WEBVTT 00:00:00.400 --> 00:00:02.240 Uh David, uh good to see you. 00:00:02.640 --> 00:00:03.680 Good to see you too. 00:00:03.920 --> 00:00:07.040 Uh uh You're the Petrazuwski and I'm the Pen Sof. 00:00:07.200 --> 00:00:07.680 And what is this? 00:00:07.920 --> 00:00:10.000 This is Evolutionary Psychology, the podcast. 00:00:10.080 --> 00:00:14.640 And some people have noted that they don't like the screw-ups because it comes across as 00:00:14.640 --> 00:00:15.440 unprofessional. 00:00:15.520 --> 00:00:18.880 Uh for whatever reason, people who listen on Spotify are saying that. 00:00:19.040 --> 00:00:20.400 What do you think about that? 00:00:20.650 --> 00:00:21.130 Hmm. 00:00:21.370 --> 00:00:22.730 Uh yeah, that's a fair point. 00:00:22.810 --> 00:00:27.450 Why don't we just uh cut right to it then and say it's uh actual evolutionary psychology by 00:00:27.450 --> 00:00:30.810 actual evolutionary psychologists and uh point taken. 00:00:30.970 --> 00:00:31.770 Enjoy. 00:00:45.420 --> 00:00:50.860 David, today we have a wonderful guest, Karen Kramer, who is at the University 00:00:51.500 --> 00:00:57.340 of Um Utah, and she does incredible work on following 00:00:57.580 --> 00:01:03.180 actual foragers and finding out how people are spending their time doing 00:01:03.180 --> 00:01:08.060 follows of people and then also figuring out sort of who's doing what. 00:01:08.290 --> 00:01:12.290 And I think one of the most interesting things about this is that it turns out that like 00:01:12.290 --> 00:01:18.050 kids especially are actually contributing quite a bit um and doing quite a bit of the work 00:01:18.130 --> 00:01:21.090 um of sort of parenting and co-parenting. 00:01:21.410 --> 00:01:22.050 Yeah, absolutely. 00:01:22.370 --> 00:01:28.050 It was a really uh fascinating episode that um shed a lot of light into how work gets done 00:01:28.050 --> 00:01:31.940 in a small scale uh society, how how fieldwork gets done. 00:01:32.100 --> 00:01:37.060 Um uh she is a a veteran uh in in the field of uh evolutionary anthropology research giving 00:01:37.060 --> 00:01:41.300 us some really fascinating stories into what life is like uh in a small scale community. 00:01:41.380 --> 00:01:43.140 Um so this was this was a really fun episode. 00:01:43.540 --> 00:01:48.660 Yeah and just sort of the idea that uh how intergenerational, how having multiple 00:01:48.660 --> 00:01:54.390 generations in the same area in the same location is really foundational to human nature in 00:01:54.390 --> 00:01:59.750 that maybe if we're living in these very age stratified places like colleges or like 00:01:59.750 --> 00:02:03.510 schools, it might be very unnatural for us and might have weird consequences. 00:02:03.670 --> 00:02:06.870 And I think that's a a really important thing that I'm still thinking about from this 00:02:06.870 --> 00:02:07.350 episode. 00:02:07.590 --> 00:02:08.390 Yeah, absolutely. 00:02:08.550 --> 00:02:08.950 Me too. 00:02:09.190 --> 00:02:11.910 So without further ado, enjoy Karen Kramer. 00:02:12.470 --> 00:02:12.870 All right. 00:02:13.030 --> 00:02:18.560 Um so today uh we're extremely excited to have uh Karen Kramer who is 00:02:18.640 --> 00:02:22.080 Professor of Anthropology at University of Utah here with us. 00:02:22.960 --> 00:02:28.640 Karen, I know that you've been giving talks recently about the evolution of 00:02:28.640 --> 00:02:34.240 human life history and cooperation specifically between parents and 00:02:34.240 --> 00:02:35.040 children. 00:02:35.360 --> 00:02:40.480 And we've had some human behavioral ecologists on or evolutionary anthropologists on 00:02:40.720 --> 00:02:42.870 talking about human life history. 00:02:43.190 --> 00:02:44.950 We just had Mike Irvin on. 00:02:45.430 --> 00:02:51.270 And I think your work is super interesting in the following context of one 00:02:51.270 --> 00:02:54.950 thing we've talked about is sort of instinct blindness, which is the idea that the things 00:02:54.950 --> 00:03:00.870 that seem obvious to us as humans, it often takes sort of going to a different culture 00:03:00.870 --> 00:03:05.590 or going to the zoo and looking at other animals to sort of see what's actually unique and 00:03:05.590 --> 00:03:07.430 weird and strange about us. 00:03:07.830 --> 00:03:13.200 And in reading your work, I think a lot about that in the sense of we are really 00:03:13.200 --> 00:03:17.680 strange in the extent to which we're cooperative and the relationships we have among our 00:03:17.680 --> 00:03:21.200 family and with our parents and even what childhood is like. 00:03:21.440 --> 00:03:27.360 So this is all sort of a long-winded way of saying, um, can you sort of lay out 00:03:27.600 --> 00:03:32.160 what is the mystery that you're interested in explaining? 00:03:32.400 --> 00:03:37.650 And that I think for me at least, I didn't even realize was a mystery until I sort of read 00:03:37.650 --> 00:03:43.330 your work and saw your work on human life history and cooperation among 00:03:43.330 --> 00:03:43.970 generations. 00:03:46.770 --> 00:03:52.530 Well, I think the uh the the mystery or the umbrella question that I've 00:03:52.530 --> 00:03:57.250 always uh that I've centered around is how there got to be so many of us. 00:03:57.410 --> 00:04:03.380 So we are this really odd life history conundrum where we 00:04:03.380 --> 00:04:08.660 have both increased over evolutionary time, millions of years, 00:04:08.980 --> 00:04:14.820 increased both investment in children, which we see in a change in survival 00:04:14.820 --> 00:04:19.780 rates, not so much of infants but of juveniles, and also in reproduction. 00:04:19.860 --> 00:04:25.460 So, you know, most animals specialize in either surviving or reproducing, and we did 00:04:25.620 --> 00:04:26.660 we did both. 00:04:26.810 --> 00:04:31.130 And so, you know, how does how does how does that happen? 00:04:31.370 --> 00:04:37.050 And that is my interest in cooperation, certainly, 00:04:37.450 --> 00:04:42.970 and how mothers solve the problem of having multiple dependents of different ages at the 00:04:42.970 --> 00:04:48.810 same time, which, you know, really, well, it's hard to ever say humans are unique in 00:04:48.810 --> 00:04:53.450 something because there's always an exception, but we are very unusual in that capacity, 00:04:53.930 --> 00:04:59.360 certainly of supporting five, six, seven, eight dependents of different ages at the same 00:04:59.360 --> 00:04:59.600 time. 00:04:59.920 --> 00:05:00.160 Yeah. 00:05:00.240 --> 00:05:01.760 And both David and I are parents. 00:05:01.920 --> 00:05:02.800 Mine's five and a half. 00:05:02.880 --> 00:05:04.560 David, I keep sorry, I'm sorry, three. 00:05:04.800 --> 00:05:05.200 Three and a half. 00:05:05.280 --> 00:05:05.360 Yeah. 00:05:05.520 --> 00:05:05.920 Three and a half. 00:05:06.000 --> 00:05:06.240 Yeah, yeah. 00:05:06.320 --> 00:05:06.480 Okay. 00:05:06.560 --> 00:05:07.200 Two years apart. 00:05:07.360 --> 00:05:07.520 Yeah. 00:05:07.600 --> 00:05:13.280 And I think, you know, we we really I I certainly experience the software turning on of 00:05:13.280 --> 00:05:15.520 parenting, you know, even for fathering. 00:05:15.680 --> 00:05:20.720 Um, and just there's sort of a lot of we're very altrucial and there's a lot of investment 00:05:20.720 --> 00:05:21.360 necessary. 00:05:21.920 --> 00:05:22.560 Yes. 00:05:22.950 --> 00:05:23.350 Right. 00:05:23.510 --> 00:05:29.030 And the I I guess the when I was coming through graduate school, 00:05:29.590 --> 00:05:34.230 the explanations, I mean, you talked about how when people go when people go to the field, 00:05:34.310 --> 00:05:39.110 yes, your socks get blown off and you are you really have to think about things in other 00:05:39.110 --> 00:05:39.750 ways. 00:05:40.230 --> 00:05:46.150 So when I went to the field, the expectation uh, and it's still something I've spent my 00:05:46.150 --> 00:05:51.920 career kind of um trying to form a new narrative uh about the role of 00:05:51.920 --> 00:05:52.400 children. 00:05:52.480 --> 00:05:57.440 Uh I I think I still have a long ways to go uh in terms of convincing people. 00:05:57.760 --> 00:06:02.960 But the idea was that you know human children are these sort of little pariahs that just 00:06:02.960 --> 00:06:08.320 need, need, need, need and suck, suck, suck, and and all we can do is kind of, you know, 00:06:08.480 --> 00:06:11.440 they're this empty vessel that gets filled up. 00:06:11.760 --> 00:06:17.630 And um that was the theoretic model that I had in mind. 00:06:17.710 --> 00:06:22.830 That was the analytic model that I had in mind when I went to the field for the first time. 00:06:23.550 --> 00:06:29.390 And when you do go to the field for the first time, one of the 00:06:29.390 --> 00:06:34.110 things you do, because you can't just march into a community and start asking about 00:06:34.110 --> 00:06:37.840 reproduction and can I sit in your house and watch what you're doing all day long? 00:06:37.920 --> 00:06:43.280 You have to you have to create a relationship and you have to create loyalty and trust and 00:06:43.520 --> 00:06:44.480 uh etc. 00:06:44.800 --> 00:06:50.800 And so one way at least we used to do it um is that well you would map 00:06:50.800 --> 00:06:55.830 your community physically draw a map of your community because you learn then where 00:06:55.830 --> 00:06:59.430 everyone's learning and what where kinship relationships are. 00:06:59.750 --> 00:07:03.830 You can ask along the way, age and sex of individuals living in different households. 00:07:03.910 --> 00:07:09.110 You get a sense of the community, and people love, well, one, they love looking at maps and 00:07:09.110 --> 00:07:10.310 how you draw a map. 00:07:10.470 --> 00:07:15.030 And two, you collect, as I said, along the way, kind of the reproductive histories about 00:07:15.030 --> 00:07:15.430 what's going on. 00:07:15.510 --> 00:07:20.070 And one of the questions I asked, because I was interested basically in divisions of labor, 00:07:20.640 --> 00:07:23.600 was, do you spend any time in the fields? 00:07:23.760 --> 00:07:29.760 These were Maya agriculturalists, and most of their diet comes from corn, and an 00:07:29.760 --> 00:07:32.960 awful lot of their time supposedly was would be spent in the fields. 00:07:33.120 --> 00:07:35.920 And I would ask men, women, and children this question. 00:07:36.080 --> 00:07:41.600 And it was always, you know, women spend no time, children spend no time, and the dads all 00:07:41.600 --> 00:07:42.400 spent the time. 00:07:42.560 --> 00:07:48.030 And yet every morning I would get up and in front of my little hut, there would walk by the 00:07:48.030 --> 00:07:51.950 women to the field, and tracing behind them were all the children walking behind in the 00:07:51.950 --> 00:07:52.270 field. 00:07:52.350 --> 00:07:57.950 And so one of my first eureka moments was that what 00:07:58.270 --> 00:08:03.790 people say and what people do are very different, which is why I guess I'm I'm committed to 00:08:03.790 --> 00:08:09.070 observational sorts of research because that deception was very clear to me right off the 00:08:09.070 --> 00:08:09.550 bat. 00:08:09.840 --> 00:08:13.760 So, you know, my par my paradigm kind of really had to shift. 00:08:13.840 --> 00:08:19.600 And when I started analyzing my data, you know, what I was observing and my hunches 00:08:20.320 --> 00:08:23.040 certainly manifested. 00:08:23.120 --> 00:08:29.120 And kids were doing an awful lot to support themselves and 00:08:29.120 --> 00:08:29.920 their siblings. 00:08:30.000 --> 00:08:35.870 And as I guess it's kind of evolved in my thinking over time, in the vernacular, I 00:08:35.870 --> 00:08:40.750 guess I would say all those kids are, in a sense, the very engine that supports high 00:08:40.750 --> 00:08:41.470 fertility. 00:08:41.550 --> 00:08:47.470 And, you know, it's it's a perpetuating, interactive, uh, finely tuned piece 00:08:47.470 --> 00:08:51.390 of life history and economic uh machinery. 00:08:51.790 --> 00:08:57.440 I'm very curious about that piece you mentioned, that uh there was a disconnect between 00:08:57.440 --> 00:09:00.640 what people were saying and what people were doing. 00:09:00.880 --> 00:09:03.600 Um so why do you think that is? 00:09:03.840 --> 00:09:09.840 Why was there that disconnect between the narrative of how much time women 00:09:09.840 --> 00:09:13.280 and children spend in the fields and how much time they were actually spending in the 00:09:13.280 --> 00:09:13.520 fields? 00:09:13.680 --> 00:09:15.200 What do you think was behind that? 00:09:15.680 --> 00:09:21.520 Well, I think in that case there must be um there must be a strong norm 00:09:22.510 --> 00:09:28.030 that it's you know men are doing the work in the fields and uh 00:09:28.670 --> 00:09:34.430 I mean I even if they're objectively not even if they're objective even if 00:09:34.430 --> 00:09:39.550 they're objectively not I mean another good example is um 00:09:40.430 --> 00:09:45.870 I I had spent a a day uh sitting in a house doing taking time 00:09:45.870 --> 00:09:50.910 allocation observations and it was the end of the day and 00:09:51.520 --> 00:09:57.440 there's a woman, she's got eight kids, and she's kind of she's tending the fire 00:09:57.520 --> 00:09:59.600 and she's nursing a baby. 00:09:59.920 --> 00:10:03.920 And she says to me, You know, you know, it's getting dark, it's the end of the day. 00:10:04.160 --> 00:10:05.440 I've done my work for the day. 00:10:05.600 --> 00:10:06.720 Would you like to go home? 00:10:06.880 --> 00:10:11.840 And I knew she was gonna she was heating up water to bathe her children, her eight 00:10:11.840 --> 00:10:12.160 children. 00:10:12.240 --> 00:10:14.720 Well, she probably wasn't bathing the older ones, but the younger ones. 00:10:14.960 --> 00:10:16.800 She still had to feed them all. 00:10:17.130 --> 00:10:20.890 And yet, from her point of view, that wasn't, she didn't consider that work. 00:10:20.970 --> 00:10:25.450 She she knew I was there to record what people did in terms of productive sort of economic 00:10:25.450 --> 00:10:26.010 activities. 00:10:26.170 --> 00:10:32.090 But she didn't consider all of that childcare or mother's work or 00:10:32.090 --> 00:10:34.010 cooking to be work. 00:10:34.090 --> 00:10:36.970 So I guess you know, those are two kind of different examples. 00:10:37.130 --> 00:10:42.730 One is that you know, we just have different uh it's difficult when you work in a I didn't 00:10:42.940 --> 00:10:45.180 uh probably speak Maya at that time. 00:10:45.340 --> 00:10:49.580 It's different when you're speaking through a the our common language of Spanish. 00:10:49.820 --> 00:10:53.100 Uh it's you know different when you're dealing with language. 00:10:53.260 --> 00:10:57.980 It's different when you're just dealing with how people perceive certain kinds of words, 00:10:58.060 --> 00:10:58.780 you know, even. 00:10:59.180 --> 00:11:03.660 Do you do you think this was just a a linguistic uh misunderstanding or was there a a 00:11:03.660 --> 00:11:09.510 social reason that they felt the need to cover up how much they were working 00:11:09.510 --> 00:11:12.870 in the fields for I don't know, some social or normative reason. 00:11:13.750 --> 00:11:18.550 I think in the in the first case that I gave of why in an interview format, you know, do 00:11:18.550 --> 00:11:19.910 you work in the field? 00:11:20.070 --> 00:11:23.830 Um, you know, that was probably for some kind of normative reason. 00:11:23.910 --> 00:11:26.710 I I can't really explain why that why that would be. 00:11:26.870 --> 00:11:29.190 They're not a particularly machismo culture. 00:11:29.940 --> 00:11:33.380 Women are valued for their for their contributions. 00:11:33.700 --> 00:11:39.460 But it just was kind of remarkable that and it's also the danger of just asking one simple 00:11:39.460 --> 00:11:39.860 question. 00:11:40.020 --> 00:11:43.780 I mean, the, you know, the fault, the onus was probably on me for not parsing. 00:11:43.940 --> 00:11:49.540 I mean, I just was trying, as I say, that's how you kind of get entree into a community 00:11:49.780 --> 00:11:55.700 is you sit down with families and talk to them as a way to humanize us all and make 00:11:55.700 --> 00:11:58.150 us, you know, on friendly terms. 00:11:58.390 --> 00:12:03.590 And it probably in while I was going to study that, it wasn't my main objective. 00:12:03.750 --> 00:12:05.990 It was just to kind of talk to them. 00:12:06.150 --> 00:12:10.870 So anyway, I think that was, you know, part of it was was the onus is on me. 00:12:10.950 --> 00:12:16.230 If I'm going to rely on interview, my onus on is on me to be able to parse the question in 00:12:16.230 --> 00:12:19.030 a way that you're going to get actually the answer that you want. 00:12:19.580 --> 00:12:23.820 So part of it may be their norms about their own behavior, and part of it may be that I was 00:12:23.820 --> 00:12:27.660 just asking this one simple question to move on to all the other questions so that I can 00:12:27.660 --> 00:12:31.260 move on to my own research that I really wanted to do. 00:12:31.980 --> 00:12:32.460 So it's funny. 00:12:32.540 --> 00:12:32.700 Yeah. 00:12:32.780 --> 00:12:36.220 And I mean, maybe this is the next question that is sort of you have this thing where 00:12:36.220 --> 00:12:38.140 you're like, whoa, this is really different. 00:12:38.300 --> 00:12:41.420 Everyone's saying this one thing, but I go out and look and they're actually going in the 00:12:41.420 --> 00:12:41.980 fields. 00:12:42.140 --> 00:12:44.380 And now you you mentioned that experience. 00:12:44.460 --> 00:12:49.490 And then you you talked about earlier that you're you're you now have a very different 00:12:49.490 --> 00:12:49.890 view. 00:12:50.130 --> 00:12:55.250 Can you sort of walk us through how that experience now leads to this new view where you 00:12:55.250 --> 00:13:00.690 talked about sort of this um the engine of high fertility being being children and thinking 00:13:00.690 --> 00:13:04.450 about children in that lifespan and thinking about them as you're saying, as agents and 00:13:04.450 --> 00:13:06.290 having agency and not just being empty vessels? 00:13:06.370 --> 00:13:10.450 Can you kind of walk us through from that moment that you had that field experience to sort 00:13:10.450 --> 00:13:15.490 of what was the next step for you in your thinking or how are you thinking now about that? 00:13:15.940 --> 00:13:20.260 Well, so you you're in the field for a year, you're collecting all these observations, 00:13:20.340 --> 00:13:26.100 you're you have hunches about you know what you're seeing, um, repetitive patterns, 00:13:26.180 --> 00:13:28.740 and then you come back and you analyze your data. 00:13:28.820 --> 00:13:34.660 And it was um, it was very clear, you know, the the analysis um was very 00:13:34.660 --> 00:13:35.220 clear. 00:13:35.540 --> 00:13:41.150 One difference is most of the arguments up until then were 00:13:41.150 --> 00:13:47.070 spurred mostly by demographers, and they there was this whole 00:13:47.070 --> 00:13:51.150 cost of children, literature, and interest. 00:13:51.230 --> 00:13:53.070 So, how much does a kid cost? 00:13:53.630 --> 00:13:59.630 And you can either sum the calories or demographers sum the dollars, and then you look 00:13:59.630 --> 00:14:04.560 at what they put in, and you know, it doesn't match. 00:14:04.720 --> 00:14:06.800 You know, kids look really expensive, and they do. 00:14:07.200 --> 00:14:11.600 Maya kids, Pume kids, the hunters and gatherers that I work with in Venezuela, you know, 00:14:11.680 --> 00:14:13.840 they look really expensive when you look at one kid. 00:14:14.000 --> 00:14:19.840 But my argument all along was humans have this really odd life history where we 00:14:19.840 --> 00:14:23.760 started where women, mothers, have multiple dependents of different ages. 00:14:23.840 --> 00:14:29.510 And so, even as an economic question, we have to look at it not as one kid going through, 00:14:29.590 --> 00:14:33.910 but what does it look like as economically from the passel of kids going through? 00:14:34.230 --> 00:14:39.990 So any one kid, the five-year-old, the three-year-old, the five-year-old are going to take 00:14:39.990 --> 00:14:45.670 out of the basket more than they put in, but the 12, 13, you know, 15, 17-year-old are 00:14:45.670 --> 00:14:47.990 going to put more into the basket than they take out. 00:14:48.150 --> 00:14:52.230 And so you get from the mother's point of view, she's just thinking about how am I going to 00:14:52.230 --> 00:14:53.590 raise my kids? 00:14:53.990 --> 00:14:59.940 Um, Is, you know, her calculus is not each, you know, I'm gonna each kid is too 00:14:59.940 --> 00:15:03.460 expensive, but you know, how can I manage the whole? 00:15:03.860 --> 00:15:09.860 And that's one thing I really tried to bring to the analysis of how we think about kids is 00:15:09.860 --> 00:15:15.380 thinking about this kind of this whole this whole product moving 00:15:15.540 --> 00:15:19.540 forward as women decide to or not to have additional children. 00:15:19.860 --> 00:15:20.420 Right. 00:15:20.770 --> 00:15:26.770 And what is it that, I mean, you know, we we are psychologists, but one of the reasons to 00:15:26.770 --> 00:15:31.330 have an integrated, you know, evolutionary behavioral science is that anthropologists 00:15:31.330 --> 00:15:36.290 seeing, you know, ways of living that are on the ground keep us lab psychologists honest. 00:15:36.530 --> 00:15:42.450 So what was it that you were seeing in terms of um the expression of sort of care at 00:15:42.450 --> 00:15:43.010 different ages? 00:15:43.170 --> 00:15:48.980 Was the idea that sort of you're seeing that there's clearly evolved design in kids for 00:15:48.980 --> 00:15:52.980 taking care of siblings or like kind of doing alloparenting as well? 00:15:53.060 --> 00:15:55.300 Or what was it that you were seeing? 00:15:56.100 --> 00:16:01.860 Well, it it changes, it certainly changes with age, but well, I guess some of the 00:16:01.860 --> 00:16:07.860 arguments that I've made is that that kids have a low opportunity cost in terms of 00:16:07.860 --> 00:16:08.820 health. 00:16:09.060 --> 00:16:14.950 Uh and so this is unlike other, you know, humans, this is all in the kind of the rubric 00:16:15.030 --> 00:16:20.790 of cooperative breeding, but in other species, it's really not until um 00:16:21.190 --> 00:16:27.190 the problem about cooperative breeding is why sexually mature individuals stick 00:16:27.190 --> 00:16:33.030 around home or the nest or the den or whatever longer after they're they can reproduce 00:16:33.030 --> 00:16:36.950 themselves, why they stick around longer and help out help raise their siblings. 00:16:37.320 --> 00:16:43.160 And the situation is very different for humans because, yes, by the time boys and girls are 00:16:43.160 --> 00:16:47.880 16, 17, or 18, yes, you get to be that rub and and they and they do leave home. 00:16:48.120 --> 00:16:54.120 But it's those, it's those juveniles, like maybe even three to twelve, thirteen, 00:16:54.280 --> 00:16:59.890 fourteen, who um these aren't this this well, Maya then didn't have um 00:16:59.890 --> 00:17:00.610 formal education. 00:17:00.690 --> 00:17:04.610 The Pune, the hunters and gatherers I work with don't have formal any formal education. 00:17:04.770 --> 00:17:06.930 So, in a sense, that is their school. 00:17:07.090 --> 00:17:10.210 That is how they're learning their adult skills, is by helping. 00:17:10.370 --> 00:17:15.650 And there's no real opportunity cost because they aren't, they aren't um, you know, they 00:17:15.650 --> 00:17:20.050 aren't looking around for mates and trying to start a family themselves or too young. 00:17:20.130 --> 00:17:25.280 So they're kind of a beholden audience, you know, for that reason. 00:17:25.360 --> 00:17:30.400 You know, that that that is their school, and there are they learn by doing. 00:17:30.480 --> 00:17:35.520 That's how they, you know, I think think that that's one place that anthropology and and 00:17:35.520 --> 00:17:39.520 psychology really overlap is in learning and like how we think about learning. 00:17:39.680 --> 00:17:44.400 There's several of us now that are like looking at learning in traditional societies, and 00:17:44.400 --> 00:17:50.070 it just does seem to be very different in terms of learning from each other and learning 00:17:50.070 --> 00:17:50.950 while doing. 00:17:51.110 --> 00:17:55.190 And so again, just back to the idea that there's a low opportunity cost. 00:17:55.670 --> 00:18:01.190 That that's interesting that a lot of the childcare is is being done by older 00:18:01.190 --> 00:18:05.670 kids who haven't yet left to go look for a mate or or start a family. 00:18:05.830 --> 00:18:10.550 And a lot of that work is is being done by these kids and they're all learning by doing and 00:18:10.550 --> 00:18:11.590 working with each other. 00:18:11.830 --> 00:18:16.950 Um that's very different from the way things work in a modern society where uh 00:18:17.220 --> 00:18:22.980 kids aren't really playing that kind of teaching or pedagogical or child rearing 00:18:22.980 --> 00:18:28.420 role, we farm that out to daycare or to uh formal education systems. 00:18:28.660 --> 00:18:34.580 Do you think that could be playing a role in why we see fertility levels being so uh 00:18:34.580 --> 00:18:37.460 uh low uh in in Western cultures? 00:18:37.540 --> 00:18:42.580 Um, and that the cause kids literally are more expensive in Western cultures because uh uh 00:18:42.580 --> 00:18:47.090 they don't help each other the way they do um in the in the in the communities you're 00:18:47.090 --> 00:18:47.410 studying. 00:18:47.490 --> 00:18:49.330 Is this do you think that might play a role? 00:18:49.890 --> 00:18:55.650 Well certainly that is a one of the classic um arguments for the demographic 00:18:55.650 --> 00:18:58.450 transition is is about the cost of children. 00:18:58.610 --> 00:19:03.330 Those were very popular arguments in the 70s and 80s. 00:19:03.490 --> 00:19:08.450 And you know I think we've tried to make it more we've tried to make it more nuanced, more 00:19:08.450 --> 00:19:14.320 sophisticated, but I think kind of economically it does come back to that, that you just uh 00:19:14.560 --> 00:19:18.880 yes, that that that transition makes it again, that engine breaks down. 00:19:19.040 --> 00:19:23.360 It doesn't, those all those kids no longer really uh pay for themselves. 00:19:23.520 --> 00:19:28.880 I mean, and in essence, what we see is in traditional societies when you spin it out, these 00:19:29.040 --> 00:19:33.040 are pretty much paying for themselves, that group of kids within a family. 00:19:33.200 --> 00:19:33.520 Right. 00:19:33.600 --> 00:19:34.800 And that's no longer the case. 00:19:34.960 --> 00:19:40.560 So that's certainly been uh it's certainly a considerable uh I think part 00:19:40.880 --> 00:19:44.890 of why you get that um that demographic transition. 00:19:45.290 --> 00:19:49.050 I think there's lots of there's lots of other reasons now and it's perpetuated for lots of 00:19:49.050 --> 00:19:49.770 other reasons now. 00:19:49.850 --> 00:19:52.490 But what do you think some of those reasons are? 00:19:52.570 --> 00:19:57.210 I mean we we got into this uh briefly with Michael Gervin um sort of getting his take on on 00:19:57.290 --> 00:20:02.490 uh what's going on with this drop in fertility that we see in the Western world uh as uh 00:20:02.490 --> 00:20:06.090 countries economically develop you you know you would think from a Darwinian perspective 00:20:06.170 --> 00:20:10.730 that greater prosperity would lead to greater fertility but what we see is the opposite um 00:20:10.880 --> 00:20:15.600 You mentioned one possible factor where in Western cultures kids don't take care of 00:20:15.600 --> 00:20:19.280 themselves to the same extent that they do in other societies. 00:20:19.360 --> 00:20:24.560 So that might be one reason why fertility has gone down, is that they're just more uh 00:20:24.720 --> 00:20:25.520 expensive. 00:20:25.680 --> 00:20:28.800 Um what what do you think are some of the other factors that you think are playing a key 00:20:28.800 --> 00:20:29.520 role here? 00:20:30.160 --> 00:20:35.600 Well, this is not a place that I am an am an expert, is thinking about modern demographic 00:20:35.600 --> 00:20:36.240 transition. 00:20:36.400 --> 00:20:42.230 Um uh so there are many factors, and I think all many different disciplines weigh 00:20:42.230 --> 00:20:47.430 in, you know, both about uh cognitive, you know, economic reasons uh that we just you know 00:20:47.510 --> 00:20:49.110 talked about, cost of children. 00:20:49.270 --> 00:20:54.150 You know, there certainly are um, you know, probably cultural evolution, you know, the 00:20:54.150 --> 00:20:57.510 cultural evolutionists would have a set of explanations for that. 00:20:57.670 --> 00:21:00.310 I think psychologists would have an explanation for that. 00:21:00.470 --> 00:21:06.310 You know, I think one obvious thing is is when we've got seven billion people on 00:21:06.310 --> 00:21:12.040 the planet, um, you know, that's gone up many fold since you know you and I were born, 00:21:12.200 --> 00:21:18.120 that it's uh you know, it's just a super competitive world, and and you you have to, 00:21:18.200 --> 00:21:22.680 you know, you have to you have to think about um you know that aspect of it. 00:21:22.760 --> 00:21:28.570 I was gonna say that demographers, uh well, to focus on 00:21:28.570 --> 00:21:33.290 a mean change, an average change in fertility is one question. 00:21:33.530 --> 00:21:39.290 But I guess what I've really learned watching this Maya community, the 00:21:39.290 --> 00:21:44.490 uptake of family planning or contraception is something very different that we have to 00:21:44.490 --> 00:21:49.460 really actually keep our eye on the variation and what's going on there. 00:21:49.780 --> 00:21:55.460 So, in that Maya community, as in much of Mesoamerica and Latin America, 00:21:56.020 --> 00:21:58.820 family planning is introduced with tubal ligation. 00:21:58.900 --> 00:22:04.900 So, this is a real serious decision, you know, on-off decision about whether you curtail 00:22:04.900 --> 00:22:07.220 your fertility or not. 00:22:07.460 --> 00:22:11.170 And it was, you know, I trained as a demographer. 00:22:11.250 --> 00:22:15.490 I was looking at averages, averages, averages, and you know, nothing was if nothing was 00:22:15.490 --> 00:22:18.210 really changing, but I knew things were changing. 00:22:18.370 --> 00:22:21.170 And I mean, I've worked in this community for 33 years. 00:22:21.330 --> 00:22:26.850 And so if you take a look at the variation, that's what was moving around, which was so 00:22:26.850 --> 00:22:27.250 interesting. 00:22:27.410 --> 00:22:32.050 So what parents were doing is some were just as as life got more 00:22:33.280 --> 00:22:38.720 economically as they started going through market integration, and there 00:22:38.960 --> 00:22:40.240 started to be some wealth. 00:22:40.320 --> 00:22:44.800 I wouldn't say there's even hardly wealth disparities yet, but now that's coming down the 00:22:44.800 --> 00:22:45.360 track. 00:22:46.160 --> 00:22:50.640 Some people were you were putting that into somatic reproductive effort, some people were 00:22:50.640 --> 00:22:53.920 having much larger families, and others were having smaller families. 00:22:54.080 --> 00:22:57.760 And so but you would miss all of that if you were just were looking at the average. 00:22:57.840 --> 00:23:00.240 You would you'd have to look at the distribution. 00:23:00.970 --> 00:23:06.970 And what was interesting is that women were, you know, tubal ligation again, really 00:23:06.970 --> 00:23:10.010 serious form of family planning. 00:23:10.250 --> 00:23:14.810 They were uptaking it at the end of their reproductive careers. 00:23:15.210 --> 00:23:19.290 So they would get a tubal ligation after they had six or seven children. 00:23:19.530 --> 00:23:25.210 So it was curtailing them from having seven, eight, or nine children, but they weren't, 00:23:25.370 --> 00:23:31.160 they weren't yet making the decision, I just want to have two children or one children, 00:23:31.400 --> 00:23:35.960 one child, until they understood the implications of this new world. 00:23:36.120 --> 00:23:41.320 I mean, so you've got this, you've got this rapidly changing world economically, you've got 00:23:41.320 --> 00:23:46.920 these new market opportunities, and along with that comes the the option to 00:23:46.920 --> 00:23:48.920 limit families size. 00:23:49.160 --> 00:23:50.520 And so what do you do? 00:23:50.680 --> 00:23:56.370 And what was so cool about that is that they had far more agency than we 00:23:56.370 --> 00:24:00.690 give most people, that they were making their own decisions and they were basically making 00:24:00.690 --> 00:24:02.530 the most cautious decision they could. 00:24:02.690 --> 00:24:04.130 They were doing the new behavior. 00:24:04.210 --> 00:24:10.130 If if I'm making, if if you're following what I'm saying, they were doing the new behavior, 00:24:10.210 --> 00:24:14.130 they were uptaking family planning, but they were doing so at a time that really wouldn't 00:24:14.130 --> 00:24:18.530 have late in their reproductive career when it really wouldn't affect their fertility. 00:24:18.850 --> 00:24:24.580 Then, 20 years later, when they start to understand the risks and opportunities, 00:24:24.820 --> 00:24:30.580 they start to then have it, have those tube ligations earlier in their reproductive career. 00:24:30.740 --> 00:24:35.300 So that's not super answering your question because I'm looking at it, I'm looking at the 00:24:35.300 --> 00:24:39.460 demographic transition played out like literally in a 20-year period. 00:24:40.020 --> 00:24:44.660 And that's all I can say about that is that that women have um, I guess, you know, their 00:24:44.820 --> 00:24:49.870 parents make decisions and they make conscious decisions about what they what they want to 00:24:49.870 --> 00:24:54.590 do, what they can afford to do, and how it might impact. 00:24:54.910 --> 00:24:59.230 You know, if if you only have two kids, you're not going to be growing crops much longer. 00:24:59.310 --> 00:25:01.630 You can't really afford to grow crops. 00:25:02.110 --> 00:25:04.990 Um, so it's a you know, it's a pretty major decision. 00:25:05.230 --> 00:25:10.910 So I think those decisions, the demographic transition, we can see a mean change in family 00:25:10.910 --> 00:25:15.310 size, gotten much smaller, got much smaller, you know, over a couple hundred years pretty 00:25:15.310 --> 00:25:19.640 quickly, I guess, but there's also a lot of variation around that. 00:25:20.280 --> 00:25:25.160 And that's maybe where we can learn actually more about why people, why parents make those 00:25:25.480 --> 00:25:26.440 decisions. 00:25:27.160 --> 00:25:27.400 Yeah. 00:25:27.480 --> 00:25:33.320 But I'm hearing you say too is also, I think from a very naive evolutionary 00:25:33.320 --> 00:25:39.290 perspective, and maybe one that, you know, I'm certainly guilty of promulgating would 00:25:39.290 --> 00:25:44.730 be one of there's evolved design for obviously like mating and for 00:25:44.730 --> 00:25:45.450 parenting. 00:25:45.610 --> 00:25:51.210 But the idea that sort of thinking about well, how are my children going to 00:25:51.210 --> 00:25:54.810 succeed in this social ecology? 00:25:55.290 --> 00:26:00.250 And what can I do now to ensure their success in the future? 00:26:00.620 --> 00:26:04.540 which, you know, even if it wouldn't have included, you know, birth control or it might 00:26:04.540 --> 00:26:07.740 have over evolutionary time, you know, but that's a little bit uncertain. 00:26:07.900 --> 00:26:11.900 I mean, we we certainly have lots of cross-cultural ethnographic evidence of birth control 00:26:11.900 --> 00:26:14.860 and ways to sort of limit fertility. 00:26:15.020 --> 00:26:21.020 But to me, this sort of expresses a much richer psychology of sort of family plan planning. 00:26:21.350 --> 00:26:27.350 and and even for the evolved psychology to sort of be aware of on the ground what is the 00:26:27.350 --> 00:26:33.270 social landscape, what is the ecology, and how can I as a parent, you know, it's not like 00:26:33.270 --> 00:26:37.350 we're just, you know, a species where we just sort of drop our eggs and say, good luck, 00:26:37.430 --> 00:26:37.990 everybody. 00:26:38.150 --> 00:26:42.230 You know, like we're really thinking about how can we smooth out the wrinkles? 00:26:42.660 --> 00:26:44.340 what how should we invest? 00:26:44.660 --> 00:26:49.060 I mean, I realize it's not helicopter parenting, like it may be in some places, but it 00:26:49.060 --> 00:26:54.660 seems to me to reflect still a design for thinking about um being responsible and thinking 00:26:54.660 --> 00:26:59.380 about the consequences of sort of like what what what is the landscape that these children 00:26:59.380 --> 00:27:01.540 are going to be in, which is what I think you would expect. 00:27:01.700 --> 00:27:07.460 Do you think that's fair or is that um well I think I think all parents you know 00:27:07.620 --> 00:27:09.190 think think about that. 00:27:09.270 --> 00:27:14.710 I mean, even natural fertility parents who, you know, there's other ways that you can alter 00:27:14.710 --> 00:27:19.990 your fertility than to then to take, you know, birth control or have a tubal ligation. 00:27:20.070 --> 00:27:25.750 And I think all parents, I think all parents think about uh what are the implications if I 00:27:25.910 --> 00:27:30.920 I mean I've certainly overheard those dialogues in those conversations both among the Kume, 00:27:31.320 --> 00:27:36.920 among the Maya, certainly among friends and colleagues and students that 00:27:37.080 --> 00:27:42.440 um you know we think about the futures of our children and what that's gonna what's that 00:27:42.440 --> 00:27:43.000 that's gonna do. 00:27:43.080 --> 00:27:48.920 I mean there's a lot of built-in biological mechanisms in humans so that we it's 00:27:48.920 --> 00:27:54.790 difficult well there's few few benefits and a lot of costs to have kids 00:27:54.790 --> 00:27:56.070 too closely together. 00:27:56.230 --> 00:28:01.990 So there are some some limits that are just kind of imposed, so to speak, biologically. 00:28:02.150 --> 00:28:07.750 But um, I do think there's uh well thought out conversations about about 00:28:08.070 --> 00:28:08.310 that. 00:28:08.630 --> 00:28:08.950 Yeah. 00:28:09.270 --> 00:28:11.430 David asked about the demographic transition. 00:28:11.590 --> 00:28:17.420 Are there other consequences as you see it to this idea that in a more 00:28:17.420 --> 00:28:23.100 quote unquote sort of natural ecology, children are having the experience of 00:28:23.100 --> 00:28:28.060 raising their siblings or close relatives or or in multi-age um 00:28:28.380 --> 00:28:29.260 cohorts. 00:28:29.500 --> 00:28:33.180 And we don't do that in in certain cultures and ours. 00:28:33.340 --> 00:28:36.460 Are there other consequences or or what are those consequences? 00:28:36.540 --> 00:28:39.900 And what are the ones that you are thinking about or worrying about or yeah. 00:28:40.270 --> 00:28:42.670 I I think I think there I think there are. 00:28:42.910 --> 00:28:46.830 I'm actually just starting to write a book on kind of the evolution of childhood. 00:28:47.150 --> 00:28:51.790 And while I'm again not an expert because I'm not a psychologist, I'm not a developmental 00:28:51.790 --> 00:28:57.790 psychologist or a cognitive psychologist, but certainly I I no I've got the 00:28:57.790 --> 00:29:03.600 other perspective of how kids organize themselves when they're 00:29:03.600 --> 00:29:07.840 children versus what you know is very apparent in our own world. 00:29:07.920 --> 00:29:13.840 And that's one of the biggest, I think, aspects is that kids in traditional societies hang 00:29:13.840 --> 00:29:16.240 out in mixed age groups. 00:29:16.560 --> 00:29:22.480 So there's very little, even I'm not sure if I think Mike was on that study, even among the 00:29:22.480 --> 00:29:28.240 Chamani, they looked at language learning and they found there was incredibly 00:29:28.240 --> 00:29:32.030 low child-directed uh adult talk. 00:29:32.350 --> 00:29:33.070 Very low. 00:29:33.150 --> 00:29:38.190 And I found that not in terms of language, but just in terms of learning, that kids spend 00:29:38.190 --> 00:29:43.390 almost no time being taught by uh adults. 00:29:43.550 --> 00:29:45.710 Now, that's very culturally specific. 00:29:45.790 --> 00:29:50.990 I'm sure, you know, in some cases, in some traditional cultures around the world, 00:29:51.600 --> 00:29:55.120 absolutely, you know, there's hands-on parent parental teaching. 00:29:55.280 --> 00:29:59.520 I just don't observe it in the with the people that I work with. 00:29:59.680 --> 00:30:03.920 There's much more uh kids learning, kids learning on their own. 00:30:04.000 --> 00:30:08.880 So, for example, the Pume, the hunters and gatherers that I work with, a lot of their 00:30:08.880 --> 00:30:11.520 technology is woven technology. 00:30:12.110 --> 00:30:17.790 and little girls, so they use you know baskets uh of every shape and 00:30:17.790 --> 00:30:21.710 size to do everything, you know, that's their those are their containers, those are their 00:30:21.710 --> 00:30:24.430 bowls, those are how they carry things around. 00:30:24.510 --> 00:30:27.070 I mean, they're really woven technology is really critical. 00:30:27.150 --> 00:30:29.870 They weave mats to sit on, so they don't have to sit on the dirt. 00:30:30.030 --> 00:30:35.150 And kids don't learn how they learn to do that is not by mom showing them. 00:30:35.310 --> 00:30:39.780 They will take a they'll go to the garbage, you know, the trash dump, they'll pick up a 00:30:39.940 --> 00:30:43.540 discarded basket or bat mat or something, they'll take it apart. 00:30:43.700 --> 00:30:48.020 I guess, you know, lots of kids learn basic mechanics this way. 00:30:48.180 --> 00:30:51.380 They'll take it apart and they'll learn how to put it back together again. 00:30:51.540 --> 00:30:56.020 And you know, maybe when they're a little bit older, they'll ask you know, mom a question 00:30:56.020 --> 00:30:59.620 about something sophisticated, or the mother will correct them about something. 00:30:59.780 --> 00:31:00.740 But that's how they learn. 00:31:00.820 --> 00:31:02.420 They're not they're not formally taught. 00:31:02.580 --> 00:31:06.260 And part of it, they're, I mean, they're just they're hanging out in mixed age and mixed 00:31:06.340 --> 00:31:11.390 sex groups, and they're learning an awful lot from each other. 00:31:11.710 --> 00:31:17.310 And I think there is probably a big price to pay for the fact that we have these 00:31:17.310 --> 00:31:23.230 age-regulated groupings, you know, in terms of after-school sports, in terms 00:31:23.230 --> 00:31:28.190 of schooling, uh, lots of expectation about age. 00:31:28.270 --> 00:31:34.240 And I think we've we've eliminated, I mean, at least this what I'm writing so 00:31:34.240 --> 00:31:38.640 far about that, you know, I certainly wouldn't recommend that we don't send our kids to 00:31:38.640 --> 00:31:44.560 school, but I think in terms of social learning, that's really critical is that you learn 00:31:45.440 --> 00:31:47.520 you learn from the older kids. 00:31:47.760 --> 00:31:51.840 Um you learn from the older kids how to socially regulate. 00:31:51.920 --> 00:31:54.160 And I think we miss out on that. 00:31:54.400 --> 00:32:00.010 I have a good example where um uh a male uh a postdoc uh 00:32:00.170 --> 00:32:05.930 he brought down um his uh kids to the field and the 00:32:05.930 --> 00:32:10.970 Maya were so excited to see like what you know what what would it be what what the little 00:32:10.970 --> 00:32:16.810 ones would be like and um they were the the kids 00:32:16.970 --> 00:32:22.940 were sh were just kind of jaw-droppingly astonished that there was a two-year-old and 00:32:22.940 --> 00:32:28.060 the two-year-old just threw fits, you know, as as our kids do through through tantrums all 00:32:28.060 --> 00:32:28.460 the time. 00:32:28.620 --> 00:32:33.420 And they were just like dumbfounded, like how in the like how do you like, why would you do 00:32:33.420 --> 00:32:33.500 that? 00:32:33.580 --> 00:32:34.620 And how do you get away with that? 00:32:34.860 --> 00:32:39.900 Or like sharing, it would be like they they just easily, they easily share. 00:32:40.060 --> 00:32:41.180 I mean they're self-interested. 00:32:41.260 --> 00:32:42.460 There's no you know essential difference. 00:32:42.970 --> 00:32:44.410 But they're they easily share. 00:32:44.490 --> 00:32:48.010 And you know, it's like, you know, that two-year-old old sort of behavior that that's mine 00:32:48.170 --> 00:32:48.970 and you can't have me. 00:32:49.450 --> 00:32:55.210 And and yet, and yet, and yet the little the the kid could recite their numbers and their 00:32:55.210 --> 00:32:57.290 letters in a way that the Maya kids could not. 00:32:57.370 --> 00:33:02.490 So there's just, you know, there's real differences in terms of kind of cognitive skills 00:33:02.490 --> 00:33:03.690 and social skills. 00:33:03.930 --> 00:33:08.650 And you know, we can't we need the social we need the cognitive skills obviously to succeed 00:33:08.650 --> 00:33:09.530 in our own world. 00:33:09.690 --> 00:33:14.820 But I I worry about the the social skills, I guess, and and and maybe what we're 00:33:14.820 --> 00:33:15.700 compromising. 00:33:16.420 --> 00:33:16.820 Yeah. 00:33:17.220 --> 00:33:22.580 Do you think those social skills, I mean, and maybe maybe I'm just saying the obvious 00:33:22.580 --> 00:33:28.580 inference is that the reason why the the the postdoc children got away 00:33:28.580 --> 00:33:34.310 with that was because there weren't just younger kids around who when there was a fit were 00:33:34.310 --> 00:33:35.830 just sort of like walked away. 00:33:35.910 --> 00:33:40.390 Cause right, they're just not, they are they're not, they didn't buy into like I'm gonna 00:33:40.470 --> 00:33:43.750 like go the full the full way and dealing with a meltdown. 00:33:43.830 --> 00:33:47.910 I'm still a kid, and you know what, kid, have a meltdown, I'm not gonna deal with this. 00:33:48.070 --> 00:33:52.710 And that just changes then the reward structure of the two-year-old of just like if I if I 00:33:52.710 --> 00:33:55.910 have a meltdown, yep, doesn't do anything, I'm not I'm gonna, you know, I'm just gonna do 00:33:55.910 --> 00:33:56.310 it less. 00:33:56.390 --> 00:33:57.990 Is that you know right, right? 00:33:58.070 --> 00:34:00.630 Yeah, certainly there would be synergy for that. 00:34:00.790 --> 00:34:01.270 Yeah. 00:34:01.480 --> 00:34:01.880 Yeah. 00:34:02.120 --> 00:34:02.680 Yeah. 00:34:04.520 --> 00:34:05.480 Interesting. 00:34:06.440 --> 00:34:11.960 I mean, I'm wondering if it if it has to do with the abstractness of the 00:34:11.960 --> 00:34:17.160 information that has to be transmitted in modern societies compared to 00:34:17.880 --> 00:34:19.400 forging societies. 00:34:19.800 --> 00:34:24.910 And that, you know, a physical skill can easily be acquired by you know actually practicing 00:34:24.910 --> 00:34:28.190 it actually doing it, you know, being around other kids who are doing it. 00:34:28.350 --> 00:34:34.110 Whereas learning how to read or write uh is not really the type of skill that you can learn 00:34:34.110 --> 00:34:34.750 by doing. 00:34:35.150 --> 00:34:40.990 And that's it's it's kind of an alien way of learning that kids aren't really um good at at 00:34:40.990 --> 00:34:41.310 doing. 00:34:41.390 --> 00:34:44.830 I mean the kids like to you know move move their bodies to manipulate things. 00:34:44.910 --> 00:34:48.750 They like to play around and experiment and you know try things out and see what happens. 00:34:48.920 --> 00:34:52.120 That's much more the the natural way that kids like to learn. 00:34:52.280 --> 00:34:56.760 But unfortunately, that's just not the way that that you can learn how to read and write 00:34:56.760 --> 00:34:57.640 and do math. 00:34:57.800 --> 00:35:00.120 It's just it's a very different mode of information. 00:35:00.280 --> 00:35:04.120 Do you think there's something about the different the the nature of the information that 00:35:04.120 --> 00:35:09.480 needs to be learned to to flourish in a in a modern society compared to a forging society. 00:35:09.560 --> 00:35:13.240 Do you think that is is one of the differences perhaps that that leads to these cultural 00:35:13.240 --> 00:35:13.800 differences? 00:35:14.440 --> 00:35:19.430 I mean I think in the from the surface of it, it would seem like you know, the information 00:35:19.430 --> 00:35:25.030 that we need to learn is is certainly additive, and and adults have kind of the end 00:35:25.030 --> 00:35:30.950 game picture in mind, and so um they can transmit that 00:35:31.270 --> 00:35:31.910 information. 00:35:32.230 --> 00:35:38.150 I mean, I would say you know, lots of um technologies in traditional 00:35:38.150 --> 00:35:40.390 societies is pretty sophisticated. 00:35:40.780 --> 00:35:45.100 Um but uh I would say that's yeah that's probably tr true. 00:35:45.260 --> 00:35:50.780 I'm not like I'm saying I wouldn't advocate that cognitive learning should um 00:35:51.740 --> 00:35:56.460 perhaps you know there it that's all very understandable but I think it's just appreciating 00:35:56.540 --> 00:36:02.410 I think what we what we what we always thought what we tend to do is look at look 00:36:02.490 --> 00:36:07.050 look at um you know look at where we're at today and then kind of project backwards as 00:36:07.050 --> 00:36:12.490 opposed to sort of thinking about you know evolution that happens from the past forward and 00:36:12.570 --> 00:36:18.010 you know what some of those pressures uh and changes would have been. 00:36:18.810 --> 00:36:24.570 But just you know, I mean, I guess just mostly appreciating that it's not a top-down, 00:36:24.940 --> 00:36:28.220 We maybe aren't adapted to a top-down process. 00:36:28.620 --> 00:36:31.500 Um it pr maybe is more challenging. 00:36:31.660 --> 00:36:36.540 Maybe that's why we have such trouble with retention, you know, in schools and stuff like 00:36:36.540 --> 00:36:36.620 that. 00:36:36.780 --> 00:36:38.460 I don't, I don't, I've I don't have any idea. 00:36:38.540 --> 00:36:44.300 Those aren't, those aren't things I really contemplate, but um it it you know, it could be 00:36:44.300 --> 00:36:50.130 that we are really well adapted in to something different, but true in this 00:36:50.130 --> 00:36:55.010 world, in this age, that's not what's going, you know, we need these other skills to 00:36:55.010 --> 00:36:55.810 succeed. 00:36:56.130 --> 00:36:58.610 Yeah, you use the word agency. 00:36:58.770 --> 00:37:03.010 Um, and I think like one of the things I'm hearing is that there was sort of a lack of 00:37:03.010 --> 00:37:08.850 appreciation for for many of the things you mentioned already of people having 00:37:08.850 --> 00:37:13.760 agency, including women, including children, who maybe weren't 00:37:15.040 --> 00:37:19.280 appreciated for the agency they actually had, either in the evolutionary models or maybe by 00:37:19.280 --> 00:37:23.920 ethnographers in the past, or by scientists, or just by social world. 00:37:24.800 --> 00:37:27.680 Is that, you know, can you speak a little bit to that? 00:37:27.760 --> 00:37:29.120 Is that a fair characterization? 00:37:29.280 --> 00:37:33.760 Do you think that that's um one of the themes of the work that you've seen? 00:37:33.920 --> 00:37:39.570 Is that it's sort of one way to be scientific is to sort of appreciate the 00:37:39.730 --> 00:37:43.650 the agency of folks who have otherwise been sort of overlooked. 00:37:44.690 --> 00:37:47.490 I I think it certainly in terms of kids, that's true. 00:37:47.650 --> 00:37:53.490 I mean, I you know, there are, you know, tons of books on child 00:37:53.490 --> 00:37:59.250 development and um, you know, how to how to raise the best children that we can. 00:37:59.410 --> 00:38:04.370 And they really do always seem to be kind of top-down perspectives. 00:38:04.610 --> 00:38:10.240 You know, one of the best a couple of couple of examples of that are uh, 00:38:10.800 --> 00:38:14.800 you know, if you if you, I'm sure any kind of research that you do, you know, we have to go 00:38:14.800 --> 00:38:20.560 through all of these um gyrations with with with human subjects to get 00:38:20.640 --> 00:38:21.920 to get approvals. 00:38:22.080 --> 00:38:27.110 And so the same thing is true when we go into the field and I don't know, it was a number 00:38:27.110 --> 00:38:31.830 of years ago, and I had to get permission in this case from adults if a child could 00:38:31.830 --> 00:38:33.190 participate in something. 00:38:33.430 --> 00:38:37.350 And so I asked the mother, I said, you know, could you sign this paper for your kid? 00:38:37.430 --> 00:38:40.630 And the kid was pretty little, probably five years old or so. 00:38:40.790 --> 00:38:45.830 And she just looked at me just kind of really quizzically and said, Why are you asking me? 00:38:45.990 --> 00:38:47.110 Ask the kid. 00:38:47.990 --> 00:38:49.430 It was just classy examples. 00:38:49.670 --> 00:38:51.270 Like, I don't need to make this decision. 00:38:51.350 --> 00:38:54.950 If my child wants to participate, they'll make their own decision. 00:38:55.580 --> 00:38:58.780 Yeah, so I think that's um I think that's really true. 00:38:58.940 --> 00:39:03.820 In terms of why you know kids have, you know, I think really been under the radar in uh 00:39:03.820 --> 00:39:09.740 anthropology and archaeology is there's I also have a great story um about out 00:39:09.900 --> 00:39:15.740 from Alison Brooks, who is a famous archaeologist uh working in sub-Saharan Africa, and 00:39:15.740 --> 00:39:21.550 she was living with um like in a in a kung in a juanse community and 00:39:21.550 --> 00:39:26.350 every day as a dutiful you know mother from america she made her kids peanut butter and 00:39:26.350 --> 00:39:32.030 jelly sandwiches and she'd go off to her excavation and give her kids the food and she'd 00:39:32.030 --> 00:39:36.190 come back at the end of the day and and their the lunch sack would still be full and and 00:39:36.190 --> 00:39:39.470 she would say what were what were you you know what were you doing all day long and like 00:39:39.550 --> 00:39:42.430 how did you eat and it's like oh yeah you know we're out we're out with the other kids 00:39:42.510 --> 00:39:46.990 we're killing little birds little lizards you know we're eating this we're grabbing that 00:39:47.340 --> 00:39:53.020 And all of that, yeah, I think for decades and decades go 00:39:53.180 --> 00:39:54.380 went completely unnoticed. 00:39:54.460 --> 00:39:58.380 They're just not watching what kids are doing. 00:39:58.460 --> 00:40:03.180 And because they're not bringing back, maybe the little ones aren't bringing back huge 00:40:03.180 --> 00:40:03.980 returns. 00:40:04.460 --> 00:40:09.100 Um, but they are actually really able, even among the Juansi, who are, you know, kids 00:40:09.100 --> 00:40:13.530 aren't known to really work that hard in that particular group of hunters and gatherers 00:40:13.610 --> 00:40:16.250 were were taking care of themselves, just going very unnoticed. 00:40:16.410 --> 00:40:21.770 So yes, I think they do have, uh I do think they have a lot of agency in their own uh 00:40:21.770 --> 00:40:22.410 society. 00:40:22.490 --> 00:40:28.410 And I think they do take care of themselves in ways that we just weren't paying attention 00:40:28.410 --> 00:40:28.650 to. 00:40:28.970 --> 00:40:29.130 Yeah. 00:40:29.370 --> 00:40:32.890 And I don't want to get too sidetracked, but David, I just have a quick aside, which is you 00:40:32.890 --> 00:40:37.440 know, I also think like just institutionally, I think like there can also be institutional 00:40:37.440 --> 00:40:41.280 selection pressures of like or even a fear of like kids' agency, right? 00:40:41.360 --> 00:40:45.840 Like because it can be contrary to the goals of the adults, right? 00:40:45.920 --> 00:40:50.400 Or, you know, or you just if you don't appreciate what it is the kids are designed to do, 00:40:50.640 --> 00:40:54.560 status schemes, you know, do things that are different than like, you know, you're going to 00:40:54.560 --> 00:40:58.400 be working in the workshop, you know, in five years and you need to know learn how to make 00:40:58.400 --> 00:41:01.440 a widget and you better be a good worker, like that kind of thing. 00:41:01.810 --> 00:41:02.130 Yeah. 00:41:02.210 --> 00:41:06.610 And then there's the issue of parent-offspring conflict where you know parents have have 00:41:06.610 --> 00:41:11.090 different genetic interests than than their offspring and often will will want them to be 00:41:11.090 --> 00:41:15.410 more altruistic toward their siblings than than the kids themselves would would want to 00:41:15.490 --> 00:41:17.010 from a Darwinian perspective. 00:41:17.330 --> 00:41:22.530 And so there's the need to mold kids uh in a in a in a into a shape that is going to be 00:41:22.530 --> 00:41:25.410 more beneficial for the parents' fitness than for the offspring's fitness. 00:41:25.490 --> 00:41:29.800 And so you might expect, you know, from the offspring's perspective, they uh are going to 00:41:29.800 --> 00:41:33.160 be better off learning from other kids in their peer group whom they're going to be 00:41:33.160 --> 00:41:35.880 competing with as adults for status and for mates. 00:41:36.040 --> 00:41:39.960 Um, that's gonna be, you know, a more important source of information for them than you 00:41:39.960 --> 00:41:43.880 know, than perhaps you know, being trying to be molded by their parents uh to fit you know 00:41:43.960 --> 00:41:44.680 the parents' agenda. 00:41:44.760 --> 00:41:48.280 I don't know if if you if you if you buy any of that perspective in terms of parent 00:41:48.360 --> 00:41:52.920 offspring conflict, Karen, if or if that has informed your your thinking on this at all. 00:41:54.570 --> 00:42:00.090 Yes, uh uh I mean certainly certainly that's true and you do see those 00:42:00.090 --> 00:42:04.890 conflicts I guess to to the point I was making earlier about opportunity costs you know 00:42:04.970 --> 00:42:09.530 once those opportunity costs start to diminish diminish when kids reach reproductive age 00:42:09.610 --> 00:42:15.050 you certainly see those you see those conflicts you also see conflicts at the at the other 00:42:15.370 --> 00:42:21.340 end around weaning I mean I have seen three year olds dump pots 00:42:21.340 --> 00:42:23.900 of boiling water on their one year old sibling. 00:42:23.980 --> 00:42:28.860 I mean, you do you do see stuff, you know, stuff happens where there's certainly conflict. 00:42:29.100 --> 00:42:33.820 You know, there's and it's usually around weaning uh age. 00:42:33.980 --> 00:42:39.900 But then, you know, I I do think there's kind of a sweet spot where there's just a really 00:42:39.900 --> 00:42:42.300 low opportunity cost for kids to not. 00:42:42.460 --> 00:42:48.060 I mean, what else is they don't like if you see a Maya kid working in the field, they're, 00:42:48.630 --> 00:42:52.790 you know, yeah, they'll weed a couple rows, they'll they'll weed for five minutes and then 00:42:52.790 --> 00:42:56.470 they'll pick up some dirt clods and throw them at birds and they'll, you know, kind of 00:42:56.470 --> 00:43:00.070 wander off, and then they'll come back and they'll do their thing and then they'll wander, 00:43:00.150 --> 00:43:03.190 you know, that's you know, kind of kids are you you can't expect them. 00:43:03.270 --> 00:43:05.270 It's not like factory work for sure. 00:43:05.510 --> 00:43:10.550 Um, and I don't think parents, you know, what's one thing was interesting, you never, both 00:43:10.550 --> 00:43:15.190 with the Pume and the Maya, uh, you almost never hear the word no. 00:43:16.140 --> 00:43:22.060 Um you hear like they'll parents will tell kids go do this, but they'll 00:43:22.060 --> 00:43:27.660 almost never, you know, like a kid will be sitting right next to you, like 00:43:27.980 --> 00:43:33.420 singing a song at the top of their lungs, way off key, you know, something that we would 00:43:33.420 --> 00:43:36.380 tell the kid to like, could you just, you know, cut it out? 00:43:36.620 --> 00:43:40.610 And they would just not, they would just wouldn't, you know, whatever. 00:43:40.690 --> 00:43:45.970 Kids, kids could could have a lot of freedom, except if they did need to do something, they 00:43:45.970 --> 00:43:47.090 would be told to do something. 00:43:47.170 --> 00:43:50.690 But you rarely heard like, don't do that, don't do this, don't do this. 00:43:50.850 --> 00:43:54.610 And you realize, yes, we tell kid, we have to tell kids that all the time because you know, 00:43:54.690 --> 00:44:00.370 there's the cleanser under the sink, there's the hot iron on the, you know, on the ironing 00:44:00.370 --> 00:44:03.250 board, there's the fertilizer that's on the grass. 00:44:03.490 --> 00:44:08.700 I mean, there's so there's the street, there's the dog, I mean, there's so much that we 00:44:08.700 --> 00:44:12.220 have to guard kids uh against. 00:44:12.380 --> 00:44:17.500 And um, yeah, so I mean, presumably though, there would be lots of things to guard against 00:44:17.580 --> 00:44:19.500 uh in a in a forager society. 00:44:19.580 --> 00:44:24.780 There, you know, there are poisonous plants, yes, animals and bugs, and you know, uh all 00:44:25.420 --> 00:44:28.620 sorts of dangers, you know, you know, fire and danger, sharp tools. 00:44:28.780 --> 00:44:33.260 There are there are lots of things that kids could get into uh in a situation there too. 00:44:33.470 --> 00:44:39.230 Um so I'm I'm I'm curious about why why that difference 00:44:39.230 --> 00:44:43.070 exists with with the well I think there's just so much more that's dangerous. 00:44:43.310 --> 00:44:48.670 I mean absolutely you know kids don't uh if they live around big uh 00:44:48.670 --> 00:44:51.230 carnivores you know there are different rules. 00:44:51.310 --> 00:44:56.420 I've never I haven't worked with people who live around big carnivores but um certainly I I 00:44:56.420 --> 00:45:00.340 think adults are probably just as you know freaked out by them as little kids are. 00:45:00.420 --> 00:45:03.140 But yeah, there certainly are are things in place. 00:45:03.220 --> 00:45:08.020 But there's just it just seems like in our houses there's just a gazillion things that can 00:45:08.580 --> 00:45:14.420 this is a change of magnitude um in terms of the numbers of things that could 00:45:14.420 --> 00:45:16.340 potentially hurt us or hurt our kids. 00:45:16.710 --> 00:45:16.870 Yeah. 00:45:17.110 --> 00:45:20.070 Do you detect any consequences of that freedom? 00:45:20.150 --> 00:45:23.590 Like compared to, I mean, you, you know, you you cross these cultures. 00:45:23.830 --> 00:45:25.510 Are there differences in kids? 00:45:25.590 --> 00:45:30.390 You know, like with freedom comes responsibility, sort of, you know, is that for example, 00:45:30.470 --> 00:45:32.550 or you know, are there notable differences? 00:45:32.710 --> 00:45:37.830 I mean, you talked about the two-year-old having a fit, uh, which was different for for the 00:45:37.830 --> 00:45:41.190 people, um, for the other kids, you know, in this other culture. 00:45:41.350 --> 00:45:46.940 Um, are there, you know, in your thinking about transposing yourself between these 00:45:46.940 --> 00:45:52.460 different cultures, um, yeah, are there things that you've sort of noticed about kids? 00:45:52.620 --> 00:45:55.500 Like you mentioned, you know, you're you're you're really thinking about, you know, we're 00:45:55.500 --> 00:45:56.860 really missing something. 00:45:57.020 --> 00:45:58.940 Um, do you see those consequences? 00:45:59.100 --> 00:46:03.420 I mean, I even think about this, you know, as a parent, you know, even just small cultural 00:46:03.420 --> 00:46:07.020 differences, you know, between like, you know, living where my son grew up and where he 00:46:07.020 --> 00:46:09.180 lives now, and what that effect has on me. 00:46:09.340 --> 00:46:13.850 I mean, I, you know, do you have you thought about, you know, what are the things that we 00:46:13.850 --> 00:46:18.970 might be blind to about our own ourselves or the children we're raising because they're not 00:46:19.290 --> 00:46:23.450 more responsible or because we're not giving them as much freedom or because we're not 00:46:23.450 --> 00:46:29.290 letting them grow up in a mixed age cohort like like they might be designed to do 00:46:33.290 --> 00:46:39.140 um well I mean I um I I don't know how that would quite would 00:46:39.140 --> 00:46:44.340 spin out, but uh I think if you know from a young age you have a lot of agency and you do 00:46:44.420 --> 00:46:46.420 you can make your own decisions. 00:46:47.060 --> 00:46:52.900 Um I don't know how that would affect, you know, kind of adult decision making or or 00:46:53.140 --> 00:46:58.740 um maybe not so much adult, but juvenile uh well young adult decision 00:46:58.740 --> 00:46:59.220 making. 00:46:59.430 --> 00:47:03.750 You know, we know all we hear, you know, we just hear so much bad stuff was what's going on 00:47:03.750 --> 00:47:07.510 with with young people, not so much children, but with with young adults. 00:47:07.670 --> 00:47:12.230 Um, you know, I guess the other thing I would say, it's, you know, we live in such a 00:47:12.230 --> 00:47:14.310 rapidly changing world. 00:47:15.110 --> 00:47:20.790 You know, it's just constantly uh it's really in an exponential 00:47:20.790 --> 00:47:22.230 state of change. 00:47:22.550 --> 00:47:27.820 Whereas, you know, I guess the people I'm talking about, there's there's some there's some 00:47:27.820 --> 00:47:30.460 homeostasis to their way of to their way of life. 00:47:30.540 --> 00:47:36.060 I mean the skill the skills you learn as a kid are the skills that are going to be useful 00:47:36.060 --> 00:47:38.380 to you uh as as an adult. 00:47:38.620 --> 00:47:42.220 I think it I think it's important to really integrate society. 00:47:42.620 --> 00:47:48.450 I mean, I'm expecting, you know, something I I didn't set out to study, but 00:47:48.450 --> 00:47:53.090 the the the hunters and gathers in Venezuela, Venezuela is such a broken-down country, 00:47:53.330 --> 00:47:58.530 their lives probably it's too dangerous for us to go back right now, but their lives have 00:47:58.530 --> 00:48:01.090 probably actually really not changed. 00:48:01.410 --> 00:48:07.330 Um but in uh with the Maya, their life has changed a lot. 00:48:08.620 --> 00:48:10.300 And you do see the breakdown. 00:48:10.460 --> 00:48:16.460 I mean, you do see the beginnings of kind of breakdowns in terms of where kids spend 00:48:16.460 --> 00:48:18.540 their time, how they spend their time. 00:48:19.020 --> 00:48:20.780 It's not as integrated. 00:48:21.820 --> 00:48:27.660 You know, the other thing is that kids and adults in more traditional societies, kids are 00:48:27.660 --> 00:48:29.740 kind of always there, like running. 00:48:29.900 --> 00:48:31.260 No, adults are like doing something. 00:48:31.500 --> 00:48:36.270 Kids are just constantly like running in or in and out of adult spaces. 00:48:36.510 --> 00:48:41.070 And so there's a lot of sort of spatial integrity, whereas I think we have a lot of 00:48:41.070 --> 00:48:43.790 actually spatial segregation. 00:48:44.510 --> 00:48:49.790 And so I don't know what that means about long-term sort of respect or 00:48:50.270 --> 00:48:52.350 intergenerational integration. 00:48:52.990 --> 00:48:58.200 Um, you know, I don't know, when I was a teen, I was embarrassed to be seen around my 00:48:58.200 --> 00:48:58.520 parents. 00:48:58.600 --> 00:49:03.720 You know, you do anything to like not like drop me off like two blocks away and I'll walk 00:49:03.720 --> 00:49:05.080 in or, you know, whatever. 00:49:05.240 --> 00:49:08.520 It's uh I I think that's changed back again. 00:49:08.680 --> 00:49:14.520 But you know, uh there you know, that would just never cross a puma or my child's mind to 00:49:14.520 --> 00:49:18.530 be embarrassed by their parent or their grandparent or um yeah. 00:49:18.610 --> 00:49:23.730 So I I I I I it's hard to answer because I think there's there's so much flux and change 00:49:23.730 --> 00:49:24.610 happening right now. 00:49:24.930 --> 00:49:25.090 Yeah. 00:49:25.250 --> 00:49:28.930 Well, I think that's a very uh thoughtful and careful answer. 00:49:29.010 --> 00:49:31.250 And I think even just being aware of the difference, right? 00:49:31.330 --> 00:49:36.370 To just even point to the fact that it is different and and it is something to ask, right? 00:49:36.530 --> 00:49:40.050 I think that's a big part of it, is just even asking the question. 00:49:40.210 --> 00:49:44.770 Um, yeah, it's and we would not even get to that question if you weren't sort of looking at 00:49:44.770 --> 00:49:48.360 the kinds of things that you're looking at, or more broadly taking, kind of this 00:49:48.360 --> 00:49:50.440 evolutionary approach to life history. 00:49:52.440 --> 00:49:54.280 David, I think you were going to say something. 00:49:54.920 --> 00:49:58.920 Yeah, I mean, I think we we've been talking a lot about life history. 00:49:59.160 --> 00:50:00.840 We've been throwing this word around a lot. 00:50:00.920 --> 00:50:06.760 Um, I don't think it's something that we've ever delved into uh uh thoroughly in 00:50:06.760 --> 00:50:08.280 this podcast before. 00:50:08.360 --> 00:50:13.170 Um, and it's really a core perspective, uh it's a t it's a core approach to a lot of people 00:50:13.170 --> 00:50:15.570 in the evolutionary behavioral sciences. 00:50:15.730 --> 00:50:21.250 Um so I think it might be worth um taking a moment to unpack, you know, what 00:50:21.250 --> 00:50:27.170 life history means and and what life history theory is and how that 00:50:27.170 --> 00:50:29.090 informs uh your work. 00:50:29.250 --> 00:50:31.330 So so what is uh life history? 00:50:31.410 --> 00:50:36.130 What is life history theory to you and how does that help you uh uh uh develop ideas in 00:50:36.130 --> 00:50:37.010 your research? 00:50:37.400 --> 00:50:42.520 Okay, well, I think you know it's a it's a concept that came out of evolutionary 00:50:42.520 --> 00:50:48.280 biology, and it was a kind of a revolution at 00:50:48.280 --> 00:50:54.280 the time to thinking about how we could think about species being 00:50:54.280 --> 00:50:57.320 different in terms of what we're called RK strategies. 00:50:57.560 --> 00:51:03.320 So, you know, some species produce a lot of offspring and don't just much in either one, 00:51:03.400 --> 00:51:09.090 and other ones um produce a a few species few offspring and in invest 00:51:09.410 --> 00:51:13.170 a lot you know that's kind of the short of it and the idea is you know once you make kind 00:51:13.170 --> 00:51:18.050 of a typology like that you know there are gonna be so many exceptions so life history 00:51:18.050 --> 00:51:23.170 theory kind of um it didn't so much supplant it but it gives it another way of looking at 00:51:23.490 --> 00:51:28.770 that um life events uh are uh differential 00:51:29.410 --> 00:51:35.180 time and energy investments are made in different life events. 00:51:35.420 --> 00:51:40.940 And there are differential fertility rates, mortality rates. 00:51:41.100 --> 00:51:44.860 So there's a focus on that, as well as on in growth and development. 00:51:45.020 --> 00:51:50.460 You know, whether you have a short infancy or a long infancy, or weaned early or late, or 00:51:50.460 --> 00:51:52.780 reach sexual maturity early or late. 00:51:52.860 --> 00:51:58.850 So it's the idea that you have a unit of time, a unit of calories, a unit 00:51:58.850 --> 00:52:04.450 of energy, unit of money in our case, and you can allocate it to this thing or to that 00:52:04.450 --> 00:52:09.330 thing that's either going to aid in your survival or reproduction. 00:52:09.490 --> 00:52:15.330 And so then it's heavily reliant on the idea of a trade-off that I can either do this 00:52:15.330 --> 00:52:16.770 thing or I can do that thing. 00:52:16.850 --> 00:52:22.780 So we can use that to think about, I mean, I think about many things about children, um, 00:52:22.940 --> 00:52:25.420 in terms uh including growth and development. 00:52:25.500 --> 00:52:31.340 You know, why is it that we have the kind of pattern of growth and development that we do, 00:52:31.500 --> 00:52:36.940 and then also why we start to reproduce when we do or not? 00:52:37.100 --> 00:52:43.100 Do we curtail, in a sense, childhood and and and make that transition early, or do we make 00:52:43.100 --> 00:52:43.740 it later? 00:52:43.980 --> 00:52:49.170 And then kind of from the mother's point of view, also the children's point of view, this 00:52:49.170 --> 00:52:54.290 idea of how do you allocate your resources to different children in terms of fertility 00:52:54.290 --> 00:53:00.050 decisions and how kids allocate their time in terms of either being helpful or not helpful. 00:53:00.130 --> 00:53:05.890 So I guess it informs that structure of time and energy and resources 00:53:05.970 --> 00:53:11.730 are limited, and decisions are made about alternative choices, is kind of what 00:53:11.730 --> 00:53:13.890 informs, I guess, most of what I do. 00:53:14.050 --> 00:53:14.610 Yes. 00:53:15.040 --> 00:53:20.880 And I think just one thing I uh you know, because I think it's probably so baked in for 00:53:20.880 --> 00:53:25.600 you, but I think, you know, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you were one of the people 00:53:25.600 --> 00:53:30.240 to really go and look at what people were doing and not just listen to sort of what people 00:53:30.240 --> 00:53:34.240 were saying, which is, you know, you mentioned at the beginning, you know, you actually are 00:53:34.240 --> 00:53:35.760 going on these follows. 00:53:35.920 --> 00:53:40.640 And it's sort of easy to say in a few seconds on a podcast, but that's a very difficult 00:53:41.090 --> 00:53:42.290 thing to do. 00:53:42.450 --> 00:53:47.010 I mean, can you can you talk a little bit about, you know, like what how did you decide or 00:53:47.010 --> 00:53:48.530 why did you decide to actually do that? 00:53:48.610 --> 00:53:50.450 And like, was that actually difficult? 00:53:50.530 --> 00:53:55.890 You know, I mean, like that's I think for for many people, my generation, even 00:53:55.890 --> 00:54:00.690 understanding sort of because you know, we now that's sort of baked into, you know, if 00:54:00.690 --> 00:54:04.370 you're gonna do this, you have to go do a follow and actually track calories. 00:54:04.530 --> 00:54:08.960 But that was not, as I understand it, sort of a thing as much. 00:54:09.360 --> 00:54:12.960 I mean, I know people started to do that, but can you talk a little bit about like sort of 00:54:12.960 --> 00:54:13.760 what is that like doing? 00:54:13.840 --> 00:54:17.920 Or if you're somebody listening who's never done that, like what does that involve, you 00:54:17.920 --> 00:54:18.080 know? 00:54:18.160 --> 00:54:24.080 Like well, um time allocation, scan observations, focal 00:54:24.080 --> 00:54:29.600 follows, all of that came out of studies with I think mostly with primates in the 00:54:29.600 --> 00:54:34.770 60s and 70s, and the early behavioral ecologists. 00:54:34.850 --> 00:54:39.090 So I was a student of Hilly Kaplan's and Jane Lancaster's. 00:54:39.330 --> 00:54:43.250 And that's how they were they were trained by ethologists. 00:54:43.490 --> 00:54:45.810 They were actually trained here at the University of Utah. 00:54:45.890 --> 00:54:51.410 They were students of Kristen Hawks, and uh including Hilly Kaplan and Magdalena Hurtado. 00:54:51.570 --> 00:54:57.560 And you know, they had a real emphasis on b behavioral observation Before I be 00:54:57.880 --> 00:55:03.160 before I started studying with with with them in behavioral ecology, I was an archaeologist 00:55:03.320 --> 00:55:07.720 and I was a student of Lou Binford's, who was kind of the father of the new archaeology. 00:55:07.800 --> 00:55:13.560 And his real emphasis was on bringing scientific thinking to archaeology 00:55:13.720 --> 00:55:19.560 and um and on ethno archaeology, which is we have to see what people 00:55:19.560 --> 00:55:20.280 are doing. 00:55:20.440 --> 00:55:25.810 We can't see it in the archaeological record, so we have to go actually live and work with 00:55:25.810 --> 00:55:27.970 people that are living close to those ways of life. 00:55:28.130 --> 00:55:33.650 So all of that kind of comes together both from the archaeology, the ethnoarchaeology point 00:55:33.650 --> 00:55:36.770 of view and from the and then from the ethology point of view. 00:55:36.930 --> 00:55:41.810 And then as it translated into human behavioral ecology was behavioral observation. 00:55:42.130 --> 00:55:42.530 Right. 00:55:42.770 --> 00:55:46.290 So that was kind of the stuff that we used, I mean that was this when I was coming through, 00:55:46.370 --> 00:55:48.840 it was the stuff that we all, we all, we all did. 00:55:49.400 --> 00:55:53.480 You collected your reproductive histories when you first went into the field, and then you 00:55:53.480 --> 00:55:56.920 uh collected your time allocation uh data. 00:55:57.240 --> 00:56:01.640 And um it just has been abbreviated, I guess, over time. 00:56:01.800 --> 00:56:05.160 It's very, I can't talk any graduate students into doing it anymore. 00:56:05.240 --> 00:56:05.800 It's true. 00:56:06.120 --> 00:56:11.400 It's very, it's pretty it's pretty labor intensive, but and there are biases, 00:56:12.090 --> 00:56:17.850 but I would say it's uh you know, by watching people over the course of a year. 00:56:18.090 --> 00:56:23.450 So usually a year time frame was the time frame you would um 00:56:25.690 --> 00:56:30.330 you would go from house to house and every 15 minutes say write down what everyone was 00:56:30.330 --> 00:56:31.130 doing in that house. 00:56:31.210 --> 00:56:35.930 And after you have hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands of observations, you know, 00:56:36.010 --> 00:56:40.970 you can say three to five year olds spend this amount of their time doing this rather than 00:56:41.050 --> 00:56:42.660 um rather than asking. 00:56:42.820 --> 00:56:48.020 I think it would also be really hard, you know, maybe interview, you know, maybe it's 00:56:48.020 --> 00:56:52.820 really limited because you can ask adults that, but you know, I'm not sure about kids. 00:56:52.900 --> 00:56:58.900 And again, having parents say what kids are doing are probably really different 00:56:58.900 --> 00:57:00.340 than actually seeing them. 00:57:00.500 --> 00:57:06.340 So there was a real emphasis on it and I think that is actually, it's reverted now more to 00:57:06.420 --> 00:57:11.110 um to interview even among behavioral ecologists, yeah. 00:57:11.270 --> 00:57:14.470 It's much, much more interview uh oriented. 00:57:14.630 --> 00:57:18.070 And different questions have emerged, you know, not so much what people how they spend 00:57:18.070 --> 00:57:22.950 their time, but I do think like knowing someone's, you know, age and sex, knowing what they 00:57:22.950 --> 00:57:26.870 do is is pretty fundamental to to so many questions that we want to ask. 00:57:27.190 --> 00:57:27.430 Yeah. 00:57:27.510 --> 00:57:31.430 I mean, and I don't, you know, we we can but but just the one question is sort of like what 00:57:31.430 --> 00:57:31.910 does that do? 00:57:32.150 --> 00:57:36.340 I mean, uh uh when before you did that and then after you didn't have that experience of 00:57:36.340 --> 00:57:40.820 being with a group of people and doing this sort of interesting and maybe slightly 00:57:40.820 --> 00:57:44.420 unnatural thing of every 15 minutes just noting down what people did. 00:57:44.980 --> 00:57:50.580 Um for for those of us who haven't done that, like does that change how you think about 00:57:50.580 --> 00:57:55.380 people or how you observe, or what what when you when you come when you're you know when 00:57:55.380 --> 00:58:00.260 you start doing that process, how does that change you as a person or scientist? 00:58:02.210 --> 00:58:07.970 Well, I think it was the most magnificent way to 00:58:08.770 --> 00:58:11.970 have kind of come up at doing research. 00:58:12.130 --> 00:58:17.330 It um it does, it did deeply change me as a human being. 00:58:17.410 --> 00:58:22.690 I I think in an in a number of ways that maybe if you don't, you know, sit there day after 00:58:22.690 --> 00:58:28.210 day after day in the boiling hot, and you know, half the time you're really bored, but um 00:58:29.010 --> 00:58:34.720 it is it it is so human to understand that just 00:58:34.800 --> 00:58:39.920 watching what people do, it's not what they say they do, but you know, we all love our 00:58:39.920 --> 00:58:41.200 children in the same way. 00:58:41.360 --> 00:58:44.320 We all, you know, are annoyed by the same things. 00:58:44.480 --> 00:58:46.640 We all, you know, feel certain ways. 00:58:46.800 --> 00:58:51.760 I've it was it was um I I mean, I think it's I go into the field every year. 00:58:51.840 --> 00:58:57.470 It's the most important thing, I think, to keep me as a kind, honest 00:58:57.790 --> 00:59:03.630 human being is to understand that we're all connected in this, we're all human. 00:59:03.710 --> 00:59:08.190 I mean you can't walk out of that situation and be very prejudiced about people. 00:59:08.350 --> 00:59:13.710 I mean it's uh you know even though you know they're hunters and gatherers, they are there 00:59:13.790 --> 00:59:16.900 there's so much that we um have in common. 00:59:17.060 --> 00:59:22.340 So yeah, I think there was uh there's a fundamental effect that it has on one's humanity 00:59:22.500 --> 00:59:23.300 for sure. 00:59:23.860 --> 00:59:28.900 Um and sense of empathy that we're all up, you know, we're all up kind of up against the 00:59:28.900 --> 00:59:31.140 same, some of the same basic things. 00:59:31.300 --> 00:59:31.780 Yes. 00:59:32.180 --> 00:59:32.500 Yeah. 00:59:32.740 --> 00:59:32.980 Yeah. 00:59:33.060 --> 00:59:38.020 I um yeah, and especially, I mean, just as a parent, especially, you know, like I think 00:59:38.260 --> 00:59:43.770 even uh whenever I see another parent, whatever the social distances, you know, I I sort of 00:59:43.770 --> 00:59:44.810 get a sliver of that. 00:59:44.890 --> 00:59:50.810 So I can't it must be uh really um life changing to sort of experience that 00:59:50.810 --> 00:59:53.370 in lots of different ways day to day over a year. 00:59:53.530 --> 00:59:54.090 Yeah. 00:59:54.410 --> 00:59:54.810 Mm-hmm. 00:59:54.890 --> 00:59:55.370 Mm-hmm. 00:59:55.770 --> 00:59:58.490 Yeah, and then people there people are mostly good. 00:59:58.730 --> 00:59:58.970 Yeah. 00:59:59.210 --> 01:00:02.170 They're mostly really kind and really loving and really good. 01:00:02.330 --> 01:00:07.700 I mean, you know, there's sometimes a few, you know, bad eggs and and um, you know, I think 01:00:07.700 --> 01:00:13.380 you deceive yourself as an anthropologist to think that, you know, you are beloved like 01:00:13.380 --> 01:00:13.860 family. 01:00:14.100 --> 01:00:20.100 I mean, there's always a um you know, there's always a you know, there it 01:00:20.100 --> 01:00:21.940 you you leave in the end. 01:00:22.020 --> 01:00:25.300 And so, you know, there's there's there's is a difference. 01:00:25.540 --> 01:00:30.580 Um, yeah, I think it's a kind of a mistake to think that you are kind of one of them, but 01:00:30.820 --> 01:00:36.530 um yeah, it's uh and it's a very different sense since you're asking the question. 01:00:36.770 --> 01:00:42.450 It's really different to miss a whole community. 01:00:42.530 --> 01:00:45.890 I can't even say what that's like because we don't really have that sense. 01:00:46.130 --> 01:00:50.050 Like when I'm not with them for a while, it's like I miss a village of 500. 01:00:50.130 --> 01:00:51.090 How do you even explain that? 01:00:51.250 --> 01:00:56.130 Like we we miss individuals, we miss you know, our kids, our parents, our friends, but like 01:00:56.210 --> 01:00:59.300 to miss a whole village is like a different thing. 01:00:59.460 --> 01:01:01.300 But uh anyway, thanks for asking. 01:01:01.620 --> 01:01:05.300 Yeah, it's it's sort of, I mean, I think a lot of the anthropologists we have on express 01:01:05.380 --> 01:01:09.620 that, and it's almost like you have this sort of strange alternate dimension, not strange, 01:01:09.700 --> 01:01:15.620 but just it's it is an unusual thing as a human to sort of have this uh other life that 01:01:15.620 --> 01:01:16.100 you miss. 01:01:16.580 --> 01:01:21.940 Um many people have expressed that, and um yeah, and that's it's it's a wonderful thing. 01:01:22.020 --> 01:01:27.380 And I think it also ties to one of the things that David um and I mentioned a lot on this 01:01:27.450 --> 01:01:33.370 podcast is sort of how um, you know, like you said, what we talk about may not always be 01:01:33.370 --> 01:01:34.490 representative of what we do. 01:01:34.650 --> 01:01:38.890 And it's it's nice that you're saying that in a way of sort of a lot of what we do is 01:01:38.890 --> 01:01:43.850 actually very universal and often very sort of uh just 01:01:44.490 --> 01:01:50.490 normal, everyday human stuff, and maybe not necessarily the stuff that makes the news um 01:01:50.570 --> 01:01:56.490 or or all the horrible stuff, uh, but but just sort of beautifully mundane sort of stuff. 01:01:58.460 --> 01:01:58.940 Yeah. 01:01:59.500 --> 01:01:59.900 Exactly. 01:02:00.380 --> 01:02:06.300 I mean, one one, you know, one of the mundane human things that um that our live 01:02:06.380 --> 01:02:11.660 that our lives revolve around is um parenthood itself and and the idea that there are two 01:02:11.660 --> 01:02:14.780 parents working together, the the dad and and the mom. 01:02:15.100 --> 01:02:20.300 Um and uh you've done some research on examining that question of you know what is the 01:02:20.300 --> 01:02:21.420 natural sort of family structure. 01:02:21.580 --> 01:02:25.750 You have a paper with Ryan Schacht with uh the question is, are we monogamous? 01:02:25.910 --> 01:02:27.990 is the title of the of the paper. 01:02:28.230 --> 01:02:33.750 Um and uh I'm curious how you would answer the question that you posed in the title of that 01:02:33.750 --> 01:02:34.150 paper. 01:02:34.390 --> 01:02:40.150 Do you see uh human life history as uh uh you know, in terms of biparental 01:02:40.150 --> 01:02:44.630 investment with with a mother and a father, uh, or or is it more uh is it is it is it 01:02:44.630 --> 01:02:44.870 different? 01:02:45.030 --> 01:02:48.150 Is it, you know, are there different family structures that we have that we are perhaps 01:02:48.230 --> 01:02:48.790 more suited to? 01:02:48.950 --> 01:02:53.040 What do you think is the answer to the question of what is the what is the most uh uh 01:02:53.200 --> 01:02:59.040 natural or or species typical uh uh parenting arrangement well 01:02:59.120 --> 01:03:04.400 that's a great question I think there's been huge evolutionary changes in that I mean um 01:03:05.360 --> 01:03:11.280 uh one of the one of the things I have argued is you know we can't 01:03:11.280 --> 01:03:16.480 see these well we can't see these behaviors in the past so we really have to we have to 01:03:16.480 --> 01:03:22.290 work from phylogenetic studies we have to work from what we know from closely 01:03:22.290 --> 01:03:23.330 related species. 01:03:23.490 --> 01:03:28.930 We have to work from what we know about living in these more traditional societies. 01:03:29.330 --> 01:03:31.810 I think we can say a couple of things. 01:03:32.530 --> 01:03:38.530 I do have a couple of papers on the cooperative economy of food and the evolution 01:03:38.530 --> 01:03:39.730 of the human family. 01:03:39.970 --> 01:03:45.410 That it is, well, one, the nuclear family is probably very novel. 01:03:45.660 --> 01:03:48.700 Um, the idea of that you get a mom and a dad in a house. 01:03:48.860 --> 01:03:54.140 So at least in the past we grew up in extended, I think that's a minimum you could say 01:03:54.460 --> 01:03:58.220 extended family households, and it's highly variable cross-culturally. 01:03:58.380 --> 01:04:02.700 You know, some places you get men's houses and you get women's houses, other places you get 01:04:02.700 --> 01:04:05.980 a lot of in you know, you get integrity between the the two. 01:04:06.140 --> 01:04:09.740 So it's it's it's it's quite, you know, it's quite variable. 01:04:09.900 --> 01:04:15.290 But I think what you can say is that the nuclear family is probably very, very 01:04:15.530 --> 01:04:18.410 recent, and you know, in terms of hundreds of years. 01:04:18.650 --> 01:04:22.490 Um, there's no question that you know, moms don't care who they get the help. 01:04:22.810 --> 01:04:27.450 I mean, I would say moms are agnostic, mothers are agnostic who they get the help from, 01:04:27.610 --> 01:04:32.010 whether or not it's their own kids, whether or not it's a partner, whether or not it's a 01:04:32.330 --> 01:04:33.290 grandparent. 01:04:34.090 --> 01:04:39.340 Uh And I guess I think probably the earliest systems were probably 01:04:39.340 --> 01:04:44.860 maternal, maternal structures where you get mothers and maybe related women and 01:04:44.860 --> 01:04:50.860 children that uh it's it's a big evolutionary step to get male parental care in there. 01:04:51.420 --> 01:04:54.380 And it happens, of course it happens. 01:04:54.620 --> 01:05:00.620 Um, but uh I would say it's one of the harder things to, you know, there has to 01:05:00.620 --> 01:05:06.350 be some big um uh social organizational changes, and that's what I mean. 01:05:06.430 --> 01:05:11.070 I've explored this topic with some evolutionary biologists uh before that paper with Ryan 01:05:11.230 --> 01:05:17.150 about about monogamy, and it is I think what's interesting about it 01:05:17.150 --> 01:05:22.910 is if you think of us as cooperative breeders, so what I mean by that is people other than 01:05:22.910 --> 01:05:28.670 mothers helping to raise offspring, very rare in the animal world, doesn't happen all that 01:05:28.670 --> 01:05:33.600 much, Happens across a great diversity of species, but not that many species. 01:05:34.080 --> 01:05:39.840 And the evolutionary biologists usually argue that in order for that to have 01:05:39.840 --> 01:05:44.720 happened, there had to have been monogamy in the system at some point in the past. 01:05:45.120 --> 01:05:50.880 So there is a precedence for thinking that monogamy and cooperative reading uh go together. 01:05:51.710 --> 01:05:56.030 Why why sorry, why why's the evolutionary reasoning behind those links? 01:05:58.830 --> 01:06:04.670 Because they're trying to explain why sexually mature uh individuals would 01:06:04.670 --> 01:06:08.590 help a mother raise offspring that are not their own. 01:06:08.750 --> 01:06:13.680 So there's this high opportunity costs that we've talked, kind of talked about. 01:06:13.840 --> 01:06:19.600 And so if everyone is highly related, if you're more related in the community through 01:06:19.600 --> 01:06:23.600 monogamy, you're more likely to want to pay the opportunity cost. 01:06:23.920 --> 01:06:29.840 And I guess what I argue is that because if kids are that 01:06:29.840 --> 01:06:35.040 valuable to helping mothers, you don't necessarily, they may be half 01:06:35.150 --> 01:06:38.590 siblings, but they're not going to be any more distantly related than that. 01:06:38.750 --> 01:06:42.990 So you don't necessarily need that entry point of monogamy. 01:06:43.470 --> 01:06:48.670 In many other cooperative breeders, monogamy happened sometime in the evolutionary past, 01:06:48.750 --> 01:06:50.590 and then the breeding system changed. 01:06:50.830 --> 01:06:56.430 So I guess to go back to your question, there is no question that male 01:06:56.430 --> 01:07:00.670 parental care is important in human societies. 01:07:01.230 --> 01:07:05.660 I think it's probably relatively, you know, in terms of a big evolutionary picture, 01:07:05.820 --> 01:07:11.340 relatively late, because it requires a pretty big um social 01:07:11.660 --> 01:07:17.180 organizational um change that kids helping raise uh 01:07:17.180 --> 01:07:19.340 kids wouldn't require. 01:07:19.660 --> 01:07:24.220 Um and I don't think older individual, you know, I think older individuals, that's just 01:07:24.220 --> 01:07:28.380 demographically fairly not so probable. 01:07:29.210 --> 01:07:34.650 What what social organizational changes do you think need to be in place for male parental 01:07:34.650 --> 01:07:38.890 care to well there has to there's this trade-off where you're gonna have to assure 01:07:38.890 --> 01:07:43.210 paternity confidence, women are gonna have to, you know, classic sexual selection. 01:07:43.530 --> 01:07:48.570 Um, I guess you're gonna have to, you know, males will have to um 01:07:49.460 --> 01:07:54.340 Bernard Chapet has made a lot of arguments in this direction, which is kind of you know how 01:07:54.340 --> 01:07:58.020 we weigh dampen down male-male competition. 01:07:58.180 --> 01:08:03.060 Although I think you could argue, yeah, we don't bludgeon each other, but we certainly have 01:08:03.060 --> 01:08:07.060 other ways that we heavily males heavily compete with each other. 01:08:07.300 --> 01:08:08.740 But you'd have to dampen that. 01:08:08.820 --> 01:08:13.860 You'd have to respect, you'd have to respect your brother's children, your your brother's 01:08:13.860 --> 01:08:14.900 wife, I guess. 01:08:15.090 --> 01:08:19.810 And so, you know, oddly enough, we live in these communities where we have multiple 01:08:19.810 --> 01:08:23.970 breeding aged males and multiple breeding aged females. 01:08:24.210 --> 01:08:27.570 Just, you know, a village, uh, your neighbors. 01:08:27.810 --> 01:08:33.730 And we somehow dampen down the competition to, you know, we we don't 01:08:34.130 --> 01:08:35.970 we respect those boundaries. 01:08:36.210 --> 01:08:41.660 And that's a big evolutionary change to what other great apes do. 01:08:43.420 --> 01:08:49.420 So we, you know, probably go from a pretty polygynous past 01:08:49.500 --> 01:08:55.340 of some form of some form we don't really know, to one where we start respecting each 01:08:55.340 --> 01:08:56.300 other's boundaries. 01:08:56.460 --> 01:08:59.260 And I think that's a pretty, that's pretty sophisticated. 01:08:59.580 --> 01:08:59.820 Yeah. 01:09:00.070 --> 01:09:04.150 Well, sort of, I mean, we had Chris von Ruden on and he talked about Chris Bohm and sort of 01:09:04.150 --> 01:09:05.910 leveling mechanisms or coalitions. 01:09:05.990 --> 01:09:07.830 Is that sort of the thing you're you're referring to? 01:09:08.150 --> 01:09:09.910 Like I mean, that's the next step. 01:09:10.070 --> 01:09:14.230 I mean, it's all speculative, and of course, we're sort of on the edge here of sort of what 01:09:14.230 --> 01:09:20.070 the the the key topics, but I mean, is that sort of what you're uh um talking about 01:09:20.150 --> 01:09:24.240 too, where it would be just sort of, you know, just from a very basic perspective, just 01:09:24.240 --> 01:09:28.800 sort of to the extent that we have a phenotype that allows us to be coalitional, then you 01:09:28.800 --> 01:09:30.880 know, we can sort of enforce norms like that. 01:09:31.040 --> 01:09:36.000 And that a belligerent, um, aggressive male might be teamed up against and it's sort of a 01:09:36.000 --> 01:09:38.640 leveling mechanism in the crispome kind of way. 01:09:39.360 --> 01:09:43.040 Yeah, but I mean that's a big step because other primates don't do that. 01:09:43.200 --> 01:09:48.960 I mean, they they form co coalitions, certainly, but they also have no problem 01:09:49.120 --> 01:09:54.750 um, you know taking on you know there's no yes they're promiscuous 01:09:54.910 --> 01:10:00.510 yeah um so yeah I think monogamy monogamy is 01:10:00.510 --> 01:10:06.190 pretty pretty difficult to get to yeah there's I mean I I know there's some new 01:10:06.270 --> 01:10:10.510 new thinking on that but you know I I think the human the human story whether or not we 01:10:10.510 --> 01:10:14.750 have deep ancestry in that that's with that paper that's previous work that I've done with 01:10:14.750 --> 01:10:19.260 Andy Russell looking at this question in other species of cooperative breeders. 01:10:19.340 --> 01:10:23.820 You know, we we have some of those traits sort of, and you know, we don't have others. 01:10:23.980 --> 01:10:26.540 So uh biological traits, social traits. 01:10:26.700 --> 01:10:32.300 So I think um I teach this a lot in in and I just kind of let students 01:10:32.620 --> 01:10:37.740 uh know kind of what the evidence is on this side or that side, and they can make up, they 01:10:37.740 --> 01:10:38.540 can make up their mind. 01:10:38.620 --> 01:10:42.140 I think it's a really loaded, it's a really loaded question. 01:10:42.300 --> 01:10:44.590 Um and there's other ways, you know. 01:10:44.670 --> 01:10:50.270 We know in societies where there isn't a lot of paternity certainty, it's it's the uncles 01:10:50.270 --> 01:10:55.470 that play a big so so there, you know, I think we do have to distinguish between male 01:10:55.470 --> 01:10:58.350 parental investment and paternal investment. 01:10:58.590 --> 01:10:58.830 Right. 01:10:58.990 --> 01:11:00.270 So, you know, you certainly can't. 01:11:01.150 --> 01:11:04.750 Oh, those in terms of you know the the father investing versus uncles or other men. 01:11:05.070 --> 01:11:05.710 Yes, yes. 01:11:06.430 --> 01:11:06.670 Yeah. 01:11:06.830 --> 01:11:09.870 So where there's a lot of promiscuity in those societies where there's a lot of 01:11:09.870 --> 01:11:15.340 promiscuity, it is uh mother's brother that um will invest. 01:11:16.140 --> 01:11:16.380 Okay. 01:11:16.540 --> 01:11:22.300 So a lot of facultative sort of in lingo sort of facultative design here in terms of 01:11:22.700 --> 01:11:28.620 or not parenting, but just uh investment in in allo parenting and offspring and 01:11:28.700 --> 01:11:29.580 uh and children. 01:11:29.660 --> 01:11:29.900 Yeah. 01:11:30.300 --> 01:11:36.070 Well I think that's a good place for me to probably end is that you know I think the human 01:11:36.230 --> 01:11:39.990 the brilliance of the human strategy is our incredible flexibility. 01:11:40.470 --> 01:11:43.190 And you know we don't have just one breeding pattern. 01:11:43.270 --> 01:11:49.030 We've got all of these I I would say we're not committed male parental investors at all. 01:11:49.510 --> 01:11:55.480 It's pretty it is facultative and and we we solve it in so many that's our 01:11:55.640 --> 01:11:57.880 that's why we're so successful at what we do. 01:11:58.040 --> 01:12:00.440 We solve these things in so many different ways. 01:12:00.760 --> 01:12:01.000 Yeah. 01:12:01.400 --> 01:12:06.520 We we we have a mandatory question, which is is there anything we should have asked you uh 01:12:06.760 --> 01:12:07.480 during this? 01:12:08.040 --> 01:12:13.720 Oh yeah I I guess I I mean I brought up some of them, but I guess I was thinking, okay, 01:12:13.960 --> 01:12:16.810 what are like one's Eureka moments? 01:12:16.890 --> 01:12:18.490 You know, what gets them to? 01:12:18.650 --> 01:12:23.210 And we talked, we we did actually talk about a few of them, but um, or you know. 01:12:23.530 --> 01:12:28.170 Yeah, or how did you get, or maybe one question just sort of is like, how did you um how 01:12:28.170 --> 01:12:32.490 did you discover, how did you become an anthropologist or become an evol interested in 01:12:32.490 --> 01:12:33.370 evolution? 01:12:34.090 --> 01:12:39.860 Well, um, I I was an archaeologist and as I said, in ethnoarchaeology 01:12:39.940 --> 01:12:44.580 was really a big uh was really what was important at that time was studying uh living 01:12:44.820 --> 01:12:49.620 hunters and gatherers or or recently um ethnographic hunters and gatherers. 01:12:49.700 --> 01:12:54.340 And I just fell in love, I didn't have the patience for an archaeolog for archaeology, 01:12:54.500 --> 01:12:56.260 really, the slowness of it. 01:12:56.500 --> 01:13:01.650 And I guess I like um, I guess I would call myself, you know, a behavioral ecologist or an 01:13:01.650 --> 01:13:03.170 evolutionary anthropologist. 01:13:03.330 --> 01:13:09.250 And I guess I like thinking about origins questions, not historic narrative, uh, 01:13:09.490 --> 01:13:14.530 not just explaining you know why things are the way they are, but actually have what what 01:13:14.530 --> 01:13:17.730 the origins are, what origins are, origin stories. 01:13:18.050 --> 01:13:23.090 And I also think it's a really good message for our time, 01:13:24.320 --> 01:13:30.080 Because times are so sort of divisive that it focuses in some 01:13:30.080 --> 01:13:33.440 ways on what makes us all human. 01:13:33.680 --> 01:13:39.360 And I think in psychology, there's even a greater emphasis on 01:13:39.360 --> 01:13:40.240 universals. 01:13:40.640 --> 01:13:45.520 I do think you do have to stay focused on variation in order to advance the science. 01:13:45.840 --> 01:13:51.530 But I do think it does pull together a lot about, you know, what 01:13:51.530 --> 01:13:52.890 makes us fundamentally human. 01:13:52.970 --> 01:13:55.690 And I think that's a good message for we need that message. 01:13:55.850 --> 01:13:58.170 Students need that message at this time. 01:13:58.570 --> 01:13:58.890 Yeah. 01:13:59.130 --> 01:13:59.290 Yeah. 01:13:59.450 --> 01:14:04.650 And I think even, you know, one of the themes of this, in addition to sort of being aware 01:14:04.650 --> 01:14:10.090 of the agency of of people who haven't, you know, whose agency has sort of been 01:14:10.090 --> 01:14:15.770 overlooked, is also just that it offers this interesting, and I mean your work is just it 01:14:15.850 --> 01:14:20.880 it highlights the uniqueness of what is our universal uh nature, right? 01:14:20.960 --> 01:14:24.400 That I think, you know, if you don't take an evolutionary approach, you wouldn't even ask 01:14:24.400 --> 01:14:29.920 the question of, you know, is monogamy what what we're designed to do, or think we may ask 01:14:30.000 --> 01:14:34.240 questions about facultative male investment in children or things like that. 01:14:34.400 --> 01:14:40.270 And so I think seeing what we often take for granted um and seeing if it is weird or 01:14:40.270 --> 01:14:45.230 not um is a real value thing and i think your work is a wonderful example of that and um 01:14:45.310 --> 01:14:51.230 and it sounds like you're working on a book is that right i am yes yeah so we look 01:14:51.230 --> 01:14:57.150 forward to uh when whenever that comes out we uh yes well it's it's an experiment 01:14:57.230 --> 01:15:01.870 because writing writing a popular book is something very different from writing an academic 01:15:01.870 --> 01:15:06.910 paper right so um yeah well thank you for that and i yes um 01:15:07.780 --> 01:15:09.380 uh and thank you for your podcast. 01:15:09.460 --> 01:15:10.500 It was really a lot of fun. 01:15:10.820 --> 01:15:12.260 Yeah, thank you so much for being on. 01:15:12.340 --> 01:15:13.140 We really appreciate it. 01:15:13.220 --> 01:15:14.340 And yeah, uh best of luck. 01:15:14.420 --> 01:15:18.020 And we look forward to having you on uh when the book is is coming out. 01:15:18.180 --> 01:15:20.980 So so I'll enjoy that. 01:15:21.220 --> 01:15:22.740 Okay, thank you. 01:15:22.980 --> 01:15:23.700 Okay, bye. 01:15:24.100 --> 01:15:25.380 Great pleasure talking to you all. 01:15:25.540 --> 01:15:26.020 Yeah, you too. 01:15:26.420 --> 01:15:27.620 Bye, Dave and David. 01:15:27.830 --> 01:15:28.230 Bye. 01:15:31.750 --> 01:15:36.790 David, how can people uh support the podcast now that we're all done with this episode? 01:15:37.190 --> 01:15:41.190 Well, they can say that Evolutionary Psychology, the podcast, is awesome on social media. 01:15:41.270 --> 01:15:46.390 They can leave us a kind review, uh, or they can visit us on Patreon and maybe throw us a 01:15:46.390 --> 01:15:50.790 few bucks because uh more funding is always needed, as our friend Dan Sneezer would say. 01:15:51.030 --> 01:15:54.470 And uh also uh just in general, reach out to us. 01:15:54.550 --> 01:15:56.400 You know, tell us what you think, give us ideas. 01:15:56.480 --> 01:16:00.240 We're uh we're lovely to talk to, if I uh don't mind saying so. 01:16:00.560 --> 01:16:01.520 See so yourself, yeah. 01:16:01.600 --> 01:16:02.400 I agree, David. 01:16:02.480 --> 01:16:07.600 So yeah, and without further ado, um here's gonna be the next episode in a few moments or 01:16:07.600 --> 01:16:08.080 in a week. 01:16:08.240 --> 01:16:08.880 Good enjoy.