

24:34

based on the work of Benjamin

24:36

Lee Wharf of about a hundred

24:38

years ago, about how language has

24:40

affected the way we think. I've

24:43

been... fascinated with how we use

24:45

language to communicate about how to

24:47

think, not the structural language, but

24:50

I've been studying at various monasteries

24:52

with gurus all over the world

24:54

and they're trying to describe a

24:56

felt state and they'll say, you

24:59

know, sit here, close your eyes,

25:01

you know, visualize the Buddha, think

25:03

about the number of leads, and

25:05

they're trying to get you to

25:08

do something inside your brain that

25:10

feels a certain way, or another

25:12

guest. on the show from Harvard,

25:15

I was Daniel P. Brown, who

25:17

translates Sanskrit cave meditation texts from

25:19

the 13th century into English for

25:21

people. In my practice, I do

25:24

it with electrodes on the brains

25:26

of leadership. Well, do more of

25:28

what makes the sound louder. So

25:31

when we're talking about things like

25:33

love or a state of bliss

25:35

or a state of happiness or

25:37

a state of sacred union or

25:40

anything that doesn't have a picture

25:42

with it. How the heck does

25:44

language communicate that? Well, language, one

25:47

reason we know that language evolved

25:49

rather than being created by a

25:51

supreme being. If I may be

25:53

so bold, I don't want to

25:56

offend anyone. is that it doesn't

25:58

work very well all the time.

26:00

One reason that there are divorces,

26:02

one of many reasons, is that

26:05

miscommunication takes place all the time.

26:07

And so two people can be

26:09

talking and using the same language

26:12

and still not be communicating effectively

26:14

with one another. But when we

26:16

go into meditation, when we talk

26:18

to people who have very different

26:21

cultural experiences, We communicate with our

26:23

entire bodies, not just the words

26:25

that come out of our mouth,

26:28

but our facial expressions, our body

26:30

orientation, our hand movements. You know,

26:32

in Brazil, if you talk to

26:34

somebody, it doesn't matter what their

26:37

gender is, male or female, they're

26:39

probably going to touch you a

26:41

lot while they're talking to you.

26:43

This is a Brazilian thing, and

26:46

it's really a wonderful thing, you

26:48

know. I remember first talking to

26:50

someone when I was learning Portuguese

26:53

and Brazil, a young woman, and

26:55

she grabbed my arm. And at

26:57

first I thought, what is she

26:59

flirting with me? And then I

27:02

realized, no, this has nothing to

27:04

do with it, it. effective form

27:06

of a bond building and barrier

27:09

breaking at the same time they're

27:11

talking. So when somebody wants to

27:13

tell me about meditation or about

27:15

calming down because I tend to

27:18

be rather tense a lot, they

27:20

talk to me slowly. calmly, they

27:22

show that they have it under

27:24

control, their breathing helps, they have

27:27

gotten used to talking about subjects

27:29

such as emotional control and brain

27:31

control and body control that most

27:34

of us aren't that familiar with

27:36

talking about, and so they have

27:38

developed an effective way of communicating

27:40

holistically with their entire body, and

27:43

the PETA are very good at

27:45

this. When I talk to the

27:47

PETA, They are so laid back

27:50

and so chill. when they talk,

27:52

that it almost puts me to

27:54

sleep. I never, you know, somebody

27:56

came to visit me once in

27:59

the tribe, another scientist, and he

28:01

said, boy, you've, you're, I have

28:03

never seen you this calm. I

28:05

have never seen you this chill

28:08

in my whole life. And I

28:10

said, that's the environment. It just,

28:12

when I'm talking to these people,

28:15

I just relax. They just relax

28:17

me. Dr. Stephen Porgel Theory. It's

28:19

done a lot of work on

28:21

intonation and the speed of how

28:24

we speak and even the difference

28:26

between female and male voices harsh

28:28

guttural sounds and the direct effect

28:31

on the nervous system. So it

28:33

would follow that. some languages when

28:35

people speak them, they're just going

28:37

to be neurologically calming in a

28:40

way that doesn't have anything to

28:42

do with our thinking about the

28:44

language or the meaning just in

28:46

the way our biology receives them,

28:49

right? Right. In fact, the pita

28:51

ha, because it's a tone language

28:53

like Mandarin, for example, they can

28:56

whistle their language, they can hum

28:58

their language without any consonants or

29:00

vowels. So they use consonants in

29:02

vowels in... You know in many

29:05

different speech settings, but if they

29:07

want to be intimate, they're humming

29:09

to each other. They're sitting in

29:12

a corner, usually mothers and children

29:14

or fathers and children, but often

29:16

young couples and older people. I

29:18

mean, they sit in a corner

29:21

and it's sort of like whispering,

29:23

but it's humming. But it works

29:25

because it's tonal and they're carrying

29:27

all the tones in their hums.

29:30

And I've watched mothers pick their

29:32

child up and start humming something

29:34

about it's time to go to

29:37

sleep and the child just falls

29:39

to sleep. I mean, it's just

29:41

like, I almost fall asleep when

29:43

I watch them do it. It's

29:46

so relaxing. And whistling, when the

29:48

men are out hunting especially, they

29:50

whistle to one another. Communicating, effectively,

29:53

anything that we can communicate with

29:55

consonants and valves, they can do

29:57

whistling or humming. And these just

29:59

really affect. your emotions when you're

30:02

around this. Also, they laugh all

30:04

the time. They have such amazing

30:06

sense of humor. So they're not

30:09

only chill, they're not only hum,

30:11

they not only whistle as normal

30:13

communication, but they laugh at everything.

30:15

I mean, not in a nasty

30:18

way. They don't laugh at people,

30:20

but they just find life fun.

30:22

And they're often laughing. So this

30:24

immersive experience has, I think added

30:27

years to my life. Wow. Okay,

30:29

if paraha, if I said that

30:31

right, is a language that's going

30:34

to make you just calm and

30:36

maybe a little bit joyful, what

30:38

language would make someone have the

30:40

best memory? Oh, well, many languages

30:43

of hunter gatherers and others are

30:45

not written down. And one of

30:47

the drawbacks of literacy is that

30:50

we place the burden. that hunter-gatherers

30:52

have to place on their memory,

30:54

we place in the written word.

30:56

So I have found that memory

30:59

appears to be greater in hunter-gatherers

31:01

who only have oral language and

31:03

not written language. And so they

31:05

have to remember all these stories.

31:08

So it would be like... It

31:10

would be like remembering large passages

31:12

of the Bible, for example, if

31:15

you were a Christian or the

31:17

Torah or the Quran. Some people

31:19

try to memorize large sections, but

31:21

in hunter-gatherer societies, to know the

31:24

stories of your ancestors, to know

31:26

the stories that are important, there's

31:28

no choice but to remember them.

31:31

And you hear different people tell

31:33

the story, they tell it the

31:35

same way. Because this is part

31:37

of... the way the language operates.

31:40

There's no other sub language like

31:42

writing to throw it off on.

31:44

So in that respect, there's an

31:46

it. There is an advantage to

31:49

not having a written language. There

31:51

are a lot of, the disadvantages

31:53

outweigh the advantages in its modern

31:56

technological society, but if you're a

31:58

hunter-gatherer society, having increased memory is

32:00

very important for your survival. So

32:02

increasing memory works, and there are

32:05

ways to increase working memory at

32:07

least with some brain training things

32:09

that I've written about, but they're

32:12

not language-based. One of the biggest

32:14

challenges that I have in my

32:16

weird, a neurological post, we'll call

32:18

it post Asperger's wiring, I do

32:21

not have a sense of cardinal

32:23

direction, innate directions whatsoever. Right. Can

32:25

you tell me about some languages

32:27

that unusually use spatial awareness? Yes,

32:30

this is very common. You know,

32:32

when I was first working with

32:34

the Pida Hahn, there by no

32:37

means the only language like this.

32:39

I was trying to get some

32:41

terms that we might use in

32:43

English. Our absolute directions are north,

32:46

south, west, south, east, that kind

32:48

of thing, which I have to

32:50

say most English speakers, if I

32:53

were walking down the street and

32:55

I said let's turn north, very

32:57

few people would know what I'm

32:59

talking about. So the pita how

33:02

what they do is they live

33:04

by a river and they know

33:06

which way the river flows. And

33:08

they always know where the river

33:11

is where the river is. They

33:13

remember this. So when you're walking

33:15

with them in the jungle, they

33:18

will say, turn up river, or

33:20

they will say, turn away from

33:22

the river, or turn towards the

33:24

river. And so when you take

33:27

a pita ha out to another

33:29

place they've never been before, the

33:31

first thing they want to know

33:34

is, where's the river? And I

33:36

have seen, I have taken pita

33:38

ha out for medical treatment. And

33:40

I took this guy, he had

33:43

cirrhosis of the liver, he really

33:45

needed to see a doctor, so

33:47

we flew out of the village.

33:49

I took him to my rented

33:52

house in the city, and then

33:54

I said, okay, now I'm taking

33:56

you to the... hospital. So we

33:59

got into a car and we

34:01

drove him to the hospital and

34:03

he said, yeah but I don't

34:05

want to stay here. And I said, well this

34:08

is where the doctor is. I don't know how

34:10

to help you. The doctor knows how to

34:12

help you. He said, I don't want to

34:14

stay here. I said, let's just try it

34:16

for tonight and see what it's. I'll be

34:18

here first thing in the morning. And so

34:20

I left. The doctor was with him. But

34:22

at about five in the morning, there's a

34:25

knock on my door and I open it

34:27

and here's this pita-ha man with the hospital

34:29

gown all open in the back with no

34:31

underwear or anything. and he's walked almost 20

34:34

miles during the night from that hospital to

34:36

my house and he's never seen these places

34:38

before in his whole life because he knew

34:40

where the river was and when he saw

34:43

my house he immediately mapped it out relative

34:45

to the river and then when I got

34:47

him to the hospital he mapped that out

34:49

relative to the river so he just

34:51

walked from the hospital to my house

34:54

having only seen them one time and

34:56

that was fairly astounding. barefoot half

34:58

naked with just a hospital gown

35:00

on. He made it and so

35:02

I didn't make him go back

35:04

to the hospital. I said, if

35:06

you don't see the doctor, you

35:09

could die. He says, well, then I'll

35:11

die. And so I took him back to

35:13

the village. Did he die? Yep, he died

35:15

about a week after we got back.

35:17

But he was he was not afraid

35:19

of death I mean the Peterhouse simply

35:21

don't fear death They don't like to

35:23

be sick when nobody likes to be

35:25

sick, but he was there with his

35:27

friends He told me he said I

35:29

want to die with my brothers. I

35:31

don't want to die out here We

35:33

can learn a lot from that mindset

35:35

in the West. That's an incredible gift.

35:37

There's another language that fascinates me. I'm

35:39

always looking at things that I suck

35:41

at and being like, well, how could

35:43

I suck less at that? Or just

35:45

like I'm curious about it. So call

35:47

me direction blind. And my father, I

35:50

guess, Boy Scout or something, he always

35:52

knows which way is north. And I'm

35:54

like, that's gross. Actually, I'd like to do

35:56

that. So there's a language from

35:59

the Aboriginals. where they only use cardinal

36:01

directions. So they would say things like the cup

36:03

is to the east of the plate. So their

36:05

entire reality is always mapped out in four directions.

36:07

And what that would do to my brain, if

36:09

I saw the whole world and I always know,

36:11

I feel like my sense of self would be

36:13

so different versus the way some languages would say,

36:16

well, it's to the left of you or to

36:18

the right of you. Right. Do you think that

36:20

that affects? the way we interact even with the

36:22

whole world? Are we a part of the world?

36:24

Is the world part of us individualism? How does

36:26

language affect that? Yeah, there are a lot of

36:28

experiments that show that different directional systems can lead

36:30

to very different degrees of effectiveness in navigating through

36:32

novel environments. So someone like the pita-ha, who basically

36:35

from the time they're little, build a map of

36:37

their whole environment in their head. They don't have

36:39

numbers, so they can't say I'll meet you in

36:41

two. I mean you go two kilometers that way

36:43

and I'll meet you out there or go north

36:45

or south They simply have a name for that

36:47

part of the jungle they want to meet in

36:49

and They say I'll meet you out there, but

36:51

they've mapped it all out in their brain But

36:54

anyway their directional system based on finding the river

36:56

if you know where the river is if you

36:58

can find a river I don't know how this

37:00

would work in the Sahara? Experiments show that they

37:02

would find their way around much faster than most

37:04

of us. And that's exactly what this Peter Ha

37:06

guy did when I took him out to the

37:08

hospital. If you took me out to a brand

37:10

new city and showed me somebody's house, then took

37:13

me to the hospital 20 miles away, I doubt

37:15

that I could walk back to that house. I

37:17

might, if I could... cheat and use street names,

37:19

but this guy doesn't read and doesn't know any

37:21

street names and doesn't have a GPS. It feels

37:23

like you could create a really strong psychedelic experience

37:25

for the barata. Put him in the middle of

37:27

a circular river. Oh, right. And

37:29

if like reality just

37:31

collapsed and they probably, you

37:34

know, go somewhere, what

37:36

do you think? Yeah, they

37:38

actually have some sort

37:40

of circular rivers, oxbow rivers

37:42

that are vestiges of

37:44

other rivers, but they always

37:46

have the main river

37:48

to refer to. The main

37:50

river is dominant then,

37:53

okay, that's no fun. Yeah,

37:55

the main river is

37:57

dominant. So if you take

37:59

away the main river,

38:01

so you put them in

38:03

a place where there's

38:05

only one body of water

38:07

and it keeps going

38:09

around in a circle, like

38:12

a moat, or you

38:14

take them to the Sahara

38:16

Desert where there simply

38:18

is no water, that would

38:20

be extremely difficult for

38:22

them. It just points out,

38:24

there's so much about

38:26

objective reality that isn't really

38:28

that objective. It's very

38:31

much a subjective reality. We

38:33

just all have this

38:35

shared belief about it. It

38:37

sounds like words don't

38:39

even reflect objective reality, they're

38:41

just cultural constructs. Is

38:43

that real? That's basically what

38:45

a symbol is. It's

38:47

a cultural construct and it

38:50

doesn't have to reflect

38:52

objective reality, it only has

38:54

to reflect how the

38:56

people want to talk about

38:58

it. This

39:00

is something that comes up again

39:03

and again. So what is fact

39:05

and what is fiction? We tend to

39:07

think there's this hard line between

39:09

the two that every culture observes,

39:11

but I've been in many societies

39:13

where I really can't tell when they're

39:15

talking about something, whether that's fact

39:17

or fiction, and sometimes it seems

39:19

to be a blend of both. So

39:22

the Piedaha believe in jungle. the

39:24

news? I get it. Yeah, right.

39:26

Exactly. You know, you watch any

39:28

two people watch the news and they're

39:30

going to take away very different

39:32

conclusions. He said this. No, he

39:34

didn't. He said this. So that's

39:36

another thing that points to the fact

39:38

that language evolved because it's not,

39:40

you know, I once was interviewed,

39:42

you know, about 40 years ago,

39:44

I was interviewed by the New York

39:47

Times because somebody had claimed that

39:49

a language of South America, Imata,

39:51

was the perfect logical language. It was

39:53

even more logical than computer languages

39:55

and that if we all spoke

39:57

this, there would be no ambiguity. the

40:00

reporter, I said, it's just

40:02

impossible that this is the

40:04

case because human languages are

40:06

superior and more complex than

40:08

computer languages because they have

40:10

ambiguity and because they have

40:12

vagueness. No politician could survive

40:15

without ambiguity and vagueness. We

40:17

all use these things purposely

40:19

to mislead people. So one

40:21

of the functions of languages

40:23

to mislead people. You know,

40:25

oh wait, there's a tiger

40:27

over here, we better not

40:29

come because I actually saw food

40:31

over here and I don't want

40:33

to share it with anybody. So

40:35

lying can be to our advantage,

40:37

which is why everybody lies. Did

40:39

we invent language so we could

40:41

lie? Well, I think lying has

40:43

a big part, is a big

40:46

part of it. I think that

40:48

lying was there from the very

40:50

beginning. My dog lies. They will. They'll

40:52

try to hide things. And we've seen

40:54

chimpanzees. You know, they'll misdirect others to

40:56

hide the banana or whatever. Lying is

40:58

not unique to us, but we're just

41:00

better at it because we have language

41:02

and we can say it with a

41:04

straight face. We can say we're not lying.

41:06

So like the Pitaha have these little endings

41:08

at the end of every verb that tells

41:10

me the degree of certainty I have for

41:13

what I just said. Whoa. Did I deduce

41:15

it? Did I induce it? Am I

41:17

just, did I just hear somebody

41:19

say that? They're just little particles

41:21

and each one of them tells

41:23

me that. Somebody said, so we

41:25

always know they're telling the truth.

41:27

I said, no, sometimes they will

41:29

use the one that means absolute

41:31

truth when they're lying. Imagine if

41:33

like every post on the internet,

41:35

if the author was saying, you know,

41:37

here's, here's one of three things. I'm

41:40

pretty sure I heard it somewhere. I

41:42

heard it somewhere. And no, I've studied

41:44

the crap out. All this time people,

41:46

like, that's true, that's not true. Like,

41:49

it's actually probably somewhere in the middle. Well,

41:51

okay. Right. That's cool. So they could say that,

41:53

but in Pida Ha, you have to say it.

41:55

It's part of the verb. You have no other

41:57

option. Oh, man. This is so mind-blowing. All right.

42:00

Do you think there's like a

42:02

secret universal language that's hidden underneath

42:04

all languages? Well that that is

42:06

the view of some linguists actually

42:08

called universal grammar Actually universal grammar

42:11

is an idea that started with

42:13

in the 13th century with the

42:15

monk Roger Bacon He was the

42:17

first one to use this term

42:20

and what he meant Was that

42:22

there are logical principles that languages

42:24

have to follow He didn't mean

42:26

it's biological, he just meant that

42:28

it's logical. The same term, universal

42:31

grammar, was first used in the

42:33

United States in 1865 by the

42:35

American philosopher Charles Sanders Perce, whose

42:37

biography I'm just now finishing, and

42:40

he meant the same thing by

42:42

it that Roger Bacon meant, and

42:44

he actually gives Roger Bacon the

42:46

credit for the idea, that we

42:48

have symbols. they can only be

42:51

arranged in certain ways. So in

42:53

that sense, where all humans are

42:55

subject are bound to a certain

42:57

logic, but that logic is not

43:00

totally tight. I mean, it's just

43:02

a sort of a loose framework.

43:04

So languages can vary tremendously and

43:06

how people think about the world

43:08

and how they talk about the

43:11

world are very different in each

43:13

of the 8,000 languages spoken in

43:15

the world today. So. the more

43:17

we know about those languages, the

43:20

more we know about how to

43:22

reason and how to talk about

43:24

the world and how to solve

43:26

problems. But at the same time,

43:28

there is a loose logic to

43:31

how language works, and so if

43:33

I met aliens... Like I commented

43:35

in a couple of places on

43:37

the movie Arrival, where you've got

43:40

these space aliens coming down and

43:42

a linguist has to figure out

43:44

what they're saying, and that's pretty

43:46

much how field work functions. I

43:48

mean, I love the movie, not

43:51

always... for the whole movie, but

43:53

I love the part where she

43:55

was talking to the aliens or

43:57

communicating with them because that's exactly

44:00

how I would work. And it's

44:02

one thing that makes learning another

44:04

language possible. If there were no

44:06

constraints at all, if languages were

44:08

utterly different, it would be almost

44:11

impossible to learn another one. But

44:13

once we start to learn some

44:15

of the symbols and start to

44:17

put them together, the logic. doesn't

44:20

do everything by any means, but

44:22

it is an extremely useful fallback

44:24

as we're learning in other language.

44:26

Do you think AI really understands

44:28

language nuance? Oh, that's a great

44:31

question. I think AI proves most

44:33

linguistic theories that are based on

44:35

biology to be false. Because there's

44:37

no biology in AI. Okay, so

44:40

does it understand the meaning of

44:42

what it's saying? Maybe not. It's

44:44

not even necessary that it do

44:46

that. There was this famous thought

44:48

experiment by the philosopher John Searle

44:51

about 45 years ago called the

44:53

Chinese Room. And he said, let's

44:55

imagine that you've got a big

44:57

computer, but it's empty inside. There's

45:00

a guy in there. And the

45:02

guy has instructions. And he's got

45:04

two buckets of symbols. And it

45:06

says, if you get a symbol

45:08

that looks like this, some quickly

45:11

little line, put out of the

45:13

opening, which turns out to look

45:15

like a mouth, because he doesn't

45:17

know he's in a big robot

45:20

head, put out this other symbol.

45:22

And the guy starts doing that.

45:24

He gets really good at it.

45:26

And pretty soon, he's taking, and

45:28

he doesn't know that he's taking

45:31

Chinese and putting out English. Pretty

45:33

soon he's so good at it

45:35

that nobody can tell everybody thinks

45:37

he speaks Chinese. But does he

45:40

speak Chinese? Well, you can't say

45:42

he really understands Chinese, but he's

45:44

doing a really good job. So

45:46

when Alan Turing proposed the Turing

45:48

test, he thought that if a

45:51

computer could imitate a human... enough,

45:53

we'd have to say that they

45:55

were thinking like a human. But

45:57

AI today and John Searles' 45-year-old

46:00

thought experiments show that it doesn't

46:02

matter if they're doing it the

46:04

way we do it. They're doing

46:06

it. I use AI all the

46:08

time, not, you know, to combat

46:11

it in the classroom, I always

46:13

give written this, I don't allow

46:15

any electronic devices, and I have

46:17

weekly essays that have to be

46:20

written with pen and paper, and

46:22

my students think they're going back

46:24

another century. For now, I mean,

46:26

if I were really creative, I

46:28

would have, but I do have

46:31

them do some AI assignments. It's

46:33

not like AI is bad for

46:35

you. It's very good for you.

46:37

So I don't think it's relevant

46:40

to ask whether it's doing this

46:42

exactly like a human would. It's

46:44

doing it really well. And if

46:46

you say that it's only possible

46:48

to learn a language in a

46:51

way that we, that AI does,

46:53

based on a biology, that's just

46:55

wrong, because AI has proven you

46:57

don't need any biology to do

47:00

that. Do you follow Project SETI

47:02

with understanding language in Wales? I

47:04

have read quite a few of

47:06

the different reports on language in

47:08

Wales, yeah. I attended a presentation

47:11

by one of the researchers in

47:13

Switzerland recently, and it's incredible. They've

47:15

decoded major portions of the clicking

47:17

language in Wales, all using AI.

47:20

And again, does the AI understand

47:22

anything? We don't really know. But

47:24

it can tell you when the

47:26

whale clicks this way, they're talking

47:28

about the one over there whose

47:31

name to click-click. Quick. Do you

47:33

think there's other language all over

47:35

the world that we're going to

47:37

be able to decode? Like bird

47:40

language or slime molds, flaming? I

47:42

don't know. Well, every creature communicates.

47:44

There's not a living creature that

47:46

doesn't communicate. The big difference, to

47:48

call it language in my opinion,

47:51

is the use of symbols that

47:53

are created by convention. Can other

47:55

animals do that? I think almost

47:57

certainly they can. Can they do

48:00

it to the same degree that

48:02

we do? I don't know. But

48:04

I would never say again that

48:06

an animal... can't have a language,

48:08

I would simply say that until

48:11

recently, we haven't had the ability

48:13

to study it like these researchers

48:15

are doing now. Many linguists would

48:17

still say, I mean, Noam Chomsky

48:20

is famous for saying that trying

48:22

to teach, trying to say that

48:24

an ape or a whale has

48:26

language is like saying a man

48:28

jumping out of a fifth story

48:31

window flapping his arms is flying.

48:33

But that, although it's funny. doesn't

48:35

have any real basis because if

48:37

you can show that these whales

48:40

are using symbols and it's almost

48:42

certainly the case that they are

48:44

my dog recognizes symbols and you

48:46

know there are certain words that

48:48

all my dogs so that they

48:51

can learn them they don't seem

48:53

to create them but whales do

48:55

seem to create them I mean

48:57

after all the the brain of

49:00

a sperm whale is over 5,000

49:02

cubic... centimeters, whereas the brain of

49:04

the most, the biggest brain in

49:06

the human line has, was Homo

49:08

Neandrotholyntus, which had a brain of

49:11

about 1,300 to 1,450 C.C.C.s, except

49:13

that European women brains average size

49:15

of about 950 C. So, did

49:17

you just say that women have

49:20

smaller brains than men? Yeah, they

49:22

do because their bodies are smaller.

49:24

I'm telling my girlfriend. My response

49:26

to that is size doesn't matter.

49:28

Exactly. I was hoping you were

49:31

going to go there. I've not.

49:33

Yeah, yeah. So if the creature,

49:35

you know, the sperm whale brain

49:37

is not organized like our brain,

49:40

but it's 5,000 cubic. I mean,

49:42

it's huge. It's the biggest brain

49:44

in the world. So I'm not

49:46

shocked. Elephants can do things that

49:48

we never... thought possible. Animals, we

49:51

are animals and the fact that

49:53

we think of ourselves and a

49:55

lot of this This is the

49:57

influence of the philosopher Renee de

50:00

Cartt, who basically said that all

50:02

animals except humans, he would have

50:04

never called humans animals. Animals are

50:06

basically meat machines. They don't have

50:08

any thoughts, they don't have any

50:11

emotions, they just have instincts and

50:13

reactions, and so killing them doesn't

50:15

matter at all. But once you

50:17

start to study animals and realize

50:20

we're also animals... that we're better

50:22

at some things and other animals

50:24

and other animals are better at

50:26

many things than we are, then

50:28

you start to realize that we've

50:31

undervalued these creatures, these beautiful sentient

50:33

creatures that coexist in the world

50:35

with us. It makes you think

50:37

about the ethics of harming others,

50:40

you know, if whales can speak

50:42

to each other, what does that

50:44

mean about killing them? I mean,

50:46

we kill humans, so I guess

50:48

the people who kill humans aren't

50:51

too worried about killing whales, but

50:53

we don't do a lot of

50:55

eating of humans anyway. It's not

50:57

too often, although, when I was

51:00

going to school, we used to

51:02

have some vegans who would blow

51:04

up laboratories of university researchers working

51:06

on chicken eggs. Oh yeah. That

51:08

was kind of always, I was

51:11

like, if you wanted to blow

51:13

up one thing, you might as

51:15

well be willing to eat them,

51:17

but I guess. Right, right, exactly.

51:24

Have you seen the movie Idiocracy? I

51:26

have not. I've seen it advertised, but

51:28

I haven't seen it. It's a cult

51:31

classic. It's hilarious about the world's smartest

51:33

man today gets frozen and wakes up

51:35

200 years from now accidentally. Actually, the

51:37

world's dumbest man from today gets frozen.

51:40

And 200 years from now he wakes

51:42

up and he's the world's smartest man.

51:44

You know, saves the world because they're

51:47

spraying crops with gatorade because electrolytes. You

51:49

know, it's a sort of a sort

51:51

of a... commentary about how generation, my

51:53

generation, we seem to be getting dumber.

51:56

What I'm curious is, if I froze

51:58

myself... and I could wake up at

52:00

some point in time, how long could

52:03

I go before I wouldn't recognize English

52:05

anymore? In the last 1,000 years, English

52:07

a thousand years ago would be completely

52:10

unintelligible to us today. You just couldn't

52:12

understand it. So you don't have to

52:14

go back a thousand years, you go

52:16

back to a few hundred years to

52:19

Shakespeare, and it's already difficult to follow

52:21

what Shakespeare's writing, if you don't have

52:23

some sort of... marginal notes to tell

52:26

you what this phrase means and that

52:28

phrase means. You know, so many words

52:30

fall out of use and other words

52:33

come into use, but languages are always

52:35

changing. And so English and German used

52:37

to be the same language. In fact,

52:39

the English and French 6,000 years ago

52:42

were the same language. And we can

52:44

tell that by different things. So language

52:46

changes each generation. has new words and

52:49

new expressions. So in a hundred years,

52:51

you would understand, but you would lose

52:53

a lot of the thread of things

52:55

that were being said. I mean, I

52:58

have grown grandchildren, and if we take

53:00

just the textual language, text language, I

53:02

don't understand half of what they text

53:05

me. I have to write back and

53:07

ask for an explanation, because... Language is

53:09

changing, becoming more visual for them. Emogies

53:12

are becoming part of language. So we

53:14

have these two modalities. When I speak

53:16

to them, like my granddaughter, who is

53:18

one of the smartest people I know,

53:21

she's a senior in high school, she

53:23

graduates this year, she's always using words

53:25

I don't know what they mean. You

53:28

know, I consider myself... to have a

53:30

good vocabulary. I write books, I read

53:32

all the time. But she's always using

53:34

words from her generation that I don't

53:37

understand. And I have to ask her.

53:39

And she said, you don't know this?

53:41

Yeah, that's... I suspect that if I

53:44

went to sleep and woke up in

53:46

a hundred years, I would have a

53:48

hard time following a conversation. I agree.

53:51

And I'm on the record, wrote a

53:53

big book about, I'm planning to live

53:55

to at least 180. And that may

53:57

sound a little crazy, but hey, I

54:00

just want 50% better than our current

54:02

best. I've got AI and gene therapy

54:04

and 100 years to play around. Maybe

54:07

I'll make it maybe I want. But

54:09

if I do, when I'm 180, will

54:11

I understand the language of 12-year-olds? And

54:14

I kind of think I won't. Well,

54:16

if you have no contact with them

54:18

for all that time. your own speaking

54:20

your own language will change so you'll

54:23

keep up with them but if you

54:25

go to sleep and wake up in

54:27

a hundred eighty years and haven't had

54:30

that contact then you probably won't understand

54:32

them uh... but if you live constantly

54:34

and have that kind of regular contact

54:36

then I suspect you will be able

54:39

to follow them. As long as you

54:41

talk to them. The simple rule is

54:43

we talk like who we talk with.

54:46

And if you stop talking with a

54:48

particular group of people, you're going to

54:50

stop talking like them. And if you

54:53

stop talking like them long enough. So

54:55

many years ago, there was a study

54:57

by the founder of sociolinguistics, William Labov,

54:59

at the University of Pennsylvania, who showed

55:02

that African-American dialect or language of the

55:04

inner city. and the surrounding white language

55:06

of the suburbs were becoming so far

55:09

apart it was really difficult for them

55:11

to talk to each other. So that's

55:13

just because they stopped talking to each

55:15

other so they stopped talking like each

55:18

other and this shows a severe social

55:20

problem. We're not talking with each other.

55:22

And we find this along economic lines

55:25

and age lines and ethnic lines. So

55:27

one of the great things about diversity

55:29

is to be able to know what

55:32

everybody's talking about. You know, you hang

55:34

around and you listen to different ways

55:36

of speaking, and it's almost like becoming

55:38

bilingual. When I lecture to a large

55:41

class that has a lot of African-Americans,

55:43

I tell my students, you know, especially

55:45

the white students, said, you know how

55:48

to speak English in one way. These

55:50

people all know how to speak it

55:52

in two ways. They speak African-American vernacular,

55:54

and they speak white English, because they've

55:57

got to speak it. And in my

55:59

school, growing up in Southern California, eight

56:01

miles from the Mexican border, 80% of

56:04

my friends in school were Spanish-speaking in

56:06

the home. They all spoke good English,

56:08

but they... But you know when you

56:11

played football or something everybody was speaking

56:13

Spanish so I realized if I wanted

56:15

to have these friends I got to

56:17

have to learn to speak Spanish and

56:20

we had Spanish classes required from third

56:22

grade on and I'm so glad that

56:24

that happened it's not like they didn't

56:27

speak English we could speak English but

56:29

like if you go to another country

56:31

probably they're going to understand English so

56:34

you could just you know business people

56:36

when they travel they don't have that

56:38

much time they speak English and they

56:40

get by. But if you speak to

56:43

them in their language or you make

56:45

a serious effort to learn this other

56:47

language, that's a great sign of respect

56:50

on the one hand, and it can

56:52

show them that you're serious about knowing

56:54

who they are and getting to know

56:56

them, not just simply using them for

56:59

business purposes, at the same time that

57:01

it's expanding your own consciousness. So you're

57:03

doing two favors at once. Couldn't you

57:06

argue that that's cultural appropriation? You're stealing

57:08

a language from someone else? I mean,

57:10

there's crazy people out there that would

57:13

say that, but what do you think?

57:15

Oh, I've heard a lot of people

57:17

say that. Yeah, people have said that

57:19

to me. They said, you stole the

57:22

language from the pita ha. I said,

57:24

yeah, well, if I stole the language,

57:26

they wouldn't be speaking it, would they?

57:29

I would have taken it out of

57:31

their mouths, but they're all speaking it

57:33

just fine. It's important to learn these

57:35

languages. The only way you could steal

57:38

a language is if you took it

57:40

out of their brain. Exactly. This whole

57:42

idea that you own a language or

57:45

a... food, it's nonsense. You don't steal

57:47

food from someone unless you take it

57:49

off their plate. Exactly. So I eat

57:52

tacos. Actually, I don't eat tacos because

57:54

of the corn, but I want to

57:56

eat tacos. So there. Yeah, I used

57:58

to eat a lot of tacos growing

58:01

up, but I don't eat the carbs

58:03

now either. So, you know, I take

58:05

the tortilla and scrape everything out. Yeah,

58:08

Connie. We can agree. But yeah. You're

58:10

not stealing tacos. All my good friends

58:12

in Southern California are still making tacos.

58:15

They posted on Facebook all the time,

58:17

so I didn't steal that from them.

58:19

In fact, they would find it rather

58:21

strange if I didn't like the food

58:24

I was raised on. And also, no

58:26

one's ever stolen a hamburger for me.

58:28

So... Right. I'm very happy. If people

58:31

want to eat hamburgers in Beijing, that's

58:33

fine. I don't feel like I've been

58:35

culturally misappropriated or something like that. Cool.

58:37

Now we're getting into things that are

58:40

a little humorous and I'm curious. How

58:42

does humor change in language? Does some

58:44

languages have a little flag like I'm

58:47

joking or how do you communicate humor

58:49

differently? Well we do it, you know,

58:51

one way we do it is codified

58:54

jokes, you know, where we have these

58:56

jokes and we tell them. Peterha don't

58:58

have jokes like that, for example, they

59:00

don't have that, but they use a

59:03

lot of sarcasm. So that rely on

59:05

cultural knowledge. So somebody can tell you

59:07

something it sounds perfectly serious. You know,

59:10

so I had a I had Peter

59:12

Ha come in one time because I

59:14

was always asking him questions about their

59:16

culture and everything and the guy comes

59:19

in and he starts telling me the

59:21

story About how they kill their babies

59:23

if they don't like the way they

59:26

look and I'm getting like horrified and

59:28

I said at the end. He's told

59:30

me all this I'm taking notes and

59:33

I said you kill your babies and

59:35

he bursts out laughing and he says

59:37

Who would kill the babies? That's the

59:39

stupidest thing I ever heard of. You

59:42

believe that? No, he said, you know.

59:44

I like these guys already. Yeah, so

59:46

yeah, they're very funny and they like

59:49

to... They like my gullibility, you know,

59:51

because they know I'm there studying and

59:53

I take it all seriously. So they

59:56

teach me bad words, you know, dirty

59:58

words, just for a joke to see

1:00:00

if I'll say it. And then I'll

1:00:02

try it out in public, you know,

1:00:05

because you have to practice the language

1:00:07

and the guy who taught it to

1:00:09

him, he's elbowing the guy next to

1:00:12

him, he's going to say this word.

1:00:14

So, but they don't mean to humiliate

1:00:16

me. It's just fun for them. You

1:00:18

know we change our intonation a little

1:00:21

bit we change our facial expressions but

1:00:23

if you're really good at telling jokes

1:00:25

or making people laugh using sarcasm you

1:00:28

act like you're being serious it's only

1:00:30

when they realize the absurdity that and

1:00:32

that they've been taken in that it

1:00:35

becomes funny, both to you and to

1:00:37

them, if they've got a good sense

1:00:39

of humor. Wow, that's definitely the way.

1:00:41

But there are linguists have written entire

1:00:44

books on humor and how humor works

1:00:46

in language. It's not something that I've

1:00:48

studied profoundly, but I have friends who

1:00:51

specialize in the study of humor and

1:00:53

language. I ran a little experiment once,

1:00:55

and I will confess. There are sounds

1:00:57

in Swedish and French. I don't think

1:01:00

my brain processes them, right? You can

1:01:02

say the word to me and I'll

1:01:04

say a different word back. And it's

1:01:07

driven me nuts. And I used to

1:01:09

have auditory processing issues. I've done a

1:01:11

bunch of retraining of my ears to

1:01:14

be able to hear things I couldn't

1:01:16

hear before. And to this day, it's

1:01:18

still very difficult for me compared to

1:01:20

what it used to be. And I'm

1:01:23

like, what is going on here? So

1:01:25

I said, all right, I'm going to

1:01:27

see if I can fix this. So

1:01:30

I took an infrared laser that penetrates

1:01:32

the skull and stimulates brain function. And

1:01:34

I put it above my left ear

1:01:37

over the language processing center in my

1:01:39

brain. And I ran it, especially for

1:01:41

two minutes. I'm like, I'm a biacker.

1:01:43

I'll do three. And then I tried

1:01:46

talking. And I spoke in garbled sentences.

1:01:48

And it freaked me out, because I

1:01:50

made my living at the time on

1:01:53

stage talking about cloud computing and security

1:01:55

and security and encryption and all that

1:01:57

kind of all that kind of stuff.

1:01:59

And it took about four or

1:02:01

five hours. I'd overstimulated my

1:02:04

language processing center, which is

1:02:06

probably good in the long term. We

1:02:08

don't really know. And I returned to

1:02:10

normal. I still don't hear the sounds

1:02:12

very well. But what do we learn

1:02:14

about language from people who have

1:02:16

brain injuries? Well, we learn quite a

1:02:19

bit. In my book, how language began,

1:02:21

I have four chapters on the brain

1:02:23

in which I go into... healthy brains

1:02:26

and brains with different kinds of problems

1:02:28

and what these things teach us. You

1:02:30

know we have the we have the

1:02:32

famous story of Phineas Gage who

1:02:34

had the rod go through his

1:02:36

brain and do severe damage but

1:02:39

it changes personality but not his

1:02:41

linguistic ability so much. We find

1:02:44

other cases you know there was

1:02:46

a there was when I was

1:02:48

at the University of Pittsburgh we

1:02:51

had a fellow who had a

1:02:53

PhD in neurology and a PhD

1:02:55

in computer science and he worked

1:02:57

with a phasics and he had

1:02:59

a guy who had a type

1:03:02

of a phasia where he could

1:03:04

only any new noun he could only

1:03:06

think of the word Reagan

1:03:08

because Ronald Reagan had been the

1:03:10

president. So you would show him

1:03:13

a picture and the guy of

1:03:15

some object, new object and the

1:03:17

guy says I know this is not

1:03:19

it, but I want to say. That's

1:03:21

Reagan. And he would start crying because

1:03:24

he knew he wasn't saying it

1:03:26

right, but that's the only word

1:03:28

that he had. And so we

1:03:30

learn about language being so

1:03:32

compartmentalized in some ways that,

1:03:34

you know, there's the sound

1:03:36

system, which, you know, is

1:03:39

important. There's the meaning system,

1:03:41

which is important. There's the

1:03:43

word structure system that's important.

1:03:45

There's the mental dictionary that's

1:03:47

important. And we find that

1:03:49

damage can be done to

1:03:51

each of these areas. So

1:03:53

that, but when you're learning

1:03:56

new sounds, I mean, there's

1:03:58

this field called Arctic. which

1:04:00

is essential for the field worker

1:04:02

because you're going to wind up

1:04:04

going into a language that nobody's

1:04:06

ever studied before so you need

1:04:08

to know the kinds of sounds

1:04:11

that the human vocal apparatus can

1:04:13

produce and how it produces them.

1:04:15

And once you start to study

1:04:17

that if you listen to it

1:04:19

you say okay that sound is

1:04:21

the tongue is doing this and

1:04:23

the lips are doing this and

1:04:25

the teeth are doing this and

1:04:28

the pharyngeal opening is doing this.

1:04:30

And so you can then sort

1:04:32

of piece together how the sound

1:04:34

is made. And nowadays with computers,

1:04:36

you can actually look at the

1:04:38

waveform of the sound and take

1:04:40

away all the problems of your

1:04:43

ears and say, okay, now I

1:04:45

know how this sound is made,

1:04:47

you practice it, and you can

1:04:49

say it. But that requires practice,

1:04:51

and we form habits. This is

1:04:53

one of the most fundamental things

1:04:55

about being alive. every creature forms

1:04:57

habits. And we form habits, and

1:05:00

one of the habits we form

1:05:02

is producing sounds in a certain

1:05:04

way, and only a certain range

1:05:06

of sounds, and hearing sounds in

1:05:08

a certain way. But this isn't

1:05:10

limited to language. People who can

1:05:12

distinguish a wide variety of tastes

1:05:15

of wine, Somoliers, for example. I'm

1:05:17

not sure what I think of

1:05:19

all the adjectives they use to

1:05:21

describe wine. I never taste eat

1:05:23

them cheese in a wine or

1:05:25

something. But they learn definitely by

1:05:27

practice to discriminate the different tastes.

1:05:30

Or a musician learns by practice

1:05:32

to listen to a song and

1:05:34

tell what court it's in, what

1:05:36

key it's in. So all the

1:05:38

things that can be perceived. Real

1:05:40

like fictional elements like unicorns and

1:05:42

fictional elements like unicorns and all

1:05:44

the real things Charles purse called

1:05:47

the feneron all the things that

1:05:49

can be experienced and he said

1:05:51

that One of the great points

1:05:53

of education is to learn to

1:05:55

discriminate the aspects of the fenuron.

1:05:57

So he learned to discriminate wines.

1:05:59

He learned many languages. He learned

1:06:02

many fields of science. He did

1:06:04

all of these things partly because

1:06:06

he needed to, he wanted as

1:06:08

a goal to discriminate all the

1:06:10

things that happened to us in

1:06:12

experience. And most of us just

1:06:14

ignore the bulk of that. There's

1:06:16

all this background noise that we

1:06:19

don't pay attention to because it's

1:06:21

really hard. We have to. ignore

1:06:23

most of what's in our environment

1:06:25

in order to focus on what's

1:06:27

most important to us. And this

1:06:29

is hard, but at the same

1:06:31

time, we can do better. We

1:06:34

can learn to start discriminating those

1:06:36

things we've always been ignoring. and

1:06:38

learn about the sounds of Swedish,

1:06:40

or learn about the trilled R

1:06:42

of Spanish, or the uvular trill

1:06:44

of German, you know, all the

1:06:46

different sounds, or the tones, you

1:06:48

know, some people told me I'll

1:06:51

give them examples, so in Pida

1:06:53

Ha, the word for ear is

1:06:55

awe, and the word for skin

1:06:57

is awe, and the word for

1:06:59

foreigners, awe, so... you've got to

1:07:01

hear the tones. And somebody said,

1:07:03

oh, that's impossible. You must have

1:07:06

to be born learning that. I

1:07:08

said, can you carry a tune?

1:07:10

If you can sing anything, that

1:07:12

means you can discriminate the tones.

1:07:14

In fact, English uses tones also,

1:07:16

but we use it in intonation,

1:07:18

rising intonation, falling intonation. What's difficult

1:07:21

is having the tones on each

1:07:23

individual vowel. But it's not like

1:07:25

we don't do that in English,

1:07:27

it's just that... We don't do

1:07:29

it in the same way, so

1:07:31

we have to train ourselves, and

1:07:33

this is one of the things

1:07:35

that having new experiences does for

1:07:38

us. It breaks our old habits

1:07:40

and helps us form new habits

1:07:42

and powers of discrimination. It feels

1:07:44

like that's a relatively easy thing

1:07:46

to train if you just make

1:07:48

a video game. Like you can

1:07:50

only shoot, you know, rockets at

1:07:53

the bad guys if you hear

1:07:55

the right away. It's not like

1:07:57

it's conceptually difficult. It's just we

1:07:59

don't do it. So video games

1:08:01

are great. We have so many

1:08:03

new ways with electronics and AI

1:08:05

and YouTube. When I was playing

1:08:07

in a rock and roll band,

1:08:10

you listen to the song and

1:08:12

you figured out how to play

1:08:14

it. But now, you just go

1:08:16

to YouTube and somebody will actually

1:08:18

show you how to play it.

1:08:20

There's nothing wrong with that. That

1:08:22

doesn't mean you're worse. If you

1:08:25

can play it and you can

1:08:27

play a well I don't care

1:08:29

how you learn to play it

1:08:31

You know, so we have all

1:08:33

these extra tools that that help

1:08:35

us do things now That were

1:08:37

much harder or impossible for us

1:08:40

in the past Mmm. It's so

1:08:42

beautiful to think what we can

1:08:44

do and it seems like social

1:08:46

media may go in the opposite

1:08:48

direction I've got one more question

1:08:50

for you Do you think it's

1:08:52

possible that psychedelics drove the evolution

1:08:54

of language, the drunk ape theory?

1:08:57

Well, it's possible. I've read theories

1:08:59

that it did contribute, and I

1:09:01

was recently at a series of

1:09:03

meetings in Europe with people from

1:09:05

the European Research Council. talking about

1:09:07

a form of psychedelic that has

1:09:09

been developed recently that can take

1:09:12

away persons concept of their self.

1:09:14

Oh wow. And it's very effective

1:09:16

for certain kinds of therapy. But

1:09:18

you know I I'm a child

1:09:20

of California in the 60s and

1:09:22

and we took a lot of

1:09:24

psychedelics back then and I certainly

1:09:26

feel that they were consciousness expanding

1:09:29

and in my own case I

1:09:31

never had a negative reaction. It

1:09:33

was just taught me to think

1:09:35

I thought at least at the

1:09:37

time in different ways about the

1:09:39

world. So it's possible but there's

1:09:41

certainly a lot of language development.

1:09:44

I don't know that Homo erectus

1:09:46

ever had access to psychedelics. I

1:09:48

can't prove they did or they

1:09:50

didn't. So this is one of

1:09:52

those things where we just would

1:09:54

need a record of all the

1:09:56

plants they ate and everything that

1:09:58

was in their environment to say

1:10:01

this. I can't say that it's

1:10:03

implausible. I can't even say that

1:10:05

it's plausible because I haven't read

1:10:07

enough about it, but again, it's

1:10:09

silly to rule out everything as

1:10:11

impossible. One of the things that

1:10:13

worries me about the world today,

1:10:16

especially when I listen to political

1:10:18

discourse, is everything seems simple to

1:10:20

people. It's just obvious, black and

1:10:22

white. They could be on opposite

1:10:24

sides. What's black for me could

1:10:26

be white for you and vice

1:10:28

versa, but it still seems simple.

1:10:31

You know, so you take a

1:10:33

political position and somebody says, well,

1:10:35

that's just wrong. Well, it might

1:10:37

be, but you know, nothing is...

1:10:39

as simple as we like to

1:10:41

think it is. We like to

1:10:43

simplify because it makes our lives

1:10:45

simpler. We like to be right

1:10:48

and we like to think we're

1:10:50

right so we rule out possibilities.

1:10:52

And that's really not the way

1:10:54

of science. Charles Perce had an

1:10:56

expression that I really like, which

1:10:58

is, do not block the way

1:11:00

of inquiry. Do not block. the

1:11:03

possibility of finding out new things,

1:11:05

investigate everything. William James didn't believe

1:11:07

in ghosts, but he did, he

1:11:09

didn't tell people they were wrong

1:11:11

to believe in ghosts. He simply

1:11:13

did experiments. He went to seances.

1:11:15

He went to haunted houses. He

1:11:17

investigated this. And at the end

1:11:20

he said, I can't really say

1:11:22

it's totally wrong. He said, I'm

1:11:24

not totally convinced they're there and

1:11:26

I'm not totally convinced they're not

1:11:28

there. There's more plausibility than I

1:11:30

thought when I started this. And

1:11:32

that's like an honest conclusion, even

1:11:35

if I don't agree with him,

1:11:37

but I didn't do the research

1:11:39

he did. Such a fascinating thing.

1:11:41

I look at the way my...

1:11:43

mind understands the world around me

1:11:45

and there's a whole picture inside

1:11:47

there and I've done a lot

1:11:50

of esoteric practices and I can

1:11:52

have this picture that isn't really

1:11:54

what I just see and I

1:11:56

know language is a part of

1:11:58

it and I know language is

1:12:00

a part of it and I

1:12:02

know that I don't really have

1:12:04

much of a voice in my

1:12:07

head anymore and I've been pondering

1:12:09

more and more what's really going

1:12:11

on in there how do we

1:12:13

use language to enhance our cognitive

1:12:15

function how do we transform language

1:12:17

to transform the way we see

1:12:19

the world and I think the

1:12:22

work you're doing finding the biggest

1:12:24

outliers out there in language and

1:12:26

setting them. It's so fascinating and

1:12:28

it's so unusual and I really

1:12:30

thank you for just your life's

1:12:32

work and your curiosity, relentless curiosity

1:12:34

and for sharing it. Thank you

1:12:36

so much for having me and

1:12:39

give me an opportunity to talk

1:12:41

about these things. You have a

1:12:43

year old where people who are

1:12:45

interested in becoming linguists can learn

1:12:47

about your work and it's fascinating

1:12:49

stuff if you're into how does

1:12:51

the brain really work in a

1:12:54

lot of the audience is where

1:12:56

do people find your books? It's

1:12:58

at Dan Everett books.com. No space.

1:13:00

Yeah, just Dan Everett books.com. Well,

1:13:02

keep studying all the cool languages.

1:13:04

If you ever write a book

1:13:06

in Klingon, I want to read

1:13:09

it. I just don't know how.

1:13:11

Not much appreciation. Yeah, well, thank

1:13:13

you very much for having me,

1:13:15

and I hope more people take

1:13:17

it upon themselves to study languages

1:13:19

as a result of this conversation.

1:13:21

See you next time on the

1:13:23

human upgrade podcast. A

1:13:28

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1:13:31

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