WEBVTT

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Uh I don't know why there's so many very I don't know why there's so many there the need to

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There's so many ways to fuck up.

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We've we're exploring the possibility space of ways to fuck up.

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It's incredible how small what a small number of words this is and how many times we've

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screwed up.

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So David, what is this podcast?

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Uh Evolutionary Psychology the Podcast.

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And the tagline is uh actual evolutionary psychology by actual evolutionary psychologist.

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Yep, that's the thing you're listening to.

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Keep listening.

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Okay.

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That was great.

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All right.

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David, I uh I make it a practice to um actually listen

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to our episodes.

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Um and um this one I I learned a lot and in fact I learned so much

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that I I had to listen to it I think a second time to pick everything up because today

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we're we're talking to Ed Hagan and uh there was just so much in this episode about

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um what was in this episode.

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I mean, w we got into depression, mental illness, delusions, uh

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drugs getting high, whether animals get high, uh uh, we got into

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leadership and intelligence.

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Uh Ed Hagan is absolutely brilliant.

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Um, uh really uh fierce intellect, wide-ranging knowledge.

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Um I always have such a blast talking to Ed.

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Um, you could kind of hear me fanboying out a bit in the interview.

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Did I sound like a fanboy?

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Um, I don't know what that word means exactly.

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So uh because I'm just a Luddite, but uh I'm a linguistic Luddite.

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But um uh you were you were you we you were wonderfully uh inappropriately

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appreciative of Ed and how wonderful Ed is.

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And my favorite part of this episode is is also Ed's origin story.

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It's it's one of the funniest origin stories.

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I kind of don't want to spoil it.

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Um, but just you will I really think this is probably the funniest origin story we've had

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so far.

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I I would second that, yeah.

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Yeah.

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Uh just a quick spoiler alert.

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There's like uh drinking beer with Napoleon Shagnon.

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If you don't know who that is, you you can we'll find out um as we go.

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So but yeah.

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Without further ado, here is Ed Hagen talking about drugs and

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delusions and uh drinking uh with uh Napoleon Chagnon and how

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he got interested in evolutionary psychology.

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All right, so we have Ed Hagen on uh today.

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And Ed, you are um in the Department of Anthropology at Washington State University,

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Vancouver, And you were there after being at working with Peter Hammerstein,

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yeah, in in Berlin.

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And um and before that was UCSB, is that right?

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That's right.

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And who were you a student of?

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I was John Toby student.

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You were John Toby student.

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Okay.

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But your committee was sort of a who's who of sort of anthropology.

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Yeah.

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So actually, my master's, the chair of my master's committee was Knap Shagnan.

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And then for my PhD, I switched to John, but also had um Don

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Simons on there and Phil Walker on my company as well.

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Yeah, we talked about uh Don Brown, Human Universals, and Don Simons a bit.

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We haven't really talked much about, and we just have Brenda Bowser on who was alluding to

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Nap Shagnon.

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So these people have sort of been brought up, but we haven't really talked about who they

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are or what, and maybe maybe we'll get into that um today.

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Um, Ed, when I think about sort of whenever we have somebody on, I sort of think about like

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what do I think about them or like what to say when when we start.

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And I have an adjective for you which is encyclopedic.

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Um so so Ed is like I know, for example, you have you made you at one point

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when you were at UCSB came up when you sort of core you tell me if I'm wrong, but like you

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basically like um you collated and sort of um uh what is that thing when

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museums collect things?

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Curated, curated is the word I'm looking for.

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You curated all the criticisms of EvSec into a very long, lengthy

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document.

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Does that still exist?

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It does.

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It's on GitHub.

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So if you want to do it.

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We can we can link to that then on the show.

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Is that the evolutionary psychology FAQ?

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Is that what you're thinking of?

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Yes.

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Yes.

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Okay.

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Yes.

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I remember that.

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It's it's a very good uh document.

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I I like it a lot.

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Yeah.

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Um, but just I wanted to go over because Ed, like I I almost feel like we have so little

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time because so um information warfare, plant neurotoxins and the paradox of drug reward.

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I I mean, I remember you seeing I s a a talk by you talking about cigarette smoking and the

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worldwide deaths.

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I want to cover that because it's just incredible.

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Evolution of music and dance, evolution of leadership.

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I'm going in reverse alphabetical order for some reason.

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Evolution of knowledge specialization, depression, which is also something we should talk

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about in other mental health issues, child nutrition and growth, parental investment,

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and yeah.

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So I mean just so many things to talk about.

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So I think we should start with something completely besides the point, maybe.

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Sure.

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But actually, maybe this is not beside the point, but one thing we do often ask people is

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sort of um how they discovered uh evolutionary behavioral sciences, the quote

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unquote origin story.

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Do you have a a sort of Yeah, my my villain origin story?

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Yeah.

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Um Yeah, it's a long one.

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Um so I started out as an undergrad in physics

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and math.

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And actually, that was kind of my first career, was in a polymer lab in

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UC Berkeley.

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But I realized I didn't want to be a polymer chemist, but I didn't really know what

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the heck I wanted to do with my life.

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And I had no introduction or experience at all with any of the social sciences.

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I'd taken a Western Civ class, you know, as a breath requirement as an undergrad, but

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almost all my classes were physics and math courses, with the occasional, you know, history

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of Mesopotamia and philosophy course here and there.

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And it was actually the history of Mesopotamia class.

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Part of it was the Neolithic Revolution and the origins of agriculture about

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10,000 years ago in the Middle East in Mesopotamia.

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And that was as, you know, uh however old I was at that point, 18 or 19 or something.

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That was a shock that we hadn't always lived via agriculture, but that we had this hunter

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or gatherer past.

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That was actually most of our evolutionary history.

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And at the same time, I was um, you know, in

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college and you have all these kind of close relationships.

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And I really um, as I was pretty miserable realizing I didn't want to

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do what I had been trained to do, but didn't have any idea what the heck I did want, uh, I

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just started talking to people, and um I realized that you know some folks had real

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had real problems, unlike my I see.

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So like there were there were like tales of distribution on mental health.

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That's right.

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And so I was at one end where I'm kind of miserable, and then there were other people that

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were suicidal.

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Um and at the time, this was in the you know early 1980s, And

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um, this was the rise of biological psychiatry.

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It was in all the you know, Newsweek, Prozac, ProZac Nation.

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And it was this biopsych model of depression that it's all chemical imbalances that we

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can correct with antidepressants.

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So biological and sort of like the biochemical, yeah, biochemical, low level

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neurotransmitter level.

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Um but in talking to all my friends, I saw very

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clearly that their you know levels of distress and depression were really linked to real

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life problems, huge conflicts with their family, sexual abuse, other kinds of you know,

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serious life problems.

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And so I I just didn't buy this, you know, chemical imbalance story.

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It'd be quite a coincidence if these chemical imbalances just happened to occur right when

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these huge conflicts were taking place.

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Exactly.

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So uh I didn't know how to think about it, um, but uh I knew I didn't want to be a polymer

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chemist either.

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And so I said, you know what, I'm gonna kind of devote my life to figuring out what is

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actually going on here.

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Um and so I just started reading voraciously.

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Uh I just go to the library and any book that looked interesting, I would check it out and

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read it.

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Um and I was still working in the Polymer Lab at UC Berkeley, but I was

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sneaking off to classes by George Lakoff and John Cyril and Berlin.

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And really realized in combination with this new fact I had learned from Mesopotamian, my

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Mesopotamian history course, that we had basically evolved as hunter gatherers, even though

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they hadn't phrased it that way.

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And so I began to put together my own very, very crude version of

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evolutionary, what we now call evolutionary psychology.

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So you invented evolutionary psychology.

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I invented a very crude version.

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Somehow the structure of our brains is due to this long evolutionary history as

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hunter-gatherer, so depression somehow is coming out of that.

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I don't know how yet.

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That's cool.

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But I realized that if I really wanted to pursue this, I should probably do research in

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with hunter gatherers.

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And who does that?

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Anthropology does that.

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So at that time, we didn't really have the internet.

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There was this huge volume of put out by the AAA, the American Anthropology Association,

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of all the programs in the country.

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And this was somewhere around January or February of whatever

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1989 or 1990 or something.

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And I was flipping through there and I was seeing that I had missed every single

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application deadline, except for one school.

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I had no idea who was there or anything, but I just like, you know, I want to do this now,

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and I have not missed their deadline.

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Um and so, you know, I quickly took the GREs, or maybe I'd already done it, I can't

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remember now, and um got my fellow lab mates to write me letters as if they were my

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supervisor.

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So they all kind of faked some letters for me because I didn't really have any.

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We'll we'll edit that out later.

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Yeah, you can edit that out later.

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And I said, send this all in.

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Uh and I got in.

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Uh, and I had no idea that this was the center for evolutionary studies of human behavior.

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I had no idea who Tubi was, who Cosmides was, who Don Simons was, Don.

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Nothing.

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I knew nothing about that.

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So I came in as a actually as a sociocultural anthropologist.

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Um and and then of course the rest is is history.

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I began to see what was going on there.

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That's such a different most people, you know, they like they can't, they don't arrive at

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evolutionary psychology, but they they're they they have this, they're not satisfied with

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what they find.

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And then they discover it and they go somewhere that has it.

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You you somehow discovered it on your own and randomly ended up somewhere where it was

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happening.

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Exactly.

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It was totally random.

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Wow.

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Totally random.

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Um good thing about that deadline.

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Whoever did that, well done, because we need Edda Higgins.

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So thank you.

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Whoever's whoever was like, we should just extend the deadline.

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Yeah.

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Uh who admitted me.

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So he was always kind of sort of my guardian angel.

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That's great.

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He was on the on the uh admissions committee, I guess.

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So uh Don Brown, Don Simons, and Nap Shagnan, these were people that um

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preceded at least me.

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Um, what was that?

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What was it like when you got to UCSB?

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Well, yeah, like how did you I mean, we can continue this, like so you're in you just

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randomly show up.

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How do you find out?

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Did you yeah, I randomly show up and um and I

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actually uh the only thing I knew about Shagnon is that in my kind of

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reading quest earlier, I had come across this book by Ken Good, who was

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extremely harshly critical of Shagnon and really portrayed him as you know almost a

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monster.

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And so all I knew about Knapp was that he's this really notorious figure, and of course, he

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is my advisor now.

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Uh, and I go to meet with him.

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Uh it was kind of later in the afternoon or early evening, and I knock on his office door,

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and there's this huge, massive barking.

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And it was he had these two huge dogs in there.

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He's like, eh, come on in.

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And um he um opened up the fridge and he had two

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six-packs of beer.

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Yeah.

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He had uh Miller and it was probably uh PBR or something.

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He said, I'll give you the good stuff.

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You can have the Miller.

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And uh so we just sat down and started drinking beers and talking.

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And um it was one of the most incredible, you know, conversations I've really had as an

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anthropologist.

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We just covered because I had been reading on my own heavily into anthropology and

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hunter-gatherer studies.

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So I was able to kind of talk about all this stuff and yeah, give nap all my naive ideas

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and um but what what what what made it uh remarkable was it that he knew so much or he had

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a different experience because he was well he he was very uh kind of open to letting me

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spout off on all the on my crazy ideas but he knew all the anthropologists that I had been

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reading personally he knew Colin Turnbull and Robert Bailey and Irv Devor and all

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these guys So he was kind of able to give me all these kind of personal background and

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personal stories and more perspective on everything.

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And um and so it was just this wide-ranging conversation fueled by two

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six packs of uh of beer.

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And then when I kind of walked out of there reeling, okay, this is gonna be a wild ride.

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Um, and it was, And but at that point, I still I was still very

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much in the sociocultural side of things.

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And I realized pretty quickly that when I had gone into anthropology,

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I thought it was a science, to be blunt.

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And I thought it was very much, you know, what, you know, sort of the program like

00:14:54.640 --> 00:15:00.400
Murdoch's program of trying to understand, you know, scientific models of

00:15:00.720 --> 00:15:02.640
human cultural diversity.

00:15:03.840 --> 00:15:09.360
And what I realized very quickly in my seminars was that

00:15:10.240 --> 00:15:14.730
many, many anthropologists were not really interested in understanding the world.

00:15:15.130 --> 00:15:16.570
They wanted to change the world.

00:15:17.530 --> 00:15:20.330
And so I had kind of a crisis early on.

00:15:20.490 --> 00:15:25.530
Do I really want to stick with this discipline that is much more focused on

00:15:25.530 --> 00:15:28.170
advocacy than science?

00:15:28.730 --> 00:15:32.730
And I realized, you know, I'm pretty late in my, I'm about 30 years old at this point.

00:15:32.810 --> 00:15:35.610
It's gonna be hard to have yet another career switch.

00:15:36.090 --> 00:15:41.860
And at this point, I hadn't taken uh I can't remember if I took into uh taken Tubi seminar.

00:15:42.020 --> 00:15:46.020
I know I was pretty skeptical of John's stuff even after taking his seminar.

00:15:46.180 --> 00:15:52.180
Um somehow John later became a really close personal friend, but was really rubbed me the

00:15:52.180 --> 00:15:52.580
wrong way.

00:15:53.300 --> 00:15:57.140
Do you remember what rubbed you the wrong way, what you took issue with as a young naive

00:15:57.220 --> 00:15:57.460
man?

00:15:57.780 --> 00:15:59.460
I don't know exactly.

00:15:59.700 --> 00:16:03.940
Uh there was I didn't see the logic of his approach yet.

00:16:04.020 --> 00:16:05.620
And I'll tell you how I got there.

00:16:05.780 --> 00:16:08.690
Um Once I saw it, I'm like, okay, now I get it.

00:16:08.850 --> 00:16:10.290
But I didn't get it at first.

00:16:10.450 --> 00:16:15.810
Even though I knew I was really excited to take his seminar at first, because the flyer had

00:16:15.810 --> 00:16:19.570
all the stuff that I exactly I was interested in: evolution of the human mind, cognition,

00:16:19.730 --> 00:16:23.490
hunter-gatherers, uh, ancestral environments, emotions.

00:16:23.650 --> 00:16:24.850
I was like, yes, this is it.

00:16:24.930 --> 00:16:28.610
And then I took the seminar and I was like, this is not it.

00:16:28.690 --> 00:16:30.290
Um, at least at first.

00:16:30.770 --> 00:16:36.540
Um, But at the same time, taking all I was going as a sociocultural anthropologist

00:16:36.940 --> 00:16:42.060
and really having to decide do I want to stay in this field, which is really focused on

00:16:42.380 --> 00:16:45.180
advocacy more than science in many ways.

00:16:45.340 --> 00:16:46.780
And I did decide to stick with it.

00:16:46.940 --> 00:16:48.140
I'm glad I did.

00:16:49.740 --> 00:16:55.710
But what uh what really got me to understand uh to be in cosmic

00:16:56.110 --> 00:17:01.390
perspective was I was having to study for my comprehensive exams in sociocultural

00:17:01.470 --> 00:17:02.190
anthropology.

00:17:02.750 --> 00:17:04.510
Comprehensive is like second year, is that right?

00:17:04.670 --> 00:17:05.550
Yeah, it was like second year.

00:17:05.710 --> 00:17:08.830
So it's for your at Santa Barbara, maybe it's still this way, I'm not sure.

00:17:08.990 --> 00:17:14.430
But um it was basically if you pass your comps, you get your MA, right, your master's, and

00:17:14.430 --> 00:17:16.510
then you can go on and sort of do your dissertation.

00:17:16.590 --> 00:17:21.660
So it's sort of like a um it's sort of like a hoop to catch people who may not be able to

00:17:21.660 --> 00:17:25.660
kind of sort of continue on in the program and make sure that you've got sort of enough uh

00:17:25.660 --> 00:17:30.220
conceptual knowledge before doing something like really in detail actual research.

00:17:30.540 --> 00:17:30.860
That's right.

00:17:30.940 --> 00:17:32.060
So it's a filter.

00:17:32.220 --> 00:17:38.060
And um I was sure I was going to get filtered because it was just tons

00:17:38.060 --> 00:17:42.060
of postmodernist theory and Marxist theory.

00:17:42.780 --> 00:17:45.630
And um it's hard to keep organized.

00:17:45.710 --> 00:17:49.790
Like even though it was really if there's not a lot of principles, it's hard to cut the

00:17:49.790 --> 00:17:49.790
organization.

00:17:49.950 --> 00:17:50.590
There wasn't a lot of principles.

00:17:51.150 --> 00:17:51.790
And so I was panicked.

00:17:51.870 --> 00:17:53.550
And so I said, you know what, I'm gonna do mine.

00:17:53.710 --> 00:17:57.950
At that point, they didn't have the separate, um, I don't know what they call it now, but

00:17:58.030 --> 00:18:01.710
you know, um evolutionary anthropology program that didn't exist.

00:18:02.270 --> 00:18:04.670
So, but you could do it as a specialization.

00:18:04.830 --> 00:18:07.150
So I said, you know what, this stuff is really easy.

00:18:07.310 --> 00:18:09.100
It's I can understand it.

00:18:09.180 --> 00:18:13.340
So I'm gonna just do my you could pick like two or three topics that you were gonna be your

00:18:13.340 --> 00:18:14.220
specialties for the conference.

00:18:14.540 --> 00:18:16.780
So I'm gonna pick that as one of them.

00:18:17.420 --> 00:18:20.780
And um just because I think it's easy to pass.

00:18:21.260 --> 00:18:26.060
And so you chose it not because you found it inherently promising or instead of No, I I

00:18:26.060 --> 00:18:26.220
didn't.

00:18:26.380 --> 00:18:28.060
I was actually inherently skeptical of it.

00:18:28.140 --> 00:18:29.820
I was like, this is okay, it's not the way to go.

00:18:30.140 --> 00:18:33.580
This is so funny, and because I think if you like I think you have the most knowledgeable

00:18:33.580 --> 00:18:37.310
person in the heavily behavior sites, and everything in your story is like, oh, there was a

00:18:37.310 --> 00:18:37.870
late deadline.

00:18:38.030 --> 00:18:40.910
I thought I was worried about sneaking in.

00:18:41.230 --> 00:18:42.670
Somehow you've you've really, yes.

00:18:43.230 --> 00:18:45.870
You've got to make up from the exactly.

00:18:45.950 --> 00:18:46.670
Yes, exactly.

00:18:46.910 --> 00:18:52.750
Um, but yeah, so I went to Don Simons and asked him, you know, what should I read for

00:18:52.750 --> 00:18:54.830
the the Evo comps here?

00:18:55.470 --> 00:19:00.270
Um and he said you should read blah blah blah, you should read George Williams, 1966.

00:19:00.430 --> 00:19:02.940
Um Adaptation National Soil Selection.

00:19:03.180 --> 00:19:03.980
Yeah, yeah, in course.

00:19:04.140 --> 00:19:05.260
And I'm like, it was 1963.

00:19:05.420 --> 00:19:06.940
Oh, come on, Don, isn't there something more recent?

00:19:07.020 --> 00:19:07.820
Do I really have to read this?

00:19:07.900 --> 00:19:09.500
You know, he's like, well, it's a classic.

00:19:09.580 --> 00:19:11.020
I'm like, okay, okay, I'll read it.

00:19:11.180 --> 00:19:14.060
And then once I read Williams, I'm like, now I get it.

00:19:14.380 --> 00:19:17.740
Tubi is applying Williams to the brain.

00:19:18.300 --> 00:19:19.500
And it all clicked.

00:19:19.580 --> 00:19:24.940
And then it just clicked, and now I'm, you know, my wife refers to me as as Tubi's Bulldog.

00:19:25.100 --> 00:19:25.740
So yeah.

00:19:26.380 --> 00:19:27.980
That's kind of how I see myself too.

00:19:28.140 --> 00:19:29.980
Yeah, that's a good, that's a good way of putting it.

00:19:30.060 --> 00:19:30.700
Yeah.

00:19:31.170 --> 00:19:32.770
So that's my that's my villain origin.

00:19:33.250 --> 00:19:34.610
Yeah, that's that's really cool.

00:19:34.850 --> 00:19:39.570
Um what what what do you have an idea of what clicked for Williams?

00:19:39.970 --> 00:19:45.730
Yeah, so I was in the heart, you know, I was in the natural sciences, and as a kid,

00:19:45.890 --> 00:19:51.170
I was your typical nerd, your geek into model rockets and robots and computers, you know,

00:19:51.250 --> 00:19:53.570
building my own computers from scratch.

00:19:53.810 --> 00:19:59.460
Um, it was all you know the the the stereotypical male adolescent

00:19:59.700 --> 00:20:02.340
into things and technology.

00:20:03.140 --> 00:20:09.140
And early on, I really recognized that

00:20:09.140 --> 00:20:12.980
human engineering pales in comparison to nature's engineering.

00:20:13.300 --> 00:20:16.900
That was just once you try to build anything and actually have to make something work.

00:20:17.220 --> 00:20:21.780
So I was trying to build electronic circuits and just all the challenges of controlling

00:20:21.780 --> 00:20:24.580
noise and timing and feedback loops and blah blah blah.

00:20:24.740 --> 00:20:26.180
You know, it just drives you nuts.

00:20:26.270 --> 00:20:28.030
Uh, or even just building simple things.

00:20:28.110 --> 00:20:32.030
Even earlier when I was younger, I would build, you know, these go-karts and you know, just

00:20:32.030 --> 00:20:35.710
getting getting them to work uh very, very hard.

00:20:35.870 --> 00:20:40.430
So and then you look at a mosquito and you're like, we can't even come close uh as humans

00:20:40.510 --> 00:20:41.070
to building some.

00:20:41.310 --> 00:20:43.230
So I recognize that was early on.

00:20:43.310 --> 00:20:49.150
I just had a kind of an appreciation for the engineering in nature, and that really came

00:20:49.150 --> 00:20:52.990
through in Williams, um, the adaptation part, the design part.

00:20:53.390 --> 00:20:59.280
Yeah, And so that's where I clicked with tubies, you know, cognitive design and tubian

00:20:59.440 --> 00:21:00.400
cosmeties.

00:21:00.640 --> 00:21:05.840
Um, and so that's still, I would say, what drives my underlying intuition about all this

00:21:06.000 --> 00:21:11.440
stuff is is um just kind of the uh nature's engineering genius.

00:21:11.920 --> 00:21:17.710
When I first met John uh after he and Lita and I had lunch, Uh

00:21:18.030 --> 00:21:24.030
he uh he and I had a moment after lunch uh and we were sitting together and he used

00:21:24.030 --> 00:21:25.950
that moment to be like, What does your dad do?

00:21:26.110 --> 00:21:30.830
And I was like, Well, he sort of like does process like he worked like basically he was a

00:21:30.830 --> 00:21:34.670
mechanical engineer, and he sort of smiled, you know, and he was like, 'What is your you

00:21:34.670 --> 00:21:36.750
know, like do you have siblings?' And I was like, Yeah, she's a chemical engineer.

00:21:36.910 --> 00:21:41.560
And he sort of smiled and he said, it's not everyone, but a lot of people in this have sort

00:21:41.560 --> 00:21:44.760
of an engineering thing in their background or in their family.

00:21:44.920 --> 00:21:48.200
Um my dad had a full machine shop, a full shop.

00:21:48.520 --> 00:21:49.400
Mine too, yeah.

00:21:49.720 --> 00:21:54.440
Uh we rebuilt all our cars, you know, from the ground up.

00:21:54.680 --> 00:21:58.760
And so it was just a thorough appreciation of of that.

00:21:59.160 --> 00:21:59.800
Yeah.

00:22:00.760 --> 00:22:01.400
Yeah.

00:22:02.950 --> 00:22:03.830
All right then.

00:22:03.990 --> 00:22:09.990
Well, uh so your first topic of study was that mental health stuff or

00:22:09.990 --> 00:22:10.950
or was it something else?

00:22:11.270 --> 00:22:12.550
It was meant to be, yes.

00:22:12.950 --> 00:22:16.870
Um so my master's was actually on delusional disorder.

00:22:16.950 --> 00:22:17.990
Um okay, yes.

00:22:18.070 --> 00:22:18.630
I remember that.

00:22:18.710 --> 00:22:21.590
It's I by the way, I think that's one of the most underrated papers.

00:22:21.670 --> 00:22:24.390
Your your paper on um on delusions.

00:22:24.550 --> 00:22:30.230
Um could you could you give us a quick uh synopsis of what the the main hypothesis there

00:22:30.390 --> 00:22:31.510
on on delusions?

00:22:31.820 --> 00:22:32.060
Yeah.

00:22:32.140 --> 00:22:37.260
And this is it's kind of part of the of the villain origin story here that some of my

00:22:38.060 --> 00:22:43.660
uh one of my best buddies girlfriends was clearly, you know, delusional.

00:22:43.900 --> 00:22:49.420
Um and it was just trying to understand her delusions,

00:22:49.820 --> 00:22:54.140
uh, just being you know the amateur ethnographer at that point.

00:22:54.620 --> 00:23:00.300
And um, she had this horrific background of sexual abuse, um,

00:23:01.450 --> 00:23:07.290
and so trying to understand, and then her delusions were all paranoid delusions that

00:23:07.290 --> 00:23:09.690
her stepfather was trying to assassinate her.

00:23:09.930 --> 00:23:15.930
And her stepfather was the super, super famous lawyer, basically was on the board of Brown

00:23:16.090 --> 00:23:20.890
uh Brown versus Board of Education case, was instrumental in the civil rights movement, but

00:23:20.890 --> 00:23:26.490
had this really dark backstory, and his son was sexually abusing his

00:23:26.490 --> 00:23:28.410
stepdaughter, this girlfriend.

00:23:30.800 --> 00:23:36.400
And so the basic idea is when you're really facing

00:23:36.400 --> 00:23:40.000
severe ostracism, humans we cannot survive without a group.

00:23:40.400 --> 00:23:43.040
We are obligatorily social.

00:23:44.160 --> 00:23:49.840
And yet, there's lots of reasons why we might get ostracized from a group,

00:23:50.080 --> 00:23:52.800
transgressions, conflicts.

00:23:53.200 --> 00:23:55.360
And that's basically a death sentence.

00:23:55.870 --> 00:23:59.390
And what are you gonna do if you if people aren't gonna cooperate with you?

00:23:59.470 --> 00:24:01.230
Um, you're screwed.

00:24:01.470 --> 00:24:05.550
And so my idea was that um you lie.

00:24:06.430 --> 00:24:12.190
Uh and you you you tell the biggest, most effective lies you possibly can in

00:24:12.190 --> 00:24:15.790
order to convince people that they still need you around.

00:24:16.030 --> 00:24:20.270
Maybe you have special information, you have special powers, uh, you have special

00:24:20.270 --> 00:24:22.110
connections to powerful people.

00:24:22.270 --> 00:24:28.260
And when you look at the themes of delusions, they match these powerful

00:24:28.260 --> 00:24:31.620
social themes of somebody's trying to assassinate you.

00:24:31.700 --> 00:24:34.340
So some powerful an external enemy.

00:24:34.660 --> 00:24:39.780
And as David, you know from your work, what really motivates in-group versus out-group,

00:24:39.940 --> 00:24:45.620
in-group solidarity is going to be really heightened by out-group hostility.

00:24:45.700 --> 00:24:51.630
So if you're being threatened by some powerful external force that could potentially uh

00:24:51.630 --> 00:24:53.710
solidify your position in the in-group.

00:24:53.790 --> 00:24:59.470
You have information about um these this powerful external threat or you have

00:24:59.790 --> 00:25:04.830
incredibly important information that everybody needs or you have special powers that would

00:25:04.830 --> 00:25:10.590
be useful to others or you have a sexual relationship with some powerful person.

00:25:10.670 --> 00:25:13.150
So people wouldn't would be afraid to cross you.

00:25:13.310 --> 00:25:18.180
And these are all things that are kind of difficult to verify, but it might be enough to

00:25:18.180 --> 00:25:23.940
tip the balance um in these really extreme cases of of um potentially

00:25:23.940 --> 00:25:29.380
lethal threats of ostracism so that's the basic idea and the idea is not yeah and the idea

00:25:29.380 --> 00:25:33.220
is not just to clarify for people listening because you know it's the range of people

00:25:33.220 --> 00:25:38.980
listening and and correct me if I'm wrong but it's not that a person is sort of de nouveau

00:25:39.990 --> 00:25:41.750
rationalizing this all out.

00:25:41.830 --> 00:25:47.270
It's that this is there's an evolved design that contingently is sort of looking for

00:25:47.830 --> 00:25:49.670
am I in this class of situation?

00:25:49.750 --> 00:25:51.110
It's this desperate situation.

00:25:51.270 --> 00:25:52.950
I don't have any other bargaining power.

00:25:53.110 --> 00:25:54.710
I'm about to be ostracized.

00:25:54.950 --> 00:26:00.550
And that the that sort of trips this thing, and then there's sort of the activation of

00:26:00.550 --> 00:26:03.830
these frames for whatever reason or whichever narrative is picked.

00:26:03.990 --> 00:26:08.440
Um, so it's not something that's sort of like quote unquote the person is coming up with,

00:26:08.520 --> 00:26:11.560
but it's the expression of this evolved design that was selected for.

00:26:11.880 --> 00:26:14.200
Yeah, there's not some underlying manipulative mode in the case.

00:26:14.360 --> 00:26:14.600
Exactly.

00:26:14.680 --> 00:26:20.120
That's yeah, it's it's a mechanism that triggers you, the the person uh the that's

00:26:20.120 --> 00:26:23.480
suffering these delusions, genuinely believes them.

00:26:23.640 --> 00:26:23.960
Right.

00:26:24.040 --> 00:26:29.800
Um, and is actually uh very good at getting evidence to back them up

00:26:29.960 --> 00:26:34.920
um and uh make very convincing case for their story.

00:26:35.240 --> 00:26:40.930
Um and so uh yes exactly it's it's it's not uh a

00:26:40.930 --> 00:26:46.050
secretively it is a manipulative strategy but not with some underlying

00:26:46.050 --> 00:26:51.250
manipulative motive uh underneath it um so that was the first idea um not

00:26:51.410 --> 00:26:57.250
surprisingly no uh I'm curious do you do you still uh having been in

00:26:57.250 --> 00:27:02.850
this field for a long time now how how has that hypothesis fared do you do you still

00:27:02.850 --> 00:27:05.380
subscribe to it um I still subscribe to it.

00:27:05.460 --> 00:27:09.700
Nobody else does, but I'll I'll stick with maybe that's my delusion, but uh I still think

00:27:09.700 --> 00:27:10.260
it's a good one.

00:27:10.740 --> 00:27:10.900
Yeah.

00:27:10.980 --> 00:27:13.540
No, I th I think it's definitely a compelling hypothesis.

00:27:13.700 --> 00:27:18.500
Um, but this this is a good segue into your other work on on mental health issues.

00:27:18.660 --> 00:27:24.500
So as we talked about the prevailing view in psychiatry and mental

00:27:24.500 --> 00:27:30.370
health research is that uh mental uh illnesses in general are are are dysfunctions.

00:27:30.530 --> 00:27:32.930
Uh depression itself is a chemical imbalance.

00:27:33.010 --> 00:27:37.570
We just need to rejinger the the right levels of neurotransmitters and we'll solve your

00:27:37.570 --> 00:27:37.810
problem.

00:27:38.050 --> 00:27:40.210
It's it's things breaking down.

00:27:40.450 --> 00:27:46.290
Um and you have a different view on what mental illness is.

00:27:46.610 --> 00:27:51.970
Uh how what is your view and how does it differ from from the uh conventional view?

00:27:52.450 --> 00:27:55.890
Yeah, so it's it's not a view of mental illness in general.

00:27:56.050 --> 00:28:01.560
Um the brain can dysfunction just like every other system in our body can dysfunction.

00:28:01.640 --> 00:28:07.240
We have autoimmune disorders, we have cardiac arrests, we have liver dysfunction, kidney

00:28:07.240 --> 00:28:09.720
failures, vision problems, so forth and so on.

00:28:09.880 --> 00:28:12.280
So the brain can dysfunction.

00:28:12.680 --> 00:28:18.600
And I strongly suspect that things like schizophrenia and which is distinct,

00:28:18.680 --> 00:28:22.120
uh which is actually you can distinguish from the delusional disorder that I was just

00:28:22.120 --> 00:28:22.520
talking about.

00:28:22.680 --> 00:28:28.350
Even though delusions are part of schizophrenia, they They're uh nosologically distinct.

00:28:28.590 --> 00:28:34.270
Um, but things like autism, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder probably are genuine

00:28:34.910 --> 00:28:37.310
uh uh cognitive dysfunctions.

00:28:37.550 --> 00:28:42.990
But if you look at depression and anxiety, quote unquote disorders, they really are

00:28:43.230 --> 00:28:43.950
different.

00:28:44.110 --> 00:28:47.550
Um and they're different in a number of different respects.

00:28:47.790 --> 00:28:53.070
First of all, unlike schizophrenia and autism, the environmental

00:28:53.440 --> 00:28:59.360
causation, the environmental component of depression is huge, whereas it's a really small

00:28:59.360 --> 00:29:04.160
component of schizophrenia, which is largely seems to be genetically heritable due to

00:29:04.160 --> 00:29:04.960
genetic variance.

00:29:05.040 --> 00:29:07.840
Um so you're referring to twin studies research where they compare.

00:29:08.160 --> 00:29:13.120
Twin studies research, GWAS research, um, genome-wide association studies, yeah.

00:29:13.520 --> 00:29:14.080
Exactly.

00:29:14.400 --> 00:29:19.120
And and those pretty clearly indicate that there's a really strong uh

00:29:20.270 --> 00:29:25.470
Contribution of genetic variation to things like schizophrenia and autism,

00:29:25.710 --> 00:29:30.990
unlike depression, where the heritability, the contribution of genetic variation to

00:29:30.990 --> 00:29:32.830
variation in depression is quite small.

00:29:33.230 --> 00:29:35.550
There is some, but it's quite small.

00:29:37.150 --> 00:29:41.870
And there is environmental components to always mental health problems, but with things

00:29:41.870 --> 00:29:45.470
like schizophrenia and autism, we don't really know what those environmental components

00:29:45.470 --> 00:29:45.710
are.

00:29:45.870 --> 00:29:48.120
With depression, we know it's adversity.

00:29:48.360 --> 00:29:50.280
Bad things happen to you and you get depressed.

00:29:50.360 --> 00:29:51.880
That's what we were just talking about.

00:29:51.960 --> 00:29:56.760
Um, and that's been shown very convincingly that um it's not just associated with

00:29:56.760 --> 00:30:00.760
depression, but that adversity is very likely causal.

00:30:01.080 --> 00:30:05.720
Um now that doesn't mean everybody that suffers adversity will get depressed, but pretty

00:30:05.720 --> 00:30:09.710
much everybody that's depressed has suffered adversity with rare exceptions.

00:30:09.790 --> 00:30:11.470
And there are some exceptions.

00:30:12.270 --> 00:30:17.870
But at least 80 to 85, maybe even 90% of the cases of depression have a clear link to some

00:30:17.870 --> 00:30:20.830
recent severe adverse event.

00:30:21.070 --> 00:30:26.670
It might be divorce, might be death of a loved one, might be sexual or physical

00:30:26.670 --> 00:30:31.790
abuse, might be loss of a job, financial problems, legal problems, something.

00:30:32.270 --> 00:30:38.180
But these are all things That would have had a very strong negative impact on our fitness.

00:30:38.340 --> 00:30:39.940
These are all common things.

00:30:40.260 --> 00:30:42.180
These are not new part of our new environment.

00:30:42.260 --> 00:30:48.020
And you know, there's not a person alive that hasn't had somebody die or

00:30:48.340 --> 00:30:52.100
been had at least some physical threat or had you know bad things happen to them.

00:30:52.260 --> 00:30:58.020
So these are the kinds of things that would have been very, very common and routine over

00:30:58.180 --> 00:30:58.980
evolutionary history.

00:30:59.060 --> 00:31:04.050
And when they happened, would very plausibly have had a negative impact on fitness.

00:31:04.210 --> 00:31:09.810
And so they should, we should have evolved some kind of adaptive response, some adaptations

00:31:10.130 --> 00:31:12.770
in response to these kinds of adversity.

00:31:13.250 --> 00:31:15.170
And when you look stuff should should feel bad.

00:31:15.330 --> 00:31:15.810
It should be bad.

00:31:15.970 --> 00:31:16.770
We would expect it to feel bad.

00:31:17.250 --> 00:31:20.290
We would expect it to feel bad because it's having a negative impact on your on your

00:31:20.290 --> 00:31:25.570
biological fitness if your parent dies or your child dies or your wife or husband dies.

00:31:25.970 --> 00:31:30.460
Um and so that's one thing that really distinguishes two things that really distinguish

00:31:30.460 --> 00:31:33.820
depression um and anxiety disorders from some of these other ones.

00:31:33.980 --> 00:31:35.820
And the other thing is they're really common.

00:31:35.980 --> 00:31:38.540
Um, so schizophrenia and autism are pretty rare.

00:31:38.620 --> 00:31:41.100
They're down at the one percent ish level.

00:31:41.340 --> 00:31:45.180
Um, depression is at least 10 times higher than that, if not more.

00:31:45.740 --> 00:31:51.450
Um and um schizophrenia and autism, lifelong

00:31:51.450 --> 00:31:56.570
conditions, and they develop early on in life, and you've got them for the rest of your

00:31:56.570 --> 00:31:57.690
life, typically.

00:31:57.850 --> 00:31:59.850
Um, not the case with depression.

00:32:00.010 --> 00:32:05.690
Um, typically, people will suffer one episode in their life if they suffer any episodes,

00:32:06.010 --> 00:32:11.980
and um they will have symptoms for several months, maybe up to a year or

00:32:11.980 --> 00:32:13.580
so, and then that's it.

00:32:13.740 --> 00:32:16.460
Um, and then they're back to normal after that.

00:32:16.620 --> 00:32:21.740
Again, very much unlike these these other much more plausible uh mental illnesses.

00:32:21.980 --> 00:32:22.140
Yeah.

00:32:23.500 --> 00:32:27.820
It's hard to reconcile that with the chemical because if it was a chemical, I mean you'd

00:32:27.820 --> 00:32:33.230
expect it to last presumably your whole life until you get uh you know an antidepressant or

00:32:33.230 --> 00:32:33.630
something like that.

00:32:33.710 --> 00:32:37.870
But it would be weird to just have your your your chemicals become imbalanced for a few

00:32:37.870 --> 00:32:41.630
months, you know, coincidentally when when hardship is happening and then go back to

00:32:41.630 --> 00:32:41.790
normal.

00:32:41.950 --> 00:32:45.870
Like that's that's a pretty strange thing to happen if under the the chemical imbalance

00:32:45.870 --> 00:32:46.030
view.

00:32:46.350 --> 00:32:47.310
Yeah, exactly.

00:32:47.470 --> 00:32:52.720
And um this actually makes it hard to test antidepressants because when you have your

00:32:52.720 --> 00:32:57.600
control group, their symptoms are decreasing just about as fast as they are under

00:32:58.000 --> 00:32:59.200
antidepressant regime.

00:32:59.520 --> 00:33:04.880
So distinguishing there's this very slight difference in those survival curves.

00:33:10.320 --> 00:33:12.400
It's not really, you know, a placebo effect.

00:33:12.560 --> 00:33:14.080
It's just that depressive symptoms.

00:33:14.960 --> 00:33:15.760
It's the baseline.

00:33:16.160 --> 00:33:16.640
It's the baseline.

00:33:16.960 --> 00:33:19.520
They tend to things resolve, you know, if you're having a problem.

00:33:19.760 --> 00:33:20.000
Yeah.

00:33:20.570 --> 00:33:25.930
Um, and when you take antidepressants, there is, you know, they may resolve slightly

00:33:25.930 --> 00:33:27.930
faster, very slightly.

00:33:28.170 --> 00:33:30.730
Um, but even that's not clear.

00:33:30.970 --> 00:33:35.770
Um, in in some sense, the jury is is kind of still out on antidepressants and if they're

00:33:35.770 --> 00:33:37.610
really doing anything.

00:33:37.850 --> 00:33:43.780
Um so you know, on a on the Hamilton scale, it's like two points out

00:33:43.780 --> 00:33:44.420
of whatever it is.

00:33:44.500 --> 00:33:46.340
I forget what the buttons like out of 30 points.

00:33:46.500 --> 00:33:51.540
It's a very limited effect size, very small effect size, about 0.3

00:33:51.860 --> 00:33:55.380
D.3, for those of you know that stuff.

00:33:56.660 --> 00:34:02.660
So yeah, so exactly as David said here, my idea is actually, you know, and is pretty

00:34:02.730 --> 00:34:05.850
much the same idea that most evolutionary people that have looked at this, they they have

00:34:05.850 --> 00:34:07.610
their own little spins on it.

00:34:07.850 --> 00:34:11.850
But it's basically just as as David said, um, when bad things happen, you should feel bad.

00:34:12.010 --> 00:34:15.770
And the reason you should feel bad is the same reason we feel bad when we get a physical

00:34:15.770 --> 00:34:17.850
injury and we feel physical pain.

00:34:18.090 --> 00:34:22.330
Uh, we need to know that something bad has happened um and we need to address it.

00:34:22.490 --> 00:34:26.000
Um, If you break your ankle, you need to see what you just did.

00:34:26.160 --> 00:34:28.320
You need to stop walking on your ankle.

00:34:29.200 --> 00:34:32.880
You need to, you know, sit down or whatever you're doing that broke your ankle.

00:34:32.960 --> 00:34:34.720
You need to learn whatever stupid thing you did.

00:34:34.800 --> 00:34:36.000
Don't do that again.

00:34:36.240 --> 00:34:42.000
So there's all kinds of rearrangements and learning that we need to

00:34:42.000 --> 00:34:46.400
make when we have a physical injury, and that's why we experience physical pain.

00:34:46.800 --> 00:34:52.230
And we very likely experience psychological pain for very analogous reasons.

00:34:52.310 --> 00:34:57.670
Um, that when bad things happen, if your wife is getting ready to leave you, uh, you better

00:34:57.670 --> 00:34:59.110
figure out what's going on here.

00:34:59.190 --> 00:35:01.510
Is there can you change your behavior?

00:35:01.830 --> 00:35:07.670
Um, or you know, should you learn what to not to do next time, uh the next time you get

00:35:07.670 --> 00:35:08.470
a mate?

00:35:08.710 --> 00:35:14.710
Um, or if um someone close to you dies, uh feeling bad won't bring

00:35:14.710 --> 00:35:19.900
that person back, but you may begin to really think about what you could do to prevent the

00:35:19.900 --> 00:35:22.780
death of another close person that's close to you.

00:35:22.860 --> 00:35:27.260
Um, what could you have done differently that might have made things you know travel down a

00:35:27.260 --> 00:35:28.220
different pathway?

00:35:28.700 --> 00:35:31.900
Or how can you live your life without this person that you were that you're doing?

00:35:32.060 --> 00:35:37.020
Or how can you exactly now um all those resources have disappeared or that social support

00:35:37.100 --> 00:35:37.740
or whatever it is?

00:35:37.820 --> 00:35:40.300
I need to now find alternative sources.

00:35:40.540 --> 00:35:45.100
So you do really need to think about these things um and learn from them and readjust your

00:35:45.100 --> 00:35:45.420
life.

00:35:45.770 --> 00:35:48.810
So it would be remarkable if we didn't feel bad.

00:35:48.970 --> 00:35:53.290
And when we look at depression, it's on a continuum, it's a continuous scale.

00:35:53.850 --> 00:35:59.690
And so when people suffer adversity, some people, you know,

00:35:59.850 --> 00:36:02.570
suffer less psychological pain, so they're not diagnosed.

00:36:02.730 --> 00:36:04.250
Some people suffer a little bit more.

00:36:04.410 --> 00:36:09.850
And that's because what looks like the same event, like a divorce, might be horrendous for

00:36:09.850 --> 00:36:13.210
some person, but not so bad for another person.

00:36:13.450 --> 00:36:19.360
So the levels of depression or you know psychological pain that we might

00:36:19.360 --> 00:36:25.280
experience to what on the surface looks to be a similar kind of adversity might really have

00:36:25.280 --> 00:36:27.920
very different implications for different individuals.

00:36:28.240 --> 00:36:33.520
So that I think is at least part of the explanation why not everybody is

00:36:33.520 --> 00:36:39.230
diagnosed as depressed every time there's someone dies or they get fired or

00:36:39.230 --> 00:36:40.830
there's a relationship breakup.

00:36:40.990 --> 00:36:45.070
And it's because those things have different implications for people in different

00:36:45.070 --> 00:36:46.110
circumstances.

00:36:46.670 --> 00:36:51.630
So grieving and mourning, um, and I mean what I've heard, you know, maybe you this is your

00:36:51.630 --> 00:36:53.790
expression, Ed, but it's almost like kind of going on strike.

00:36:53.950 --> 00:36:55.710
Like can you talk a little bit about the proximate?

00:36:55.790 --> 00:37:01.790
So like why is there a turning down of valuation or like feeling good or

00:37:01.790 --> 00:37:02.270
anything?

00:37:02.620 --> 00:37:02.940
Yeah.

00:37:03.180 --> 00:37:04.460
So go ahead, David.

00:37:04.780 --> 00:37:04.940
Yeah.

00:37:05.020 --> 00:37:09.900
So I mean, so this explains why the the feeling bad part of it, but that's not all of what

00:37:09.900 --> 00:37:10.540
depression is.

00:37:10.700 --> 00:37:16.380
It's not merely feeling bad that, you know, your spouse died, or you know, your you know

00:37:16.540 --> 00:37:21.500
your wife broke up with you or um or or whatever, you got fired from your job.

00:37:21.660 --> 00:37:26.070
It's not merely that you feel bad about these things, It's that you have lost your

00:37:26.070 --> 00:37:28.230
motivation to engage in everyday activities.

00:37:28.310 --> 00:37:29.270
You become dysfunctional.

00:37:29.350 --> 00:37:32.550
You can't do anything, can't get out of bed, you're not eating, you're not sleeping.

00:37:32.710 --> 00:37:36.550
So there's much more to depression than merely feeling bad about something bad that

00:37:36.550 --> 00:37:37.110
happened to you.

00:37:37.270 --> 00:37:39.270
So how can we explain this extra stuff?

00:37:39.750 --> 00:37:39.910
Yeah.

00:37:39.990 --> 00:37:44.070
And one of the big ones there is uh suicidality, thinking about killing yourself and

00:37:44.070 --> 00:37:45.510
sometimes falling through on that.

00:37:45.750 --> 00:37:46.870
So what the heck is going on?

00:37:46.950 --> 00:37:52.100
And that's where my contribution comes in, are these more severe symptoms.

00:37:52.820 --> 00:37:57.140
And our approach there is where we add a little bit on to the psychological pain

00:37:57.140 --> 00:37:59.780
hypothesis, which is an internal signal.

00:38:00.100 --> 00:38:03.540
Um, but there's also going to be external signals a lot of times.

00:38:03.620 --> 00:38:07.220
So again, with physical pain, you know, we it hurts.

00:38:07.620 --> 00:38:11.550
Uh, but a lot of times we give uh external signals.

00:38:11.790 --> 00:38:15.550
We have a sad face or we start crying or screaming.

00:38:15.790 --> 00:38:20.830
Um, so we're signaling our need to others.

00:38:21.070 --> 00:38:23.950
Um, and in many cases, others will respond.

00:38:24.030 --> 00:38:29.950
Again, as we talked about earlier, uh you know, humans are obligatory, uh obligatorily

00:38:30.270 --> 00:38:30.590
social.

00:38:31.150 --> 00:38:36.980
Um, and we have always lived in social groups, and in many

00:38:36.980 --> 00:38:41.700
cases, when we're suffering adversity, our social partners jump in, they are glad to help

00:38:41.700 --> 00:38:43.060
us, they value us.

00:38:43.780 --> 00:38:45.220
But that's not always the case.

00:38:45.540 --> 00:38:49.540
And this is kind of the theme that underlies a lot of my work on mental health: is that a

00:38:49.540 --> 00:38:53.540
lot of times when people are in need, they don't get the help they need.

00:38:53.860 --> 00:38:55.620
And that's because there's conflicts of interest.

00:38:55.700 --> 00:39:00.930
There's genuinely, if your wife is leaving you, uh, she's probably got good reasons for

00:39:00.930 --> 00:39:01.650
leaving you.

00:39:01.810 --> 00:39:03.890
Um, there's a conflict there.

00:39:04.210 --> 00:39:10.130
Um, if your spouse dies, you now need all the resources you were getting from them, from

00:39:10.130 --> 00:39:13.890
somebody else, but others may not have those resources to give.

00:39:14.210 --> 00:39:19.970
Um you uh you know are physically assaulted or sexually

00:39:19.970 --> 00:39:23.410
assaulted, you need protection, but that puts other people at risk.

00:39:23.570 --> 00:39:29.400
Um, So, what do you do when there's conflicts and you do have needs, but

00:39:29.400 --> 00:39:31.000
other people are unwilling to fill them?

00:39:31.080 --> 00:39:34.200
And that's where what David brought up, this idea of a strike.

00:39:34.600 --> 00:39:39.160
If you are valuable, you know, a living person is extremely valuable.

00:39:39.320 --> 00:39:42.600
You have all kinds of skills and knowledge and capabilities.

00:39:43.400 --> 00:39:48.930
So you have tremendous value to others potentially.

00:39:49.410 --> 00:39:54.530
And what we argue that things like all these symptoms that David brought up of your

00:39:54.530 --> 00:39:58.770
motivation dials down, you can't get out of bed, you may stop eating, you may think of

00:39:58.770 --> 00:40:03.730
killing yourself, what you're doing there is you're threatening to take away the value that

00:40:03.730 --> 00:40:05.730
you represent to others, take that away.

00:40:05.810 --> 00:40:07.650
And that's the idea of going on strike.

00:40:07.890 --> 00:40:13.810
So if workers aren't getting the salaries they need and deserve,

00:40:13.890 --> 00:40:15.780
um, And there's conflict with many, you know.

00:40:15.860 --> 00:40:18.820
Now, if management is good, they'll say, hey, I know you guys need it.

00:40:19.220 --> 00:40:22.740
But if they have conflicts with management, they're not going to necessarily get the salary

00:40:22.740 --> 00:40:23.540
increase they want.

00:40:23.700 --> 00:40:24.420
What do they do?

00:40:24.500 --> 00:40:25.700
They can withhold their labor.

00:40:25.780 --> 00:40:30.740
They can stop making the widgets, and the factory worker or the factory owners aren't gonna

00:40:30.740 --> 00:40:32.020
get their profit.

00:40:32.420 --> 00:40:34.980
And so now there's an incentive to bargain or negotiate.

00:40:35.060 --> 00:40:40.100
And so that's what we're arguing here: is that there's this signaling process where if

00:40:40.210 --> 00:40:46.050
people aren't getting the investment they need from social partners in times of

00:40:46.050 --> 00:40:49.090
need, they can bargain with their own value to others.

00:40:49.890 --> 00:40:54.690
If you don't invest in me, I'm not going to take care of the kids.

00:40:55.730 --> 00:40:59.570
If I'm your child, I might end up killing myself, and that is going to be devastating to

00:40:59.570 --> 00:41:00.450
your fitness.

00:41:00.600 --> 00:41:06.360
Um, if I'm your spouse, um, I'm not gonna be bringing home the bacon or doing child

00:41:06.360 --> 00:41:12.280
care and all the things that are valuable to you until you step up and

00:41:12.280 --> 00:41:15.400
we reach some agreement that we can both live with.

00:41:15.720 --> 00:41:21.240
So that's that's our kind of twist on the psychological pain story is that it involves a

00:41:21.240 --> 00:41:26.200
signaling component, an external signaling component, especially when there's when there's

00:41:26.200 --> 00:41:28.760
conflict with with your social partners.

00:41:29.000 --> 00:41:29.160
Right.

00:41:29.330 --> 00:41:30.530
And that's it.

00:41:30.850 --> 00:41:31.410
Go ahead, David.

00:41:31.570 --> 00:41:31.810
Go ahead.

00:41:32.050 --> 00:41:35.170
So would you view suicidality and self-harm?

00:41:35.410 --> 00:41:40.450
Would you view that as an extreme end of the continuum of this bargaining tactic?

00:41:40.530 --> 00:41:44.930
That I'm threatening, you know, the milder forms would be I'm going to withdraw uh my

00:41:44.930 --> 00:41:48.850
energy and investments in the relationship or in my everyday activities that would

00:41:48.850 --> 00:41:49.810
otherwise benefit you.

00:41:49.890 --> 00:41:53.330
But in the extreme end of the continuum, I'm going to actually hurt myself or threaten to

00:41:53.330 --> 00:41:57.490
kill myself, which would be the ultimate withdrawal of the value that I'm providing you.

00:41:57.960 --> 00:41:59.160
Yeah, exactly.

00:41:59.400 --> 00:42:03.880
And um, you know, you think about it, killing yourself is about the worst thing you can do

00:42:03.880 --> 00:42:04.600
to your own fitness.

00:42:04.760 --> 00:42:08.840
It really seems like the the antithesis of a fitness enhancing strategy.

00:42:09.000 --> 00:42:14.840
So what we're proposing is that exactly as David said, um We're going with Dave and

00:42:14.840 --> 00:42:15.640
David, just to clarify.

00:42:16.440 --> 00:42:19.640
And which is where she named that on your own.

00:42:20.920 --> 00:42:21.400
I'm David.

00:42:21.640 --> 00:42:23.080
I so think of me as the one with the id.

00:42:23.560 --> 00:42:25.560
I'm the I'm the less mature one.

00:42:26.120 --> 00:42:26.440
Okay.

00:42:27.430 --> 00:42:33.430
Um so sorry, we just completely Yeah, yeah, no, that's that I was gonna ask that at the

00:42:33.430 --> 00:42:33.830
outset.

00:42:34.070 --> 00:42:35.270
Uh you know, what what am I getting?

00:42:35.350 --> 00:42:36.710
And you're both Dave P's too.

00:42:36.790 --> 00:42:37.350
So what are we gonna do?

00:42:37.670 --> 00:42:38.870
We should have David Putts on.

00:42:38.950 --> 00:42:39.110
Yeah.

00:42:39.270 --> 00:42:39.510
I know.

00:42:39.750 --> 00:42:40.870
Yeah, exactly.

00:42:41.110 --> 00:42:47.110
Um so what we're proposing is because folks, you

00:42:47.110 --> 00:42:52.070
know, you know, healthy individuals are extremely valuable to others potentially, um,

00:42:53.270 --> 00:42:59.200
but that they may not be getting what they need from others, um, that they may either

00:42:59.200 --> 00:43:04.880
threaten to or actually engage in an act that with some low but non-zero probability could

00:43:04.880 --> 00:43:06.480
end up killing them.

00:43:06.880 --> 00:43:11.520
Um and for those uh listeners who are familiar with this, it's kind of a form of costly

00:43:11.520 --> 00:43:12.000
signaling.

00:43:12.080 --> 00:43:17.710
It's a credible signal that if you were being deceptive and just wanted more investment,

00:43:17.790 --> 00:43:21.950
even though you didn't really need it, you couldn't afford the cost of an actual suicide

00:43:21.950 --> 00:43:27.310
attempt where you're maybe taking a 1% chance of killing yourself or maybe a 10% chance.

00:43:31.870 --> 00:43:37.230
And the data showed that the vast majority of people who attempt suicide in fact survive

00:43:37.230 --> 00:43:37.390
it.

00:43:38.040 --> 00:43:43.720
And so, and the the ratio of attempts to completions in young adult women is

00:43:43.720 --> 00:43:45.240
100 to one or so.

00:43:45.480 --> 00:43:45.720
Wow.

00:43:46.120 --> 00:43:47.640
Might even be higher than that.

00:43:48.200 --> 00:43:53.000
And so what we're arguing here is that that folks say, okay, I'm not getting what I need.

00:43:53.160 --> 00:43:57.880
I'm going to do something and that everybody will recognize could have killed me, but

00:43:57.880 --> 00:43:58.520
probably won't.

00:43:58.760 --> 00:44:01.240
But if you don't then step up, I might do it again.

00:44:01.400 --> 00:44:04.770
And at some point are gonna lose me.

00:44:04.930 --> 00:44:10.930
And so this is a a costly but credible signal that you genuinely do

00:44:10.930 --> 00:44:13.170
need more investment, that you're not faking it.

00:44:14.930 --> 00:44:20.610
And you're gambling that you will survive the attempt and get

00:44:20.930 --> 00:44:26.440
that will be enough to convince your social partners that you actually do deserve the

00:44:26.440 --> 00:44:27.880
investment and need it.

00:44:28.840 --> 00:44:33.560
And so the evidence in favor of that is that when we look in the ethnographic record,

00:44:33.960 --> 00:44:38.760
suicidality is pretty common across cultures, including small-scale hunter-gatherer

00:44:38.760 --> 00:44:39.000
cultures.

00:44:39.240 --> 00:44:42.040
So it's not a modern, it's not a disease of modern civilization.

00:44:42.440 --> 00:44:43.160
That's right.

00:44:43.480 --> 00:44:48.120
And as far as we can tell, we see it in culture after culture.

00:44:48.450 --> 00:44:54.290
And it is ubiquitously associated with severe conflicts with social

00:44:54.530 --> 00:44:58.850
partners and folks that do survive the suicide.

00:44:59.170 --> 00:45:02.210
It's often a public sort of act.

00:45:02.370 --> 00:45:06.770
And then folks that survive often do get what they did.

00:45:07.010 --> 00:45:09.570
The person that was abusing them stops abusing them.

00:45:09.810 --> 00:45:12.450
The partner who left them comes back.

00:45:16.680 --> 00:45:20.920
uh the the issue gets resolved in their favor in many in many cases.

00:45:21.240 --> 00:45:26.760
So um not not not recommending doing it, but understanding doing it, not

00:45:26.920 --> 00:45:28.440
recommending doing it, just for the record.

00:45:28.680 --> 00:45:28.840
Yeah.

00:45:29.080 --> 00:45:34.040
No, I actually I have a question that is there any have you thought about like would a

00:45:34.680 --> 00:45:39.370
would an intervention sort of be teaching people this theory?

00:45:40.170 --> 00:45:40.490
Yeah.

00:45:40.570 --> 00:45:42.490
I so I I I should say this at the outset.

00:45:42.570 --> 00:45:44.410
You know, I I love my own theories.

00:45:44.570 --> 00:45:50.490
Uh but I I don't recommend that anybody uh put them into practice because they

00:45:50.490 --> 00:45:52.250
are far from being proven.

00:45:52.810 --> 00:45:56.970
We're really talking kind of theoretically just in the early stages of of these things.

00:45:57.050 --> 00:46:02.840
I I think many of us social scientists far too quickly jumped to wanting to implement

00:46:02.840 --> 00:46:04.840
our our latest pet theories.

00:46:05.480 --> 00:46:09.320
And then we've all seen many bad examples of that.

00:46:10.360 --> 00:46:15.640
So I we're definitely just talking theoretically here and hypothetically.

00:46:15.880 --> 00:46:20.120
But what would be the, and you know, to dig a little bit further in the weeds here, the

00:46:20.120 --> 00:46:25.870
problem is what is private information that the outsiders don't necessarily know how

00:46:25.870 --> 00:46:27.390
severe your need actually is.

00:46:27.550 --> 00:46:28.030
Right.

00:46:28.270 --> 00:46:30.830
Um, you could be faking it.

00:46:30.990 --> 00:46:31.870
There's conflict.

00:46:32.110 --> 00:46:37.630
Um, um, are you genuinely need or are you just uh looking for more?

00:46:37.950 --> 00:46:43.790
Um and so how do we, when there is this conflict, you know, are there ways to more

00:46:43.790 --> 00:46:49.550
credibly to reveal that private information without going down the

00:46:49.550 --> 00:46:51.380
road of a suicide attack.

00:46:51.700 --> 00:46:54.180
Um and that that might not be easy.

00:46:54.260 --> 00:46:59.220
Um, I think one of the big mistakes in psychiatry and therapy is that, you know, talking to

00:46:59.220 --> 00:47:03.380
a therapist is going to fix everything, but that therapist is not embedded in your

00:47:03.380 --> 00:47:03.700
community.

00:47:03.860 --> 00:47:05.380
They don't have any authority.

00:47:05.620 --> 00:47:10.100
Um, if your wife leaves you, the therapist has no influence over her.

00:47:10.740 --> 00:47:16.650
Uh and um and so how do we deal with

00:47:16.650 --> 00:47:22.330
situations where you know there's not any easy way to intervene in that person's complex

00:47:22.490 --> 00:47:24.090
conflictual social network?

00:47:24.410 --> 00:47:25.690
It doesn't mean it's impossible.

00:47:26.010 --> 00:47:31.050
I it's not, you know, but I am a little bit skeptical about how easy it's it's going to be

00:47:31.050 --> 00:47:33.450
to fix to actually improve things.

00:47:33.690 --> 00:47:37.610
Yeah, it's kind of the chemical imbalance thing where it's sort of like what you're saying

00:47:37.610 --> 00:47:40.570
is that it's a control and support issue.

00:47:40.900 --> 00:47:46.260
And what we don't want to do is just recapitulate the thing of you just sort of gloss that

00:47:46.260 --> 00:47:46.420
over.

00:47:46.580 --> 00:47:50.900
If somebody is in a situation where they they're being harmed or they need more support or

00:47:50.900 --> 00:47:54.980
they need more control in their life and they don't have it, the solution, the easy

00:47:54.980 --> 00:48:00.660
solution is to just turn off the alarm in the person's head that that's a problem, right?

00:48:00.820 --> 00:48:02.340
But that's a bad solution.

00:48:02.580 --> 00:48:08.210
A better solution is fix the lack of control, the harm, the

00:48:08.610 --> 00:48:09.410
those things.

00:48:09.570 --> 00:48:14.610
But that that is not something that you just pop a drug or an easy sort of social science

00:48:14.610 --> 00:48:15.090
intervention.

00:48:15.170 --> 00:48:18.130
That's changing the person's situation.

00:48:18.690 --> 00:48:18.850
Yeah.

00:48:18.930 --> 00:48:20.690
And I have two comments on that.

00:48:20.770 --> 00:48:25.490
One, when we think about physical pain, you break your ankle and you go to the hospital and

00:48:25.490 --> 00:48:30.290
you expect them to set your ankle, put some pins in, put a cast on, but they'll also give

00:48:30.290 --> 00:48:31.010
you a painkiller.

00:48:31.480 --> 00:48:37.400
but they won't do that until they've actually fixed the painkiller until they see

00:48:37.400 --> 00:48:37.640
it.

00:48:38.280 --> 00:48:43.240
And that's what we're doing with kind of depression therapy now with antidepressants, is

00:48:43.240 --> 00:48:45.960
we're giving you the painkiller, but without fixing the problem.

00:48:46.280 --> 00:48:51.240
So it does suggest there might be a role for a psychological painkiller, but only in

00:48:51.240 --> 00:48:56.350
combination with genuine solutions to the social conflicts and social problems and

00:48:56.350 --> 00:48:59.070
adversity that actually exists.

00:48:59.230 --> 00:49:00.830
Um, so that'd be point number one.

00:49:00.990 --> 00:49:05.150
Point number two is we we kind of have, as humans, we have a moral system.

00:49:05.310 --> 00:49:07.790
Some people are on the right side and other on the wrong side.

00:49:07.870 --> 00:49:13.790
So your wife leaves you, uh, she could be the selfish person, um, or you could

00:49:13.790 --> 00:49:14.910
be a jerk.

00:49:15.150 --> 00:49:19.520
Um, and so when there's conflict and you have adversity, and you know, maybe you got fired

00:49:19.520 --> 00:49:22.640
from your job, but maybe you should have been fired, maybe you were stealing from the

00:49:22.640 --> 00:49:23.760
company or something.

00:49:23.920 --> 00:49:28.960
Um, so people have adversity sometimes because they are, you know, the innocent victim, but

00:49:28.960 --> 00:49:31.120
other times because they're the guilty victim.

00:49:31.280 --> 00:49:36.320
We can't always assume that the folks in need are what the public would

00:49:36.960 --> 00:49:40.080
judge as uh sort of innocent victims of adversity.

00:49:40.240 --> 00:49:42.160
They might be guilty victims of adversity.

00:49:42.240 --> 00:49:47.750
And so that's going to make it even more complicated to address a lot of times that that

00:49:47.750 --> 00:49:53.750
folks that are suicidal um and we don't want that to happen but may

00:49:53.750 --> 00:49:57.750
have really genuinely transgressed against others or or done things that they really

00:49:57.750 --> 00:49:59.030
shouldn't have done.

00:49:59.590 --> 00:50:02.790
And that's going to make it all the more complicated to to kind of deal with their

00:50:02.790 --> 00:50:03.670
situation, I think.

00:50:05.740 --> 00:50:08.540
Um David, do you have something else on this?

00:50:08.620 --> 00:50:09.980
Because I was going to do a transition.

00:50:10.380 --> 00:50:12.380
Uh one last question.

00:50:12.540 --> 00:50:17.740
Um, could this potentially explain the limited benefits you see uh from

00:50:17.740 --> 00:50:18.780
psychotherapy?

00:50:19.020 --> 00:50:24.700
So if you are deprived of you know social support, people who are listening to your

00:50:24.700 --> 00:50:29.730
problems and offering solutions, people who are there for you, um, that if you're deprived

00:50:29.730 --> 00:50:34.770
of that, and that's one of the causes of your depression, that regularly seeing someone who

00:50:34.770 --> 00:50:39.970
is compassionately listening to you could help to alleviate some of that, or at least the

00:50:39.970 --> 00:50:44.690
perception of social conflict, could give you the perception that at least some someone is

00:50:44.690 --> 00:50:48.690
out there who cares about you, and that and that could be responsible for for some of these

00:50:48.690 --> 00:50:50.690
limited uh benefits of psychotherapy.

00:50:51.020 --> 00:50:51.260
Yeah.

00:50:51.340 --> 00:50:55.900
And folks that are in the evolutionary psychiatry realm recognize, you know, this is sort

00:50:55.900 --> 00:50:59.500
of the alliance with your therapist that this is going to be now your social partner.

00:50:59.580 --> 00:51:01.500
They're genuinely on your side.

00:51:01.740 --> 00:51:06.700
And you can develop this trusting relationship where you may begin to get some of that

00:51:06.700 --> 00:51:07.100
stuff.

00:51:07.260 --> 00:51:12.860
Um, and so in some cases, that could explain some of the really important benefits of

00:51:13.100 --> 00:51:13.980
therapy.

00:51:14.220 --> 00:51:15.180
Absolutely.

00:51:15.340 --> 00:51:20.270
Um, and then the limitations would be that the therapist can't intervene in your actual

00:51:20.270 --> 00:51:21.310
life in many cases.

00:51:21.470 --> 00:51:22.750
And I'll give you an anecdote.

00:51:22.910 --> 00:51:28.190
One of my colleagues and good friends in evolutionary psychiatry, Andy Thompson.

00:51:29.630 --> 00:51:32.590
You know, he and I have been talking about this stuff for years and years now.

00:51:32.670 --> 00:51:35.790
And he's kind of as a he's a psychiatrist.

00:51:35.870 --> 00:51:37.790
Um, and he works in student health.

00:51:37.870 --> 00:51:43.870
And so he's seeing students with often severe issues like being suicidal.

00:51:44.360 --> 00:51:50.360
And he just told me this one anecdote that he had one, and I can't remember the precise

00:51:50.360 --> 00:51:53.640
details here, but he had one patient come in, one student.

00:51:54.760 --> 00:51:56.600
And it was really the stereotypical thing.

00:51:56.680 --> 00:52:00.680
You know, his parents were really pressuring him to be an engineer and major in

00:52:00.680 --> 00:52:01.320
engineering.

00:52:01.400 --> 00:52:03.640
And he was trying to do that, but he hated it.

00:52:03.800 --> 00:52:08.520
And what he really wanted to do was, you know, the arts and theater, something like this.

00:52:08.600 --> 00:52:10.440
I can't remember the exact details.

00:52:11.590 --> 00:52:15.190
And he was suicidal about this conflict with his parents.

00:52:15.670 --> 00:52:21.590
And um, but because Andy was, you know, a school therapist, he could actually call

00:52:21.590 --> 00:52:22.150
the parents.

00:52:22.230 --> 00:52:23.110
And he basically did.

00:52:23.190 --> 00:52:27.670
He called the parents and said, You really need to let your son drop out of engineering and

00:52:27.670 --> 00:52:29.430
switch to a major whether he wants to.

00:52:29.590 --> 00:52:31.590
And the parents immediately relented.

00:52:31.750 --> 00:52:34.550
And literally, like a week later, this guy was fine.

00:52:34.710 --> 00:52:40.230
Um so in that anecdote where the therapist really did intervene in the conflict and change

00:52:40.230 --> 00:52:46.220
things in the patient's favor, or at least um in that one, you know, n equals

00:52:46.220 --> 00:52:48.540
one case, uh, it really seemed to help a lot.

00:52:49.660 --> 00:52:50.220
So it's interesting.

00:52:50.300 --> 00:52:56.220
So it it it suggests that this model of the disinterested, dispassionate therapist

00:52:56.220 --> 00:53:01.660
who doesn't intervene and isn't your friend, but is just a you know uh

00:53:02.140 --> 00:53:07.180
a professional, uh I don't know, mm psyche uh repairer.

00:53:07.450 --> 00:53:12.410
um, that this picture is actually could be counterproductive in terms of helping solve

00:53:12.410 --> 00:53:12.970
people's problems.

00:53:13.050 --> 00:53:17.290
That really what the people who come to see a therapist what they need is additional social

00:53:17.290 --> 00:53:18.810
support that they're currently not getting.

00:53:18.890 --> 00:53:23.530
And insofar as that social support is provided, their their problems may well be improved.

00:53:23.770 --> 00:53:26.650
Um w is there something to that?

00:53:27.460 --> 00:53:28.020
Maybe.

00:53:28.180 --> 00:53:31.780
I I don't wanna, you know, there's my theory, there's the theories, and then there's the

00:53:31.860 --> 00:53:32.500
real world.

00:53:32.660 --> 00:53:37.620
Uh and the real world is obviously way more complicated, but I I do think there is is

00:53:37.620 --> 00:53:38.900
something to that.

00:53:39.140 --> 00:53:45.060
Um and um you know, I and there there

00:53:45.140 --> 00:53:51.050
there is, you know, there is a strand of there's family therapy and in where they do bring

00:53:51.050 --> 00:53:54.650
in the family but that sort of presupposes that the conflict is family oriented which in

00:53:54.650 --> 00:53:59.770
many cases especially with adolescents it is um so there they're kind of kind of putting

00:53:59.770 --> 00:54:05.610
into practice what I'm advocating here to to think about um but in other

00:54:05.610 --> 00:54:11.580
cases the conflict is is not family it's at your job or um it's with some romantic

00:54:11.580 --> 00:54:14.860
partner that is just out of the picture at this point.

00:54:15.420 --> 00:54:17.740
Or it's not about that kind of conflict.

00:54:17.820 --> 00:54:21.820
It's, you know, your spouse has died and you're not, it's the neighborhood that's not

00:54:21.820 --> 00:54:26.380
getting together to help you, or your your social, you know, your broader social network

00:54:26.380 --> 00:54:29.740
that was really, you didn't really realize, but was really through your spouse.

00:54:29.980 --> 00:54:35.230
And now that they're dead, um all of the people you thought were your mutual friends um

00:54:35.470 --> 00:54:40.830
turned out to be you know his friends or her friends and um that social network begins to

00:54:40.830 --> 00:54:45.710
deteriorate and the therapist doesn't have any any power over that so

00:54:46.510 --> 00:54:51.230
yeah uh is the disinterested you know standoff kind of um

00:54:53.310 --> 00:54:58.270
um type is that the way to go there there may be uh you know there's obviously more

00:54:58.270 --> 00:55:04.260
complications here um but um it would take a lot

00:55:04.260 --> 00:55:10.180
of work to really work out the the you know a lot of the evolutionary psychiatrists

00:55:10.180 --> 00:55:15.940
do have like Randy Nessie, you know, he he actually is a therapist and and um

00:55:15.940 --> 00:55:16.980
works with patients.

00:55:17.140 --> 00:55:20.580
And so um and he's put a lot of this stuff into practice.

00:55:20.660 --> 00:55:24.500
And um I'm not quite sure exactly what he would say, but I'd say I think he would not

00:55:24.500 --> 00:55:26.900
necessarily my theories, but his very similar theories.

00:55:27.050 --> 00:55:29.690
He seems, I mean, I having read his book, we should probably have him on the podcast, by

00:55:29.690 --> 00:55:34.890
the way, but having re having read his his book, he seems to uh be less of the

00:55:34.890 --> 00:55:40.170
disinterested therapist and tends to be more of an active uh supporter for his patients.

00:55:40.570 --> 00:55:45.210
I remember one anecdote where um there was this guy who was doing these death-defying uh

00:55:45.210 --> 00:55:49.930
motorcycle races and he was suffering uh anxiety and fear about them because you know

00:55:50.010 --> 00:55:54.560
people have died doing these kinds of stunts, And he wanted uh something to take the edge

00:55:54.560 --> 00:55:54.720
off.

00:55:54.880 --> 00:55:58.400
He wanted his fear to be reduced so that he could continue doing these death-defying

00:55:58.400 --> 00:55:59.440
motorcycle stunts.

00:55:59.760 --> 00:56:03.600
And he actually, Randy actually introduced and said, No, I'm not gonna give you that.

00:56:03.760 --> 00:56:07.680
Like your your fear system is telling you something important that your life is at risk.

00:56:07.840 --> 00:56:11.360
And if I were to give you medication to reduce that, I would be doing you a disservice.

00:56:11.520 --> 00:56:13.680
I would be increasing the chance that you die.

00:56:13.840 --> 00:56:18.000
And so what you need to do is is not what you need to do is is is look into other

00:56:18.690 --> 00:56:20.530
activities for yourself that are safer.

00:56:20.690 --> 00:56:25.970
Uh and so that seems to be at least crossing some boundaries between the therapist and the

00:56:25.970 --> 00:56:26.290
patient.

00:56:26.370 --> 00:56:30.690
And it's interesting that, you know, he crosses those boundaries in those ways, perhaps

00:56:30.690 --> 00:56:32.290
informed by his his perspective.

00:56:32.530 --> 00:56:32.690
Yeah.

00:56:32.770 --> 00:56:37.490
And I think many people that work in evolutionary psychiatry, but also then also work with

00:56:37.490 --> 00:56:39.970
patients, uh, would would take a similar approach.

00:56:40.130 --> 00:56:45.410
Many of them have mentioned sort of kind of being the allies of their patients.

00:56:45.490 --> 00:56:48.720
Um for these reasons exactly.

00:56:49.200 --> 00:56:55.200
So uh earlier um in the podcast, one episode I talked about Edward Bernays, who was

00:56:55.200 --> 00:56:58.320
sort of the father of sort of um public relations.

00:56:58.640 --> 00:57:03.440
And one of the things I mentioned was that one of his first projects was convincing women

00:57:03.440 --> 00:57:06.240
who were not at the time smoking to smoke.

00:57:06.640 --> 00:57:12.000
Um, and so this is a way of bringing up this uh this thing that you um

00:57:12.320 --> 00:57:16.000
talk about, which is sort of use of drugs.

00:57:16.450 --> 00:57:20.530
Um, and every time I drink a cup of a cup of coffee now, I think a little bit, there's a

00:57:20.530 --> 00:57:23.970
little Ed Hagan on my shoulder saying, you're drinking pesticide.

00:57:25.490 --> 00:57:30.850
And so um so this is sort of an invitation to sort of um and and I remember seeing your

00:57:30.850 --> 00:57:36.850
talks when you were talking about um cigarette smoking um and uh and just the

00:57:36.850 --> 00:57:41.320
numbers of of deaths uh was staggering.

00:57:41.480 --> 00:57:47.400
Um so so I don't know, yeah, if you want to start either with coffee or cigarettes, um uh

00:57:47.560 --> 00:57:53.000
but but can you talk a little bit and maybe also like how did you get into that from

00:57:53.000 --> 00:57:53.800
depression?

00:57:54.360 --> 00:57:57.400
Uh yeah maybe there is a segue.

00:57:57.560 --> 00:58:01.970
So uh it turns out that folks with mental health issues are heavy drug users.

00:58:02.610 --> 00:58:08.450
Um, and so one of my um started doing this um as graduate students, Roger

00:58:08.450 --> 00:58:09.250
Sullivan and I.

00:58:09.330 --> 00:58:13.810
We were both anthropologists, we were both working in on mental health issues.

00:58:13.890 --> 00:58:17.970
I was working more on depression, he was working more on schizophrenia, we were both taking

00:58:17.970 --> 00:58:23.410
an evolutionary perspective, and he was uh visiting from um

00:58:24.200 --> 00:58:28.600
Auckland to Santa Barbara to do a year at Santa Barbara.

00:58:28.760 --> 00:58:33.320
And so we were both really interested like what the heck is going on with the heavy drug

00:58:33.320 --> 00:58:35.560
use by folks with mental health problems.

00:58:35.720 --> 00:58:38.760
And so Roger was working in Palau with schizophrenics.

00:58:38.840 --> 00:58:44.680
And you know, these guys were using tobacco and betelnut and other uh drugs

00:58:44.920 --> 00:58:45.720
copiously.

00:58:45.800 --> 00:58:47.960
And this is a really common pattern.

00:58:48.120 --> 00:58:49.560
It's widely recognized.

00:58:50.040 --> 00:58:55.890
And this was a this was a group of people who were in a a sort of um weird society

00:58:55.970 --> 00:58:57.410
or in sort of a more hunter or horror.

00:58:57.730 --> 00:58:58.690
They were more traditional.

00:58:58.850 --> 00:59:04.530
That's it's an island kind of basic island type, you know, heavy kin based non- So maybe

00:59:04.530 --> 00:59:09.250
not like a medical, maybe no not like psychiatrists or psychologists available, right?

00:59:09.650 --> 00:59:14.450
Well, they did have a clinic and so Roger got access to the patients through the clinic

00:59:14.450 --> 00:59:14.690
there.

00:59:15.170 --> 00:59:15.570
Okay, great.

00:59:15.650 --> 00:59:21.000
And so they they were kind of um and um I don't know if the if the clinicians were Western

00:59:21.000 --> 00:59:23.240
trained or not, but probably they were basing.

00:59:23.480 --> 00:59:23.720
Yeah, yeah.

00:59:23.960 --> 00:59:28.120
Um, but Roger was able to kind of see how these symptoms played out in a much more

00:59:28.120 --> 00:59:29.160
traditional context.

00:59:29.320 --> 00:59:30.920
I don't think they would play out here.

00:59:31.160 --> 00:59:36.680
So we we started thinking about um, you know, what's up with with the heavy drug use.

00:59:37.240 --> 00:59:43.130
Um and um we decided that we want to take an

00:59:43.130 --> 00:59:45.370
evolutionary approach to this, obviously.

00:59:45.690 --> 00:59:51.130
And so we started like, what are the evolutionary origins of all these drugs?

00:59:52.330 --> 00:59:57.290
Let's not so much think about the drug use to begin with, but you know, why do tobacco

00:59:57.290 --> 00:59:58.810
plants produce nicotine?

00:59:58.970 --> 01:00:00.970
Why do coffee plants produce caffeine?

01:00:01.130 --> 01:00:03.450
Why do coca plants produce cocaine?

01:00:03.610 --> 01:00:07.880
Why do cannabis plants produce THC and other cannabinoids.

01:00:08.360 --> 01:00:11.960
I just want to interject one one quickly, uh one one uh thought real quickly.

01:00:12.040 --> 01:00:17.720
Um I think it's a beautiful example of how the evolutionary approach causes you to ask

01:00:17.720 --> 01:00:21.240
questions that you would otherwise not think to ask.

01:00:21.800 --> 01:00:26.280
So why do plants have properties that make human beings high?

01:00:26.520 --> 01:00:31.080
Like that out of all of the chemical properties that a plant could have, it's kind of

01:00:31.080 --> 01:00:36.730
curious that it would have a property that i elicits pleasure and and pleasurable

01:00:36.730 --> 01:00:39.610
psychological states in uh apes like us.

01:00:39.850 --> 01:00:44.330
So I think just asking that question is is a really important question to ask.

01:00:44.490 --> 01:00:45.930
So continue continue, sorry to interject.

01:00:46.170 --> 01:00:47.690
Yeah, no, that's that's exactly right.

01:00:47.850 --> 01:00:53.690
So we uh of course knew that um these things are all what we call plant

01:00:53.770 --> 01:00:59.580
defensive chemicals, that tobacco is producing nicotine, not so we

01:00:59.580 --> 01:01:04.940
can produce cigarettes, but as um a way to defend itself against herbivores.

01:01:05.180 --> 01:01:07.980
So nicotine is a highly toxic substance.

01:01:08.060 --> 01:01:09.500
It's a neurotoxin.

01:01:09.900 --> 01:01:13.100
Um people commit suicide with nicotine pesticides.

01:01:13.180 --> 01:01:14.860
It's a really effective pesticide.

01:01:14.940 --> 01:01:16.460
It's uh used by organic farmers.

01:01:16.620 --> 01:01:18.140
It's actually still pretty widely used.

01:01:18.220 --> 01:01:18.460
Go ahead.

01:01:18.940 --> 01:01:24.930
That only intensifies the mystery that a toxic substance is pleasurable to the

01:01:24.930 --> 01:01:25.650
to the human brain.

01:01:25.890 --> 01:01:29.330
Yeah, these things, the the the popular drugs can kill you.

01:01:29.410 --> 01:01:31.090
So you can kill yourself with caffeine.

01:01:31.170 --> 01:01:32.530
It's a little harder with caffeine.

01:01:32.610 --> 01:01:34.850
You can kill yourself with nicotine easily.

01:01:35.010 --> 01:01:38.770
You can kill yourself with cocaine, heroin easily.

01:01:39.330 --> 01:01:44.770
And these things are are very, very potent neurotoxins, and plants evolve them

01:01:45.090 --> 01:01:48.130
to deter herbivores from eating them.

01:01:48.450 --> 01:01:51.700
And um so that's exactly where we started.

01:01:51.860 --> 01:01:54.340
Why would and then how do they do that?

01:01:54.500 --> 01:01:58.180
They do that by mimicking our endogenous neurotransmitters.

01:01:58.340 --> 01:02:01.060
So nicotine mimics acetylcholine.

01:02:02.660 --> 01:02:07.620
And cocaine, these mimic dopamine and other neurotransmitters.

01:02:07.940 --> 01:02:11.940
And so caffeine mimics adenosine.

01:02:13.090 --> 01:02:17.410
And that's plants based, and these neurotransmitter systems are not unique to humans.

01:02:17.490 --> 01:02:20.930
They're widespread among animals, including insect herbivores.

01:02:21.970 --> 01:02:24.290
They're ancient, ancient systems.

01:02:24.610 --> 01:02:29.570
And so plants have evolved compounds that mimic these systems to basically gum up the

01:02:29.570 --> 01:02:33.330
works, to interfere with cellular signaling, neural signaling.

01:02:33.740 --> 01:02:35.820
That's how venoms work as well.

01:02:36.060 --> 01:02:37.820
Same, same basic principle.

01:02:38.300 --> 01:02:43.100
And that means the plant really only has to produce a small quantity of this extremely

01:02:43.100 --> 01:02:48.460
deadly toxic substance and infuse it into its leaves in order to deter

01:02:48.780 --> 01:02:49.580
herbivores.

01:02:49.820 --> 01:02:53.980
So the idea with an herbivore is sort of like if I'm an herbivore, I have an evolved system

01:02:53.980 --> 01:02:57.980
that sort of detects something in my works is gummed up.

01:02:58.140 --> 01:02:59.020
Don't eat this again.

01:02:59.260 --> 01:02:59.420
Yeah.

01:02:59.500 --> 01:03:04.530
And in us humans and um mammals and many vertebrates, it's taste receptors.

01:03:04.610 --> 01:03:08.530
So we have these bitter taste receptors on our tongues and in our oral cavities.

01:03:08.690 --> 01:03:11.250
Actually, we express them in many tissues, it turns out.

01:03:12.690 --> 01:03:17.490
And these respond uh quite quickly to toxic substances.

01:03:17.890 --> 01:03:22.290
Um and so all of these drugs of abuse taste bitter.

01:03:22.370 --> 01:03:25.570
Um, in fact, our body recognizes them as toxic very quickly.

01:03:25.730 --> 01:03:31.410
Anybody who remembers the their first cigarette um probably remembers feeling pretty queasy

01:03:31.720 --> 01:03:32.840
afterwards.

01:03:33.560 --> 01:03:38.360
And so Roger and I, to, to kind of get back, we were trying to think, you know, what what

01:03:38.520 --> 01:03:43.720
benefits might there be to um you know

01:03:44.040 --> 01:03:49.640
taking substances that mimic neurotransmitters that are highly

01:03:49.640 --> 01:03:50.440
toxic.

01:03:50.680 --> 01:03:55.160
And as we were thinking about our um folks with these mental health issues like

01:03:55.160 --> 01:04:00.150
schizophrenia and stuff, of course, a lot of the reigning theories of of those disorders

01:04:00.150 --> 01:04:02.630
are neurotransmitter signaling deficits.

01:04:02.870 --> 01:04:08.070
So our kind of early idea, which we haven't really followed up on too much, but was could,

01:04:08.390 --> 01:04:12.070
and I still think there might be something to this, could these compounds kind of act as

01:04:12.070 --> 01:04:14.870
neurotransmitter substitutes in small quantities?

01:04:15.030 --> 01:04:19.190
Um, if in fact schizophrenia has something to do with some disruption of, let's say,

01:04:19.350 --> 01:04:24.630
dopamine signaling, could taking a dopamine analog, you know, partially

01:04:24.630 --> 01:04:27.320
compensate for those deficits.

01:04:28.440 --> 01:04:31.240
And so that's kind of where we we started out.

01:04:32.920 --> 01:04:37.720
But the more we began to think about it, the more we realized, hey, these things evolve to

01:04:37.720 --> 01:04:39.960
kill plant parasites, basically.

01:04:40.200 --> 01:04:45.880
And if they kill plant parasites, they they might kill our parasites as well.

01:04:46.440 --> 01:04:52.280
And so the more we looked into that hypothesis, the stronger it got that um,

01:04:52.600 --> 01:04:58.450
and we really began to focus on uh intestinal worms because these

01:04:58.450 --> 01:05:00.690
are kind of macroscopic animals with nervous systems.

01:05:01.090 --> 01:05:06.290
Um, just I'm just laughing like people who are eating, so just like like like warning the

01:05:06.450 --> 01:05:10.370
warning for this portion of the yeah, warning for this portion of the talk.

01:05:10.850 --> 01:05:14.530
Um we're gonna get we could get into brain worms too um at some point here.

01:05:14.850 --> 01:05:16.530
Fortunately, Ed does not have slides.

01:05:16.610 --> 01:05:21.490
I have to say that the most disgusting slides I've ever seen were from Ed's slides, Ed to

01:05:21.490 --> 01:05:22.050
your credit.

01:05:22.100 --> 01:05:23.220
So yeah.

01:05:24.020 --> 01:05:27.460
And so worms have nervous systems pretty similar to ours.

01:05:28.180 --> 01:05:33.780
And one of the first clues was that a lot of anti-worm medicines that are used commercially

01:05:34.580 --> 01:05:39.220
are in fact chemically very similar to recreational drugs.

01:05:39.380 --> 01:05:41.860
Lvamasole is very similar to nicotine.

01:05:41.940 --> 01:05:45.140
It interacts with the same acetylcholine receptors.

01:05:45.670 --> 01:05:51.670
Even to this day, we uh deworm dogs and other animals with a compound called aceticoline,

01:05:51.910 --> 01:05:57.830
not acetylcholine, but ercoline, which is an acetycholine analog produced in

01:05:57.830 --> 01:06:02.390
betel net, which is one of the world's most widely used drugs.

01:06:02.470 --> 01:06:06.710
We don't really use it here in the US that much, but in in the Pacific, and it's probably

01:06:06.710 --> 01:06:08.710
the number four drug in the world.

01:06:10.560 --> 01:06:16.240
And so when we began to look at this, we realized that basically every single drug of

01:06:16.240 --> 01:06:18.640
abuse kills intestinal worms.

01:06:19.840 --> 01:06:25.600
And so could our taste for these neurotoxic substances be a form of

01:06:25.600 --> 01:06:31.530
self-medication that we are attracted to them because they are even today, what are some of

01:06:31.530 --> 01:06:32.090
the most valuable?

01:06:32.170 --> 01:06:35.210
We just were talking about antidepressants, it's a multi-billion dollar business.

01:06:35.450 --> 01:06:41.370
Drugs and medicines are still uh even today some of the most valuable

01:06:41.370 --> 01:06:45.130
substances that we have, some of the most valuable products.

01:06:45.290 --> 01:06:50.410
And that may well have been true over our evolutionary history, that discovering compounds

01:06:50.410 --> 01:06:56.320
that could kill our own pathogens and our own parasites uh would have been tremendously

01:06:56.320 --> 01:06:57.280
beneficial.

01:06:57.600 --> 01:07:03.280
And plants and animals are basically attacked by the basic same broad classes of

01:07:03.920 --> 01:07:05.360
things that eat them.

01:07:05.840 --> 01:07:11.680
And so if plants are constantly evolving compounds that that harm those classes of

01:07:11.680 --> 01:07:16.160
organisms, they may also harm the ones that are trying to eat us.

01:07:16.560 --> 01:07:21.120
So that's that's the basic idea and that's how we how we got into it.

01:07:23.030 --> 01:07:24.870
And then to get onto oh go ahead, David.

01:07:24.950 --> 01:07:25.030
No.

01:07:25.430 --> 01:07:30.870
I just want to do a just just a a a recap of of the idea, just in case people aren't quite

01:07:30.870 --> 01:07:31.510
following.

01:07:31.750 --> 01:07:37.590
Um so the idea is that plants evolved neurotoxins to

01:07:37.590 --> 01:07:39.910
get rid of uh the animals that eat them.

01:07:40.070 --> 01:07:42.070
So plant parasites, right?

01:07:42.470 --> 01:07:47.720
And uh and we take these substances because we're often preyed upon by the same parasites.

01:07:47.960 --> 01:07:52.840
And if we take these toxins in small doses, it's enough to kill the per parasites without

01:07:52.840 --> 01:07:53.320
harming us.

01:07:53.560 --> 01:07:55.720
So we evolved a taste for these things in small doses.

01:07:55.880 --> 01:07:58.120
In large doses, obviously, they can harm us.

01:07:58.200 --> 01:08:02.920
Uh, but if we consume them in small doses, they act as a as a medicine uh that can get rid

01:08:02.920 --> 01:08:05.640
of uh pathogens and parasites in us.

01:08:06.360 --> 01:08:07.240
That's exactly right.

01:08:07.320 --> 01:08:12.650
That we we basically have this, we didn't haven't recognized that we have a psychology to

01:08:12.650 --> 01:08:16.170
self-medicate with toxic plant compounds.

01:08:16.650 --> 01:08:17.130
And the reason why we're going to do that.

01:08:18.650 --> 01:08:22.170
We love spices and they are also toxic plant compounds.

01:08:22.330 --> 01:08:27.290
And there's a very strong case to make that we put them in our food to kill foodborne

01:08:27.290 --> 01:08:27.930
pathogens.

01:08:28.410 --> 01:08:32.730
And so is the idea that the pleasurable response that we get from consuming these drugs

01:08:32.730 --> 01:08:33.610
itself evolved?

01:08:33.690 --> 01:08:37.760
That we evolve so that originally maybe we didn't find it rewarding to consume these

01:08:37.760 --> 01:08:41.520
substances and maybe, you know, there was there was no response, but over evolutionary

01:08:41.520 --> 01:08:46.480
history, perhaps those who found consuming these substances to be more rewarding, uh, had a

01:08:46.480 --> 01:08:50.320
reproductive advantage because of the self medication benefits.

01:08:50.400 --> 01:08:54.640
And then so we evolved to to find these drugs rewarding.

01:08:55.280 --> 01:08:56.800
Yeah, basically yes.

01:08:56.880 --> 01:09:02.730
Um I would be a little careful here because um the reward model is very tied

01:09:02.810 --> 01:09:08.490
up with dopamine signaling model that is still heavily

01:09:08.490 --> 01:09:09.850
debated and heavily investigated.

01:09:10.010 --> 01:09:15.850
So I and it is often conflated, the research on drug abuse is very

01:09:15.850 --> 01:09:21.620
much linked with research on reward-based learning

01:09:21.620 --> 01:09:22.260
mechanisms.

01:09:22.420 --> 01:09:27.380
And so even though those really are should be distinct, they're for historical reasons and

01:09:27.380 --> 01:09:31.860
other reasons, really conflated and intertwined in kind of complex ways.

01:09:32.020 --> 01:09:37.300
And so we kind of want to, it's been challenging because uh people want to jump right in

01:09:37.300 --> 01:09:39.140
with the dopamine reward model.

01:09:39.940 --> 01:09:45.090
And we're not willing to, you know, put a blanket endorsement over that whole thing.

01:09:45.250 --> 01:09:49.650
We kind of want to step back from that and say, yes, we humans have some evolved

01:09:49.730 --> 01:09:51.970
propensity, a taste for these drugs.

01:09:53.330 --> 01:09:59.090
But exactly how that might be manifested in terms of our psychology and our psychological

01:09:59.090 --> 01:10:04.130
mechanisms, we want to leave that a little bit open because initially our reaction to it is

01:10:04.130 --> 01:10:04.610
aversion.

01:10:04.690 --> 01:10:09.060
You know, when folks first try some of these drugs, they their first reaction is correctly

01:10:09.140 --> 01:10:10.020
in a versive one.

01:10:10.100 --> 01:10:14.100
They taste better, they make you sick to your stomach, they'll often induce vomiting.

01:10:14.340 --> 01:10:19.540
Um, and what we see is that kids avoid them just like the plague.

01:10:19.860 --> 01:10:25.060
So um, there's not this universal rewarding experience, just you know, um

01:10:26.100 --> 01:10:26.500
study here.

01:10:26.820 --> 01:10:30.340
The the drug use by age graphs you showed were just incredible.

01:10:30.580 --> 01:10:31.860
Can you talk a little bit about that?

01:10:31.940 --> 01:10:32.100
Yeah.

01:10:32.500 --> 01:10:32.740
Yeah.

01:10:32.820 --> 01:10:36.660
So we began thinking about drugs as toxins instead of rewarding substances.

01:10:36.870 --> 01:10:41.430
So that the the basic model that is used by pretty much everybody in this area today, the

01:10:41.430 --> 01:10:46.550
mainstream folks, is that recreational drugs are like sugar.

01:10:47.270 --> 01:10:52.550
And that we like them and they they give us this rewarding feeling, and it's due to

01:10:52.550 --> 01:10:53.990
dopamine signaling.

01:10:54.150 --> 01:10:55.670
And that's why we use more of them.

01:10:55.750 --> 01:10:59.590
And then they have all kinds of complications around that basic story.

01:11:00.780 --> 01:11:02.700
But our story, we start with these things are now.

01:11:02.860 --> 01:11:05.580
They're deadly toxins and they taste bitter.

01:11:06.140 --> 01:11:08.940
And your body recognizes them as toxic.

01:11:09.260 --> 01:11:13.100
They trigger vomiting reflexes and nausea.

01:11:13.180 --> 01:11:15.100
They trigger a versive learning quite effectively.

01:11:15.260 --> 01:11:19.180
It's actually really hard to get animals to self administer nicotine.

01:11:21.260 --> 01:11:26.790
And so from that perspective, we said, okay,

01:11:27.030 --> 01:11:30.150
who should not use these things?

01:11:30.390 --> 01:11:36.230
And we thought, well, these things are interfering with neurosignaling,

01:11:36.310 --> 01:11:40.550
and that's going to be really critical during development when your brain is growing

01:11:40.550 --> 01:11:41.430
rapidly.

01:11:41.910 --> 01:11:45.750
So we would predict that kids shouldn't lose uh use them.

01:11:45.830 --> 01:11:51.060
And I still even remember saying, you know, I'm gonna check what uh what we know about

01:11:51.060 --> 01:11:53.540
child tobacco use.

01:11:53.620 --> 01:11:57.700
Uh and when I looked it up, I was just I was blown away the same way Dave was here.

01:11:58.500 --> 01:12:03.300
There's no drug use by kids uh under the age of 10.

01:12:03.460 --> 01:12:05.780
Um there's just almost none.

01:12:05.940 --> 01:12:08.500
Despite some of the YouTube videos that you might see.

01:12:10.010 --> 01:12:15.050
uh and and we replicated this in hunter gathers where there's um and and everybody thinks

01:12:15.210 --> 01:12:18.890
okay it's because your parents tell you not to do it and they prevent you from doing it um

01:12:19.050 --> 01:12:23.210
but you know all those 14 year old parents the parents of 14 year olds yeah smoke and do

01:12:23.210 --> 01:12:27.290
drugs right yeah right i i tell I tell my daughter to avoid eating too much candy she

01:12:27.290 --> 01:12:31.530
doesn't listen to me exactly that's what that's right I was saying like how I've never been

01:12:31.530 --> 01:12:36.330
able to struggle with not eat their you know Halloween candy or uh grab those cookies.

01:12:36.580 --> 01:12:42.420
So when it comes to genuinely rewarding things like sweets, um, the kids don't listen to us

01:12:42.420 --> 01:12:42.660
at all.

01:12:42.740 --> 01:12:48.660
But we we have large scale um data where you know they've actually done drug testing, um,

01:12:48.820 --> 01:12:54.260
and we just see nothing in in kids for either caffeine, and caffeine is put into soft

01:12:54.260 --> 01:12:54.980
drinks.

01:12:55.140 --> 01:13:00.340
Um, and even there, the levels in kids are really low compared to adults.

01:13:00.580 --> 01:13:06.230
So um, And then from about age 10 to 20, everybody transitions to drug use.

01:13:06.310 --> 01:13:06.710
Everybody.

01:13:06.870 --> 01:13:11.430
It may be caffeine, it might be nicotine, it might be alcohol, it might be some, you know,

01:13:11.510 --> 01:13:13.510
it might be marijuana, some other drug.

01:13:13.830 --> 01:13:16.310
But basically everybody makes a very rapid transition.

01:13:16.470 --> 01:13:22.230
And our argument there is that once your brain is more or less fully developed, the cost of

01:13:22.230 --> 01:13:27.240
interfering with brain development with these deadly neurotoxins has gotten down to the

01:13:27.240 --> 01:13:31.320
point, and the benefits of the self-medication have increased to the point where the

01:13:31.320 --> 01:13:36.440
balance now tips, and it's the benefits of self-medicating outweigh the costs.

01:13:36.520 --> 01:13:38.280
And we see this rapid transition.

01:13:38.440 --> 01:13:40.920
And the exception there is that there is a sex difference.

01:13:41.160 --> 01:13:46.600
Females are transitioning less than males and adults, and especially in their reproductive

01:13:46.600 --> 01:13:47.080
years.

01:13:47.320 --> 01:13:52.370
And we argue uh that that's because uh over our evolutionary history, women would often be

01:13:52.370 --> 01:13:56.130
pregnant, so they're not protecting their own brain development, but the development of

01:13:56.130 --> 01:13:57.410
their potential fetuses.

01:13:57.890 --> 01:14:03.010
Um, and so we have really good evidence uh supporting that hypothesis, too, that the

01:14:03.010 --> 01:14:08.930
toxicity of drugs um explains a lot about the epidemiology of drug

01:14:08.930 --> 01:14:10.450
use that we see by age and sex.

01:14:10.700 --> 01:14:10.860
Yeah.

01:14:11.020 --> 01:14:14.940
And how facultative is do you do you think this is?

01:14:15.020 --> 01:14:18.940
So I mean, you know, if when you're thirsty, you want water and you drink water and you're

01:14:18.940 --> 01:14:24.860
sort of you feel better, and that sort of, you know, is a important representation for

01:14:24.860 --> 01:14:25.980
organisms.

01:14:26.300 --> 01:14:32.220
If, you know, if I'm infected with zoonotic parasites, that's that's that's

01:14:32.220 --> 01:14:33.580
a fun sentence to say out loud.

01:14:33.660 --> 01:14:33.980
Okay.

01:14:34.220 --> 01:14:36.220
Um, for the record, I'm not, I don't think.

01:14:36.300 --> 01:14:42.150
Um, but anyway, uh, if I'm infected with this and I take something, um, or or m

01:14:42.230 --> 01:14:45.590
my my question is sort of like do I might am I c do I crave things, you know?

01:14:45.670 --> 01:14:49.270
Or do I think so this is are these prophylactic or are they therapeutic?

01:14:49.510 --> 01:14:49.830
Yeah, exactly.

01:14:50.550 --> 01:14:52.790
Thank you for putting it more much more sophisticated way than me.

01:14:52.870 --> 01:14:53.510
Uh yeah.

01:14:53.590 --> 01:14:58.230
And so uh I think the strongest evidence would be that we use them therapeutically.

01:14:58.310 --> 01:15:01.350
And this hypothesis, we're not the only ones researching this.

01:15:01.430 --> 01:15:05.700
There's a there's actually quite a few folks researching this idea in non-human animals.

01:15:05.860 --> 01:15:11.780
So in primates and even in insects, um, there's quite a bit of evidence now that other

01:15:11.780 --> 01:15:15.060
animals are self-medicating with toxic plant substances.

01:15:15.620 --> 01:15:21.540
Um so that's where we can get some of the best um experimental tests of kind of the um

01:15:21.940 --> 01:15:22.980
insects are smoking.

01:15:23.140 --> 01:15:24.070
Yeah They're getting high.

01:15:24.310 --> 01:15:24.950
Bug bugs are not.

01:15:25.190 --> 01:15:30.550
Well, they're they're using they're consuming toxic plants that don't make sense

01:15:30.550 --> 01:15:31.430
nutritionally.

01:15:31.670 --> 01:15:36.790
And um so presumably they would be they would be getting some kind of high, if your model

01:15:36.790 --> 01:15:37.430
is correct.

01:15:37.910 --> 01:15:42.230
If I if if I would and if they're neurotoxins, plants are producing a wide variety of

01:15:42.230 --> 01:15:45.590
toxins, not all of which are neurotoxin, but some of them are, yeah.

01:15:45.670 --> 01:15:50.310
So it could be they're getting but they may have different representations, you know, how

01:15:50.310 --> 01:15:52.300
it affects their psychology.

01:15:52.700 --> 01:15:53.580
But yes.

01:15:54.460 --> 01:15:58.940
Now there I will say the evidence is mixed because in those experiments, you can

01:15:58.940 --> 01:16:04.540
experimentally infect your insect that's in your and see, does it then

01:16:04.540 --> 01:16:09.740
increase consumption of, or you can experimentally infect your rat model or your mouse

01:16:09.740 --> 01:16:11.260
model or whatever it might be.

01:16:11.550 --> 01:16:14.350
Um, and there the results have been have been really mixed.

01:16:14.430 --> 01:16:20.030
Um, a lot of I think what the data show most clearly is that animals

01:16:20.190 --> 01:16:25.870
um are uh more inclined to eat toxic foods

01:16:26.030 --> 01:16:31.390
lace with these toxins than they should be, um, given that they are toxic.

01:16:31.870 --> 01:16:37.070
So that would support either that we're wrong, and our whole idea is is wrong, or that it's

01:16:37.070 --> 01:16:42.160
more of a prophylactic um type adaptation than a therapeutic one.

01:16:42.320 --> 01:16:47.520
But there is, there are, there are some studies that show increased intake of toxic

01:16:47.520 --> 01:16:52.000
substances after infection, experimental treatments with infections.

01:16:52.480 --> 01:16:54.800
Now in humans, it's tougher.

01:16:55.440 --> 01:16:59.360
We did one experiment with hunter gatherers where we went in the opposite direction.

01:16:59.440 --> 01:17:03.120
So we were working with ACA hunter gatherers in the Congo Basin.

01:17:03.280 --> 01:17:08.630
And we were working with this population because they use a lot of drugs.

01:17:08.790 --> 01:17:09.430
The men do.

01:17:09.590 --> 01:17:15.270
The women almost do not at all, nor do the kids, but almost 100% of the men, basically

01:17:15.350 --> 01:17:18.950
100% of the men either use tobacco or cannabis or both.

01:17:19.830 --> 01:17:23.510
And basically 100% are infected with worms.

01:17:23.990 --> 01:17:29.430
And so what we thought is, well, uh the ideal experiment would be to infect somebody with

01:17:29.430 --> 01:17:34.640
worms and see if they start smoking more, but um that might not be ethically permitted.

01:17:34.720 --> 01:17:36.080
So we'll do the reverse.

01:17:36.160 --> 01:17:39.520
We'll take a bunch of people who are already infected with worms that are already smoking

01:17:39.680 --> 01:17:41.520
and treat them for worms.

01:17:42.320 --> 01:17:47.680
So we did a double blind RCT randomized controlled trial, placebo controlled trial, where

01:17:47.680 --> 01:17:53.520
we took a large number of ACA hunter gatherer men and got stool

01:17:53.680 --> 01:17:59.680
samples to confirm their worm infected status and saliva samples to confirm their

01:17:59.680 --> 01:18:01.760
tobacco use and cannabis use.

01:18:02.160 --> 01:18:06.770
And then we randomized them double blind into two groups, one getting a placebo and one

01:18:06.770 --> 01:18:10.370
getting albendazole, which is a powerful anti-worm medication.

01:18:12.210 --> 01:18:14.210
And then we waited two weeks.

01:18:14.530 --> 01:18:19.250
And then we got everybody back and tested them for worms again and tested them for uh

01:18:19.490 --> 01:18:22.850
salivary cotinine, which is a nicotine metabolite again.

01:18:23.170 --> 01:18:26.850
Um, and indeed the abendazole worked, not too surprisingly.

01:18:26.930 --> 01:18:29.170
All those guys were cleared of worms, the other guys weren't.

01:18:29.330 --> 01:18:34.720
But the key result is uh that in the treatment group, uh

01:18:34.960 --> 01:18:38.400
nicotine levels went down compared to the control group.

01:18:38.560 --> 01:18:44.240
And they went down in proportion to how badly infected they were with worms to begin with.

01:18:44.400 --> 01:18:49.120
So the more heavily infected guys reduced their tobacco use more, and we got the same

01:18:49.120 --> 01:18:50.880
result for cannabis use.

01:18:51.600 --> 01:18:54.160
So um that result needs to be replicated.

01:18:54.240 --> 01:18:57.920
We have not replicated it, uh so put a little asterisk on all these things.

01:18:58.000 --> 01:19:01.850
Um, but um that it was definitely an encouraging result.

01:19:02.010 --> 01:19:07.850
And then the the follow-up, we followed up with all these guys uh a year later um

01:19:08.090 --> 01:19:10.810
because you get reinfected with worms pretty quickly.

01:19:11.210 --> 01:19:17.130
And so um, and what we found a year later is that the guys who had um started

01:19:17.130 --> 01:19:22.810
smoking more were less likely to be reinfected than the guys who were smoking less.

01:19:23.130 --> 01:19:28.820
So that would be more the prophylactic effect that I mean kind of prevents you from from

01:19:28.980 --> 01:19:29.860
infections.

01:19:30.340 --> 01:19:36.100
This is such a cool result um and such a a great example of you know an

01:19:36.100 --> 01:19:41.140
evolutionary perspective providing you with a really bold, testable prediction that nobody

01:19:41.140 --> 01:19:42.100
would have thought to make.

01:19:42.260 --> 01:19:46.020
Nobody would have thought to make, you know, yeah, if if you if we cure your intestinal

01:19:46.020 --> 01:19:48.150
parasites, then you're gonna smoke less, right?

01:19:48.230 --> 01:19:48.310
Right.

01:19:48.470 --> 01:19:49.430
Like no no one would make it.

01:19:49.510 --> 01:19:50.230
For at least two weeks.

01:19:50.470 --> 01:19:51.430
Yeah, for at least two weeks.

01:19:51.510 --> 01:19:51.670
Yeah.

01:19:51.750 --> 01:19:54.150
Like that that's an incredibly bold, testable prediction.

01:19:54.230 --> 01:19:55.270
It it has been confirmed.

01:19:55.670 --> 01:20:00.950
We still want it to be replicated, obviously, but uh it's a really beautiful example of the

01:20:00.950 --> 01:20:03.430
utility of the evolutionary approach.

01:20:03.670 --> 01:20:09.350
Um I also love how it it just it beautifully explains really strong patterns in the

01:20:09.350 --> 01:20:14.000
empirical data, like as we s as we mentioned, that kids don't uh do drugs.

01:20:14.160 --> 01:20:18.720
They don't have an interest in doing drugs, despite uh them having an interest in, say,

01:20:18.800 --> 01:20:19.280
sweets.

01:20:19.360 --> 01:20:23.760
And our you know, parents are have a hard time keeping them away from the sweets.

01:20:23.840 --> 01:20:26.400
We I don't have a hard time keeping my daughter away from my coffee.

01:20:26.480 --> 01:20:31.520
Uh she has no interest in it at all, or any, you know, uh and we s we see similar drops,

01:20:31.600 --> 01:20:35.280
you know, when when women are pregnant, they they don't uh consume these substances.

01:20:35.520 --> 01:20:40.250
So we see a close match between what you would expect uh from the self-medication

01:20:40.250 --> 01:20:45.210
hypothesis, that that use is calibrated to the cost-benefit ratio of self-medication.

01:20:45.290 --> 01:20:49.050
Uh, and it it doesn't really match this idea that drugs are just hijacking our reward

01:20:49.050 --> 01:20:49.210
system.

01:20:49.370 --> 01:20:54.810
If they're hijacking our reward system, then you would expect kids to be uh uh grasping for

01:20:54.810 --> 01:20:56.410
this stuff the way they grasp for candy.

01:20:56.490 --> 01:21:00.250
You expect everybody to be doing it, and the more you do it, the the more pleasure you'd

01:21:00.250 --> 01:21:00.410
get.

01:21:00.570 --> 01:21:02.890
Um so here's another prediction that your model makes.

01:21:02.970 --> 01:21:04.730
I'm not sure if there's any evidence for this.

01:21:05.020 --> 01:21:10.460
Given that these uh substances only have self-medicating effects in small doses, and then

01:21:10.460 --> 01:21:16.380
in larger doses they have harmful effects, um, you would expect the pleasurable response

01:21:16.380 --> 01:21:21.660
to only occur at small doses and start to become aversive at large doses.

01:21:21.820 --> 01:21:23.260
Uh is there evidence for that?

01:21:23.340 --> 01:21:26.540
I mean, intuitively that's strong evidence, strong evidence for that.

01:21:26.940 --> 01:21:32.650
So um if the if the hijack model is correct, that these things are

01:21:32.650 --> 01:21:35.450
hijacking over basically everybody should be overdosing.

01:21:35.610 --> 01:21:35.850
Yeah.

01:21:36.250 --> 01:21:39.370
Um and nicotine can easily kill you.

01:21:39.450 --> 01:21:42.970
Um, and yet nicotine overdoses are vanishingly rare.

01:21:43.130 --> 01:21:47.450
They're actually more common now than they've ever been due to vaping, and the fact that um

01:21:47.610 --> 01:21:52.700
these vape fluids are often have flavors in them, and so you've got vial, and it's it's

01:21:52.700 --> 01:21:53.820
basically young infants.

01:21:53.980 --> 01:21:59.980
Oh god that so the the uh visits to uh poison centers have skyrocketed uh with the onset of

01:21:59.980 --> 01:22:05.740
vaping because um little little babies or uh toddlers are getting into the

01:22:05.740 --> 01:22:10.620
vape fluids and they kind of smell sweet and and flavored and then they get a big dose of

01:22:10.620 --> 01:22:14.140
nicotine um and have to be rushed to the hospital.

01:22:14.380 --> 01:22:20.170
So um but absent that uh nicotine overdoses are really, really

01:22:20.170 --> 01:22:20.490
rare.

01:22:20.570 --> 01:22:24.410
And so the evidence in favor of what David was saving here is there's been many, many

01:22:24.410 --> 01:22:27.450
studies of what's called um nicotine titration.

01:22:27.690 --> 01:22:33.690
And so these are experimental studies where you take smokers and you um measure,

01:22:33.850 --> 01:22:38.410
you actually have this little box that measures that you're in flow, how deeply draw you're

01:22:38.410 --> 01:22:39.610
drawing in the tobacco.

01:22:39.690 --> 01:22:40.970
So it's measuring airflow.

01:22:41.050 --> 01:22:44.410
Um so you kind of stick your cigarette on one end, smoke it through the other end.

01:22:44.730 --> 01:22:50.660
Um And uh so you do this uh to get everybody's baseline levels

01:22:50.740 --> 01:22:54.820
of of basically, and you can also measure their nicotine levels in their blood, their

01:22:54.900 --> 01:22:57.460
cotinine levels, that's the nicotine metabolite.

01:22:57.620 --> 01:23:02.340
Um and then what you do is you randomize them into groups where they either kind of get

01:23:02.340 --> 01:23:06.900
their normal cigarette or they get a cigarette that's either got more nicotine in it than

01:23:06.900 --> 01:23:12.110
usual or uh less nicotine in it than so a high nicotine cigarette or a low nicotine

01:23:12.110 --> 01:23:12.990
cigarette.

01:23:13.310 --> 01:23:15.630
And what you find is that people titrate.

01:23:15.870 --> 01:23:20.190
If you give them the high nicotine cigarette, they dial back and they dial back their

01:23:20.270 --> 01:23:24.030
smoking to basically getting the same levels of nicotine they were getting at baseline.

01:23:24.110 --> 01:23:28.430
If you give them the low nicotine cigarettes, they inhale, they puff more deeply, more

01:23:28.430 --> 01:23:31.950
puffs, bring to bring their nicotine levels back up.

01:23:32.190 --> 01:23:37.980
So folks are very, very accurately titrating their levels of nicotine in a very

01:23:37.980 --> 01:23:39.260
narrow range.

01:23:39.900 --> 01:23:45.580
And that range is pretty much just below the range where you start to trigger acute toxic

01:23:45.580 --> 01:23:46.300
reactions.

01:23:46.540 --> 01:23:51.420
So people are, and that suggests to me that there's got to be an evolved mechanism to do

01:23:51.420 --> 01:23:54.540
that, to be that precise with such a dangerous substance.

01:23:54.860 --> 01:23:59.820
That folks are very, very good at keeping their nicotine levels within a pretty narrow

01:23:59.820 --> 01:24:03.820
band, even when you manipulate their source of nicotine.

01:24:04.070 --> 01:24:04.390
Yeah.

01:24:04.710 --> 01:24:05.110
Awesome.

01:24:05.190 --> 01:24:06.070
It's really beautiful work.

01:24:06.150 --> 01:24:07.270
I I love I love this stuff.

01:24:07.350 --> 01:24:08.310
It's mind blowing.

01:24:08.470 --> 01:24:11.190
Um I I gotta ask though, what's the deal with heroin?

01:24:11.350 --> 01:24:13.510
Like that your your model has a hard time explaining this.

01:24:13.670 --> 01:24:14.710
It destroys people's lives.

01:24:14.870 --> 01:24:19.030
They it does seem like something is being hijacked and something is going wrong there.

01:24:19.190 --> 01:24:20.230
Uh what's what's going on there?

01:24:20.470 --> 01:24:22.630
Yeah the opioid one is the tough one for us.

01:24:22.790 --> 01:24:23.670
I agree with that.

01:24:23.910 --> 01:24:29.840
Um and uh I don't have a great I don't have a great story

01:24:29.840 --> 01:24:30.160
here.

01:24:30.480 --> 01:24:36.400
Um a lot of it is that the way you take a lot of those uh ones that are really dangerous

01:24:36.400 --> 01:24:39.440
is you bypass a lot of your toxin detection mechanisms.

01:24:39.520 --> 01:24:40.960
So you inject them.

01:24:41.360 --> 01:24:43.440
Um, for example.

01:24:44.080 --> 01:24:49.280
Um and so, for example, with cocaine, we don't really see folks

01:24:49.280 --> 01:24:52.790
overdosing seriously with cocaine if they snort it.

01:24:53.030 --> 01:24:55.590
But if they inject it, that's when you get the overdoses.

01:24:56.630 --> 01:25:01.750
And also, you know, with, you know, toxicodone and fentanyl, you're taking pills that

01:25:01.830 --> 01:25:05.670
again, you're bypassing a lot of your innate toxin defense mechanisms.

01:25:06.070 --> 01:25:08.310
So I think that's that's part of it.

01:25:08.950 --> 01:25:14.150
If you really had to taste the bitterness of of these things and you were fully engaging

01:25:14.150 --> 01:25:18.180
your your toxin detection mechanisms, they may be less dangerous.

01:25:18.420 --> 01:25:18.740
Interesting.

01:25:19.460 --> 01:25:21.060
And they do destroy people's lives.

01:25:21.220 --> 01:25:22.020
Alcohol does too.

01:25:22.100 --> 01:25:26.020
Alcohol is another little bit of a tough case for us because it's not a plant toxin, for

01:25:26.020 --> 01:25:26.660
example.

01:25:27.300 --> 01:25:32.100
But it is a toxin and it is an antibacterial, powerful

01:25:32.180 --> 01:25:34.260
antibacterial substance.

01:25:36.180 --> 01:25:38.740
So I don't fully know.

01:25:39.140 --> 01:25:44.030
And you know, not everybody gets addicted to opioids.

01:25:44.830 --> 01:25:50.190
So could there be something about the environment, either the social environment, or

01:25:50.750 --> 01:25:54.030
you know, could there be some I've I've looked for patterns.

01:25:54.190 --> 01:26:00.030
For example, we have IgE measures from around the country, which is a biomarker of uh

01:26:00.030 --> 01:26:04.990
worm infections, uh, to see if those kind of correlate with drug use patterns around.

01:26:05.070 --> 01:26:07.870
I haven't really found anything too convincing.

01:26:08.110 --> 01:26:10.060
Um allergens.

01:26:10.940 --> 01:26:14.620
You know, you David was saying he didn't think he was infected with parasites, but actually

01:26:14.700 --> 01:26:15.020
you are.

01:26:15.180 --> 01:26:19.260
We all have these little mites that are in uh inhabiting our hair follicles.

01:26:19.660 --> 01:26:22.460
Um and those can actually stimulate immune responses.

01:26:22.620 --> 01:26:25.180
So we do have a lot of these ectoparasites on us.

01:26:25.340 --> 01:26:30.540
Um and so um, and in some folks you get these really severe

01:26:30.570 --> 01:26:32.890
outbreaks from them.

01:26:33.050 --> 01:26:34.570
Most of us tolerate them pretty well.

01:26:34.730 --> 01:26:37.770
So, could there be some immune system thing going on?

01:26:37.930 --> 01:26:43.130
And that there's a quite a bit of evidence that, and there's actually animal models of

01:26:43.130 --> 01:26:48.570
this, that stimulating the immune system does increase drug intake in laboratory animals.

01:26:48.810 --> 01:26:54.250
Um, and in correlation studies in humans, um, immune activation seems to be associated with

01:26:54.250 --> 01:26:55.370
opioid use.

01:26:56.330 --> 01:27:01.980
So, it could be some kind of immune uh variation that might explain some of the

01:27:01.980 --> 01:27:04.460
variation in susceptibility to opioid.

01:27:04.540 --> 01:27:09.900
You see, maybe you are self-medicating, uh, but because your immune system is activated in

01:27:09.900 --> 01:27:15.100
a way for you, either due to your environment that you're in, um, obviously it's associated

01:27:15.100 --> 01:27:20.220
with poverty, uh, and that's obviously more associated with exposure to pathogens and lack

01:27:20.220 --> 01:27:21.420
of sanitation.

01:27:22.060 --> 01:27:27.790
Um, So this is all hand waving, but this would be some of the some of the paths that would

01:27:27.790 --> 01:27:28.510
follow for that.

01:27:28.910 --> 01:27:32.590
More more research is needed, or as as or as my friend Dan Sneezer would say, more funding

01:27:32.590 --> 01:27:32.990
is needed.

01:27:33.710 --> 01:27:37.630
So it does it does opium that comes from like the poppy plant, right?

01:27:37.870 --> 01:27:38.510
That's right.

01:27:38.830 --> 01:27:44.240
So presumably if people were making tea from the poppy plant, they would be less if your

01:27:44.240 --> 01:27:46.880
model's correct, you might expect them to be less likely to get addicted.

01:27:46.960 --> 01:27:51.680
If they're ingesting the substance through normally ecologically valid ways, their nervous

01:27:51.680 --> 01:27:56.240
system has evolved to titrate, that presumably you would expect this, these kinds of uh

01:27:56.240 --> 01:27:58.000
addictions to be less prevalent.

01:27:58.320 --> 01:27:59.680
Yeah, well, less severe.

01:27:59.840 --> 01:28:04.480
So addiction is a tricky concept, and I really don't like it because it has this thing that

01:28:04.560 --> 01:28:10.450
um you're using a substance um that you know is harmful to you, that you you want to

01:28:10.450 --> 01:28:11.490
stop, but you can't stop it.

01:28:11.570 --> 01:28:16.530
So it involves all this kind of weird intrapsychic conflict where you somehow know the

01:28:16.530 --> 01:28:18.610
harms, whatever that means.

01:28:18.770 --> 01:28:22.690
Uh and you want to stop, whatever that means, but you can't stop, whatever that means.

01:28:22.850 --> 01:28:26.210
So that it's a really fuzzy and I think unhelpful concept.

01:28:26.290 --> 01:28:27.410
But are we addicted to food?

01:28:27.490 --> 01:28:28.610
Are we addicted to oxygen?

01:28:28.690 --> 01:28:30.050
Um, are we addicted to water?

01:28:30.440 --> 01:28:31.720
I'm addicted to oxygen.

01:28:31.800 --> 01:28:31.960
Yeah.

01:28:32.120 --> 01:28:32.360
Yeah.

01:28:32.600 --> 01:28:34.600
I can't stop breathing even though I want to all the time.

01:28:34.920 --> 01:28:35.160
Right, yeah.

01:28:36.120 --> 01:28:40.600
So uh and if I don't want to stop using heroin, then I'm not addicted to it.

01:28:40.680 --> 01:28:43.320
You know, you have to want to stop using it.

01:28:43.720 --> 01:28:49.080
Um and you know, when we think about coffee addiction, um, nobody really worries about it.

01:28:49.240 --> 01:28:51.480
And we don't even really call it that except as a joke.

01:28:51.560 --> 01:28:56.070
Um, but really why so kind of habitual use

01:28:57.270 --> 01:29:02.310
is one thing, and then use to the point that it destroys your life is another thing.

01:29:03.030 --> 01:29:07.030
And I think habitual use, I think is perfectly consistent with our model.

01:29:07.110 --> 01:29:09.670
We habitually use stuff that's beneficial to us.

01:29:09.830 --> 01:29:13.350
And so if it's a prophylactic, uh, we need to habitually use it.

01:29:13.430 --> 01:29:16.390
We need to use it uh all the time.

01:29:16.470 --> 01:29:21.030
You know, are we habitually addicted to pepper uh and spices?

01:29:21.190 --> 01:29:23.270
Um no, we we want them, we like them.

01:29:23.440 --> 01:29:23.600
Yeah.

01:29:24.080 --> 01:29:29.520
So it's more of the life destroying aspects of what you think that um that's the more

01:29:29.520 --> 01:29:30.320
challenging part.

01:29:30.480 --> 01:29:33.040
Why would you be using them to that, to that level?

01:29:33.200 --> 01:29:37.600
And and maybe as you say, if if they weren't bypassing a lot of our toxin defense

01:29:37.600 --> 01:29:42.240
mechanisms, um and that's that's kind of ideas that Randy Nessie has floated and then other

01:29:42.240 --> 01:29:43.920
people have floated too but that's fascinating.

01:29:44.080 --> 01:29:47.440
So presumably if you're I mean again, we don't know if you're right, but if you are right,

01:29:47.520 --> 01:29:49.810
it could have very important implications.

01:29:49.970 --> 01:29:54.050
It could suggest that the best way to prescribe people opiates and painkillers is not by

01:29:54.050 --> 01:29:58.130
giving them pills that they could potentially destroy their lives with, but by giving them

01:29:58.130 --> 01:30:03.490
teas or whatever kinds of, you know, ancestrally ecologically valid ways of consuming these

01:30:03.490 --> 01:30:08.050
substances that would prevent them from destroying their their lives with these substances.

01:30:08.370 --> 01:30:10.050
Yeah, or a mimic that did that.

01:30:10.210 --> 01:30:14.770
Because a lot of the challenge with drug design is that your body, we are so well defended

01:30:14.770 --> 01:30:19.300
against plant toxins that it's often hard to get the drug to the target tissue.

01:30:19.460 --> 01:30:23.380
In fact, that's why it's almost impossible to train brain infections and brain cancer,

01:30:23.540 --> 01:30:26.020
because we can't get drugs across the blood brain barrier.

01:30:26.820 --> 01:30:32.820
And so a huge amount of engineering in in pharmacology is exactly how

01:30:32.820 --> 01:30:35.940
do we bypass uh toxin defense mechanisms.

01:30:36.100 --> 01:30:39.060
We need them to not trigger, you shouldn't, we don't want you to vomit.

01:30:39.380 --> 01:30:41.620
We don't want your body to metabolize this.

01:30:42.500 --> 01:30:44.270
We need it to get to the target tissue.

01:30:44.350 --> 01:30:49.390
Often we disguise it as one thing, and then we count on your metabolic enzymes to convert

01:30:49.390 --> 01:30:52.110
it into the active product later.

01:30:53.710 --> 01:30:57.310
And that's actually what's happening with morphine and heroin.

01:30:58.430 --> 01:31:04.430
And so if we were to begin to think about designing these things, we would want, you

01:31:04.430 --> 01:31:10.100
know, we have the there's these trade-offs of getting getting the drug to the target

01:31:10.100 --> 01:31:15.860
tissue to do its job, but then also um not you know either

01:31:15.860 --> 01:31:21.060
triggering or not triggering toxin defense mechanisms to get the ideal outcome.

01:31:21.220 --> 01:31:25.860
So it it would be a tricky problem, but I could imagine putting in other bitter substances

01:31:26.020 --> 01:31:26.660
maybe.

01:31:26.930 --> 01:31:32.770
Um and I I don't know what the case with opioids and all these different opioids um in uh

01:31:32.930 --> 01:31:38.690
uh washing down your uh your your opium your opiate pill with some horseradish or something

01:31:38.690 --> 01:31:38.930
like that.

01:31:39.170 --> 01:31:41.010
Something, yeah, with some wasabi or something.

01:31:41.170 --> 01:31:45.090
Uh for me that would be I I find wasabi kind of addicting myself.

01:31:45.170 --> 01:31:46.370
But yeah, I like it too.

01:31:46.610 --> 01:31:46.770
Yeah.

01:31:46.940 --> 01:31:50.540
Um, can you talk a little bit about the cigarette thing and the Yeah?

01:31:50.700 --> 01:31:56.380
So tobacco is, you know, this hugely it is very deadly, but it's deadly in the long term.

01:31:56.460 --> 01:32:01.340
It has these, it's not the nicotine that kills you uh with smoking, it's all the other

01:32:01.340 --> 01:32:06.540
stuff um that gives you cancer much later in life or um heart

01:32:06.540 --> 01:32:07.420
disease.

01:32:08.670 --> 01:32:14.670
And so in high-income countries like ours that have a history

01:32:14.670 --> 01:32:19.470
of high prevalence of tobacco use, about one in five deaths are due to tobacco.

01:32:19.710 --> 01:32:21.550
Worldwide, it's about one in ten.

01:32:22.830 --> 01:32:28.750
And so it's this enormously costly drug that uh whose

01:32:28.750 --> 01:32:31.150
costs occur late in life.

01:32:31.390 --> 01:32:36.540
Um, But it's exactly one of these drugs that we've been talking about to plant neurotoxin.

01:32:36.620 --> 01:32:37.740
It's very deadly.

01:32:38.300 --> 01:32:40.220
We're very good at titrating it.

01:32:42.460 --> 01:32:47.900
And there's been a huge debate in public health about vaping,

01:32:48.220 --> 01:32:53.820
because vaping delivers the nicotine without all of those other harmful, or without most of

01:32:53.820 --> 01:32:59.020
the other harmful substances, or at least stuff that's a lot less harmful than the highly

01:32:59.020 --> 01:33:03.030
reactive compounds when you burn tobacco leaves.

01:33:04.150 --> 01:33:06.870
And so on the one hand, you might say this is perfect.

01:33:07.270 --> 01:33:13.110
And as a smoking cessation device, it is very good that folks find it a lot

01:33:13.110 --> 01:33:16.790
easier to stop smoking by transitioning to vaping.

01:33:17.110 --> 01:33:20.870
And that's often more effective, is my understanding of the literature, than things like

01:33:20.870 --> 01:33:23.830
nicotine patches and nicotine gum.

01:33:25.600 --> 01:33:27.680
And that's an interesting question why that is.

01:33:28.880 --> 01:33:34.880
And so, but the worry that public health folks have is that it's kind of a gateway drug to

01:33:34.880 --> 01:33:35.760
actually smoking.

01:33:36.160 --> 01:33:39.760
And so there's been this huge debate over the last 10 years with the rise of vaping.

01:33:39.920 --> 01:33:43.200
Should we encourage it because it's way safer than smoking?

01:33:43.440 --> 01:33:48.320
Or should we continue to discourage it because it's really going to just be a gateway drug

01:33:48.480 --> 01:33:50.400
to regular actual smoking?

01:33:50.880 --> 01:33:55.710
And I don't know if the evidence, I it's hard to kind of separate out there the two camps,

01:33:55.790 --> 01:33:57.950
you know, and they're they're kind of fighting each other.

01:33:58.030 --> 01:34:00.990
It's kind of like you know the debate over COVID and all this stuff.

01:34:01.150 --> 01:34:05.870
Um it's gotten to the point where it's it's hard to know what the where the real truth is

01:34:05.950 --> 01:34:08.350
and what the best policy would be.

01:34:08.670 --> 01:34:14.560
But I my bias is that eventually we're going to need something kind of

01:34:14.560 --> 01:34:15.120
like a drug sub.

01:34:15.440 --> 01:34:17.280
We we love drugs so much.

01:34:17.760 --> 01:34:21.600
Um, and I think you know, the rise of Starbucks and coffee is great because that one is

01:34:21.600 --> 01:34:26.000
really safe and it satisfies our kind of desire for plant toxins.

01:34:26.160 --> 01:34:32.000
But we'll probably need a lot more of these that kind of satisfy our taste for plant

01:34:32.000 --> 01:34:38.000
toxins, but don't come with all these tremendously harmful side effects like cancer and

01:34:38.000 --> 01:34:40.960
heart disease or ruining your life with opioids.

01:34:41.440 --> 01:34:47.350
Um and vaping was kind of the baby steps in that direction, but

01:34:47.350 --> 01:34:51.190
one that's been very controversial and you know, understandably so.

01:34:51.590 --> 01:34:52.150
Interesting.

01:34:52.390 --> 01:34:57.830
Yeah, I mean, it sounds like the almost everybody we've had on, in some way or another,

01:34:57.990 --> 01:35:01.990
it's the argument that things are you can have insights from an evolutionary perspective

01:35:01.990 --> 01:35:07.190
that you would never get, but it also highlights that if you have a cartoonishly oversimple

01:35:07.190 --> 01:35:09.270
view of the world, you're gonna be wrong.

01:35:09.430 --> 01:35:14.360
And so the idea that like immune function or parasite load has anything to do with drug

01:35:14.360 --> 01:35:14.680
abuse.

01:35:14.760 --> 01:35:18.760
And it's not just shame on you for being immoral for taking drugs.

01:35:18.920 --> 01:35:24.760
Like that, you know, it it it challenges just this really cartoonish view of the world

01:35:24.840 --> 01:35:27.560
where it's just you take drugs because you're a bad person, right?

01:35:27.960 --> 01:35:33.240
Or a weak person, or because it's hijacked your reward system.

01:35:33.720 --> 01:35:39.400
Um, and you know, just pop culture, you know, dopamine hit, we hear, you know, constantly.

01:35:39.480 --> 01:35:43.910
Um and it's really kind of getting the whole thing backwards, you know, that these

01:35:43.910 --> 01:35:46.150
neurotransmitters are how your body works.

01:35:46.390 --> 01:35:51.270
And the buzz and the high is not from neurotransmitters, it's from compounds that evolve to

01:35:51.270 --> 01:35:55.910
interfere with with cellular signaling.

01:35:56.310 --> 01:35:57.510
Hit is right, but they mean it.

01:35:58.470 --> 01:36:00.870
They're saying the right word, but it's the wrong intention.

01:36:00.950 --> 01:36:01.270
Yeah.

01:36:01.590 --> 01:36:01.830
Yeah.

01:36:01.990 --> 01:36:04.790
There it's it's we're not getting hits from dopamine.

01:36:04.950 --> 01:36:07.750
We're getting from hits from compounds that evolve to interfere with dopamine.

01:36:08.150 --> 01:36:08.550
Exactly.

01:36:08.630 --> 01:36:08.950
Yeah.

01:36:09.110 --> 01:36:10.440
So it's exactly the opposite.

01:36:10.520 --> 01:36:10.680
Yeah.

01:36:10.760 --> 01:36:13.000
So exactly.

01:36:13.240 --> 01:36:18.680
Um the uh I mean David, I'll you know, feel free to jump in.

01:36:18.760 --> 01:36:21.560
I just wanted to because I just want to cover a little more ground.

01:36:21.800 --> 01:36:27.720
Um knowledge specialization and sort of um we've had some folks on talking about

01:36:27.720 --> 01:36:31.960
leadership and also like female leadership has been something we've kind of been going

01:36:31.960 --> 01:36:32.360
around.

01:36:32.600 --> 01:36:36.970
Can you talk a little bit about you know, we you and I, we both had leadership papers come

01:36:36.970 --> 01:36:38.330
out roughly around the same time.

01:36:38.570 --> 01:36:41.850
Yours was an enormous, again, encyclopedic um thing.

01:36:42.090 --> 01:36:46.890
Can you talk a little bit about what you're thinking about from kind of new ideas about um

01:36:46.890 --> 01:36:49.290
leadership and and family leadership?

01:36:49.450 --> 01:36:51.210
I I I know you've been thinking about that a little bit.

01:36:51.450 --> 01:36:51.690
Yeah.

01:36:52.010 --> 01:36:52.250
Yeah.

01:36:52.330 --> 01:36:57.930
So Zach Garfield um gives credit for the encyclopedic uh treatment of

01:36:57.930 --> 01:36:58.650
leadership there.

01:36:58.730 --> 01:37:01.450
He's the one that did all the work there.

01:37:01.690 --> 01:37:03.540
Well, is that Oh, I said great.

01:37:03.620 --> 01:37:08.500
And actually we've been having try we're getting trying to get Zach on um with field site

01:37:08.580 --> 01:37:09.940
uh scheduling things.

01:37:10.020 --> 01:37:11.380
But yeah, that's great good to know.

01:37:11.460 --> 01:37:14.740
So yeah, yeah, he he gets credit for for that.

01:37:14.980 --> 01:37:20.580
Um so this was uh this kind of actually goes back to Shagnon.

01:37:20.980 --> 01:37:26.420
Um right around the time I was getting my PhD, 2000, a book came out

01:37:26.740 --> 01:37:32.410
that um accused Shagnon and his early collaborator, James Neal,

01:37:32.650 --> 01:37:38.650
who's a geneticist of deliberately triggering an epidemic in the Onomamo

01:37:39.050 --> 01:37:41.050
using a dangerous measles vaccine.

01:37:41.690 --> 01:37:46.490
I was an anthra minor when this was happening and I was learning about it real time.

01:37:46.650 --> 01:37:52.280
I think the first John Tubi thing I ever read was John's um basically just like

01:37:52.520 --> 01:37:55.800
post online about sort of what he found out about this.

01:37:55.960 --> 01:37:57.880
So yeah, this was a real thing when it was happening.

01:37:58.040 --> 01:37:59.160
This darkness in El Dorado.

01:37:59.720 --> 01:38:02.760
Yeah, this is called The Darkness in El Dorado is the name of the book.

01:38:02.920 --> 01:38:08.680
Um and uh we got early notification of this um

01:38:10.200 --> 01:38:15.880
coming out, and so John and Michael Price and myself

01:38:15.880 --> 01:38:21.590
started looking into what the heck was actually going on, And it turned out

01:38:21.590 --> 01:38:23.670
just to be completely made up.

01:38:23.830 --> 01:38:25.270
Basically, it was a vaccine scare.

01:38:25.350 --> 01:38:27.990
So the same kind of anti-vaxx stuff we're seeing today.

01:38:28.310 --> 01:38:33.670
Probably some evolved psychology about vaccines are you got to get stuck with a needle.

01:38:33.750 --> 01:38:35.750
Somebody's injecting some weird thing into you.

01:38:35.830 --> 01:38:37.350
And so people are kind of hesitant.

01:38:37.430 --> 01:38:41.990
So there's we probably have some reason to that, you know, it's probably pretty easy to

01:38:41.990 --> 01:38:44.660
trigger fears of vaccines.

01:38:45.140 --> 01:38:49.860
And so that's what this book was kind of at its core was another yet another vaccine kind

01:38:49.860 --> 01:38:52.420
of scare that there was this dangerous vaccine.

01:38:52.500 --> 01:38:55.460
But you know, vaccines cannot cause epidemics.

01:38:55.620 --> 01:38:57.540
Uh they prevent epidemics.

01:38:57.620 --> 01:39:02.180
Um, and the evidence for that was overwhelming with this measles vaccine and that it was

01:39:02.180 --> 01:39:04.660
used properly in all the right context, blah, blah, blah.

01:39:05.110 --> 01:39:10.310
So now Shagnon was sort of Sam the Neil and Shagnon were basically inoculating them against

01:39:10.470 --> 01:39:15.670
measles, but there was this book that was basically, for various reasons, which maybe are

01:39:15.670 --> 01:39:21.590
not worth going into, uh falsely accused them of creating a problem.

01:39:22.310 --> 01:39:26.630
Yeah, this is kind of the you know the controversies over evolutionary approaches to human

01:39:26.630 --> 01:39:26.950
behavior.

01:39:27.030 --> 01:39:29.910
And of course, Shagnon was one of the pioneers in that.

01:39:30.070 --> 01:39:35.800
And so to tarnish uh the field of evolution and human behavior.

01:39:36.040 --> 01:39:38.680
Um, that was kind of one of the underlying motives of this book.

01:39:38.840 --> 01:39:40.280
There were several underlying motives.

01:39:40.360 --> 01:39:40.920
That was one.

01:39:42.200 --> 01:39:48.200
Basically accusing of Shagnon and Neil of this unethical research to

01:39:48.200 --> 01:39:52.200
test some evolutionary theory of leadership in the onamo.

01:39:53.670 --> 01:39:58.310
And so that was the idea that Neil uh thought there was a leadership gene.

01:39:58.470 --> 01:39:59.430
He didn't.

01:40:00.950 --> 01:40:06.710
And that he concocted a plan to trigger a

01:40:06.950 --> 01:40:12.710
measles epidemic to test his nefarious theory of leadership in the Onomammo.

01:40:14.340 --> 01:40:18.820
and uh his sidekick Shagnon, you know, helped him carry out this plan.

01:40:19.060 --> 01:40:21.380
So that was the the kind of the story of the book.

01:40:21.540 --> 01:40:27.060
Yeah cartoon uh and you know, published by Norton, this you know, well-respected

01:40:27.060 --> 01:40:31.380
academic publisher, published in the New Yorker with fact checking, blah, blah, blah.

01:40:31.540 --> 01:40:33.940
Turned out to all be completely made up.

01:40:34.180 --> 01:40:35.860
Uh, but it did get me curious.

01:40:35.940 --> 01:40:38.180
So this is how it leads into the leadership question.

01:40:38.420 --> 01:40:43.670
So um I was doing all the, I was kind of John's research guy behind the scenes, me and

01:40:43.670 --> 01:40:47.110
Michael Price doing a lot of the all the getting all the papers and reading them.

01:40:47.190 --> 01:40:49.190
And so I was reading the two grad students, right?

01:40:49.510 --> 01:40:51.670
The two grad students doing all the work here.

01:40:51.750 --> 01:40:53.350
Um and John was doing a lot too.

01:40:53.430 --> 01:40:54.710
Um I'm sure, yeah.

01:40:55.510 --> 01:40:56.870
But trying to figure out what was going on.

01:40:57.030 --> 01:41:00.390
So I was reading Neil's papers, and you know, what did he say about leadership?

01:41:00.470 --> 01:41:01.670
And what the what the heck?

01:41:02.550 --> 01:41:03.430
Leadership gene.

01:41:03.510 --> 01:41:04.710
You know, he's a geneticist.

01:41:04.790 --> 01:41:06.790
Is that really what he was thinking?

01:41:07.270 --> 01:41:12.160
And um, no, Neil had this really key insight back in the

01:41:12.160 --> 01:41:16.480
1950s and early 60s, before anyone really.

01:41:16.560 --> 01:41:20.880
And he's really his work has been forgotten, sadly, in my view.

01:41:21.120 --> 01:41:26.400
But he, like many, many others, realized that if we really want to understand human

01:41:26.400 --> 01:41:31.600
evolution, we have to really understand what's going on in these kind of small-scale, more

01:41:31.600 --> 01:41:32.640
traditional societies.

01:41:32.720 --> 01:41:38.640
So he started working in Amazonian groups, the Anomama with one and

01:41:39.280 --> 01:41:43.970
the Chevante, another, and really trying to understand, you know, what's going on and being

01:41:43.970 --> 01:41:47.170
a geneticist, he was really focused on survival and reproduction.

01:41:47.250 --> 01:41:51.650
So he was you know putting together all these demographic tables and kinship charts and

01:41:51.650 --> 01:41:56.050
who's reproducing and who's not, what are you know, um, what are the mortality rates, just

01:41:56.050 --> 01:41:57.890
all the real basic stuff.

01:41:58.130 --> 01:42:03.810
And what he discovered um was that uh the headman in these

01:42:03.810 --> 01:42:08.130
communities were having way more kids, like way more than everybody else, uh, than all the

01:42:08.130 --> 01:42:08.770
other men.

01:42:09.180 --> 01:42:14.220
And um, and so he really began to think through what are the implications for human if

01:42:14.220 --> 01:42:19.180
this, and you know, he was careful scientist, but if this pattern characterized human

01:42:19.180 --> 01:42:24.460
evolution, these kinds of societies that there's this real reproductive skew that it's the

01:42:24.460 --> 01:42:29.820
headmen that um are having uh most of the kids.

01:42:30.570 --> 01:42:36.410
um among the men what are the implications for human evolution

01:42:36.650 --> 01:42:41.690
and um of course many many folks have looked at status and you know that this would select

01:42:41.690 --> 01:42:47.290
for status striving um and the desire to you know achieve status and that was not

01:42:47.290 --> 01:42:51.680
neil's uh approach he was like what traits would be under selected?

01:42:51.840 --> 01:42:55.280
What traits allow these men to rise into leadership positions?

01:42:55.440 --> 01:42:58.560
And his answer was intelligence.

01:42:58.720 --> 01:43:03.760
Um, that they are, they're not the most aggressive guys or the strongest guys or the most

01:43:03.760 --> 01:43:04.560
violent guys.

01:43:04.640 --> 01:43:06.080
Um, they're good at pretty much everything.

01:43:06.160 --> 01:43:08.000
They're kind of jack-of-all trades.

01:43:08.160 --> 01:43:11.040
Um, they are good warriors, they are good hunters.

01:43:11.120 --> 01:43:14.710
They're not necessarily the best warrior, they're not necessarily the best hunter, They are

01:43:14.710 --> 01:43:20.550
good at tribal lore and knowledge, um, and all the things that leaders are good at.

01:43:20.710 --> 01:43:22.550
And he said that takes smarts.

01:43:22.710 --> 01:43:26.550
Um, and he said, You know, I'm not talking about IQ here, but I'm talking about some more

01:43:26.550 --> 01:43:31.110
general um notion of ability, these general is it just the ability to pick things up

01:43:31.110 --> 01:43:33.190
quickly, just like to learn skills?

01:43:33.830 --> 01:43:35.670
Well, he didn't go into his idea too much.

01:43:35.750 --> 01:43:39.270
I mean, he was really a geneticist and much more focused on genetics, so this was a little

01:43:39.270 --> 01:43:40.630
bit of a hobby side thing for him.

01:43:40.710 --> 01:43:42.630
He only wrote a few things on it.

01:43:42.870 --> 01:43:48.400
Um, and he left a lot of details out, like what okay, so these guys are maybe

01:43:48.400 --> 01:43:50.160
smarter than average.

01:43:50.320 --> 01:43:55.120
Um, and he had these kind of Monte Carlo models actually, uh, where he kind of shows that

01:43:55.120 --> 01:43:59.840
it wouldn't take too much given the the patterns that he's seeing, and given you know, a

01:44:00.080 --> 01:44:06.080
bell curve of the heritability of some sort of innate ability, uh, you'd get

01:44:06.080 --> 01:44:08.080
selection pretty quickly for it.

01:44:08.240 --> 01:44:13.410
But he really didn't go into okay, these guys might be, you know, on the smart end of the

01:44:13.410 --> 01:44:18.930
scale, but um, why how does that allow them to rise into the leadership position?

01:44:19.010 --> 01:44:21.570
He and he admitted, he said, I'm not really sure what it is.

01:44:21.730 --> 01:44:24.370
He said, You know, he observed these guys, what they did.

01:44:24.450 --> 01:44:28.370
And he said, You know, I can really see that they're respected by everybody and they're

01:44:28.370 --> 01:44:30.050
respected for their talents.

01:44:30.210 --> 01:44:34.980
Um And I thought, you know, and I remember talking about this with John, and we were both

01:44:34.980 --> 01:44:37.620
like, wow, that's actually a really good idea.

01:44:37.780 --> 01:44:41.940
Um and Neil was viewing this as one of the driving forces in encephalization.

01:44:42.020 --> 01:44:45.620
So you know how Encephalization meaning brains getting bigger over evolution time.

01:44:45.940 --> 01:44:47.460
Brains getting bigger over evolutionary time.

01:44:47.540 --> 01:44:52.740
You know, how do we go from a chimp sized brain of 400 milliliters to a human sized brain

01:44:52.740 --> 01:44:55.830
of, you 12 to 1400 milliliters.

01:44:56.230 --> 01:45:00.470
And so he said, could this be one of the keys to that puzzle?

01:45:01.110 --> 01:45:02.950
This reproductive skew and headman.

01:45:03.110 --> 01:45:07.510
So I've always kind of I tucked that in my back pocket as an idea to pursue later and begin

01:45:07.510 --> 01:45:11.670
to work out, you know, fill in some of the gaps that Neil didn't fill in.

01:45:11.750 --> 01:45:14.230
Like, how do these guys rise into this position?

01:45:14.390 --> 01:45:19.910
And so when I took on Zach as a Zach Garfield as a student, I said,

01:45:20.150 --> 01:45:25.040
Hey, um, you've been working on status with Ray Haynes as an undergrad.

01:45:25.120 --> 01:45:28.880
And I've been always wanting to kind of look at leadership more broadly.

01:45:29.040 --> 01:45:29.840
Is Neil right?

01:45:30.080 --> 01:45:31.600
Is there this reproductive skew?

01:45:31.840 --> 01:45:34.560
Um are these guys viewed as smart and intelligent?

01:45:34.720 --> 01:45:39.440
Um is that you really a universal feature of leadership in Hunter Gather and other small

01:45:39.520 --> 01:45:40.080
scale society?

01:45:40.240 --> 01:45:45.130
So I said, if you're interested, we can really dig into that and see if Neil was on to

01:45:45.130 --> 01:45:45.930
something here.

01:45:46.170 --> 01:45:51.770
And what we found is that yes, uh, leaders are nearly universally viewed, not all

01:45:51.770 --> 01:45:57.690
leaders, but just in general, every culture values intelligent, knowledgeable leaders.

01:45:57.850 --> 01:46:03.610
That is a very highly valued trait that is possessed by uh leaders in most um small-scale

01:46:03.610 --> 01:46:04.570
societies.

01:46:04.890 --> 01:46:10.090
Um, there's clear evidence of that they are more reproductively successful than other men.

01:46:12.240 --> 01:46:16.640
And so that really gave us the empirical foundation that yes, Neil's onto something here,

01:46:16.720 --> 01:46:21.040
and we should start to think about the importance of knowledge to other people and the

01:46:21.040 --> 01:46:26.480
importance of some of these skills to other people that would allow these guys to rise.

01:46:26.640 --> 01:46:30.960
And what are the cognitive challenges of leadership that these guys might be better at

01:46:30.960 --> 01:46:34.170
solving than, you know, and just a little bit better.

01:46:34.330 --> 01:46:35.290
Doesn't have to be a lot.

01:46:35.450 --> 01:46:37.770
Uh, just that little bit of genetic variation.

01:46:38.090 --> 01:46:44.010
Um and um, so that's that's kind of where we're coming in is is trying to figure out

01:46:44.010 --> 01:46:47.930
what what are the cognitive demands of leadership that would be valuable to both.

01:46:48.170 --> 01:46:49.610
And that's the interesting thing of leadership.

01:46:49.690 --> 01:46:54.330
They're not a lot of folks have focused on how leaders are valuable to other men or how

01:46:54.330 --> 01:46:55.370
they're valuable to women.

01:46:55.530 --> 01:47:00.090
We're like they they're valuable to both, you know, both sexes are seeing value in what

01:47:00.090 --> 01:47:01.610
these guys are offering.

01:47:01.840 --> 01:47:05.280
And so what kinds of things would be valuable to both sexes?

01:47:05.520 --> 01:47:09.040
Um, and so that's where the family issue comes in.

01:47:09.120 --> 01:47:15.120
That we kind of realize that human societies are uh multi-level societies that we kind

01:47:15.120 --> 01:47:19.200
of have the family level that is nested kind of within the more community or residence

01:47:19.200 --> 01:47:25.170
level that's nested in with a more broader political level, but that

01:47:25.170 --> 01:47:27.970
the challenges, there's kind of similar challenges at each level.

01:47:28.130 --> 01:47:32.930
And so the kinds of traits that would make you a good leader would also make you a good

01:47:32.930 --> 01:47:33.330
husband.

01:47:33.410 --> 01:47:36.450
That you're gonna and some of those things are gonna be conflict resolution.

01:47:36.530 --> 01:47:39.090
We conflict was kind of a theme earlier in our talk here.

01:47:39.410 --> 01:47:45.010
Uh, that what leaders are doing across cultures is solving conflicts to

01:47:45.010 --> 01:47:47.010
prevent group visioning.

01:47:47.410 --> 01:47:53.060
Um and that's tough because you have to know just about everything about everybody to

01:47:53.060 --> 01:47:58.340
understand what those conflicts are and be able to search a pretty broad space of solutions

01:47:58.340 --> 01:48:03.940
pretty quickly to figure out where you might be able to square the circle here

01:48:04.260 --> 01:48:06.900
and find a solution that everybody can rely on.

01:48:07.060 --> 01:48:08.420
And that's the style of leadership.

01:48:08.580 --> 01:48:11.940
This is not a top-down style leadership, what we see in small-scale societies.

01:48:12.020 --> 01:48:15.060
It's not hereditary, it's not a formal position.

01:48:15.300 --> 01:48:18.830
These are just guys who uh people listen to when they speak.

01:48:18.990 --> 01:48:22.030
And they're listened to because they have valuable things to say.

01:48:22.190 --> 01:48:26.990
They know something or they have some idea, something valuable to offer consistently over a

01:48:26.990 --> 01:48:27.950
lifetime.

01:48:29.150 --> 01:48:34.990
And so it's it's those are the aspects that we're kind of exploring to how these guys

01:48:34.990 --> 01:48:40.910
actually, you know, what cognitive uh capabilities they have that might, you know, be

01:48:40.910 --> 01:48:46.780
part of our now, today, our common humanity that we all have by virtue of

01:48:46.780 --> 01:48:51.740
the fact that these things have been under constant selection throughout human evolution.

01:48:52.060 --> 01:48:52.300
Yeah.

01:48:52.380 --> 01:48:58.140
So it's kind of like the idea that there's an entry for variation in a certain set of

01:48:58.140 --> 01:48:59.260
abilities.

01:48:59.740 --> 01:49:05.180
And I like that you're unpacking that we don't just sort of like treat

01:49:05.370 --> 01:49:10.570
intelligence quote unquote as just obvious or intrinsic, but then it's saying, well, what

01:49:10.730 --> 01:49:16.730
what would be a important thing for organisms or other people to sort of want in

01:49:17.370 --> 01:49:18.250
somebody else?

01:49:18.330 --> 01:49:18.490
Right.

01:49:18.650 --> 01:49:23.530
And so things like coordination or having knowledge to sort of see a possibility space of

01:49:23.530 --> 01:49:26.010
for what to do or how to resolve a conflict.

01:49:26.090 --> 01:49:28.410
Um that kind of gives that teeth.

01:49:28.570 --> 01:49:30.490
Um yeah I like that.

01:49:31.120 --> 01:49:31.360
Right.

01:49:31.600 --> 01:49:36.800
And we're we kind of the way we're talk about this is a computational services that

01:49:37.440 --> 01:49:43.360
we humans um are valuable to others many times because we offer valuable

01:49:43.360 --> 01:49:45.440
comp uh computational services to others.

01:49:45.520 --> 01:49:49.280
Sometimes it's information, sometimes it's decisions, solutions.

01:49:49.600 --> 01:49:53.440
Um sometimes uh this comes in with the self medication aspect.

01:49:53.600 --> 01:49:59.010
The the sort of triad there is that we have kind of spices and drugs, but we also have

01:49:59.010 --> 01:50:03.330
traditional medicine that shamans are key figures in small-scale societies.

01:50:03.410 --> 01:50:08.210
And one of the main things they do is offer traditional plant-based medicines that are,

01:50:08.290 --> 01:50:14.130
again, special plant toxins that are effective at treating certain kinds of illnesses.

01:50:14.930 --> 01:50:20.770
And that's a very cognitively demanding task to figure out which of these various

01:50:20.770 --> 01:50:22.930
combinations of these various plant substances.

01:50:23.090 --> 01:50:28.460
You know, you have a symptom profile that you have to figure out what that symptom profile

01:50:28.460 --> 01:50:29.020
indicates?

01:50:29.100 --> 01:50:32.780
Um, and then how do I match it to some combination of plant toxins?

01:50:32.860 --> 01:50:37.820
There's a lot of computation going on there to solve those kinds of problems.

01:50:37.980 --> 01:50:41.660
So that would be another example of a computational service in addition to these more

01:50:41.660 --> 01:50:45.900
leadership-oriented ones that we think might have been really valuable in traditional

01:50:45.900 --> 01:50:46.620
societies.

01:50:46.700 --> 01:50:52.380
Um we're kind of broadly characterizing this as and then when you look at the family level,

01:50:52.460 --> 01:50:53.740
who's doing all of those things?

01:50:53.950 --> 01:50:54.910
It's mothers.

01:50:55.310 --> 01:50:58.110
They're having to treat their kids and they know a lot of traditional medicine.

01:50:58.270 --> 01:51:02.990
They're having to solve conflicts with all their kids, some of whom are adults, some of

01:51:02.990 --> 01:51:03.870
whom are infants.

01:51:04.190 --> 01:51:06.990
There's this daily conflicts that moms are having to solve.

01:51:07.070 --> 01:51:12.190
So we actually think a lot of the selection wasn't in these male leaders, but in moms

01:51:12.190 --> 01:51:16.350
leading their families and doing exactly the same thing that the headman is doing at the

01:51:16.350 --> 01:51:18.860
community level, moms are doing at the family level.

01:51:18.940 --> 01:51:22.380
So the selection on the cognitive abilities might initially have been in females.

01:51:22.620 --> 01:51:23.500
Yeah, it's really interesting.

01:51:23.580 --> 01:51:27.020
I mean being a parent and you know we're all parents and David and I are really on the

01:51:27.020 --> 01:51:31.500
thick of it right now is like the control system is like a division of labor.

01:51:31.580 --> 01:51:34.620
I mean my my son's gonna be getting a bit older and I think is a bit older than your

01:51:34.620 --> 01:51:38.670
daughter, David, but you know, you're like your brain is for two, you know.

01:51:39.150 --> 01:51:41.390
You're like you're watching the cars or more.

01:51:41.550 --> 01:51:41.870
You're more.

01:51:42.110 --> 01:51:46.510
And if you're in a traditional society, you have a you have five kids because you have

01:51:46.830 --> 01:51:51.230
humans have this short interbirth interval of about two, two and a half years and this very

01:51:51.230 --> 01:51:52.990
long developmental period.

01:51:53.230 --> 01:51:57.230
Um and so you're not like a chimp mom where it's one kid at a time.

01:51:57.390 --> 01:52:02.190
Um human moms are, you know, one, then two, then three, then four, then five kids, uh, and

01:52:02.190 --> 01:52:03.390
you're dealing with all of them.

01:52:03.550 --> 01:52:03.710
Yeah.

01:52:03.950 --> 01:52:06.590
And they're at different ages, they have different needs.

01:52:06.750 --> 01:52:11.140
Um, you know, some of them are ending the mating market, others are sick, others are

01:52:11.140 --> 01:52:13.620
fighting with the you know the kids next door.

01:52:13.860 --> 01:52:19.540
Um, and so you're you know, it's just a massive problem that you're trying to solve on a

01:52:19.540 --> 01:52:20.980
literally a minute by minute basis.

01:52:21.460 --> 01:52:26.180
I I can't say, like, I I think, I mean, maybe science approaches it, but I don't think

01:52:26.180 --> 01:52:30.260
there's an thing in my life that I've ever used like every drop of my quote unquote

01:52:30.260 --> 01:52:32.260
intelligence as much as in for parenting.

01:52:32.660 --> 01:52:37.450
Yeah, my my wife, you know, uh teases me that this whole idea she deserves credit for this

01:52:37.450 --> 01:52:41.610
whole thing because me observing her, you know, and also both of us just dealing with

01:52:41.610 --> 01:52:43.370
parenting when when our kids were young.

01:52:43.450 --> 01:52:48.330
It was just constant uh scheduling and negotiating.

01:52:48.650 --> 01:52:53.210
And um just the cognitive demands were that were just really pushed both of us to the the

01:52:53.210 --> 01:52:58.650
edge of what we and then you know, both trying to get our careers going, and um it was uh

01:52:58.890 --> 01:52:59.530
intense.

01:53:00.540 --> 01:53:05.740
Yeah, it definitely resonates with me as a married man with a kid, just all of the

01:53:05.740 --> 01:53:10.940
incredible cognitive labor that my wife manages to pull off with navigating schedules and

01:53:10.940 --> 01:53:14.460
social networks and like it uh it's it's dizzying to me.

01:53:14.780 --> 01:53:18.780
Yeah, you're you're you're you you're figuring out, okay, your kid like I remember even

01:53:18.780 --> 01:53:21.420
myself thinking, like, I am what am I worrying most about now?

01:53:21.740 --> 01:53:26.550
My my you know five year old daughter's social relationship her and her friends in

01:53:26.550 --> 01:53:32.390
kindergarten and who she's having conflicts with and uh you know is her friend dissing her

01:53:32.470 --> 01:53:37.830
or is she getting along and so you're you're having to build a cognitive model of of their

01:53:37.830 --> 01:53:43.030
social worlds and then figure out what you can do and then their parents and what are your

01:53:43.030 --> 01:53:45.590
relationships with their with those kids' parents.

01:53:45.910 --> 01:53:51.510
Um it's it's just uh and in mothers in traditional societies that's just it's

01:53:51.600 --> 01:53:56.640
it's multiplied by by uh the number of kids that they're and plus you know, environmental

01:53:56.640 --> 01:53:59.680
threats are are way more severe and health threats.

01:54:00.080 --> 01:54:04.880
I there we we're gonna have to wrap up soon, but uh parenting brain or like what what

01:54:04.880 --> 01:54:09.520
happens the adaptations for parenting, I think is such an understudied Yeah.

01:54:09.600 --> 01:54:15.520
I totally if there's like a ratio of sort of like what

01:54:15.520 --> 01:54:21.490
there is to the research on it, that's probably maybe one of the biggest sort of like

01:54:21.490 --> 01:54:24.130
elephants of the room in terms of evolutionary psychology.

01:54:24.210 --> 01:54:25.410
Yeah, I agree with that.

01:54:25.730 --> 01:54:26.130
Yeah.

01:54:26.450 --> 01:54:27.010
Absolutely.

01:54:28.210 --> 01:54:33.090
And we often ask people, this has been great, lots of fun things to talk about.

01:54:33.250 --> 01:54:37.570
Um some we often ask people, or always ask people, if there's anything we should have asked

01:54:37.570 --> 01:54:37.810
you.

01:54:38.050 --> 01:54:39.410
Um god.

01:54:41.410 --> 01:54:46.860
Uh no, I think I think we've covered the the big uh I guess.

01:54:47.260 --> 01:54:50.300
I feel like we've barely scratched the surface of 20 stuff I wanted to talk about.

01:54:50.620 --> 01:54:51.660
We gotta have you on again.

01:54:52.060 --> 01:54:53.980
Um we have music and dance.

01:54:54.540 --> 01:54:55.580
Yeah, we have music and dance.

01:54:55.660 --> 01:54:57.020
We haven't talked about that one.

01:54:57.260 --> 01:55:02.860
Um we haven't talked about the challenges and barriers and

01:55:02.860 --> 01:55:06.140
successes of of evolutionary thinking in the social sciences.

01:55:06.860 --> 01:55:07.740
Uh yeah.

01:55:07.980 --> 01:55:13.930
Um yeah, we were just talking to Christina um about about sort of what even are the

01:55:13.930 --> 01:55:15.850
areas within the evolutionary social sciences.

01:55:16.010 --> 01:55:20.010
And we talked a little bit so like Dan Conroy Beam on about sort of how the mating

01:55:20.090 --> 01:55:22.410
literature has been progressing.

01:55:22.570 --> 01:55:26.890
But we haven't, you know, we've there's been ebbs and flows of like how the evolutionary

01:55:26.890 --> 01:55:28.250
behavioral sciences are going.

01:55:28.410 --> 01:55:30.810
But yeah, we haven't there's still a lot more to say about that.

01:55:30.970 --> 01:55:31.290
Yeah.

01:55:31.690 --> 01:55:31.930
Right.

01:55:32.090 --> 01:55:36.170
So that'd be an area I'm trying to think if there's any other um you are incoming human

01:55:36.170 --> 01:55:38.330
behavior and evolution society president too.

01:55:38.490 --> 01:55:38.730
Yeah.

01:55:39.400 --> 01:55:40.040
Yeah.

01:55:40.440 --> 01:55:46.040
Um, and the kind of polarization that we see in the

01:55:46.040 --> 01:55:50.120
nation is reflected in our society as well.

01:55:50.360 --> 01:55:51.720
So that's gonna be fun.

01:55:51.880 --> 01:55:52.200
Yeah.

01:55:52.360 --> 01:55:54.040
Um, that's gonna be fun to navigate.

01:55:54.200 --> 01:55:55.240
Yeah, scientists are people.

01:55:55.480 --> 01:55:57.960
I mean, you're gonna need to do a lot of computational services as well.

01:55:58.040 --> 01:56:01.800
I mean, I'm exactly like uh conflict management there.

01:56:02.040 --> 01:56:05.800
I may uh I may lose my position and may be dethroned very quickly.

01:56:07.290 --> 01:56:09.850
Hopefully it doesn't hurt my reproductive success too much here.

01:56:10.490 --> 01:56:15.050
Um yeah, uh that'll be interesting.

01:56:15.290 --> 01:56:21.050
Um and we do have there's um there's child challenges in science in general right now

01:56:21.210 --> 01:56:24.250
and um the publishing landscape.

01:56:24.330 --> 01:56:29.500
Um there's a lot of challenges there too with our journal EHB and how do we want to go with

01:56:29.500 --> 01:56:31.900
that that we're going to be uh dealing with?

01:56:31.980 --> 01:56:34.540
Um right, which is uh Elsevere, yeah.

01:56:34.860 --> 01:56:40.220
Which is the Elsevier, which of course is pretty controversial with many academics.

01:56:40.300 --> 01:56:42.620
Uh I was shocked.

01:56:42.780 --> 01:56:47.260
I mean, uh uh we can cut this, but I was shocked at like the Elsevier profits or like

01:56:47.260 --> 01:56:48.140
publishing profits.

01:56:48.220 --> 01:56:48.940
It's insane.

01:56:49.260 --> 01:56:51.180
Yeah, there's a paradox there.

01:56:51.420 --> 01:56:57.290
Um that their publishing profits are insane, and yet their publishing fees are

01:56:57.290 --> 01:56:59.690
about the same as nonprofit journals.

01:56:59.930 --> 01:57:05.530
So if you look at the um article publishing costs, they're

01:57:06.090 --> 01:57:07.290
they're all about the same.

01:57:07.370 --> 01:57:07.610
Yeah.

01:57:07.770 --> 01:57:13.210
So how is El Selvier raking in these huge profits, whereas the nonprofits are nonprofits?

01:57:13.290 --> 01:57:13.690
Yes.

01:57:13.850 --> 01:57:15.450
Uh, and they're charging the same thing.

01:57:15.530 --> 01:57:18.570
And I think I don't know the answer, but I think it's economies of scale.

01:57:18.650 --> 01:57:21.500
Like Salvia just has huge numbers of titles.

01:57:21.580 --> 01:57:24.780
Uh well, isn't it the institutional contracts?

01:57:25.980 --> 01:57:27.580
You mean with libraries and stuff?

01:57:27.660 --> 01:57:27.820
Yeah.

01:57:28.060 --> 01:57:28.620
Yeah, yeah.

01:57:28.700 --> 01:57:30.860
So they they say we'll sell you this bundle.

01:57:31.100 --> 01:57:31.820
Yeah, yeah, exactly.

01:57:31.900 --> 01:57:32.380
It's cable.

01:57:32.460 --> 01:57:32.780
Yeah, yeah.

01:57:32.860 --> 01:57:38.860
There's actually there's academic work on this and that they actually keep

01:57:38.860 --> 01:57:41.500
it under they like there's non-disclosure agreements.

01:57:41.740 --> 01:57:47.500
Because I actually I I did a lecture for Intro Psych about um uh like

01:57:47.890 --> 01:57:48.850
issues in the field.

01:57:48.930 --> 01:57:52.210
And actually one of them was like the publishing issues, you know, just for like, you know,

01:57:52.290 --> 01:57:53.890
where are your tax dollars going?

01:57:53.970 --> 01:57:57.250
Um and if people it's not just tax, it's tuition dollars.

01:57:57.490 --> 01:58:00.770
I was just looking at there's all this stuff about overhead right now.

01:58:00.850 --> 01:58:03.890
So I was looking at where is our overhead at WSU going?

01:58:03.970 --> 01:58:09.640
So just the other day I was digging into our budget um and it turned out a lot of it is

01:58:09.640 --> 01:58:12.040
going to the libraries to pay for these journals.

01:58:12.280 --> 01:58:12.600
Exactly.

01:58:12.840 --> 01:58:15.720
So, you know, folks were saying, oh, it's paying for this, it's paying for that.

01:58:15.800 --> 01:58:19.240
Actually, it's it's paying for our journal subscriptions, at least at WSU.

01:58:19.400 --> 01:58:21.000
That's where a lot, that's where a lot of it's going.

01:58:21.160 --> 01:58:22.280
Not not all of it, of course.

01:58:22.680 --> 01:58:23.800
Yeah, we're a little in the weeds.

01:58:23.960 --> 01:58:26.040
Maybe we can have a whole episode on journal publishing.

01:58:26.120 --> 01:58:28.120
So or maybe we're getting into the weeds here.

01:58:28.200 --> 01:58:28.440
Yeah.

01:58:30.790 --> 01:58:31.590
Well, all right.

01:58:33.270 --> 01:58:35.350
Well, this was an awesome conversation.

01:58:35.510 --> 01:58:41.510
I wish we had uh you know a a million hours to to fully explore the landscape of your

01:58:41.510 --> 01:58:46.710
ideas and your work and to just shoot the shit and and you know bounce new ideas off of

01:58:46.710 --> 01:58:46.950
you.

01:58:47.110 --> 01:58:53.030
Um you're you're a truly um uh inspiring role model and capacious mind.

01:58:53.190 --> 01:58:56.470
Um it was a pleasure to have you on, and I look forward to having you back.

01:58:56.630 --> 01:58:57.110
Thank you so much.

01:58:57.430 --> 01:58:57.590
Thank you.

01:58:58.150 --> 01:58:59.750
Yeah, take care, guys.

01:59:03.180 --> 01:59:05.420
So David, we finished up another episode.

01:59:05.500 --> 01:59:07.500
Uh really uh I'm enjoying this.

01:59:07.580 --> 01:59:08.860
How are how are you how are you doing?

01:59:09.100 --> 01:59:09.900
I'm having a blast.

01:59:10.060 --> 01:59:11.580
I mean, I have a great time on each one.

01:59:11.820 --> 01:59:14.860
Yeah, I learn a lot and it's fun to talk to you.

01:59:15.100 --> 01:59:18.140
And um yeah, and so I hope everybody is enjoying it.

01:59:18.220 --> 01:59:20.940
If you are enjoying it, please, what can people do, David?

01:59:21.330 --> 01:59:26.450
Well, they can leave us a kind review, they can tell a friend, they can climb a mountain

01:59:26.610 --> 01:59:31.570
and shout Evolutionary Psychology the Podcast is the best, uh, as loud as possible.

01:59:31.970 --> 01:59:33.090
Oh, that was really specific.

01:59:33.250 --> 01:59:33.650
That was good.

01:59:34.210 --> 01:59:38.690
Yeah, well, uh yeah, if everybody did that, then you know, everyone would know about us.

01:59:39.330 --> 01:59:40.930
It would it would be weird and and interesting.

01:59:41.090 --> 01:59:44.290
Um uh you can also check out our Patreon page and support us.

01:59:44.370 --> 01:59:50.180
Uh really any kind of encouragement, support, uh uh of any kind is fuel for us.

01:59:50.260 --> 01:59:55.380
It just motivates us to uh keep doing these episodes, bringing on new people, talking to

01:59:55.380 --> 01:59:55.940
each other.

01:59:56.100 --> 01:59:59.380
Um, you we really depend on you for for your support.

01:59:59.780 --> 02:00:03.860
So yeah, and I have one more thing to say, which is if you have thoughts or suggestions

02:00:03.860 --> 02:00:07.700
about, you know, topics or content you'd like to have on, just you know, let us know on

02:00:07.700 --> 02:00:12.870
social media or, you know, send the podcast an email yeah yep all right uh david i'll see

02:00:12.870 --> 02:00:14.790
you in about a week see you